Exceptional X-Men #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #4
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Caranero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE MAIN CAST:
Bronze goes to Westinghouse College Prep, which is a real school. It’s not the same school as Senn College, where Melée was playing on the soccer team in issue #1. She wavers about whether to audition for the school musical (The Loveliest Sunday, which isn’t a real show), because on the one hand, she has a crush on a boy who’s going to be in it, but on the other hand, she’s afraid of turning into her metal form during the audition. Since it’s clear in this story that her powers are not generally known in the school, she evidently doesn’t have a general problem with controlling her powers; she must be worried about a stress reaction. Emma and Bobby both advise her to go ahead, and Emma encourages her to use the situation as a way of keeping her focus.
She’s distracted during training at the start of the issue, and panics. But in her first actual fight, she defeats a monster on her own, and she’s justifiably proud of this success. Still, she decide that she’s not cut out for a lead role, or maybe just that she ought to be devoting her spare time to training.
X-Men #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 7 #9
“Raid on Graymalkin, part 3”
Writer: Jed MacKay
Pencillers: Federico Vicentini & Ryan Stegman
Inkers: Federico Vicentini & JP Mayer
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Colourists: Marte Gracia & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Editor: Tom Brevoort
This is part 3 of the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover, which takes place between Uncanny X-Men #7-8.
THE X-MEN (ALASKA)
Cyclops flatly refuses to co-operate in releasing Professor X, even after seeing the state of the prison. First he claims that Professor X manipulated all of mutantkind for the sake of his dream, which is a broadly standard depiction of him since X-Men: Deadly Genesis in 2006. A fair case can be made that his acceptance as a national leader in the Krakoan era was something of an anomaly given the state of his overall relations with the X-Men over that period – and even then, he had a secret plan with Magneto and Moira X. When pressed further, Cyclops points to Xavier’s murder of the crew of the Agnew in Fall of the House of X #4. That was retconned into a trick to deceive Orchis in X-Men: From the Ashes Infinity Comic #4-6, but Cyclops apparently doesn’t know that. For Cyclops, Professor X is a danger to mutantkind. It’s possible that he’s playing along with Professor X’s stated wish in X-Men vol 6 #35 to be a lightning rod for anti-mutant backlash, and figures that breaking such a controversial figure out of jail is not going to be for the good of mutantkind in the round – but that’s not how it’s played.
Psylocke postures to Nightcrawler as a killer, a pose that she doesn’t maintain quite so rigidly among the members of her own team. She tells him that he only plays with swords, which is somewhat true. She’s slower than him to pick up on Scurvy’s influence and falls victim to Professor X’s control, all broadly consistent with the idea that she’s a relatively low-power and somewhat inexperienced telepath who uses her powers to bolster the physical combat skills that she really depends on.
Daredevil Villains #42: Death-Stalker
DAREDEVIL vol 1 #113-115 (September to November 1974)
“When Strikes the Gladiator!” / “A Quiet Night in the Swamp!” / Death Stalks the City!”
Writer: Steve Gerber
Penciller: Bob Brown
Inker: Vince Colletta
Letterers: Artie Simek (#113), Charlotte Jetter (#114-115)
Coloursts: Linda Lessmann (#113), Stan Goldberg (#114), Petra Goldberg (#115)
Editor: Roy Thomas
For our purposes, this is the end of Steve Gerber’s run. It doesn’t actually end until issue #117, but the last two issues are an Owl story. Gerber’s contributions to the rogues’ gallery end here, with the Death-Stalker.
Technically I’ve covered the Death-Stalker already. In issue #158, he will be revealed to be the Exterminator, a villain who had appeared in a single storyline in 1968. I haven’t read that issue yet, but since it’s removed from Death-Stalker’s debut by four years and three writers, it seems like a safe bet that Gerber intended the Death-Stalker to be a new character. So that’s how we’ll treat him.
The story emerges from a subplot which has been building for a while now, involving Foggy Nelson’s younger sister Candace, the token liberal in her family. Candace is a journalism student and she’s stumbled upon some documents about an abandoned research project involving Ted Sallis. None of the Daredevil characters know what Sallis is up to now, but we know that he’s the Man-Thing, and that Steve Gerber is writing that book too. This storyline isn’t a crossover, but it is an excuse for the Man-Thing to guest star.
The Homies 2024
Snow is falling all around me, children playing, having fun. ‘Tis the season for end-of-year best-of lists – it’s the Homies, everyone!
As always, we want to hear from you about what you dug this year. As with last year, rather than give you a long list of categories, we’re concentrating on the comics we read that really did it for us. We simply want you to tell us:
What was the best comic you read all year, and why?
It could be a new release, it could be a relaunch, it could be another great year for a reliable ongoing. It could be a majestic miniseries or a great graphic novel, an incredible indie or a brilliant Big Two book. We’ll be reading them out on the show, so let us know what you dug and what about it made it so special for you.
This worked really well last year so we’re massively looking forward to finding out what you’ve enjoyed this year. Lay it on us!
Charts – 20 December 2024
In which the Christmas number one is quite uneventful, really.
1. Wham! – “Last Christmas”
Here we are again, with a back catalogue track as the Christmas number one, despite the disadvantage of being on permanent downweighting. “Last Christmas” is spending its second week at number 1 this year, its ninth in total. It was number 1 at Christmas 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024. Last year it was number 1 for four weeks, mind you. That won’t be happening this year. Next week’s chart will probably still be dominated by Christmas music, since Christmas Day is Wednesday and the chart period runs from Friday to Thursday. The week after that, it will all vanish, and George Michael won’t cross our mind against for another 11 months. (Seriously, when was the last time you heard anything else by him?)
The X-Axis – 19 December 2024
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #3. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. Ah, the Infinity Comics, where you can get away with doing a spotlight issue on Lewis Guthrie. Which one is Lewis Guthrie? Well, that’s kind of the point. It’s basically a flashback issue explaining how Lewis has become a radicalised anti-mutant type during the Krakoan era, in which he sees his side of the family being ignored and left behind, while taking the flak from everyone else for the mutants doing unhelpful things like making telepathic announcements to the whole world. There is actually a story back in the 2000s where Lewis tries to get his hoped-for mutant powers to activate, which is about the only thing he’s ever done to stand out; it winds up with him almost getting killed by Dark Beast, so I can see why we’re downplaying that in favour of a more mundane (in the best sense) back story. It’s a straightforward story but quite convincingly handled. I suspect it might be read in some quarters as another sign of the current editorial office having an aversion to Krakoa. But for me, Hickman was always setting up the idea that there was a degree of hubris that wouldn’t turn out well, so I have no issue with this sort of thing.
PSYLOCKE #2. (Annotations here.) So after I spent last week’s X-Axis going through variations on “this isn’t really working”, here’s one that’s growing on me. When issue #1 came out, I wasn’t convinced that they had a hook for Kwannon as a solo lead, beyond recycling ideas about being raised as a living weapon that had already been done with Wolverine, X-23 and Elektra. And yes, that’s kind of what this book is doing too, but maybe with a lighter touch and a bit less brooding. Sure, Psylocke’s got strong feelings about rescuing kids from abuse, but Shinobi Shaw works nicely as a foil for her, and she’s given a deadpan sense of humour at the same time as not quite understanding the more normal characters (which is still a relative concept in this book, but the idea’s on the table). There’s some decent action sequences too, and while I’ve never been sold on the “underground gladiatoral arena for the rich” trope, I’m kind of coming round to the idea that maybe there’s enough unexplored territory in Kwannon that this can work?
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 23
We had to get there eventually. We’re biting the bullet and tackling Citizen V and the V Battalion: The Everlasting #1-4, the second (in any sense you care to choose) miniseries starring everyone’s least favourite patriotic superhero. We did it so you don’t have to, so the least you can do is listen to us suffer through it. Better issues next time, I promise.
And in case you’re wondering about the Homies, it’s coming! Tune in tomorrow!
The podcast is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page. Get yourself a little Christmas present while you’re up and about, over on our Redbubble store, why don’t you?
Hellverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
HELLVERINE vol 2 #1
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Raffaele Ienco
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Mark Basso
This ongoing series follows the miniseries of the same name from earlier this year, which brought Akihiro back as a Ghost Rider mash-up. This, by the way, is the problem with Marvel’s current convention of distinguishing between volumes by the year in which the first issue came out: there are two Hellverine (2024) #1s.
Fun fact! If you try to search for this issue on Amazon, it thinks it’s a typo and gives you results for Wolverine instead.
Although it’s coming from the X-office, this series seems to be basically Ghost Rider, so I probably won’t continue doing annotations for it, but hey, it’s the first issue. Chances are I’ll be dropping some other lower-tier books in the new year – otherwise we’re going to have weeks coming up with seven books requiring annotations and that’s just not realistic.
Psylocke #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PSYLOCKE vol 2 #2
“Ladykiller”
Writer: Alyssa Wong
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PSYLOCKE.
The previous issue ended with her bloodily defeating the villains and feeling disturbed by her lack of emotion about it. This issue picks up from that by going into a flashback to her childhood training – possibly a direct continuation of the training flashback on page 15 of issue #1, or at least another training session in the same location. In that flashback, she’s killed some low-level Hand ninja and seems quite relaxed about the whole thing until her friend Mitsuki snaps her out of it. (“Sometimes you go so far away.”) More of Mitsuki below.
As usual, Psylocke feels very strongly about anything involving the brutalisation of children and thinks that everyone involved “deserves to die”. Naturally, she refuses to hurt the kids who have been forced to fight her. She also shrugs off the shock collar that the Cleaver Club try to use to control her.
Charts – 13 December 2024
Oh well, here we are again.
1. Wham! – “Last Christmas”
You know the drill: “Last Christmas” reached number 2 on release in 1984, because that was also the year of Band Aid. It was originally a double A-side with “Everything She Wants”. It resurfaced as a digital download in 2007, and it’s been back every year since 2011. It reached number 1 for the first time at Christmas 2020 – more accurately, on the first chart of 2021. It had another two weeks at number 1 at Christmas 2022, and it spent four weeks at number 1 in 2023.
