Charts – 5 September 2025
It’s Sabrina Carpenter week!
I’m going to go with the short version of the artist credit, I think. Anyway, this is its fifth week at number 1, and it’s still growing. The two Saja Boys tracks fall to 5 and 8 this week, but that’s more of a reflection of two high new entries. Their actual streaming figures went up.
3. Sabrina Carpenter – “Tears”
7. Sabrina Carpenter – “My Man on Willpower”
Sabrina Carpenter’s album “Man’s Best Friend” enters the album chart as her second number 1, and gets the obligatory three singles. The third is former number 1 “Manchild”, which rebounds from 26 to 4. It’s her seventh studio album (ignoring the Christmas EP “Fruitcake”), but the first four were on Disney labels and don’t really count. Its predecessor “Short & Sweet” rebounds to number 8, but after 54 weeks on release, it’s never actually dropped below number 13. More surprising is that her first post-Disney album, “Emails I Can’t Send”, shows up at number 21 – it reached number 76 on release, and until now has only managed a single week at number 40.
The X-Axis – w/c 1 September 2025
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #35. By Tim Seeley, Eduardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. This is a weird arc, isn’t it? We’ve moved on to a rogue LMD that’s turned on humanity and is trying to get nuclear codes, which all feels a bit disconnected from the Changeling/Morph story that we started with. I guess there’s a vague impersonation theme going on, but other than that it feels like two separate stories. More to the point, there’s surprisingly little of Morph in it; he’s mainly a character being talked about by other people, which is a really odd choice. Given that it’s Tim Seeley, and he’s a perfectly solid writer, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt that there’s a reason for doing it this way, and we’ll find out by the end how it’s supposed to connect up, but it’s all a bit confusing right now. Audino’s doing some lovely art on this series, though, and deserves a higher profile assignment than an Infinity book.
UNCANNY X-MEN #20. (Annotations here.) Uncanny X-Men has an awful lot of characters to juggle, and it’s rather striking to realise that we’ve only just got to a spotlight story for Ransom with issue #20. To be honest, in some ways I’m more intrigued by the opening scene which moves the Corina Ellis subplot along a bit, since dodgy anti-mutant cults aren’t particularly out of the ordinary for the X-books. But there’s something interesting about Wolverine and Ransom as a pairing – Logan has tended to be paired with the likes of Kitty Pryde and Jubilee who serve as a contrast to him, and it actually makes a change to let him mentor someone more like himself. All the more so given that Logan’s status as an elder has come to be one of his defining traits. So that dynamic is something that carries the issue more than the actual plot. Vecchio’s art is perfectly fine in terms of telling the story but feels like it’s lacking something in atmosphere much of the time. Still, the hall of Word of Strength members in hoodies is surprisingly effective and the costume design itself is an intriguing mixture of the everyday and the cult-like.
Magik #9 annotations
MAGIK vol 3 #9
“Above All”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artists: Germán Peralta with Matt Horak
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
PAGES 1-2. Lexi Larsen attacks Magik, Mirage and Liminal on the Las Vegas Strip.
Last issue, the Embodiment (the leader of Society of the Eternal Dawn) sent Magik and Mirage to Las Vegas to retrieve Zosimos’ Quill, a magical artefact supposedly capable of exorcising Liminal from Cal Isaacs’ body. The mission looked suspiciously like a suicide mission, the Quill turned out to be in the possession of a Society splinter group and the Society’s “Examplar of Recruitment” Lexi Larsen showed up at the cliffhanger to wipe everyone out and leave no witnesses.
For some reason, the immediate resolution of that cliffhanger has taken place off panel between issues: Magik teleported herself, Mirage and Liminal to the Strip, and Lexi is in pursuit. It’s not entirely clear why Magik didn’t simply leave the city entirely, but presumably she still has designs on the Quill.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #10 annotations
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #10
“Blood Ties, part 2”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
This one really isn’t going to take us very long.
PAGE 1. Clea starts tracking Gabby.
The previous issue ended with Strega abducting Gabby and teleporting away. Supposedly Gabby’s healing powers mean that her blood strengthens Strega’s magic, and sustains Strega’s undead creations. The artefact that Clea mentions is the Sphere of Shooyen, which Strega grabbed in passing during the fight last issue, and which shows up again later in the issue.
While Clea merrily sets about tracking Gabby with blood magic, we’ll see shortly that Strega has simply gone back to her base in the Paris catacombs, which would have been the obvious first place to check anyway.
PAGE 2. Laura speaks to Xarus.
In the catchily named X-Men: Blood Hunt – Laura Kinney the Wolverine #1 (they ran out of punctuation marks halfway through), Gabby rescued Xarus from vampires who were experimenting on him by feeding him mutant blood in the hope of giving him powers, as a trial run for doing it themselves if it worked. He does indeed unleash a single blast of red energy at the end of that story, although since the first thing that starts glowing is his hands, it’s not at all obvious that the original story had Cyclops’ optic beams in mind.
Wolverine #13 annotations
WOLVERINE vol 8 #13
“Godfather for a Day”
Writer: Saladin Ahmed
Artist: Martín Cóccolo
Colour artist: Bryan Valenza
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER: Well, that’s Logan with Donna Angelina Andiamo and a bunch of dead guys. The logo is, of course, a parody of The Godfather.
PAGES 1-3. Wolverine and Nightcrawler in Louisiana.
They’re at the X-Men’s base at Haven in Louisiana, from Uncanny X-Men. Nightcrawler is part of the regular cast of that book, but he’s continuing to serve the role of sounding board and supporting character that he had in the book’s first arc.
Wolverine is attempting to drown his sorrows after the trauma of Mastermind faking his mother’s return from the dead in issues #9-12. As previously mentioned in issue #9 (and long established before then), this has little practical effect because his healing factor sobers him up almost immediately.
PAGES 4-5. Wolverine arrives at Donna Angelina Andiamo’s home in Chicago.
This is a single-issue story, but as per the footnote, much of it was set up in the 5-page Wolverine backup strip in Giant-Size House of M #2.
Uncanny X-Men #20 annotations
UNCANNY X-MEN vol 6 #20
“Battle in Buenos Aires”
Writer: Gail Simone
Artist: Luciano Vecchio
Colour artist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Editor: Tom Brevoort
COVER: Wolverine and Ransom fight the Word of Strength.
PAGES 1-3. Corina Ellis tries to talk to M.
M. Monet was last seen in issue #9, where she had a background cameo as a newly arrived prisoner at Graymalkin.
According to Corina Ellis, nobody has seen M eat since she arrived at the prison, yet she’s somehow gained three pounds in weight. This is weird, since it has nothing to do with her established powers, but it’s hard to see why Corina would be lying about it. That said, it might be something to do with psychic illusion to freak people out – Monet is apparently immune to the control collar that’s supposed to suppress her powers (and they weren’t wholly effective on Professor X either). She seems happy to show her hand about this, apparently confident that the prison operation is on its way to collapse (for reasons we’ll get to).
Monet claims to have been a friend of Corina’s brother Oscar, and that his last words were to ask Monet to watch over Corina. She previously mentioned her brother and his death in issue #8.
Daredevil Villains #58: Ladykiller
DAREDEVIL #173 (August 1981)
“Ladykiller”
Writer, breakdown art: Frank Miller
Finished art: Klaus Janson
Colourist: Glynis Wein
Letterer: Joe Rosen
Editor: Denny O’Neil
Our last two entries kicked off Frank Miller’s writer/artist run in style, with Elektra and the Kingpin. Up next will be the Hand. And in the middle… there’s this guy. When people talk about the highs of the Frank Miller run, they’re not thinking of this issue. It hasn’t aged so well.
Miller actually intended “Ladykiller” to be the name of the story. The character himself is only referred to as Michael Reese, when he’s named at all. The name “Ladykiller” only gets used in-universe in Amazing Spider-Man #219, where Daredevil mentions this story in passing for no particular reason. It’s an odd story to reference purely for a bit of Marvel Universe world-building, because Michael Reese is a sex offender, and this is a story about rape. Now, this is still a Code-approved comic from 1981, and so it can’t say in terms that it’s a story about rape, but it’s less than subtle in getting that point across.
As subject matter, this can go badly in superhero comics. It can easily come across as exploitative. It can also simply feel like a clumsy attempt to be adult, clashing horribly with the traditional superhero tropes in a way that ends up drawing attention to all the residual elements still unchanged from children’s comics past. And that’s pretty much what happens here.
Charts – 29 August 2025
You know, I’m starting to wonder if the chart show needs to be moved to Radio 2.
Not for this, obviously. “Golden” gets its fourth week at number 1, with a 50% margin over Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” at number 2. The two Saja Boys tracks are at 4 and 6 – neither is climbing on the chart, but both are up in streams. There are also three Olivia Dean tracks in the top 10, with “Nice to Each Other” at 7 and her guest appearance on Sam Fender’s “Rein Me In” at 10. It’s… not the most diverse top 10 you’ve ever heard.
13. Doja Cat – “Jealous Type”
Well, that’s the sort of video that makes Tate McRae looks subtle, isn’t it? It’s the lead single from her fifth album and it’s a rather good 80s throwback dance track. It’s been a couple of years since we had her in the top 40 as a lead artist; the lead single from her last album was “Paint the Town Red”, which was a five-week number one. But it entered lower than this, so I wouldn’t bet against her climbing further.
The X-Axis – w/c 25 August 2025
X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #34. By Tim Seeley, Edoardo Audino, KJ Díaz & Clayton Cowles. One thing I like about this book is its enthusiasm for remarkably low-key real-world settings. We’ve had an influencer convention, we’ve had the Outer Hebrides (kind of), and now we’ve got an English seaside town with a community of retired spies. It’s not even going for Portmeirion, it’s going for cosy crime. That said, does the plot here actually make sense? The idea is that we’re meant to buy into the idea that the break-ins were committed by the Changeling in his villain personality, and Banshee certainly does, but… um, when? Because he was in America when the regular cast found him, and then he was in Ireland, and then the break-ins were already in the news, so… when do people think he sneaked off to Somerset to do some light burglary? Still, it’s a nice looking book and I do appreciate that it’s doing something different.
X-MEN #21. (Annotations here.) With “Age of Revelation” approaching, I assume that X-Men is currently engaged in a bit of deck-clearing and a bit of set-up for the upcoming story. Specifically, if this is going to be an alternate future story, then I suspect it needs Jen Starkey to be heading in the right direction before we jump there. And so this is a sequel to issue #4, where Jen and some of the X-Men go back to Detroit and dispose of the eminently expendable Upstarts. Actually, the Upstarts put up a reasonable fight here, despite being made up mostly of bit-part characters from X-Statix – but they do have sensibly useful powers, so sure, I’ll buy that the X-Men can underestimate them and that Jen gets to have her moment as a result. I’m less convinced about Juggernaut killing Ocelot – yes, logically you can argue that he’s been involved in previous schemes where he seemed pretty relaxed about a body count, but that was a long time ago, some of it’s been attributed to the influence of Cyttorak, and besides, he was never a Wolverine or a Sabretooth. I know it’s meant to be a shock, but it doesn’t convince me. Still, good work here from Netho Diaz, who gives us a decently worked-out action scene and really sells Jen snapping.
Phoenix #14 annotations
PHOENIX #14
Writer: Stephanie Phillips
Artist: Roi Mercado
Colour artist: Java Tartaglia
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Annalise Bissa
COVER: A symbolic image of Jean and Sara.
PAGES 2-4. Sara and the In-Betweener.
Last issue, we established that Sara was not in fact Jean’s real sister, but rather had been inadvertently created in issue #10 from Jean’s memories of Sara. According to Cable, Sara’s continued existence somehow guaranteed a future timeline which was a zombie wasteland, though quite why wasn’t explained. The final scene of that issue saw Sara and her followers Vex, Kel and Rho trying to follow Jean and Cable, and winding up in the right place but in the present day. The issue ended with the In-Betweener appearing, making the same claim that Sara leads to a ruinous future, and calling her “the one between reality and imagination”.
This scene picks up from that cliffhanger, though Sara’s followers are nowhere to be seen (and aren’t mentioned anywhere in the issue). The In-Betweener has evidently taken her somewhere else, and we learn later that it’s the White Hot Room. The background is broadly the same as in the WHR scene in issue #11.
