House To Astonish Episode 56
Right, now that we finally have the site back up (thanks, possibly, Dreamhost!) we can get this show on the road. We’ve got a new episode of the podcast for you, where we’re talking about Julie Taymor’s exit from the Spider-Man musical, Robert Kirkman and Rob Liefeld’s new book, Jeff Smith’s Rasl heading to Hollywood and Roger Langridge’s Muppet Show languishing in Limbo. We’ve also got reviews of Sigil, Venom and… erm… Sarah Palin vs the World, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe gets square eyes. All this plus cardboard trees, waggly tongue dribble action and learning Greek on an aeroplane.
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.
The X-Axis – 13 March 2011
Well… the plan was to record the podcast tonight and do the reviews tomorrow. But Al’s car has broken down and he’s somewhere on an English verge waiting for a tow truck. So instead: reviews. Though to be honest, there’s not much out this week – a couple of X-books (X-23 and X-Men: Legacy), plus a couple of new launches, but let’s run through them anyway.
Justice League: Generation Lost #21 – Apparently this series has been tying in to Brightest Day somehow or other, but I’ve been reading it quite happily without following the sister book at all, or even being particularly conscious that there are crossover elements to it. And it’s been a good read; it’s an old-school team book reuniting some of the cast of Justice League International, with a couple of successors such as Blue Beetle subbing for the originals. It’s got a nice strong central concept: Max Lord has made everyone else forget about him aside from this Justice League D-team, and they’ve got to defeat him themselves because, again thanks to Max’s influence, nobody else believes anything they say. That’s a solid premise for a 24-issue series. The fortnightly schedule helps the pacing enormously as well; it’s a relatively rare case of a comic which actually seems to have been created with serialisation in mind, instead of being a graphic novel divided into equal chapters as a grudging concession to economic reality. Last issue, Max killed the new Blue Beetle; this is basically a downtime issue of everyone else mourning. It’s pretty obvious where it’s going as soon as Booster laments that they haven’t been able to get Beetle out of his armour, but it’s also a case where being predictable is fine; it’s heading somewhere you want it to go, the inevitable moment is satisfying without needing to be surprising, and it doesn’t invalidate the conversation scenes that preceded it. Okay, there’s a hopelessly melodramatic bit with Ice and Captain Atom that doesn’t really work. But basically it’s the “darkest just before the dawn” beat, nicely executed, in a story that needed to go there. It’s a good series.
Further Housekeeping
The best laid plans, etc. Having had a Car Incident (waiting for the nice men to come and tow us at the moment) it’s highly unlikely that we’ll be able to coordinate recording this evening. Once we know when we’ll be able to record, we’ll let you know.
Housekeeping
We’re recording the podcast tomorrow night. Reviews probably Monday. (There’s not much out, to be honest – two X-books and some new releases that I’m saving as candidates for the podcast.)
Charts – 6 March 2011
This won’t take long.
You might remember that a few weeks ago, some of the major UK record labels announced their new “on air, on sale” policy, where records would be made available to download as soon as they were released to radio. There was some speculation that this might result in records slowly climbing from the bottom of the charts. And what happened? A string of records went straight in at number 1 with no prior promotion.
But things seem to be changing. Once again, the top end of the chart is eerily becalmed. There are only four new entries on this week’s chart, none of which make the top 20. This is about as quiet as the charts get.
“Someone Like You” by Adele is number one, for the third week. And to judge from the iTunes chart, it’s got a decent shot of holding on for a fourth.
The X-Axis – 6 March 2011
After last week’s deluge of X-Men titles, this week Marvel change tack to ship three Wolverine titles. Yes, okay, one of them is Daken. But still…
Avengers Academy #10 – Well, that’s odd. The cover of this issue is the Academy trainees and the cast of New Avengers teaming up to fight magic thingies, with a big “Magic 101” banner over the top. And the interior… features Hazmat spending a day off with Leech, and Speedball delivering a lesson about how he feels about the Stamford disaster from Civil War. And that’s a perfectly good story, albeit of a rather deck-clearing sort. It addresses the obvious question of why Hazmat doesn’t just get her hugely inconvenient powers removed for good, using one of the various well-established techniques available in the Marvel Universe for such endeavours. And it continues the detoxification of Speedball, who’s going to require a lot of that sort of thing before he’ll be anything other than the poster child for really inane ideas, but points for trying. What it doesn’t do… is bear the slightest resemblance to the story advertised on the cover. Strange choice.
Charts – 27 February 2011
Don’t get too settled. This won’t take long. It’s a very quiet week on the singles chart, with a largely static top ten and only one significant new entry.
“Someone Like You” by Adele holds at number 1 for the second week. Interestingly, according to the iTunes chart, the original studio recording is now outselling the Brit Awards version that catapulted her to the top in the first place. It doesn’t look like any of this week’s new releases are posing much of a threat either, though it’s too early in the week to predict anything with confidence, given what happened on the previous two charts.
The X-Axis – 27 February 2011
If you haven’t listened to our latest podcast yet, then it’s just one post below. Reviews include Iron Man 2.0, Mission and Superman/Batman, so if you want more on those, download the show.
Meanwhile, it’s another classic week of scheduling from Marvel Comics. From time to time Marvel claim that they try to avoid having everything ship at the same time. Well, something’s clearly gone badly wrong this week, because Marvel have seen fit to ship all four ongoing X-Men titles in the same week – Astonishing X-Men #36, Uncanny X-Men #533, X-Men #8 and X-Men: Legacy #245 – plus the anthology title X-Men: To Serve and Protect #4. And that’s not all! The Legacy issue is chapter 1 of the “Age of X” crossover – and in the same week, Marvel have also shipped the second chapter, from New Mutants #22.
Nobody in their right mind could possibly have thought that this was a good idea, and my first thought was that this was some sort of rush to get material out for the February accounting period. But no – looking at the solicitations, they really did intend most of this material to come out in the same week. The exceptions are Serve and Protect #4 and Astonishing #36, both of which were meant to ship in the first week of February. (Yes, that’s right – keeping up the title’s proud tradition of non-existence, the new creative team are three weeks late with their first issue.)
House To Astonish Episode 55
We’re back! After a month away, we’ve got a lot of news to catch up on, beginning with a few words on the sad loss of Dwayne McDuffie. We’ve also got some chat on Marvel’s plans for Pixar and the Big Shots initiative, Boom! Kids’ rebranding and future, Telltale’s comics games, the Powers TV show, the Spider-Man musical being reworked and DC cancelling the First Wave line, as well as reviews of The Mission, Superman/Batman and Iron Man 2.0. All this plus swimming the Atlantic with your voice, generic bootleg armoured super-heroes and a villainous Every Which Way But Loose.
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 February 2011
Last week, Lady Gaga released a single on Friday afternoon, it entered at number 3 on the strength of a day and a half’s sales, and I confidently predicted that it would climb to the top in its first full week of release. Well, so much for that idea.
As it turns out, what seems to have happened is that the hardcore Lady Gaga fans – of whom there are apparently quite a lot – ran out and bought the single in the first few days, but it’s taking longer to catch on with a wider audience. This shouldn’t actually have come as a surprise, since she has a track record of releasing singles that took a while to catch on before climbing to the top. Perhaps “Born This Way” will be the same. (I wasn’t sold on it at first, but it’s certainly growing on me.)
Regardless, the upshot is that although she was number one in the Wednesday midweek chart, Lady Gaga didn’t sustain her sales over the course of a second week, and Jessie J’s “Price Tag” outsold her again. At time of writing, “Born This Way” has dropped to 9 on the iTunes chart, while “Price Tag” continues to sell.
But neither of those singles is this week’s number one. Unexpectedly, this is.
