The X-Axis – 31 July 2011
If you haven’t listened to this week’s podcast yet, then it’s just one post down. Reviews include Daredevil #1, Amazing Spider-Man #666 (the first part of Spider-Island) and Our Love Is Real…
…none of which are going to be covered here, since it’s another of those weeks when there’s a ridiculous quantity of X-books, so I’m going to focus on those.
Astonishing X-Men #40 – Why is Astonishing X-Men?
This is not entirely a sarcastic question (though it’s that too). With a fifth monthly X-Men title about to launch and no sign of anything being junked to make room for it, one has to ask what the point of them all is. On a purely commercial level, of course, the answer is “completists will buy them”. But let’s consider the point of view of the editors and creators tasked with filling those pages.
House To Astonish Episode 65
Episode 65 of House to Astonish (65! How time flies.) is now live, with plenty of chat about Brian K Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga, the new Fables series, Roman Dirge’s putative Lenore movie, The Sixth Gun moving to SyFy, a big round-up of Marvel-related announcements and the summary judgements in the Kirby estate lawsuit. We’ve got reviews of Amazing Spider-Man, Daredevil and Our Love Is Real and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe speaks with forked tongue. All this plus the writing skills of a hole in the ground, supervillainous Edinburgh Fringe shows and what happens when you play a comic backwards.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud. Let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
X-23 #10-12
“Touching Darkness”
Writer: Marjorie Liu
Artist: Sana Takeda
Letterers: Clayton Cowles and Cory Petit
Editor: Jeanine Schaefer
See, I said I’d get to some of these storylines sooner or later…
When I read the final issue of this three-parter, I thought it was a bit of a mess. Reading the arc again, though, I’m coming round to it. It has its problems – and they’re mainly in part 3 – but they don’t really undermine the central story Marjorie Liu was telling here.
Charts – 24 July 2011
First things first: there is no Amy Winehouse on this week’s chart. The chart week runs from Sunday through to Saturday, and so the inevitable posthumous sales rush won’t make its presence felt until next week. As of right now, it looks like she could well top the album charts, and land “Back to Black” inside the top 10.
But there is no Amy Winehouse on this week’s chart. Nor is there much else.
The Wanted spend a second week at number one with “Glad You Came”, heading up a completely static top five. There are several climbers, but it’s mostly rebounds from songs that have been around forever; the only vaguely notable one is Enrique Iglesias’ “Dirty Dancer” climbing eleven places to number 21. And there are three new entries, all outside the top twenty.
The X-Axis – 24 July 2011
Al and I have just finished recording a five-minute segment for our friends at the Thumbcast, which should be on their upcoming video episode. So, yes, if you want to know what Al’s sofa looks like, your time is nigh. We’ll let you know when it’s up (or maybe just embed it here).
I am, honestly, still intending to get around to a full review of that X-23 arc from a fortnight ago, as well as the New Mutants arc that ended last week. Meanwhile, this week we have… not a great deal, frankly. With one obvious exception, nobody seems to want to release new stuff on the eve of San Diego. So, here’s this week’s one big new release, plus the X-books:
Daredevil #1 – This may be billed as a first issue but it would be more accurately described as the start of Mark Waid’s run, since the break from the past isn’t as complete as all that.
Charts – 17 July 2011
Founded on the principle that there simply must be a gap in the market for another boy band, the Wanted were created by the same person who assembled the Saturdays. Heavily marketed to the core boy band demographic, they’ve got the sort of fanbase that rushes out to buy things in the first week if you hype it enough in advance. “Glad You Came” was hyped well in advance of its release, which is why it’s the new number one.
House To Astonish Episode 64
A couple of days late, but we’ve made it at last, with talk about DC’s fill-in creators, Marvel’s New Stores initiative, Diamond Digital and the end of the Xeric grant. We’ve also got reviews of All Nighter, X-Men: Schism and The Red Wing, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe meets Dale Earnhardt Jr. All this plus Roger Hargreaves’ Mr Terrific, a retailer-shaped hole and the expository sounds of the Germans.
The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here. Let us know what you think, either in the comments thread, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
The X-Axis – 17 July 2011
Well, what an interesting week it’s been. The Murdochs must be praying for the news cycle to move on – where’s a good natural disaster when you need one?
Just in case you didn’t spot the housekeeping notice a couple of posts down, we’re recording the next podcast tomorrow evening, so it’ll be up soon enough. Oh, and as promised last week, I will get around to doing a separate piece on X-23 #12. Not that X-23 ever exactly tears up the comments thread, but the story did read a lot better the second time through, so… we’ll come back to it. Same deal with New Mutants #27, which is the last part of “Unfinished Business”.
It’s the start of Schism proper, following the all-important Prelude to Schism miniseries which has done so much to build goodwill from the fans. More on that below.
Oh, and there’s a couple of first issues from last week that I didn’t get around to reviewing. So we’ll cover them too in this busy, busy week.
Money in the Bank 2011
In theory, “Money in the Bank” is one of the WWE’s B-shows – which is to say, it’s not the Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, Summerslam or Survivor Series, and therefore it’s automatically second-tier. But it’s a more interesting show than most, for several reasons.
First (and least important), it’s the show before “Summerslam”, and so it ought to set up major storylines to be resolved at that show. For that reason alone, it shouldn’t be a throwaway.
Second, the Money in the Bank Ladder Match has been well protected as a gimmick since it debuted in 2005. The idea is that a bunch of wrestlers compete in a ladder match with the winner being the first one to retrieve a briefcase suspended above the ring. Inside that briefcase (supposedly) is a contract entitling them to a shot at their show’s version of the world title, whenever they want it. The “whenever” bit has been taken literally, meaning that if the winner is prepared to ambush the champion, they’re pretty much guaranteed to get the title. With the exception of Rob Van Dam in 2006, everyone has been prepared to screw the champion in this way – making it an excellent gimmick for rising heels, or wrestlers who are about to turn heel.
Thirdly, this year’s show has the benefit of a particularly strong storyline on Raw, which has got an awful lot of attention from the core fans. Whether its appeal translates to a broader audience remains to be seen; but people are talking about it.
Housekeeping
We’re recording the podcast on Monday, so it’s going to be a couple of days late, due to not existing yet.
