Review: New Mutants #8-12
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #8-12
Issue #8 and #12 by Ed Brisson, Marco Failla & Carlos Lopez; issues #9-11 by Ed Brisson, Flaviano & Carlos Lopez
New Mutants is a book with something of an identity problem. If you step back and view it as a series… well, what is it? The first seven issues were weirdly structured, cutting back and forth between a comedy storyline by Jonathan Hickman with the original New Mutants in space, and an Ed Brisson story about a drugs gang besieging a Nebraskan farm. And those stories had pretty much nothing in common – not the creators, not the cast, not the themes, not plot point, not even tone.
Now that the Hickman issues have dropped out of the picture, their inclusion in the first place looks all the weirder. The book is now running Ed Brisson stories, using both casts, and so the tone is more consistent. But it’s still a slightly haphazard read.
(more…)X-Factor #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FACTOR vol 4 #5
“Suite No. 5: First Movement Finale: ‘After a Summer of Allostatic Overload”
by Leah Williams, David Baldeon & Israel Silva
“Allostatic load” is wear and tear on the body as a result of stress.
COVER / PAGE 1: Aurora and Northstar using their powers together. More of that later.
PAGES 2-4. X-Factor show the Five proof of Wind Dancer’s death.
This is picking up the storyline that was in progress before “X of Swords”. Presumably Wind Dancer’s plight was put on hold while the Five had a more pressing crisis to deal with, in the form of disruption to the whole resurrection operation.
(more…)Hellions #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #7
“Whetstone”
by Zeb Wells, Stephen Segovia & David Curiel
COVER / PAGE 1: Mister Sinister pretends to mourn the deaths of the Hellions. (Not something that literally happens in the issue, since they don’t have a gravestone, but the thrust is there.)
PAGE 2: Mister Sinister addresses the Quiet Council.
“My Hellions are dead!” In the last two issues, Mr Sinister sent the Hellions on a suicide mission, supposedly to try and stop Saturnyne’s contest of swords, but actually with a view to retrieving DNA samples of mutants from Amenth / Arakko – something even the Hellions didn’t find out until it was too late. Some of them died in Amenth, while the others made it back to Krakoa only to be murdered by Sinister in order to cover his tracks. Although he knows that the Krakoans will resurrect them, they’ll only have memories up to their most recent back-up, and so they won’t know what happened on the Amenth mission.
(more…)Charts – 27 November 2020
It’s a month to Christmas, and you all know what that means. But regular service hasn’t quite packed in just yet.
1. Ariana Grande – “Positions”
That’s five weeks, though the margins are getting smaller. “34+35” is already being promoted as the next single; it climbs 17-13 this week, though it already made the top 10 as an album track in the week of release. Not quite her longest – “Thank U, Next” managed six. The top 3 is static, with Billie Eilish at 2 and Little Mix at 3. “Levitating” by Dua Lipa climbs 10-5.
8. Miley Cyrus featuring Dua Lipa – “Prisoner”
Ah, Miley Cyrus videos – never knowingly subtle. This continues the 80s throwback approach of “Midnight Sky”, which is still sitting in the top 10 at number 7. And Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” climbs to 5. Miley Cyrus’s singles chart record is patchy – the occasional huge hit and a whole load of middling places – but this style seems to be working for her.
(more…)X of Swords: Destruction #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X OF SWORDS: DESTRUCTION #1
“X of Swords, Chapter 22”
by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Pepe Larraz & Matte Garcia
This is the final chapter of the “X of Swords” crossover, and the third one-shot – the others being X of Swords: Creation and X of Swords: Stasis. All three officially have a #1 attached, because that’s how these things work.
COVER / PAGE 1. Fighting.
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Apocalypse. Until now he’s been carrying the burden of losing Arakko and Genesis in his youth; he’s evidently willing, in this issue, to take on the burden of Annihilation instead in order to rescue them. Since Apocalypse was immortal even before the Krakoan resurrection protocols took hold, he assumes that he’s likely to literally carry these burdens forever.
(more…)Excalibur #15 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #15
“X of Swords, Chapter 21”
by Tini Howard, Mahmud Asrar, Stefano Caselli, Sunny Gho & Rachelle Rosenberg
COVER / PAGE 1: Shards showing the various contest participants; in the centre of the frame, Apocalypse’s shard is held by Saturnyne. (Honestly, you can tell it’s her from the shape of the sleeve, though it’s largely obscured by the logo.)
PAGE 2. Epigraph by Saturnyne. The claim here is that magic can be directed with willpower; therefore, magic will respond more readily to true desperation, but not so much to things that you merely desire. This ties to the advice to spellcasters on the data page about love spells later on.
(more…)X-Men #15 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 5 #15
“X of Swords, Chapter 20”
by Jonathan Hickman, Mahmud Asrar & Sunny Gho
COVER / PAGE 1: Apocalypse’s bloodstained sword, reflecting the Annihilation mask.
PAGES 2-5. Cyclops and Marvel Girl prepare to address the Quiet Council.
Krakoa is presented at its most utopian here, to hammer home the point that Cyclops sees it as a home worth fighting for. He says that he “dreamed” of a home like this but “never thought” they would have it – implicitly referencing “Xavier’s dream” of peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants, which the X-Men used to go on about all the time. Of course, Krakoa is only very debatably an example of that dream, since it’s a separatist project – it’s only coexistence when viewed on the global level. But as Cyclops says, what good did that version of the X-Men’s dream ever do them? They never made any obvious progress towards achieving it.
(more…)Charts – 20 November 2020
Another quiet week on the singles chart, beyond a couple of major releases…
Four weeks, though apparently this one was very close – the equivalent of just a few hundred sales. “34+35” and “POV” are still on the chart, at 17 and 19 respectively.
2. Billie Eilish – “Therefore I Am”
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine: 1976
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975
Last time, we entered Wolverine’s early years of publication. Now, let’s travel back to a strange time before Wolverine was a breakout character, and before the creators were all that bothered about him.
And for reasons I’ll explain, we kick off 1976 with an issue from 1977…
X-MEN vol 1 #106
“Dark Shroud of the Past!”
by Bill Mantlo, Bob Brown & Tom Sutton
August 1977
The X-Men fight psychic projections of the original team, subconsciously created by Professor X’s evil side during one of his nightmares. (These nightmares are a major subplot in the first couple of years of X-Men, but they don’t directly affect Wolverine. Basically, they’re the result of a botched psychic message to Professor X, foreshadowing the introduction of the Shi’ar.)
This is a fill-in issue, which explicitly takes place shortly after Moira arrives at the X-Men Mansion – even though it didn’t see print for over a year after that point. Although it appeared with a framing sequence by Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum, Wolverine doesn’t appear in that bit, so we won’t be coming back to this issue again. There’s a bit of character work at the start: Cyclops accuses Wolverine of putting on a “mad killer” act, while Wolverine complains that Cyclops has been pushing the team too hard ever since Thunderbird died. Banshee chips in to agree, just so we know that the brattish Wolverine actually has a point for a change.
Juggernaut #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
JUGGERNAUT #3
“Stuck in the Past”
by Fabian Nicieza, Ron Garney & Matt Milla
COVER / PAGE 1. The Juggernaut replacing a broken statue of Lady Justice, and weighing sand in her scales.
PAGE 2. This issue’s kind-of-sort-of recap page is referencing Amazing Spider-Man vol 1 #230 (July 1982), in which Juggernaut is trying to abduct Madame Web, and winds up fighting Spider-Man on a construction site. Unable to actually hurt Juggernaut, Spider-Man defeats him by luring him into newly-poured concrete foundations which apparently go down 40 feet or so, leading him to sink to the bottom. He was indeed stuck there for quite some time – his next published appearance was in Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #183, two years later – though previous stories have given it as anything from a month to six months.
(more…)