Charts – 3 November 2023
For two weeks, Kenya Grace’s “Strangers” has held off cässo’s “Prada” by a tiny margin. This week, “Strangers” drops to number 4. Is it finally cässo’s time? No, of course it isn’t.
1. Taylor Swift – “Is It Over Now (Taylor’s Version)”
2. Taylor Swift – “Now That We Don’t Talk (Taylor’s Version)”
5. Taylor Swift – “‘Slut!’ (Taylor’s Version)”
The maximum three songs from “1989 (Taylor’s Version)”, which enters the album chart as her 11th number 1. These three are all previously unreleased “vault” songs, which understandably get the most attention from her fanbase.
I’d say these songs have placed in reverse order of interest? “Is It Over Now” is very much what you’d expect from a song that didn’t make the cut for a Taylor Swift album, and what sort of lyric is “Oh Lord, I think about jumping / Off of very tall somethings”? “Now That We Don’t Talk” is a rather better break-up song, and “‘Slut!'” appears to be a song about the reaction from her famous boyfriend’s fans.
The X-Axis – w/c 30 October 2023
This is the quietest week we’ve had in a long time.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #111. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshii, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. This is the final part of “The Redroot Saga”, which feeds back into the opening scene of this week’s X-Men. Sunfire rescues Redroot and escapes while badly injured and… uh, yeah, that’s basically it. It looks fine, and the dialogue makes a brave stab at telling us that this is some sort of story about hope and perseverance, but… when you get down to it, Sunfire went to find Redroot, and found her, and had a fight with some bad guys, and left with her. This feels a lot like a story that was invented mainly in order to give someone a side quest they could pursue, to set up for Redroot returning and doing something or other in X-Men Red to wake up Arakko and turn the tide against Genesis. Or maybe to bring back Redroot and Cypher at the same time. But as a story in its own right, it runs up against the fact that Sunfire’s not very interesting – or at least, the things that are interesting about him have nothing to do with hunting for a twig in Otherworld.
X-MEN #28. (Annotations here.) Well, there’s quite a lot going on here. We’ve got Sunfire feeding back into the regular title from the Infinity Comics and, weirdly, being picked up by Apocalypse – which suggests that his plot is heading off to X-Men Red, and leaves me wondering what this scene is doing here. I do like Joshua Cassara’s Otherworld, though, which is pleasingly trippy.
X-Men #28 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #28
“Jail Break!”
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. Firestar fights the Juggernaut.
PAGES 2-5. Sunfire is found by Apocalypse.
Sunfire was last seen in this book at the end of issue #24. In that issue, Magik transported him to Otherworld so that he could set out on a quest to retrieve Redroot, the Cypher-equivalent for Arakko, who had been trapped in Otherworld since “X of Swords”. The issue ended with a flash forward marked “X months later” (sic, but let’s assume Otherworld has wonky time), with Sunfire and Redroot basically as we see them here.
In the interim, Sunfire’s story has been covered in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic in a storyline that ended this week. For present purposes, all you really need to know is that Orchis had set up a Blightswell processing facility in Blightspoke, and they were using Redroot there. Sunfire is briefly captured but escapes with Redroot. Thanks to his injuries from fighting Orchis, he also bonds with her as some sort of healing measure. Redroot herself remains basically a non-character throughout.
Charts – 27 October 2023
This is a very quiet week for new entries.
But first, a third week at number 1 for Kenya Grace, still with a razor-thin margin over “Prada” by cassö at number 2.
9. The Kid Laroi, Jung Kook & Central Cee – “Too Much”
Now that’s an unusual combination – and no, Central Cee isn’t just doing a guest verse for the UK release. He’s been having international success for a while, and this is his third top ten hit in Australia. Between the three singers it covers enough bases to make it a natural hit, though the record itself is… well, kind of meh? Justin Bieber has a songwriting credit on it, apparently because it was originally going to be a Kid Laroi/Bieber single. Mind you, eight other people also have songwriting credits on this, and it sounds like it.
The X-Axis – w/c 23 October 2023
Once again, we get a ridiculous overload of X-books this week, to be followed by just the one mainstream X-title next week. This doesn’t seem sensible to me, but what do I know? I’m just the reader.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #110. By Steve Foxe, Steve Orlando, Lynne Yoshii, Fer Sifuentes-Sujo & Travis Lanham. Basically just a fight scene, though it does serve the purpose of letting one of the X-Men do some serious damage to an Orchis operation. Now that the notion of a tour of Otherworld has been dropped and we’re simply onto a third-tier X-Man trying to save Redroot to help avenge his friends, it strikes me that there’s another problem here: Redroot is so wildly underdeveloped on the page that she barely qualifies as a character at all. So when the story tries to do the beat of Redroot feeling hope for the first time in ages… you know, let’s give her a personality first. Any personality. Because right now she’s a background Flower Fairy.
ALPHA FLIGHT #3. By Ed Brisson, Scott Godlewski, Matt Milla & Travis Lanham. It’s very much a week of middle chapters, this – which means the weight of books isn’t the only reason why some of these will be short. A lot of this is a fight scene with the Box Sentinels, which turn out to be nowhere near as good as their American counterparts. Slightly to my surprise, a scene is devoted to explaining away why we’ve had two Feedbacks wandering around, and while it reads very much like a continuity patch rather than a planned part of the story, I do appreciate the effort to smooth it over (particularly as Daken was in both stories). And Nemesis turns out to be… well, a character you’d always have expected to be in an Alpha Flight story, but I guess it does make sense for her to pick a random alternate identity to throw people off the scent. Still, it doesn’t land as quite the huge twist that the cliffhanger wants it to be – if anything, the bigger surprise is that Guardian didn’t already know who she was.
Uncanny Spider-Man #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
UNCANNY SPIDER-MAN #2
“Blue Streak”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Artist: Lee Garbett
Colour artist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Nightcrawler fights the Rhino.
PAGES 2-3. Nightcrawler and Mystique.
We saw Mystique last issue, wandering around Central Park mostly in the form of a homeless person. Since Nightcrawler says they’ve had several previous encounters, this presumably isn’t an immediate continuation from the previous issue. Mystique suffered an aneurysm in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023 while resisting Professor X’s attempt to force her through the gates, which is why she’s incoherent here – although how she made it back to Central Park in this condition is unclear. It’s surely not a coincidence that she wound up in the same place as her son Nightcrawler.
Realm of X #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
REALM OF X #3
“First Blood Spilled”
Writer: Torunn Grønbekk
Artist: Bruno Oliveira
Colour artist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Lauren Amaro
COVER / PAGE 1. Um…, well, that seems to be Mirage crying out on the Bifrost, with images of Thor and Sif overhead.
The original solicitation for this story reads: “No gods, only mutants! The date of the prophecy looms ahead, and despite their best efforts, the Vanir and their mutant protectors are ill-equipped to meet their destiny. Meanwhile, their enemy grows ever stronger, sinking their claws deeper into the misguided Curse. Lost and at the end of her rope, Dani beseeches her former friends in Asgard for help – but will reinforcements arrive in time to turn the tide, or have they truly been abandoned to their fate?”
Most of that solicitation is in the issue, but the closest it gets to Dani beseeching the Asgardians is four panels on page 13 where she stands under a tree and yells to the gods. Presumably it was planned to be a much more prominent plot thread when the cover was designed.
Dark X-Men #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
DARK X-MEN vol 2 #3
“Darker with the Day”
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 Dark X-Men fight the Bamf Dragon.
PAGE 2. Flashback: Emplate arrives on Krakoa.
This is mostly recap of things we’ve already been told, although the actual panels are new.
- Panel 1 shows Emplate shortly after arriving on Krakoa, alongside Selene and Gorgon; Exodus is present, though it’s maybe an overstatement to say that he’s welcoming Emplate rather than tolerating him. Emplate’s actual arrival on Krakoa can be seen in the background in House of X #5.
- Panel 2 shows Apocalypse and Cypher introducing Emplate and Selene to their role of monitoring Krakoa to make sure that its feeding on mutant energy remains in safe limits. This hasn’t actually been seen before, but it was mentioned in X-Men #3 (2019).
- Panel 3 shows Emplate watching his three sisters from a distance; they’re not actively rejecting him, though it’s a pretty safe bet that they would. But the main emphasis of this panel is simply that he’s irrelevant to them.
- Panel 4 shows Azazel showing up to call in whatever debt it is that Emplate owes him – this arrangement has been clear in the previous two issues, but it’s not clear yet what the debt actually is.
Jean Grey #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
JEAN GREY vol 2 #3
“Obsession”
Writer: Louise Simonson
Artist: Bernard Chang
Colour artist: Marcelo Maiolo
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Jean Grey fights the Goblin Queen.
PAGES 2-4. Jean confronts “Madelyne”, and gets interrupted by Hope.
Okay, for once we’re going to take this a panel at a time.
Page 2 panel 1. So far in this series, we’ve been following Jean’s disembodied mind as she thinks back on her life, following her “death” in X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023. We’ve already been through two possible scenarios where her life could have gone differently, but making the other choice turned out even worse. The previous issue ended with Jean turning her focus to her clone Madelyne Pryor, who ought to be familiar to everyone since she’s starring in Dark X-Men. But we’ll come to her back story in a bit shortly.
Page 2 panel 2. This is a jump pack to Jean’s disorientation at the start of issue #1, complete with fragmented images of many of the same events. From left to right:
Charts – 20 October 2023
Not a big-selling week, but quite a busy one anyway.
Two weeks. It was very close over “Prada” at number 2 – the equivalent of 800 sales, or roughly a 2% margin. It’s also one of the lowest-scoring number ones in a while, so I don’t fancy her chances of staying at the top for long. And while there aren’t any new entries in the top ten, there are a bunch of climbers. But we’ll come to that.
16. Fred Again & Jozzy – “Ten”
Perfectly timed, as the previous single “Adore U” hits its tenth week on chart, encounters the downweighting rule, and dives from number 8 straight out of the top 20. So that’s a second consecutive top 20 hit, and it’s not one of his more commercial tracks, either.
