Astonishing Iceman #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
ASTONISHING ICEMAN #5
“Out Cold, part 5”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Vincenzo Carratù
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. A shattered Iceman.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Mr Clean defeats Romeo.
This takes place before page 23 of the previous issue, and shows Mr Clean defeating Romeo while Iceman was off in New York. Clyde, the guard drone was seen in issue #1, and mentioned again by Iceman as one of his security measures last iissue.
Romeo actually puts up more of a fight against Mr Clean than you might expect from him, because it turns out that his empathic powers also extend to imposing painful emotions on people when he hits them. I’m pretty sure that’s new. I’m not entirely sure it makes sense – his powers don’t normally depend on touch – but it’s a nice idea, so what the heck.
Wolverine #40 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE vol 7 #40
“Last Mutant Standing, part 4”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Ibrahim Moustafa
Colour artist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Cory Petit
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolverine and Spider-Man in action against Stark Sentinels.
PAGE 2. Tribute to Alison Gill.
PAGES 3-7. Wolverine enlists Spider-Man to help him enter the Orchis space station.
Oscorp. Peter is leaving the Oscorp building, where he currently works in Amazing Spider-Man. (Norman Osborn is good right now, if you haven’t been following it.) Spider-Man is wearing the Oscorp hi-tech version of his costume here, hence the little glowing bits.
“You’ve alive?” Peter knows perfectly well that some mutants are still on Earth – aside from anything else, he’s appeared over in Uncanny Spider-Man – but presumably this is the first time anyone’s mentioned to him that Logan wasn’t among the mutants who went through the gates in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023.
The Orchis jet was stolen by Logan in Wakanda last issue, as the footnote says. If its rightful owner Jun Wei is “expected back at her post in less than an hour”, Wolverine apparently came straight to New York in the hope of getting Spider-Man to help. Seems a bit ambitious, but who knows, maybe he wasn’t specifically looking for Spider-Man. Maybe he just figured that the best way to round up some allies at short notice was to head to Marvel Manhattan, swing a cat, and see who he hit.
Charts – 15 December 2023
It’s mid-December, but we won’t have as much Christmas music this week as you might think, simply because the charts are so rammed with Christmas material already. So…
Two weeks. Perhaps more surprising is that there are still some non-Christmas records hanging in at the top of the chart. That’s mainly because the downweighting rule doesn’t apply to them, admittedly, but Mariah Carey drops back to number 3 this week, allowing Noah Kahan back to number 2. Unexpectedly, our highest new entry this week is…
29. Jack Harlow & Dave – “Stop Giving Me Advice”
This is a track from the upcoming Lyrical Lemonade album “All is Yellow”. The Chart Company is listing Lyrical Lemonade as a co-artist, but it’s more of a company than an artist, and the video itself only credits Dave and Harlow as the artists, so I’ll go with that. This is the sort of unlikely collaboration between two high profile artists that can make some sort of impact even in the madness of the Christmas charts.
The X-Axis – w/c 11 December 2023
Gosh, are we winding down for Christmas? Well, maybe not – there are five books out next week, plus Unlimited. But this is another light week.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #117. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is the end of the Firestar arc, and it goes pretty much how you’d expect. Firestar has successfully screwed up Judas Traveller’s PR event to the point where he’s outlived his usefulness to Orchis, which is a problem when he’s a mutant. He’s lost control of the story he was telling, and nobody else in Orchis realises that it’s because Firestar was messing it up for him. That’s a nice angle for Firestar, and I rather like Sanna’s low-key art on it, which gives Firestar a nicely impassive look. Do I buy Orchis putting her in Traveller’s place? It doesn’t really fit with Gerry Duggan writing scenes in X-Men about the Orchis higher-ups viewing her as expendable. I suppose she’s meant to win the doubters round by throwing Judas under the bus, but it still seems a stretch. I’ll put that one down as a case of dubious inter-title continuity, though, rather than being a problem with this arc in itself.
X-MEN RED #18. (Annotations here.) The final issue, although part of the plot feeds into Resurrection of Magneto. Still, this is the wrap-up of the main series, and … well, it runs up against the fact that it’s an Arakko story. Al Ewing sold me on Martian Arakko as an interesting location, but only by reinventing it as something subtler and more nuanced than the one-dimensional original concept. The war storyline is presumably meant to contrast Arakko as it developed under Storm and co with the original version of Arakko, and that runs up hard against the problem that the original concept of Arakko was very dull, and the nature of the plot makes it difficult for this story to try and convince me otherwise – the comparative flaws of Arakko Classic are a large part of the point, after all.
Dark X-Men #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #5
“The Mercy Seat”
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Jonas Scharf
Colour artist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: The two Madelyne Pryors fight.
PAGES 2-5. The Goblin Queen tries to persuade Madelyne Pryor to join forces.
“Carmen Cruz wanted nothing more than to be part of the X-Men.” Referring back to her origins in the cast of Children of the Atom, basically about a group of human fans cosplaying as mutants. Carmen, the one actual mutant in the group, made it to Krakoa with her heroes but has only come to the foreground in the context of this very questionable iteration of the X-Men.
“You let them neuter your mutant abilities?” We were told in issue #2 that Orchis had used Blightswill to remove the Goblin Queen’s mutant powers, and that she didn’t care, claiming to have long since outgrown them. She claims here that she was also lulling Orchis into a false sense of security.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 18
It’s anniversary time, as we mark the 15th turn round the sun of House to Astonish by briefly mourning the original episode we recorded for the occasion and lost in a computer disaster, before moving on to another anniversary in the form of issue 50 (and 48 and 49) of Thunderbolts, from 2001. It’s the end of the Scourge story, the return of Jolt, and time to bid a fond farewell to Mark Bagley. It’s all go! Come and join us, why don’t you?
The episode is here. or available via the player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page, and don’t forget – it’s likely nobody has bought you a House to Astonish t-shirt for Christmas, so you have all the more reason to buy one for yourself. And don’t forget to let us know what the best comic you read all year was in the 2023 Homies awards, just one post below this one!
The Homies Awards 2023
It’s December, and that can only mean one thing – it’s time for endless Hallmark Christmas movies!
But if it could mean two things, and we’re not saying it could, but just imagine… it would also mean it was time for the 2023 Homies awards!
As always, we want to hear from you about what floated your boat this year. But this time round, there’s a twist – 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.
Annnnnd… GO!
X-Men Red #18 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #18
“The Mended Land”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Yildiray Çinar
Colour artist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. A group shot of the cast, for the final issue.
PAGES 2-3. Genesis raises Arakko Prime from the sea to fight Kaorak.
“Autumn Island.” In other words, what’s left of the Autumn Lands now that most of it has got up and walked across the planet. The rebels shown in page 2 panel 2 include Kobak, Khora, Zsen and Sunspot, as well as a bunch of background characters.
“Nine left, eight, seven.” When we left Jon Ironfire last issue, he was singlehandedly fighting his way through the White Sword’s champions – already reduced from 100 to 99 by his own departure. Evidently he’s been doing well.
Genesis is carrying both the Annihilation Staff and Purity (the sword); she still has Sobunar by her side, even though we’ve repeatedly been told that he wasn’t entirely thrilled with some of her choices. Storm challenged Genesis to “raise your island and fight” at the end of the last issue, and she takes up the challenge.
Arakko Prime is the part of Arakko that was the original counterpart of Krakoa on Earth – in other words, Arakko the island, rather than Arakko the planet. The narrator calls it “the living island”, mirroring how Krakoa was billed back in Giant-Size X-Men #1.
Daredevil Villains #9: The Organization
DAREDEVIL #10 (October 1965)
“While the City Sleeps, part 1: The Organization”
Writer, finishing penciller, inker: Wally Wood
Layout penciller: Bob Powell
Letterer: Artie Simek
Editor: Stan Lee
DAREDEVIL #11 (December 1965)
“A Time to Unmask!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Penciller: Bobby Powell
Inker: Wally Wood
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Even the most casual glance at those credits might suggest a troubled production, and that’s exactly what this is. According to Brian Cronin’s “Comic Book Legends Revealed”, it goes something like this: Wally Wood didn’t care for the Marvel method and felt that he was writing the book without being paid for it. So he asked to write a story and Stan Lee agreed. But when Wood’s story came in, Lee hated it.
Accounts vary as to how heavily Lee edited issue #10. Wood claims that relatively little was changed. Lee, in a spectacularly ungracious bitching session on the letters page of issue #12, said that “about the only thing left that Wally himself had written was his name”. The surviving original art suggests the truth is somewhere in the middle and that the published story is basically what Wood wrote. Either way, Lee refused to let Wood finish the story, wrote the concluding half himself, and fired Wood after reducing him to working as inker on part 2.
Charts – 8 December 2023
Merry Christmas.
1. Wham! – “Last Christmas”
Well, yes, here we go again. It’s the first full week of December and here comes Wham! again. “Last Christmas” only reached number 2 on release in 1984, thanks to Band Aid, but it had a week at number 1 just after Christmas 2020, and two non-consecutive weeks at number 1 last year. It now gets a fourth week at number 1. I believe this is the first time that the same song has been number 1 on four separate occasions, unless you count the multiple versions of “Three Lions” as the same song. It’s a safe bet that this record is going to be sewn up by Christmas records for the future.
Right, then, bring on the tinsel parade.
