House to Astonish Episode 212
It’s not the biggest of weeks for comics news, but we have our fun regardless, as Paul and I talk you through the new UK comics industry trade body, the end of Immortal Thor, Werewolf By Night: Blood Moon Rise, the upcoming The Shredder series, Archie’s crossovers with Minor Threats and Jay & Silent Bob and Hellboy and the BPRD: Professor Harvey is Gone. We’ve also got reviews of Amazing Spider-Man and Fire and Ice: When Hell Freezes Over and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is batting 100. All this plus Mr Darkevil Godman, a really good wheel and a bag of pre-blitzed wolf.
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think in the comments, on Bluesky, or via email, and while you’re here at the computer anyway, why not navigate over to our Redbubble store and snaffle yourself a lovely t-shirt? Look, I’ve put a link in there for you and everything.
Charts – 11 April 2025
Well, I was expecting a new number one, but…
Four weeks, and still growing (slightly). It has a massive lead – beating the number 2 and 3 singles combined. Which is all the more surprising, since…
3. Ed Sheeran – “Azizam”
The X-Axis – w/c 7 April 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #17. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. There’s not much more I can say about this arc that I haven’t said already. I completely get why we’re doing stories about radicalisation and how the understandable worries of normal people can be turned to hate while they believe they’re acting in self-defence. it’s a fairly natural theme in the USA right now. But it’s making for rather repetitive stories, and using it as the vehicle for a partial Generation X reunion isn’t adding much spark to it – Skin’s a nice enough character but there’s not really that much interest in seeing him reunited with Husk. It’s a perfectly competent story in plot and artwork but there’s nothing lifting it above that.
UNCANNY X-MEN #13. (Annotations here.) Crossover season is in the rear view mirror and David Marquez is back for the first part of “The Dark Artery”. Obviously, that means the issue is worth your time for the art alone – okay, the dragon looks more stone than ice, but that panel of the Outliers approaching the Dark Artery through the swamp is wonderful, and the flashback pages of Henrietta Benjamin is lovely throughout. There was a time when the X-books worked on the principle that mutants had only started to appear in serious numbers at the start of the Silver Age once the post-nuclear generation hit puberty – that was the point of the “children of the atom” tagline – but that’s been downplayed for many years and doesn’t really make sense anyway given the sliding timeline. So embracing that change and doing stories about the secret history of underground mutant communities is a nice idea. Yes, it begs the question of why we’ve never heard of this pre-X-Men mutant history before, but… well, the current state of continuity does that anyway. I’m not quite so sure how I feel about doing the actual history of racial segregation at the same time – it risks equating the real with the fictional, and has the odd effect of presenting the mutant experience right next to the very thing that it’s a metaphor for – but I think the first chapter gets away with it.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #5 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #5
“Brother in Arms, part 2”
Writer: Erica Shultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE
After telling us last issue that she enjoyed fighting robots because she didn’t have to hold back, she seems to be losing patience with them. (“Robots, automatons, whatever! They’re all dead to me.”)
She dissuades the Revolution from killing Schneider on a fairly standard speech that he doesn’t have to be a killer any more – and then kills Schneider herself. This is a fairly standard Logan trope, where he regards himself as the X-Man who’s already corrupted and keeps doing these things in order to let his teammates stay heroic; Laura seems to be extending it to other characters who are also already corrupted. She tells Revolution that she’s “trying to be better, but some people need to be stopped permanently”. There’s no suggestion, however, that Schneider couldn’t be stopped by simply arresting him; she means simply that he deserved to die.
Storm #7 annotations
STORM vol 5 #7
“Serpents, Salamanders and Storm Gods”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colourists: Alex Guimarães & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
STORM
Iron Man enlists her to help out with an issue in Brazil – this is presented as the first time they’ve worked together since issue #1, but that must be disregarding missions as members of the Avengers. Basically, a sample of an attempt to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum has been lost in a helicopter crash caused by a “weather anomaly”, which has plagued Brazil more generally. Storm takes the mission in order to retrieve the body of the pilot of a crashed plane, despite Iron Man’s distinct lack of explanaion of what’s going on here.
It’s downright odd that calling in a fellow Avengers is presented as a last resort, particular when it’s Storm and the crisis involves weather. Presumably this is tied in somehow with Iron Man’s secrecy about the mission.
Phoenix #10 annotations
PHOENIX #10
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Alessandro Miracolo
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
PHOENIX
She sees parallels between Adani’s back story and the way her own life changed when her powers traumatically emerged on the death of her best friend Annie Richardson. This origin comes from the Phoenix story in Bizarre Adventures #27, and involves Jean withdrawing from the world until Professor X comes along to help her out. In this issue, Jean presents it as a turning point that caused her to lose her childhood – not merely because of the immediate period that followed, but by setting her on a path to meet Professor X, join the X-Men and ultimately become Phoenix. (Some stories maintain that she was always destined to become Phoenix, but that’s arguably a chicken-and-egg matter, given the Phoenix’s confusing relationship to linear cause and effect.)
The Dark Gods assume that Phoenix has the power to destroy Adani, but won’t use it because her sense of empathy holds her back. This is correct as far as it goes, but Jean stops Adani anyway by showing empathy to her and persuading her to reject her power and become an innocent child again. The clear implication is that Jean would rather have remained normal and not become Phoenix (or even an X-Man) too.
Uncanny X-Men #13 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #13
“The Dark Artery, part 1: Machinations of Dread”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: David Marquez
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE X-MEN
Gambit. Sadurang claims that the Left Eye of Agamotto will corrupt him over time, eventually leading him to kill his family and friends. We don’t know whether that’s true or not, but it’s at least consistent with what we’ve seen so far – Rogue was claiming as early as issue #2 that the Eye was “affecting him somehow”.
In narration, he says that he had a “hard time growing up” as a visible mutant due to his eyes. He says that the nurse cried at his birth when she saw him; I’m not sure that’s been said before, but Gambit #1 (1999) does say that the Thieves Guild “cursed the babe as an abomination” because of his eyes. He’s privately hurt by people’s reactions to his eyes, but feels that if he hadn’t been a mutant he would have been a nobody – maybe a low-level criminal enforcer.
Rogue. Appears in two panels. She is cold.
Daredevil Villains #49: Mind-Wave
DAREDEVIL #133 (May 1976)
“Mind-Wave and his Fearsome Think-Tank!”
Writer, editor: Marv Wolfman
Penciller: Bob Brown
Inker: Jim Mooney
Colourist: Michele Wolfman
Letterer: Ray Holloway
Because we’re only looking at the Daredevil stories that introduce new villains, we’re going to get a very distorted view of Marv Wolfman’s run. He was on the series for nearly 20 issues, but he didn’t create that many new villains in that time. There are four new villains in his run, plus another one in an annual. The standout is obviously Bullseye, who we covered last time round. But there’s a gulf of quality between him and the others. For example, here we have “Mind-Wave and his Fearsome Think Tank!”
Mind-Wave is a man in a garish green and yellow costume who can read minds. He pilots a giant futuristic tank. The tank has satellite dishes all over it. Mind-Wave himself mans a gun, and two henchmen have their own little plexi-glass bubbles at the front. It looks like something from the GI Joe toy line, or maybe even Masters of the Universe. The narrator calls it a “clanking, titanium-steel destructoid”. Mind-Wave’s basic plan is to use the tank to create a distraction so that his henchmen can commit bank robberies.
Charts – 4 April 2025
Six new entries, three artists…
Three weeks, and continuing to grow – it had more than double the points of the number 2 single, “Pink Pony Club”. Meanwhile, “Carry You Home” climbs 10-9 (which is a new peak), and “Burning Down” is still at 24. “Ordinary” is finally making some headway in his home country, reaching the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, but it’s been a number 1 in much of Europe.
5. Ariana Grande – “Twilight Zone”
19. Ariana Grande – “Dandelion”
26. Ariana Grande – “Intro (End of the World)”
The X-Axis – w/c 31 March 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #16. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Well, we’ve got to the point of bringing Sean, Paige and Angelo together for the partial Generation X reunion, but I can’t say this arc is doing much for me. It still feels too similar to the first arc. I’m not keen either on having random street level characters getting injections that turn them into the Hulk – diluting the big names for no real reason feels like it’s standing in for a lack of ideas that actually fit in this story. There’s something in the subplot about Paige’s depression, but otherwise this is an underwhelming arc.
X-MEN #14. (Annotations here.) Gosh, there’s a lot going on in this issue – and since X-Men has generally stuck to doing self-contained one or two-part stories when it isn’t involved in crossovers, that alone makes it feel like the book is kicking up a gear. It feels like we’re moving into the phase where things are starting to draw together Ryan Stegman is back on art, and I love the cover of this issue, with the broken glasses in the foreground. I’m not sure about that 3K table at all – how big is that thing? Do they have to yell to be heard on the other side? But the scene with Ben and Magneto is nicely done to continue the slow burn of Ben wanting to be an active character (even if I don’t remember any of this stuff about Magneto trying to mentor him), and the redesign of Wyre is a big improvement.
