The X-Axis – 24 April 2011
Welcome back for the first regular X-Axis column in, ooh, ages. I’ve got a three week backlog of comics to review, so in this post I’m just going to cover the the recent X-books (some in more detail than others). I’ll hopefully get to the other interesting releases in a later post – and no doubt Al and I will be talking about three of them tomorrow when we record a new episode of the House to Astonish podcast. Should be up in the course of Monday, and then we should hopefully be back on the regular schedule for the foreseeable future.
Daken: Dark Wolverine #8 – This is part 2 of “Collision”, the crossover with X-23. As you’d expect, the story shifts to Daken’s perspective, though the book is still playing its usual trick of leaving Daken’s actual motives and plans obscure even while he’s narrating the story. He’s not an unreliable narrator so much as an incomplete one who doesn’t bother explaining himself to the reader, leaving it up to us to decide when he’s genuinely planned everything out in advance, and when he’s just winging it.
Charts – 17 April 2011
Now these, I’m really behind with…
When we left off, it was 20 March, and Adele’s “Someone Like You” had just been knocked off number one by Nicole Scherzinger’s “Don’t Hold Your Breath”. That was four charts ago. So what’s happened since?
Well, Nicole Scherzinger’s first week sales didn’t hold up, so on 27 March, “Someone Like You” returned to number one for a fifth week. After that, for the two weeks I was out of the country, we had “On The Floor” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Pitbull.
The X-Axis Catch-up
Welcome back!
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written one of these, and we’re going to be in catch-up mode for a little while. As I write this, I haven’t got around to reading any of the books that came out while I was away. They ought to be showing up at the weekend, along with this week’s comics, in a massively unwieldy pile. (For those of you who’ve asked, the plan is to record the next podcast on Monday.)
But let’s make a start on the backlog, by looking briefly at the X-books that came out just before I left. Yes, comics from three weeks ago. Only on House to Astonish!
Age of X Universe #1 – By the time you read this, “Age of X” will be more or less finished. I’m still about two thirds of the way through, of course. But it’s been a good story, in part because it’s turned out to be a rather more interesting idea than it first seemed. On the surface, “Age of X” is just another dystopian parallel Earth; but with Mike Carey it’s never going to be that simple, and indeed it seems pretty clear at this point that it’s not “real” at all. Everyone’s holed up in a fortress which is probably the interior of Legion’s mind, and unknown to them, the outside world doesn’t really exist. The attacking soldiers seem generic because they literally aren’t real characters at all.
Normal service will resume shortly.
Chances are that by the time you read this I’m back in the country. Chances are that I’m also probably asleep.
Normal content will resume in the next couple of days. Thank you for your patience.
Housekeeping
In case you’re checking by for the X-Axis, a podcast or a Wrestlemania preview, just a reminder that we’re taking a short break and we’ll be back in a couple of weeks.
The X-Axis – 27 March 2011
Welcome to British Summer Time! I knew if I left that clock long enough it would become right again.
It’s a podcast weekend, so don’t forget to check the post below, where Al and I are talking about Green Lantern, Xombi and FF, along with the usual rundown of the news and solicitation.
Important housekeeping announcement! For those of you who didn’t listen to the end of the podcast, I’m taking a short break, so we’re skipping the next podcast, and it’s probably going to be three to four weeks before the next X-Axis.
Loads of X-books this week, and not a great deal else, so let’s get to it…
Captain America & Batroc the Leaper – Continuing their intriguing “more is more” marketing strategy, Marvel have a ton of Captain America one-shots out this month, of which this is one. Given the volume of Captain America minis already released in anticipation of the upcoming movie, one suspects that these books are doomed to be read by weary completists and devoted fans of the creators. But Kieron Gillen and Renato Arlem’s Batroc story is worth your time. There’s not much Captain America in it; it’s really an attempt to rehabilitate Batroc, and a very effective one too. As a back-up reprint of Tales of Suspense #85 shows, when Batroc was first introduced, he may have been ridiculously French (“Nom du chein! Batroc feels zee terrible anger!”), but he was also played as an honourable warrior who was a serious threat to the hero. Years of repeated failure have stripped the character of that aura of credibility, leaving him to hang around the fringes of the Marvel Universe as a Silver Age relic. Gillen turns that to his advantage, playing up Batroc as an underdog who really just wants to do his best as an ordinary man taking on super-soldiers and cyborgs. Even Batroc knows he’s not going to win; but it’s the trying that counts. It’s a nice way of giving back some dignity to a Z-list villain, and one of the best single issue stories I’ve read in a while.
House To Astonish Episode 57
It’s Saturday evening, and it’s podcast time. We’re talking about the new Daredevil and Punisher creative teams, Bendis and Bagley’s Brilliant, Starbucks’ partnership with Marvel and Chew being picked up by Showtime. We’ve also got reviews of Xombi, FF and Green Lantern and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook rebrands. All this plus Thor taking a paternity test, Millie the Model completists and Russian doll robots.
The podcast is here, or on Mixcloud here – let us know what you think, either in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page.
Charts – 20 March 2011
Ah well, nothing stays at number one forever. After four weeks, “Someone Like You” by Adele finally slips to number two. (Mind you, it’s number one again in the iTunes chart as I write. So you never know. It could be back.)
And the new number one is…
…“Don’t Hold Your Breath” by Nicole Scherzinger. Wikipedia describes this as “an empowering mid-tempo pop song”, which pretty much tells you what to expect. It’s one of those post-break-up declaration-of-independence dance records; all pretty familiar, let’s be honest, but it’s done well enough. The song has been doing the rounds for a while; there’s a demo version out there with vocals by Timbaland and Keri Hilson, though quite why somebody thought it was good material for him, I’ve no idea.
The X-Axis – 20 March 2011
It’s the weekend of the Chicago comicon! I’m sure all sorts of interesting things have been announced. I’ll read the round-ups on Monday.
Meanwhile, it’s a busy week for reviews, with five X-books and a bunch of other interesting (or at least noteworthy) titles. So to work…
Fear Itself: Book of the Skull – Billed as the prologue to the upcoming Fear Itself crossover. Matt Fraction is writing the main event, but this lead-in one-shot is by Ed Brubaker, presumably because it spins out of his Captain America storylines. The Red Skull is apparently dead, and his estranged daughter Sin is planning to carry on the family tradition. So she and Baron Zemo raid an abandoned Red Skull base, in order to lay hands on a Magic Widget which will clearly be of tremendous importance to the upcoming crossover. The angle is that Sin is going to outdo her father by revisiting one of his failed plans from World War II and getting it right this time. Cue an extended flashback, with Captain America, Bucky and the Sub-Mariner thwarting a Nazi plan that can fairly be described as enigmatically vague. Scot Eaton’s art is fine, though the inking’s a bit heavy for my taste. But the big pay-off is rather undermined by the fact that it really just tells us something that was already in the adverts for the series proper, accompanied by some vague hinting that will no doubt make sense in seven months’ time. It’s a perfectly acceptable comic, but I can’t honestly say it gets me excited about the crossover.
Charts – 14 March 2011
Nearly the end of the week, best get this done while it’s still vaguely up to date…
If you’ve enjoyed reading the words “Adele is still number one” over the last couple of weeks, then good news – Adele is still number one. “Someone Like You” spends its fourth week at the top, though to judge from the midweeks, commercial gravity is finally going to catch up with it on Sunday.
The turnover of number 1 singles has been pretty high for the last couple of years; the last single to stay at the top for this long was “The Fear” by Lily Allen in February 2009. (Admittedly, six different singles managed it in 2008.)
Further down, it’s a relatively busy week. The highest new entry is at number 5 for “Black & Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa. He’s been releasing albums since 2006, but this is the first time he’s made the UK charts. It’s an odd song to be a crossover hit, since it’s basically a mixture of standard rap lyrics and tributes to his home town of Pittsburgh. But it does stand out from the crowd musically. To some extent it’s been the victim of a record label who still insist on hyping records for ages before releasing them – which resulted in a dodgy cover version by Hype Squad scraping the lower end of the chart last week.
