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.
The X-Axis – w/c 4 December 2023
A short one this week, because there’s not actually much out!
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #116. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. The penultimate chapter of the Firestar arc, and naturally it’s the turning point where Firestar gets the upper hand, still without anyone noticing. Judas Traveller tries to have a press event to depower the captive Justice, Firestar surreptitiously lets him escape, and it all goes horribly wrong. What doesn’t quite work is that in order for the plot to hang together, Judas has to go out and do a public press conference himself for no apparent reason, when until now that sort of thing has always been left to Dr Stasis (for some reason). The story even tells us that Judas doesn’t do this himself normally, which feels like a misstep. Still, the arc is dealing with the twin themes of media manipulation and Firestar’s undercover role better than anything else in “Fall of X”.
X-MEN #29. (Annotations here.) The X-Men go to Latveria to try and recruit Dr Doom’s mutants, and wind up having a fight with them. That’s pretty much the issue. The strength of it lies in the fact that Doom’s team actually seem like a fairly interesting bunch with some potential for future stories, even if it seems weird to be bringing them into “Fall of X” at this point. And Joshua Cassara has some lovely art in this issue, complete with a subtle change of art style for the flashbacks that feels like a direction worth exploring for him. On the other hand, the plot is real Silver Age level stuff – we’re the X-Men, you’re mutants, what do you mean you refuse to drop everything and come with us, let’s fight. The X-Men come across as pretty dim and arrogant, which surely wasn’t the intention.
X-Men #29 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #29
“House of Doom”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Marte Gracia
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight the Daggers of Latveria.
PAGES 2-4. Flashback: Dr Doom intervenes as Professor X is about to announce Krakoa to the human race.
This is an insertion into the flashback that opens House of X #6. The opening dialogue and Xavier’s Magneto’s speech about ending all the disagreements between them is from the original, as the opening line that Professor X delivers before Doom answers him back. The rest of the scene is original material that takes place between pages 4 and 5 of House of X #6, boldly shoehorned into the middle of Professor X’s speech.
It doesn’t entirely make sense that Doom has a V-for-Victor style Cerebro helmet of his own, before Professor X has even publicly debuted with this design, though he does suggest later in the issue that he is relying on some sort of actual foreknowledge of events, rather than simply correctly predicting that Krakoa’s collapse. And the design is wonderful.
Daredevil Villains #8: Klaus Kruger
DAREDEVIL #9 (August 1965)
“That He May See!”
Writer, editor: Stan Lee
Layout penciller: Wally Wood
Finisher: Bobby Powell
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Colourist: Not credited
You can tell that a 1960s Stan Lee character is a real dud when they never appear again. These are the early, foundational issues of long-running books, and later creative teams frequently mine them for ideas. A certain generation of creators idolised the Silver Age and loved to draw on its forgotten corners. So when even they don’t touch a character, well, there’s probably a reason.
All the Daredevil villains we’ve met until now have returned in later stories – except for the Fixer, but he’s a special case, because he dies in Daredevil’s origin story. Even the Matador gets a few further appearances. But no one has gone back to Klaus Kruger.
Duke Klaus Kruger is the “hereditary ruler of the tiny principality of Lichtenbad”. He’s visiting New York for undisclosed reasons, which somehow is front page news. By a remarkable coincidence, Klaus knew Matt and Foggy at law school as a foreign exchange student – the art for this flashback shows him in a lab coat with test tubes, which suggests someone wasn’t quite thinking this through. By a further remarkable coincidence, the world’s top eye surgeon, Dr Van Eyck, has recently emigrated to Lichtenbad. So Karen Page phones up the Duke, which apparently is a thing you can just do, and asks if he can help Matt get his sight back.
Charts – 1 December 2023
Ah, early December. That period when almost no new singles are released because it’s nearly Christmas, but the annual festive march hasn’t reached the top end of the chart just yet, and so whatever’s at the top of the chart tends to stay there for now.
1. Jack Harlow – “Lovin On Me”
That’s three weeks, with Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season” climbing to 2 – I suppose it’s just possible he might sneak a week at number 1 before Christmas. Bear in mind that it’s only holding on at number 1 because all of the Christmas back catalogue is subject to the downweighting rule.
17. Ed Sheeran & Elton John – “Merry Christmas”
Well, except for this – it’s recent enough that the chart rules still allow it to be reset to normal if it has a sudden suge in sales. But the Christmas streaming playlists are swamping the charts – we’ll see the march of last week’s new entries in a bit. This spent three weeks at number 1 on its release in 2021, and reached number 3 again last year.
The X-Axis – w/c 27 November 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #115. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. Continuing the Firestar arc and, hey, some pro-mutant protestors! I mean, some of them are plants working for Judas Traveller, but still, one of my bigger problems with “Fall of X” is that it seems to want me to believe that all this is basically uncontroversial, which, um, no. All told, the Firestar story is turning out quite well here, and it’s a bit of a shame that it’s wound up in the walled garden of Marvel Unlimited. Firestar biting her tongue to play the turncoat hero works; there’s a nice little angle in how far Judas Traveller might be willing to make some kind of alliance with her against the rest of Orchis and how far he’s just manipulating her.
X-MEN BLUE: ORIGINS #1. (Annotations here.) It seems a bit odd to label this as a one-shot rather than as part of Uncanny Spider-Man – presumably someone thought it was a more marketable event this way, and I suppose they’re probably right. This is the big rewrite of Nightcrawler’s origin to explain why he’s the son of Mystique and Destiny after all. Some people will applaud this on gender grounds. Some people will applaud it because it’s closer to what Chris Claremont originally intended. Others will just be pleased to see the back of Azazel as a millstone blocking off chunks of Kurt’s back story.
X-Men Blue: Origins #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN BLUE: ORIGINS #1
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artists: Wilton Santos (with Oren Junior) & Marcus To
Colour artist: Ceci De La Cruz
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Mystique and Nightcrawler (in his Spider-Man costume) in action together. I think the thing in the background is meant to be the Stark Sentinel from Uncanny Spider-Man #4.
X-Men Blue: Origins. The title is a play on the ongoing series X-Men Blue that ran for 36 issues in 2017-2018.
PAGES 2-5. Flashback: Mystique resists Professor X’s mental control and falls off a cliff.
This is a straight recap of a scene in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 #1. We were told in that issue that her body was taken away by the sea, and naturally she showed up again in New York in Uncanny Spider-Man #1.
The recap narrator is the mysterious Bamf that hangs around talking to Nightcrawler, invisible to everyone else, in Uncanny Spider-Man; for present purposes, though, he just gives us a bare-bones recap of Hellfire Gala.
PAGE 6. Flashback: Mystique escapes the Hellfire Gala.
Basically, Mystique picks herself up pretty much immediately, already obsessing about “my baby” (as she has been in Uncanny Spider-Man). She kills and replaces a random Orchis soldier and escapes that way.
Realm of X #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
REALM OF X #4
“The Promised Day”
Writer: Torunn Grønbekk
Artists: Diógenes Neves & Rafael Pimentel
Colour artists: Rain Beredo & Dono Sánchez-Almara
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Lauren Amaro
COVER / PAGE 1: Saturnyne watches as the cast are trapped in an hourglass. This doesn’t really have much to do with the story.
PAGE 2. Sif learns what’s happening in Vanaheim.
Sif took over as guardian of the Bifrost in King Thor #4 (2019) following the death of her brother Heimdall, and now has the same all-seeing powers that he used to. The Bifrost itself has actually been destroyed for most of her tenure, but it was recently restored in Immortal Thor #1. Although we don’t see the Bifrost in this issue, it’s mentioned twice as something that exists, so evidently we’re after that issue. That also means that Thor is wrongly drawn in the costume from his previous series throughout this issue, though that’s a minor error; he’s allowed to have more than one set of clothes.
Saturnyne has been magically preventing communication between Asgard and Vanaheim throughout this series, which we’ve seen mainly in the form of the prayers and messages from Vanaheim failing to generate a response from Thor. Curse used her powers to shut down that effect at the end of issue #3; Saturnyne’s “What did you do?” line is repeated from that issue.
Charts – 24 November 2023
The Christmas deluge is on its way. But it’s not here quite yet.
1. Jack Harlow – “Lovin On Me”
Two weeks. This is actually growing on me, even though everything tells me I ought to hate it.
12. Tate McRae – “Exes”
Boldly, a new release just before Christmas, and with the previous single “Greedy” returning to its peak of number 3 this week, after spending ten straight weeks in the top 10. If you’re releasing singles at now, then either you’re not interested in airplay or (more likely) you’re hoping to be one of the singles poised to benefit from the post-Christmas crash when nothing else is around. That’s probably the plan here, but it’s… not very good?
The X-Axis – 20 November 2023
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #114. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Guillermo Sanna, Java Tartaglia & Travis Lanham. This is turning out to be a nice little arc. Firestar’s undercover role in Orchis is at best a B plot in X-Men, but in Unlimited it gets some room to breathe. Not only do we get some reaction from Firestar-adjacent characters who know what’s going on and those who don’t, but we’re also finally getting to the question of what on Earth Judas Traveller – also a mutant – has been doing in Orchis all this time. He’s basically there because he figured they were going to win, but he’s played quite nicely here as someone who’s hedging his bets at the same time, and starting to believe in Firestar as a potential ally in an organisation full of people who want to kill them both. And there’s something in the idea that Firestar is believable in this role precisely because Jean didn’t have time to do anything more than pick someone at random, meaning that she’s wound up assigning a mutant that nobody would regard as the first choice for the job. Guillermo Sanna pitches her acting quite well. I’m enjoying this.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #17. (Annotations here.) It may not quite match up neatly with Jean Grey‘s final issue in terms of Jean’s state of mind, but this picks up the general theme of Jean being stuck in confused versions of her past rather nicely, with the clever device of having her “narrate” the book entirely with fragments of dialogue from (mostly) iconic appearances – plus a couple that aren’t quite so well known but fit the narrative requirements so well that Gillen would have been mad to pass them up. The Mother Righteous storyline also seems to be building to some kind of climax, while Mr Sinister makes his pitch for an alliance of convenience with Xavier. Quite how we’ve ended up with two comics drawn by Juan José Ryp in a single week, I’m not sure – but his autumnal Krakoa is beautifully rendered, and other than a slightly odd sequence with Apocalypse crushing Exodus’s head, which feels a bit like wires got crossed somewhere, it’s a good issue.
