Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1
The Giant-Size X-Men one-shots have a slightly odd place in Hickman’s line. On the one hand, they’re written by Hickman himself, and they feature what seem to be significant plot points for his wider story. On the other, they differ in tone from his X-Men stories, with a more relaxed pace and none of the data pages that normally provide heavy-duty exposition. They feel a little detached from the rest of the line. After all, even when something seemingly important happens – like Storm’s infection by the Children of the Vault – it never gets mentioned anywhere else, and vanishes into the narrative ether.
Granted, the long interruption caused by the pandemic probably makes that look worse than it is. But there’s a definite sense of Giant-Size X-Men being off to the side somewhere, creating Schrodinger’s plot developments that won’t feel like they really matter until another book mentions them.
Read moreThe Incomplete Wolverine, Part 3
Part 1 – Origin to Origin II
Part 2 – 1907 to 1914
We’ve reached World War I, which is… untapped territory, for the most part. Not entirely, though. Wolverine: Origins #17 tells us that Logan fought in World War I as part of Romulus’s “Devil’s Brigade”, some sort of black ops or mercenary squad who fought alongside the regular troops. Daniel Way seems to have picked this up from Alpha Flight vol 1 #33, where Wolverine mentions in passing his service with the Devil’s Brigade. In reality, the Devil’s Brigade was the nickname of the First Special Service Force, a US/Canadian commando unit that existed between 1942 and 1944 and is regarded as the forerunner of modern US and Canadian special operations forces. Maybe Daniel Way didn’t get the reference, or maybe he was suggesting that that unit was also part of Romulus’s conspiracy.
Flashbacks in WOLVERINE vol 3 #57-60
“Logan Dies, parts 1-4” by Marc Guggenheim & Howard Chaykin
November 2007 to February 2008
22 April 1915. Logan is fighting with (apparently regular) Canadian forces. At the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans use chlorine gas for the first time. Everyone else dies, but Logan survives to see a mysterious figure with a sword. Being Logan, he promptly fights and kills the guy, who immediately reappears alive and well and says they will meet again. This is Lazaer, an angel of death. (Yes, it’s an anagram of “Azrael”.) The nagging sense that he has defied the order of nature leads Logan to fall into a depression, to the point where he attempts suicide – but evidently he comes to terms with it over time.
Charts – 17 July 2020
I suppose we’re coming out of lockdown season now – but this is another lockdown singles chart, in which not much would be happening if it weren’t for a single major album release.
1. Jawsh 685 & Jason Derulo – “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)”
Three weeks. It needs one more week in order to match 2015’s “Want to Want Me” as Derulo’s longest-running number one.
“Head & Heart” by Joel Corry featuring MNEK climbs 15-3. That makes it the highest placed single for both artists. Both had previously peaked at number 4 – Corry with his previous single “Lonely”, and MNEK with his debut hit “Ready for your Love” back in 2014.
9. Juice WRLD & Marshmello – “Come & Go”
11. Juice WRLD & Halsey – “Life’s A Mess”
15. Juice WRLD – “Wishing Well”
iWolverine 2020 #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
iWOLVERINE 2020: This is a two-issue miniseries ostensibly tying in to the Iron Man 2020 event. Albert debuted in Wolverine vol 2 #37, by Larry Hama and Marc Silvestri, and he was a recurring character throughout Hama’s Wolverine run alongside his partner Elsie-Dee. The back story is that Donald Pierce came up with a convoluted scheme to assassinate Wolverine which involved making a robot duplicate of Wolverine, and a little girl robot with a bomb inside. The girl was accidentally given superhuman intelligence, broke her programming, and upgraded the Wolverine doppelganger at the same time, naming him Alfred. Since then, they’ve basically been wandering adventurers.
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Magneto #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
And before anyone asks, I haven’t read the Free Comic Book Day story, which isn’t available digitally. From the sound of it, it’s basically a bunch of cryptic teasers for X of Swords.
COVER / PAGE 1. Magneto, in shadow, looks at the camera.
PAGES 2-4. Magneto arrives at Mykines and asks to buy it from its owner.
Mykines is the westernmost of the Faroe Islands, which are about 200 miles north of Scotland. It does indeed have a lot of puffins. In real life, there’s a small village on the island, including a guest house for the small number of tourists (who are acknowledged in this scene, and who can reach the place by regular ferry and helicopter services). Most of the houses are now second homes; according to a BBC article about the Faroes written in 2018, the current permanent population is nine. The Greek-sounding name is thought to be a corruption of a Celtic term for “pig island”.
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 2
In part 1, we were going through stories that were mostly designed to be read in sequence. We left off with Logan in New York in 1907, at the end of Origin II. Now we’re entering a rather more haywire phase, since writers tend to assume that Wolverine’s history between Origin and World War I is simply a bit of a blank. It isn’t, but it’s a scattershot period with a lot of travelling going on.
Flashback in WOLVERINE: WEAPON X #10
“Love and the Wolverine” by Jason Aaron & CP Smith
February 2010
Shortly after Origin II (“it wasn’t long after I first come down outta the wilderness”), Logan wanders to California and becomes an agricultural labourer, where he loses his virginity to a Mexican migrant worker (whose name he doesn’t know). And that’s the whole thing.
Somewhere around this point, apparently, Logan encounters the sadistic mercenary Shredder, from the 2003 miniseries Hulk/Wolverine: Six Hours. In issue #3 of that series, Logan claims that he met Shredder when he was “young … just starting to get control of my mutant powers” – whatever that really means, given the nature of Logan’s powers. As tends to be the way with one-off villains in need of instant credibility, Shredder nearly kills Logan, but he escapes.
Charts – 10 July 2020
Another album maxes out its singles chart allowance…
1. Jawsh 685 & Jason Derulo – “Savage Loved (Laxed – Siren Beat)”
Two weeks. That’s as far as Jason Derulo usually gets, but he did manage four weeks with “Want to Want Me” in 2015. Of course, the typical length of a run at number one has been creeping up since Jason was last having regular number ones.
The top 6 is completely static, and our highest new entry is…
7. AJ Tracey & Mabel – “West Ten”
(more…)X-Force #10 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PAGE 1 / COVER. Black Tom Cassidy in attacking mode. This is another issue which doesn’t call for much in the way of annotation since it’s mainly the climax of plot threads from X-Force itself, but we’ll run through it quickly anyway.
PAGES 2-5. Wolverine, Domino and Kid Omega enter a Terra Verden temple and get separated by the evil plants.
Wolverine and Domino discuss her apparent decision to be restored to life without traumatic memories. Regular readers will know that this isn’t what happened – in issue #8, the dying Domino specifically told Colossus that she wanted to “remember everything” when she was revived. Colossus clearly lied about her instructions. Wolverine does, however, remember her expressing a different opinion previously – but whether he’s suspicious about how this came to pass, or simply doubting the wisdom of the decision from someone who must have been changing her mind frequently, is less clear.
(more…)The Incomplete Wolverine, Part 1
Because you can’t spell “quixotic” without an “X”.
So the Moira thing went well, but it goes without saying you’d be completely insane to do the same thing for a character like Wolverine. Still, we had a long gap this year with no new comics coming out, and so I thought I might go back and read Wolverine’s pre-X-Men back story in chronological order to see if it made any kind of sense.
And so in this series of posts, we’re going to go through Wolverine’s history in more-or-less chronological order – some of this stuff just can’t be placed precisely, but there are certainly clear phases of his life where appearances have to go. Obviously there’s got to be a cut-off point somewhere, but we’ll cover at least his history up to joining the X-Men and see where we go from there – I’ve read up as far as Uncanny X-Men #200 at time of writing, which is around the point where he’s fully developed into the familiar character. It’s also “Incomplete” because I can’t be 100% confident I’ve caught anything, but also because it’s clearly going to stop somewhere. Once the ongoing comics are coming out again, these will probably settle into a less frequent schedule than the Moira posts – the current material takes priority.
(more…)Charts – 3 July 2020
We’ve had busier weeks, but at least this week’s four new entries are somewhat eclectic.
1. Jawsh 685 & Jason Derulo – “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)”
Climbing to number 1 in its third week on chart. Producer Jawsh 685 joins the list of pure one-hit-wonders (one number 1 single and nothing else). Most people who achieve that do manage to get off the list – other than Jawsh 685, the most recent name on the list is Bradley Cooper, thanks to his duet with Lady Gaga in 2018 – and since he’s not principally a singer, he probably is going to stay on the list.
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