Hellions #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLIONS #3
“Nothing People”
by Zeb Wells & Stephen Segovia
COVER / PAGE 1. Madelyne Pryor, as the Goblin Queen, stands over a pentagram displaying the Hellions.
PAGE 2. Another epigraph from Nightcrawler, as in the first two issues.
PAGES 3-6. Madelyne talks to Havok.
We’ll skip over the irritatingly stupid grimdark bit. The four panels on the right hand side of page 4 are basically recapping Madelyne Pryor’s history up to Inferno. The first panel shows Madelyne in her pilot outfit from when she had just met Cyclops (though I’m not sure she ever wears precisely this outfit on panel). She talks about how she gave that up to be with Havok’s brother Cyclops.
(more…)Empyre: X-Men
EMPYRE: X-MEN #1-4
by Jonathan Hickman, Tini Howard, Gerry Duggan, Benjamin Percy, Leah Williams, Vita Ayala, Zeb Wells, Ed Brisson, Matteo Buffagni, Lucas Werneck, Andrea Broccardo & Jorge Melina
There was a time when the X-Men got to sit out line-wide crossovers that didn’t concern them, back when they ruled the roost at Marvel. Innocent times. But this is 2020, and so here we are in the margins of an Avengers / Fantastic Four crossover about alien plants invading. We all know the Marvel event format for these events by now. The actual plot is confined to the core miniseries; there are a few side quests to keep the secondary characters occupied; and then there are books that are just finding something to do against the backdrop of the big event without really having any impact on it. This isn’t the X-Men’s story; we’re in category three.
(more…)Charts – 21 August 2020
It’s quite an eclectic week.
1. Joel Corry featuring MNEK – “Head & Heart”
Five weeks – which is the longest uninterrupted run of the year. (“Blinding Lights” had eight weeks total, though.) It’s been ages since we had a dance record spend this long at number one, and it seems all the stranger that it’s happening at a time when all the clubs are closed. But there we are.
“WAP” by Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion climbs 4-2. So it’s now clearly the biggest hit for either of them, and a strong contender to be the next number one.
4. Drake featuring Lil Durk – “Laugh Now Cry Later”
(more…)Cable #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CABLE vol 4 #3
“Ace in the Pouch”
by Gerry Duggan & Phil Noto
COVER / PAGE 1. Cable, with Deadpool behind him. The older Cable costarred with Deadpool in a series for several years, and they were odd-couple friends.
PAGES 2-4. Cable remembers killing his older self.
This is a flashback to Extermination #1. The older Cable’s telepathic line was not in the original scene, and fits in between pages 24-25 of the original story. The flashback version also tones down Kid Cable’s original dialogue, which was “Cable, you’re relieved of your duty. Old fool – you really should have seen that coming.”
(more…)Wolverine #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #4
“The Red Tavern”
by Benjamin Percy, Viktor Bogdanovic & Matthew Wilson
COVER / PAGE 1. Omega Red tries to drown Wolverine.
PAGES 2-3. Wolverine winds up the Quiet Council.
Generally, Wolverine is taking an anti-authority stance here which is a bit of a throwback to his early (publication) years – from the late 80s onwards, he came to be written as an elder statesman of the X-Men and as being an authority figure himself. It’s interesting to see Wolverine baiting the (very dodgy) government of the X-Men’s supposed utopia. As Professor X points out, this is very unhelpful behaviour.
“Suppose you’ll be wanting this back.” Wolverine stole Magneto’s helmet in a flashback in the previous issue, to use it as psychic shielding.
“You once tore the adamantium off my skeleton.” In X-Men vol 2 #25.
(more…)Excalibur #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCALIBUR vol 4 #11
“Verse XI: Blood of the Changeling”
by Tini Howard, Marcus To & Erick Arciniega
COVER / PAGE 1: An angry Jubilee surrounded by… well, I guess it’s meant to be dragon fire, though if it’s supposed to be forming any particular shape, I’m not seeing it. In a retro touch, we have the story title too… plonked somewhat arbitrarily on the page.
PAGES 2-5. Excalibur show up to rescue Jubilee from the Green Priestesses.
We’re picking up here from issue #9, where Excalibur were in Otherworld in an attempt to create a permanent Krakoan gate. They were attacked by Saturnyne’s Priestesses – who are now clarified in this issue to be the White Priestesses – and Shogo was shot down. Issue #10 was a diversion into events in an alternate timeline (which doesn’t directly play into this issue), and so it’s been a long long time since we picked up this plot thread.
(more…)Empyre: X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
This is the final issue of Empyre: X-Men, so a proper review will follow. Meanwhile…
EMPYRE: X-MEN #4
“Un-Ring”
by Jonathan Hickman, Jorge Molina, Lucas Werneck & Adriano di Benedetto
Everyone else has had their fun on the middle chapters, but Jonathan Hickman’s back for the (vaguely) serious bit.
COVER / PAGE 1. Magik, Angel, Wolverine and M/Penance being consumed by plants. Wolverine does not appear in this issue. The glowing sword sticking out of the rock is presumably Magik’s Soulsword.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits.
PAGES 4-5. Flashback. The Scarlet Witch realises she’s brought back a bunch of zombies and beats a hasty retreat.
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 5
Part 1: Origin to Origin II
Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939
Part 4: World War II
We’ve reached the postwar era. We’re not quite at Team X just yet, but we’re certainly getting back into some better known parts of Wolverine’s back story.
According to Logan: Path of the Warlord – and we’ll get to that story shortly – after World War II, Logan returns to Madripoor in search of easy money. There, he gets involved with the mysterious firm of Landau, Luckman & Lake, who specialise in “all kinds of shady stuff”. As one of their agents, he visits Japan again and fights Kimora, an alien warlord who’s been brought to Earth through a portal opened by a Dr Carling. Why Logan’s fighting alien warlords, even vaguely samurai-ish ones, at this stage of his career… well, he just is. But more of Kimora in a bit.
Landau, Luckman & Lake were introduced by Chris Claremont in Wolverine vol 2 #5, which shows a photograph of Logan with his LLL contact Chang. That photo is described as a 19th century tintype, which might have been intended to imply that Logan was an adult in the 1800s – if so, that obviously can’t survive Origin. But the same story shows that Chang is around in the present day, and LLL are generally hinted to be a bit weird right from the off, so it’s equally possible that Claremont was thinking of time travel or dimension hopping.
Charts – 14 August 2020
Ah, controversy.
1. Joel Corry featuring MNEK – “Head & Heart”
Three weeks, and it heads up a static top three. It’s still growing, so it could be here for a while.
4. Cardi B featuring Megan Thee Stallion – “WAP”
Not a song about the early days of wireless internet, but a bold new contender for the coveted title of Most Futile Radio Edit. Mind you, apparently YouTube rejected the “explicit” version and accepted this one, so it must have ticked some sort of box, despite its frankly token effort at disguising the repeated sample from Frank Ski’s “Whores in This House”. And that was the least of the radio editor’s problems.
(more…)X-Force #11 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #11
“Red Dawn”
by Benjamin Percy & Bazaldua
COVER / PAGE 1. Colossus fights Omega Red. Omega Red does not appear in the issue, which always makes me wonder if plans changed after the cover was commissioned.
This is a “Path to X of Swords” issue. In this case, it’s fairly easy to see which element ties in to the crossover, but it still emerges from things that have happened in this book.
PAGES 2-5. The latest batch of lab-grown soldiers turn out to contain “Russian doll” assassins.
The soldiers. These are the bad guys that Wolverine and the Marauders defeated in Wolverine #3. They don’t look all that similar in the two issues, since Adam Kubert depicts them with some sort of swirly energy effect on their costumes, while Bazaldua just presents it as red armour-type stuff.
(more…)