Cable #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CABLE vol 4 #6
“X of Swords, Chapter 19”
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1. Generic pin-up of Cable and other characters from “X of Swords” (including Betsy, who’s been absent from the plot for several chapters now).
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Cyclops. The point here, of course, is that generally Scott is giving teen Cable fairly conventional advice, but in this issue Cable is fretting that the older, more experienced Cable that he forcibly replaced would have been much better suited to the occasion.
(more…)Hellions #6 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #6
“X of Swords, Chapter 18”
by Zeb Wells, Carmen Carnero & David Curiel
COVER / PAGE 1. Tarn the Uncaring stands over the defeated Hellions.
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Tarn, which pretty much speaks for itself. Tarn is (presumably) a new character – for what it’s worth, the Marvel Universe does have a previous Tarn, who was a minor Spaceknight, but that’s probably just coincidence. Oh, and a tarn is a small mountain lake.
Note that Hellions normally opens with an epigraph from Nightcrawler. I suppose Tarn gets the slot here because they’re such a long way from home.
(more…)X-Force #14 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #14
“X of Swords, Chapter 17”
by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine holding up his new Muramasa blade, with Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl and the Beast shown in reflection – which has nothing much to do with any scene in the issue.
PAGES 2-3. Magik fights Pogg Ur-Pogg.
“Things are about to get busy.” As we’ll see in Cable #6, there are apparently 25 battles in total. We’ve already had six of them, and this issue takes us up all the way through to battle 22. So it’s something of a montage issue.
(more…)Review: Wolverine #1-5
WOLVERINE vol 7 #1-5
issues #1-3 by Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert & Frank Martin
issues #4-5 & issue #1 backup by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic & Matthew Wilson
February to September 2020
The revived Wolverine solo title turns out to be a companion book to Benjamin Percy’s X-Force. The team show up in the first arc; the Russian super soldiers for issue #3 turn up again in X-Force; and when we get to “X of Swords”, we’ll see the Wolverine chapter running through both books as if they were indistinguishable.
If nothing else, it helps to keep things straight between Wolverine’s solo and team books. And certainly the tone is very similar, though this book does benefit from being able to keep its focus on a single character.
It also carries over some of X-Force‘s flaws. The first arc immediately rubs me up the wrong way by having Wolverine kill off the rest of X-Force. The Krakoan resurrection set-up can easily tempt writers into killing off characters, because it no longer has consequences. But we’re past the point of establishing the concept now, and instead it just feels like a repeat of What If? syndrome, where characters charge into situations they’d normally take in stride, and die en masse like poisoned lemmings. It’s quite literally overkill.
(more…)House to Astonish Episode 187
A compact and bijou hour-and-change of comics chat for you this time round, with discussion of Marie Javins’ promotion to DC EIC, John Nee being let go as Marvel Publisher, and the announcements of Truth & Justice, X-Men Legends, Hollow Heart and Geiger. We’ve also got reviews of Punchline and Hellboy and the BPRD: The Seven Wives Club, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe mentioned it once but it thinks it got away with it. All this plus Adam Smith’s Golden Age comics career, 1990s house anthems and Johnny Fishnchips, the scrappy British superhero.
The podcast is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And remember, if you ever feel like your torso could be warmer, you can always buy one of our neato t-shirts over at our Redbubble page.
Review: Cable vol 4 #1-4
CABLE vol 4 #1-4
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
March to September 2020
It’s past time that I started clearing my review backlog. So let’s go through the ongoing titles and talk about what they were doing before “X of Swords” started.
Cable had the misfortune to launch just before the delays caused by the pandemic, leading to a delay of over four months between issues #1 and #2. That’s beyond the control of anyone involved, but it means stories played out much more slowly than originally intended. Still, the impact on Cable is rather less than on other titles, because it had barely got going in the first place – its first issue is mostly about establishing its take on the title character, and setting up the story to follow.
(more…)Charts – 13 November 2020
Ah, are we into the pre-Christmas lull already?
1. Ariana Grande – “Positions”
22. Ariana Grande – “POV”
For the second week running, Ariana Grande charts with the maximum three tracks from her new album. “Positions” spends its third week at number one – admittedly without much in the way of competition. “34+35” drops from 9 to 18. And we get one of those awkward quirks of the chart rules, as “POV” overtakes “Motive” as the third-placed track from the album, and elbows it off the chart entirely thanks to the quota rule. Since “POV” was disqualified under the same rule last week, technically it becomes this week’s highest new entry, but it’s all a little artificial.
(more…)Wolverine #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #7
“X of Swords, Chapter 16”
by Benjamin Percy, Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara & Guru-eFX
COVER / PAGE 1. Symbolic image of Wolverine impales by loads of swords, with images of the Arakki champions arranged in an X behind him.
PAGE 2. An epigraph from Saturnyne, alluding to all the tarot cards we keep seeing.
PAGES 3-6. Magik battles Pogg Ur-Pogg
This involves going through Merlin’s Holy Republic of Fae to Roma’s “Floating Kingdom” – initially shown upside down, as it was in X of Swords: Stasis. As far as I’m aware, the pseudo tarot card has no significance.
(more…)Excalibur #14 annotations
As always this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #14
“X of Swords, chapter 15”
by Tini Howard & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1: Apocalypse, Captain Britain and Magik offer moral support to a terrified Cypher. This bears no resemblance to anything in the story, but Cypher does at least appear prominently.
PAGE 2. Epigraph from Apocalypse. Obviously he’s referring to his relationship with Genesis, but the parallel here is the unlikely pairing of Cypher and Bei from later in the issue.
PAGE 3. Betsy psychically checks in with Jubilee.
We last saw Jubilee and Shogo in issue #11; they’re staying with the Priestesses of the Green while Shogo recovers from the injury he suffered in issue #9.
(more…)Marauders #15 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS #15
“X of Swords, chapter 14”
by Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Stefano Caselli & Edgar Delgado
COVER / PAGE 1. A smug-looking Saturnyne stands over her unconscious, and presumably poisoned, guests. None of the Marauders appear here, and this is another of those “X of Swords” chapters which is an issue of the title in question in name only.
PAGE 2. Two epigraphs. The first is indeed a quotation from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Given the way this week’s issues play out, the point is presumably that the whole contest is essentially rigged by Saturnyne, or at least open to rigging. The second is from one of the Arakkii champions, who we know has a hundred followers that he raises from the dead with his healing powers every day.
(more…)