Daredevil Villains #14: The Leap-Frog
We jump forward quite a few issues here. So, just for the record: Issue #19 is more of the Gladiator and the Masked Marauder. Issues #20-21 are an Owl story, in which he kidnaps the judge who sentenced him to jail and forces Matt to defend him in a mock trial before a jury of criminals. It’s a lovely idea, but Stan couldn’t figure out a clever solution, so Daredevil just hits everyone with a stick. Issue #22 is the Tri-Man, but that’s just a robot built by the Masked Marauder. Issue #23 is another Gladiator / Masked Marauder story. Issue #24 is the Plunderer again. And that brings us to…
DAREDEVIL #25 (December 1966)
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: Gene Colan
Inker: Frank Giacoia
Letterer: Art Simek
Colourist: Not credited
The most significant thing in this issue is the new storyline advertised on the cover. “Wow-eeeee!”, Stan proclaims. “Just wait’ll you meet ol’ Matt Murdock’s swingin’ twin brother!” Yes, it’s Mike Murdock, a notorious piece of Silver Age silliness.
Foggy and Karen find a letter which reveals that Matt is Daredevil. When Matt shows up a few minutes later, he improvises wildly, and claims that Daredevil is actually his twin brother Mike. Foggy can’t help remembering that he and Matt lived together for years with no mention of a twin brother. But Matt keeps digging – complete with thought balloons of the “what the hell am I doing” variety – and winds up promising that Karen and Foggy can meet brother Mike.
Charts – 2 February 2024
Still here, then?
1. Noah Kahan – “Stick Season”
As the number one in waiting throughout Christmas, I figured this would hang on long enough to get a couple of weeks after the festive rush. But no, here we are in February and week five. He’s seen off Ariana Grande; his biggest challengers right now is “Lose Control” by Teddy Swims, climbing to 3, and “Murder on the Dancefloor” continuing its revival run at number 2.
It’s a quiet week for new entries in the top end of the chart, so we move on to…
20. YG Marley – “Praise Jah in the Moonlight”
Debut hit. YG Marley is the grandson of Bob Marley, and the son of Lauren Hill, which is quite the pedigree. “YG” stands for “Young God”, apparently – his first name is Joshua. The song is partly based on “Crisis”, a 1978 album track by Bob Marley & the Wailers. We don’t get much reggae on the singles chart, but this is pretty appealing quite aside from the family name. It’s already been number one in New Zealand and made the Dutch top ten.
The X-Axis – 29 January 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #124. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy, Yen Nitro & Travis Lanham. This arc feels less like a story and more like a scramble to catch up on what a bunch of barely related characters were doing during Fall of X. Thunderbird! X-Corp! Shatterstar! Somnus! Cerebra! The notional main story here is that the Externals are rounding up mutants for Selene, which at least picks up on her trying to resurrect them in Immortal X-Men. But it feels like it’s being squeezed aside by all the unrelated stuff around it, and while Selene does have some actual star power as a villain, she’s still basically just doing what she normally does. And next issue is… something to do with Captain Britain? There’s way too much going on here, and none of it is cutting through.
WOLVERINE #42. (Annotations here.) Oh dear. A storyline co-written by Victor LaValle and Benjamin Percy sounded like a horrible style clash when it was announced. It avoids that trap, but largely because LaValle’s contribution is undetectable. Certainly, nothing that made his Sabretooth minis worth reading is to be found here. This is just a tiresome exercise in gore porn. Some of it is downright stupid, in a way that simply doesn’t work alongside the general horror tone that the book seems to be aiming for. But even the bits that strike a better balance are mainly just reminding me of why conventional Sabretooth stories were so boring. This is part 2 of 10 and another eight issues of this is going to be an absolute chore.
Dead X-Men #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DEAD X-MEN #1
“Earth Intruders”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artists: Jonas Scharf, Bernard Chang & Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Prodigy, Dazzler, Cannonball and Jubilee emerge from their graves. Not what actually happens in the story, but the whole billing of this series as Dead X-Men turns out to be a bit of a red herring so far as the actual plot is concerned. Poor old Frenzy doesn’t make the cover.
Dead X-Men is a four-issue miniseries, but it seems to be actually relevant to the line-wide storylines, which is why it’s getting annotations here.
PAGES 2-4. The X-Men make an abortive visit to a demonic timeline.
Okay, so.
The Treehouse is the X-Men’s former New York base. It’s not looking very healthy, but then nor is the rest of the city in this timeline.
The X-Men for the purposes of this series are Prodigy, Frenzy, Jubilee, Dazzler and Cannonball – in other words, the five who were voted onto the team in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 and lasted a grand total of one panel before being killed by Nimrod. The other members of the Gala line-up are Synch, Talon and Juggernaut, all of whom survived and are currently appearing over in X-Men. But this is the majority of the rightful X-Men team.
Wolverine #42 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #42
“Sabretooth War, part 2”
Writers: Benjamin Percy & Victor LaValle
Penciller: Cory Smith
Inker: Oren Junior
Colourist: Alex Sinclair
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Sabretooth, with Wolverine’s head on a platter. Don’t worry, kids, it’s symbolic.
This one won’t take long.
PAGES 2-5. The Sabretooths capture Wolverine, and Sabretooth Prime has him strung up.
This continues directly from the end of the previous issue.
“I made a promise. Before you all tossed me in that Pit.” In House of X #6, Sabretooth’s last line before being dragged into the Pit was: “You think I’m just going to take this? I’m making a list and now you’re on it, along with your kids. And then their kids. I will make your line extinct.” He makes fairly generic threats to the Council throughout the scene, but nothing in this scene relates specifically to what he said in House of X #6.
Omega Red‘s tentacles are normally carbonadium, not adamantium. For most practical purposes, nothing turns on this.
House to Astonish Episode 206
Merry Chri… er… Happy New Y… um… Happy February? Welcome to the joint 15th anniversary and end of year wrap-up episode of House to Astonish, as Paul and I chat through the news of the past few weeks, including Blood Hunt‘s polybagged “Red Band” editions, Jason Aaron taking on the relaunched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the 40th anniversary of Usagi Yojimbo and Criminal coming to Amazon Prime. On top of that, we have the 2023 Homies awards, where we (and you) give our picks of the best things we read last year, and the complete audio of the SILENCE! To Astonish panel from November 2023’s Thought Bubble festival. All this plus Alan Sugar action figures, being turned evil by a bop on the head with a bowling ball, and every comic character who is legally not Captain Marvel. There’s almost too much here! Don’t eat it all at once!
The episode is available here, or through the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Bluesky or (I guess) Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And look, if you don’t already know how good you would look in a House to Astonish t-shirt, I don’t know how much more I can emphasise that fact.
Daredevil Villains #13: The Gladiator
DAREDEVIL #18 (July 1966)
“There Shall Come a Gladiator!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: John Romita
Inker: Frank Giacoia
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: not credited
Early Daredevil doesn’t have a large supporting cast. It’s just Foggy Nelson and Karen Page. And the heart of the book is the romantic triangle between Foggy, Karen and Matt.
Today, Karen has been out of the picture for many, many years. She was killed off in the late 1990s. Foggy’s established role for decades now has been the solid, dependable, long-suffering best friend who’s stood by Matt all through the years. And to be fair, that’s basically how he was set up in issue #1.
But in the early Silver Age, Foggy Nelson’s main function is to get in the way of Matt and Karen. Foggy loves Karen. Karen loves Matt, and she’s quite keen on Daredevil too. Matt loves Karen, but thinks she just feels sorry for him because he’s blind. Matt thinks Foggy is better husband material for her, and she’s willing to entertain him as a fallback option.
This role isn’t a promising starting point for Foggy. To make matters worse, he spends a lot of time in the early issues bitching about Daredevil whenever Karen mentions him, or even privately hoping that Matt doesn’t get his sight back, because it’d ruin his chances with Karen. Foggy does at least feel guilty about such things crossing his mind. From time to time he gets to show some decency and integrity. But fundamentally he’s a blocking character, not a supportive rock.
Charts – 26 January 2024
It’s the end of January and the charts are now firmly back in their normal rhythm.
1. Noah Kahan – “Stick Season”
Four weeks, and having seen off Ariana Grande, he seems to be settling in for the long haul. This week’s biggest challenge, for example, comes from…
5. Noah Kahan & Sam Fender – “Homesick”
This is the latest in a series of reissues of Kahan’s album tracks with guest verses by other singers – basically the equivalent of the single remix with the guest rapper. This time it’s Sam Fender, who understandably has completely different lyrics for his verse because he plainly did not grow up in New England. They didn’t change the chorus, though, making him a weird fit.
The X-Axis – w/c 22 January 2024
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #123. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Phillip Sevy & Yen Nitro. Another relatively quiet week, then. And this is a pace of X-output that I’d be very happy with. Anyway, over at X-Men Unlimited, the plot moves beyond simple punching into… well, um, stuff. We’re told that Orchis aren’t just kidnapping mutants on the reservation. They’re doing it everywhere. Well… yes, isn’t that the whole premise of Fall of X? Aren’t Orchis meant to be arresting every mutant in sight? I guess it’s the involvement of the Externals that’s supposed to be a hook, but the story never actually explains why we should care about them. They don’t seem to be doing anything materially different from what Orchis was doing anyway. It’s not like anyone’s been holding their breath all these years for a Crule and Gideon story. The reservation setting previously gave this some sort of focus, but now we’ve got Shatterstar, and El Aguila (a Spanish mutant superhero from Power Man and Iron Fist), and … Betsy is still active as Captain Britain, despite Orchis? What? And she’s doing media interviews? At this point, I’m just lost – I don’t understand at all what this story is trying to do.
X-FORCE #48. (Annotations here.) The Beast storyline kicks up a gear, and not in the way I expected. When they mentioned that Beast had erased all his back-ups after the period when he was a shiny happy bouncing character, it seemed pretty obvious that the end game was to resurrect him with the older personality. Then the next writer could do a story where Hank comes to terms with what he did, but no longer remembers and can’t even understand wanting to do. But instead, the bouncing Beast is brought back as a clone, and that’s a much more interesting way of doing it. I still suspect we’re going to wind up killing them both off and resurrecting them in one body, or something of that sort, but the idea of leaving Hank Classic as a copy actually feels like a better way of getting a viable Beast back into circulation – it’s less of a reset button because this Beast genuinely didn’t do anything from the last few years. I kind of hope they just stick with that. After all, they replaced Kraven the Hunter with a clone, didn’t they?
Resurrection of Magneto #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO #1
“The Lightning Path”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: David Curiel
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
RESURRECTION OF MAGNETO is a four-issue miniseries, which effectively replaces X-Men Red. It’s not exactly a renamed X-Men Red arc – as we’ll see, it’s a rather different book – but it does feature Storm and it continues the plot thread of Magneto’s death.
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm, with Magneto in the background.
PAGE 2. Storm’s dream about Magneto.
Storm confirms on page 19 that this is what she sees in her dream, and tells us fairly directly what she singles out as important: “He was standing on a strange shore, readying himself to enter a ruined city – his face turned away but in torment. It was more than a dream. It was a distress call.” She also notes the five helmets at his feet. We see a version of this same page with Storm on page 29.
The city, river and bridge are the same in both images, as are the positions of the helmets (which are replaced in Storm’s version by five versions of her headdress). Magneto has three identical versions of his traditional helmet, together with the less common black and white versions. As in Storm’s picture, the three helmets on the left appear to have pools of blood next to them, although in Magneto’s case, one of the pools is green. All of Storm’s are red.
