X-Men #23 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN vol 6 #23
“When Cometh — The Stark Sentinels”
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colour artist: Dee Cunniffe
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. The X-Men fight a Stark Sentinel.
PAGES 2-6. Mother Righteous visits Dr Stasis.
“[T]here’s nothing that Dr Stasis enjoys more than eating with clones of his family.” This is a callback to early issues, in particular issue #2, where Stasis is living in a suburban home and killing off each new family as they prove unsatisfactory. Evidently he’s now relocated full time to the Orchis Forge, but that hasn’t stopped him from recreating his throwback suburban household there.
Rebecca Essex was Nathaniel Essex’s wife before he became Mr Sinister. She appears in his origin miniseries, Further Adventures of Cyclops & Phoenix (1996). Her basic role is to become increasingly disturbed by his behaviour, die in chidlbirth, and refuse to forgive him, prompting him to turn to Apocalypse.
The Incomplete Wolverine – 2013
Part 1: Origin to Origin II | Part 2: 1907 to 1914
Part 3: 1914 to 1939 | Part 4: World War II
Part 5: The postwar era | Part 6: Team X
Part 7: Post Team X | Part 8: Weapon X
Part 9: Department H | Part 10: The Silver Age
1974-1975 | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979
1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985
1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991
1992 | 1993 | 1994 | 1995 | 1996 | 1997
1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003
2004 |2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009
2010 | 2011 | 2012
We’re still in the phase when Wolverine is running the Jean Grey School. The end is drawing near, but you wouldn’t know it just yet, as Marvel continue to launch new books.
SAVAGE WOLVERINE #1-5
“Savage”
by Frank Cho & Jason Keith
January to May 2013
Savage Wolverine ran for 24 issues with rotating creative teams, but most of the stories are set at various points in the past, so it won’t generally be troubling the timeline. In this first arc, Wolverine and Shanna the She-Devil team up to deal with a mysterious island in the Savage Land which causes technology to fail. Amadeus Cho and the Hulk show up too. The island’s temple turns out to be a containment unit for an evil space god, the Dark Walker (Morrigan); they accidentally wake it, and in the epilogue it flies off into space to encourage its creator Visher-Rakk to attack Earth. Which never happens.
Wolverine and Shanna have met multiple times before but the script seems entirely unaware of that. The story is little more than an excuse for Cho to draw stuff, predominantly Shanna’s arse. Awful.
Charts – 2 June 2023
Ah, so this is going to be around forever, then.
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
That’s eight weeks, so it ties with “One Kiss” as Calvin Harris’s longest-reigning number one. Goulding broke her record a few weeks back. It’s been on the chart for a total of 12 weeks now. “Daylight” by David Kushner is a non-mover at 2 – it’s now spent a total of five weeks stuck behind “Miracle”. Perhaps more surprisingly, number 3 is “Calm Down” by Rema, which has been in the top 10 for 24 weeks now, and has been on the top 40 since September. I haven’t mentioned it in a while because it reached number 4 for the first time back in March – and thus hasn’t achieved a new peak since, until now – but it’s huge.
12. Taylor Swift – “Karma”
18. Taylor Swift – “Hits Different”
24. Taylor Swift featuring Lana Del Rey – “Snow on the Beach”
Taylor Swift is so big that she can get three tracks into the top 40 on the release of the deluxe edition of an album from six months ago. Who does that?
X-Axis – w/c 29 May 2023
Another unusually quiet week. Well, next week’s busier. In the meantime…
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #4. (Annotations here.) So we’ve reached the penultimate issue, and while there isn’t quite a mad scramble going on, it does feel like yet again we’ve jumped past a bunch of stuff and headed straight to the conclusion. The whole Fury-as-Captain-Britain thing gets brushed aside by having him get beaten up in a few pages by the Avengers, though admittedly he’s got a subplot with Brian to pick up next issue. Rachel’s Askani storyline suddenly leaps forward. Jamie does things to advance the plot… It is what it is, at this stage. And let’s be fair, between Excalibur, Knights of X and BB:CB, this storyline has managed 36 issues, which isn’t bad in the current market. But 35 issues down, I’m still not really very interested in Betsy as Captain Britain, and when the book is trying to be defiantly celebratory about her in the role, it far too often feels brittle and defensive. Let’s just wrap up the storylines and move on.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #89. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. The X-Men fight Nature Girl – sorry, Armageddon Girl – and of course she takes them apart singlehandedly. After all, it would be a pretty underwhelming story if a bunch of characters who hadn’t otherwise been involved just rocked up and sorted it a few panels. This issue comes across more as a swing back to the earlier X-Men Green vibe of “the planet is very angry and Nature Girl has a point”. There’s not a huge amount more to it than that, but it’s got a story beat to hit and it does it well.
DEADPOOL #7. By Alyssa Wong, Luigi Zagaria & Matt Milla. There’s a lot that I like about this run on Deadpool – the art and story have a nice upbeat feel, the Atelier characters feel well designed, Valentine works as a foil for Deadpool. The tone is right. My main issue with it is pacing – it does some really long action sequences which mean that not a huge amount happens in each issue. That’s the main thing holding it back right now, but it’s still quite good fun in its own way.
X-23: DEADLY REGENESIS #3. By Erica Schultz, Edgar Salazar & Carlos Lopez. You expect these flashback minis to play the hits, but up to about two thirds of the way through this issue, Deadly Regenesis feels a lot like it’s re-treading the hits. Eventually we get to the hook, which is Kimura trying to exploit X-23’s new heroic values to get her back under control by means of hostage taking, and deliberately finding the most random and unimportant people she can find (in her eyes, at least) so as to rub it in that Laura is doing this in service of some abstract notion of the importance of human life. I can kind of see that as an angle for a certain point in Laura’s development, and Salazar’s art makes Kimura seem suitably smug, but I’m far from convinced that this is really adding much.
Betsy Braddock: Captain Britain #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
BETSY BRADDOCK: CAPTAIN BRITAIN #4
“Earth’s Most Furious”
Writer: Tini Howard
Artist: Vasco Georgiev
Colour artist: Erick Arciniega
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Captain Britain and Askani under attack by Morgan Le Fey’s Furies and Dr Doom’s Doombots.
PAGES 2-4. Betsy Braddock and Tony Stark talk.
This scene picks up from the end of the previous issue, with Betsy visiting Tony to ask for his help as “an expert on Morgan Le Fey”.
“I went to Otherworld once upon a time. With Doctor Doom.” If this is meant to be referring to Iron Man vol 1 #150, then that was a time travel story, not a trip to Otherworld.
“I dueled King Arthur somewhat recently.” In Excalibur #26 (which came out back in December 2021).
“Terrible what happened to the West End.” Tony is referring the Fury attack last issue.
PAGE 5. Recap and credits.
Charts – 26 May 2023
Apparently it’s late-career hit week on the singles chart. But first…
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
That’s week seven. One more week for it to match “One Kiss” as Calvin Harris’s longest-running number one. “Daylight” by David Kushner returns to number 2 for a fourth week, after getting pushed down to 3 last time.
9. Lana Del Rey – “Say Yes to Heaven”
Lana Del Rey did have hit singles right at the start of her career – “Video Games” made number 9 in 2011, and “Born To Die” did the same the following year. In fact, that’s as high as she’s ever got with a regular single. Technically she has three higher placed singles to her credit – the 2013 remix of “Summertime Sadness”, which reached number 4; her inexplicable collaboration with Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus on “Don’t Call Me Angel (Charlie’s Angels)”, which got to number 2 in 2019; and her guest appearance on Taylor Swift’s “Snow on the Beach”, which reached number 4 last year. But she hasn’t had a top 40 hit with one her own records since “Lust For Life”, which scraped the bottom of the chart in 2017.
The X-Axis – w/c 22 May 2023
Just one core book this week, so we’re straight on to the capsules.
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #88. By Steve Orlando, Emilio Laiso & Rachelle Rosenberg. Okay, so this is clearly us building to the big finale. Nature Girl has finally moved beyond eco-terrorism to outright atrocity, and the real X-Men finally show up to deal with her. It’s straightforward, and at this point Nature Girl isn’t what you’d call a subtle character – her back story and her previous established persona is doing a lot of the work here by providing some context for her. Laiso’s art, meanwhile, works hard to invest us in the mega-obscure Spider-Girl. As is often the case with X-Men Unlimited, it’s more of a scene than a story, but on a weekly schedule there’s nothing wrong with that.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #3. (Annotations here.) I’m counting this as a core title because it’s basically a continuation of New Mutants, but if we’re being honest, we’re on the fringes of Krakoan continuity here too. It remains very much a book centred on Charlie Jane Anders’ new character Escapade, which I don’t really have a problem with, since I quite like Escapade – but the established cast are getting marginalised. The middle section has some awkward cutting back and forth between scenes mid-page, which might have worked better if they were coloured more distinctively from another, but winds up feeling a bit confused at times. Still, this is mostly good fun as things start escalating at Nefaria’s Mansion, with a bit of soap opera for Escapade, Morgan and Cerebella thrown in. There’s a lot of personality in both writing and art, and it’s a very likeable series.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 14
It’s time for another electrifying set of issues of Marvel’s most wanted superteam, the Thunderbolts, as we look at Thunderbolts Annual 2000, as well as Thunderbolts #38 and #39. Scourges! Hellstroms! Citizens V! It’s very much all go, as the storyline begun in issue 34 continues along its twisty-turny path.
The episode can be found here, or via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments, via email, on Twitter or Mastodon, or on our Facebook fan page! And do you know what would really bring out your eyes? A House to Astonish T-shirt. It’s true!
New Mutants: Lethal Legion #3 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS: LETHAL LEGION #3
“Old Wounds, Old Weapons”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Penciller: Enid Balám
Inker: Elisabetta D’Amico
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1. Count Nefaria stands over the defeated cast.
PAGES 2-3. Karma, Mirage and Galura arrive at Count Nefaria’s mansion.
“Well, this is where Cerebro said we’d find those kids.” Last issue, Dani and Xuân were looking for Cerebella and Scout, and learned that they’d gone off-island with Escapade. Evidently they really don’t trust the trio’s judgment, since for all they know, they might have just gone to visit home.
“Do you ever miss it Karma? Being a billionaire?” Karma inherited the Hatchi Corporation upon the death of Susan Hatchi in Astonishing X-Men vol 3 #56 (2012). She claims here to have given it all away “long ago … before Krakoa”. In fact, although it was only mentioned intermittently in later years, it featured prominently in the miniseries New Mutants: Dead Souls, and she was still rich during the Matthew Rosenberg run (see Uncanny X-Men vol 5 #18), which is immediately before Krakoa. Admittedly, it hasn’t been mentioned during the Krakoan era, which at the very least suggested that she had handed the running of the business off to somebody else.
Charts – 19 May 2023
It’s the post-Eurovision chart, and for once, there’s a real impact in the top ten. But first…
1. Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding – “Miracle”
…this gets a fairly comfortable sixth week at number one. Still another two weeks to go before it matches “One Kiss” as Calvin Harris’s longest running number 1.
Embedding doesn’t seem to be working right now, so I’ll just do links. You know how to open in a new window, after all.
It’s not unusual for tracks from Eurovision to show up in the top 40 in the following week, but their sales and streams tend to be frontloaded in the days after the contest. This year, four songs make the chart, but they all had actual sustained success and wind up in the top 10 – they’re legitimate hits. Part of that may be because the viewing figures were high this year, possibly because it was held in the UK (subbing for last year’s winner Ukraine). Part of it may be that the standard was unusually high.
