Charts – 16 December 2022
And there was me thinking that Mariah Carey was guaranteed to sit at number 1 through to Christmas. But no! We have a surprise!
1. Wham! – “Last Christmas”
I mean, kind of. After all, this was number 3 last week, and it also sneaked a week at number 1 over Christmas 2020. But still, it’s some sort of turnover at the top, which is nice.
The march of Christmas singles slows down this week, simply because there are so many in the top 40 already that there’s no room for any more. The result is a very quiet singles chart with one notable exception…
X-Men Legends #1-2
X-MEN LEGENDS #1-2
“Interim for Mutants”
Writer: Roy Thomas
Artist: Dave Wachter
Colourist: Edgar Delgado
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Mark Basso
We’re going to get through the reviews backlog, really we are. And with that in mind, here’s the first arc from the second volume of X-Men Legends. Quite why you renumber an anthology title from #1 is a bit hard to follow, beyond the obvious hope that it boosts sales for a couple of months, but I guess that’s reason enough.
Originally, Legends was pitched on the idea of classic X-Men creators returning to their own runs; with Gambit and X-Treme X-Men, that seems to be the format now for Chris Claremont minis. This arc, though, is something else. Roy Thomas wrote the X-Men in the 1960s, and his issues with Neal Adams are pretty significant. That’s not the period he’s going back to. Instead, this is an exercise in bridging the gap between Incredible Hulk #181 and Giant-Size X-Men #1 for Wolverine.
From a continuity nerd’s perspective, there kind of isn’t a gap between those two stories, because Daniel Way already filled it in Wolverine: Origins #28-29… but fair enough, there are other stories that say he went on several more unspecified missions in that period. Still, is it a gap that needs filled? It’s not like Wolverine changes radically between those two issues.
Legion of X #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
LEGION OF X #8
“Family Ties”
Writer: Si Spurrier
Penciller: Netho Diaz
Inker: Sean Parsons
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Mother Righteous, surrounded by images of the cast (and focussing in particular on the transformed Nightcrawler. She isn’t actually in the issue, but her influence is apparent. We saw her with these sorts of viewing globes in the previous issue.
PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute page.
PAGE 3. Chamber and Husk waver over whether to go into the room.
We’re picking up here from the cliffhanger, where Nightcrawler, Dr Nemesis and Pixie showed up at Archangel’s office only to find him demonically transformed and locked in battle with the Black Knight. At the start of the previous issue, Nightcrawler despatched Chamber and Husk to visit Archangel, in response to a “hazy” request for an investigation. This is them showing up separately.
Charts – 9 December 2022
Ah. Already, then?
1. Mariah Carey – “All I Want for Christmas Is You”
We’re now firmly into the Christmas deluge, and in the absence of a particularly strong incumbent number 1 – Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” had already been there for six weeks – Mariah Carey makes to number 1 already. She had two weeks at number 1 over Christmas 2020 but had the decency that time round to wait for another week.
Some purists hate this sort of thing, but the reality is that this is what people are actually listening to – in fact, Carey has to overcome the permanent downweighting of back catalogue material. You could see it as a sign that nobody really cares very much about modern music but I suspect it’s at least as much a case of the long tail suddenly converging on Christmas records at this time of year.
X-Men Red #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-MEN RED vol 2 #9
“Return of the King”
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Stefano Caselli
Colourist: Federico Blee
Letterer and Production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Abigail Brand playing an increasingly convoluted chess-like game, with a broken Storm piece.
PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute
PAGE 3. Data page: a memo from Professor X to the rest of the Quiet Council. Essentially, Abigail Brand has persuaded Xavier that after Magneto died in A.X.E.: Judgment Day, leaving clear directions not to resuscitate him, they need to resurrect Vulcan (following his death at the hands of Tarn in issue #3) in order to have access to his power. She’s also persuaded him that an excellent idea would be to give Vulcan a crash course in some sort of therapy as part of his resurrection, supposed in order to stabilise him.
Obviously this is all part of Brand’s plan for Vulcan to go crazy (as seen at the end of the previous issue), and Xavier walks straight into it. He comes across here as gullible but also overconfident in his own abilities, despite paying lip service to his limitations. Ewing also writes Xavier confidently proclaiming absolute moral rules that he would never break “under any circumstances” – only to immediately qualify them with “absolute necessity”, which could mean anything. Basically, Xavier’s fatal flaw in this reading is that he believes his own hype.
Marauders #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MARAUDERS vol 2 #9
“Here Comes Yesterday, part 3”
Writer: Steve Orlando
Artist: Eleonora Carlini
Colourist: Matt Milla
Letterer & production: Ariana Maher
Design: Tom Muller
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Kate and Bishop fight the possessed Fang.
PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute page.
PAGE 3. Nightfount is updated on progress.
Nightfount. Nightfount was seen briefly in the previous issue, but this is the first time we’ve seen him at any length. He was described last time as “Threshold’s defector” who “leads the Unbreathing against us, razes our cities, intent on reigniting the Oxygen Wars”.
We’ll find out later in the issue who Nightfount actually is, but the design of his helmet is a big clue, as is the fact that he already knows about Arkea and Sublime by name, even though the duo only learn those names from reading the Marauders’ minds later in the issue.
PAGE 4. Recap and credits.
New Mutants #32 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
NEW MUTANTS vol 4 #32
“The Sublime Saga, part 2: Swap Out”
Writer: Charlie Jane Anders
Main story artist: Alberto Alburquerque
Main story colourist: Carlos Lopez
“Young Shela & Morgan” artists: Ro Stein & Ted Brandt
“Young Shela & Morgan” colourist: Tamra Bonvillain
Letterer & production: Travis Lanham
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Sarah Brunstad
COVER / PAGE 1: Wolfsbane, Escapade, Cerebella, Leo and Morgan surrounded by U-Men.
PAGES 2-4. Escapade as a U-Man.
Escapade tried using her powers to escape by swapping places with a guard last issue, but couldn’t get it to work. Evidently she pulled it off on a second attempt.
X-Force #35 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X-FORCE vol 6 #35
“Prison Break”
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Chris Allen
Colourist: Carlos Lopez
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Design: Tom Muller with Jay Bowen
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Beast fighting Maverick and Sevyr Blackmore.
PAGE 2. Stan Lee tribute page.
PAGE 3. Beast ejects a prisoner into space.
I mean, it’s not subtle, is it? There isn’t much to say about this issue in terms of annotations, by the way, but we’ll run through it quickly anyway. The Krakoan text reads AIRLOCK.
PAGE 4-6. The riot continues.
Solem seems to have no ulterior motive here beyond bringing down the Beast. He claims the moral high ground over Maverick on the basis that at least he doesn’t lower himself to working for the Beast, though I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve made the point that Percy’s interpretation of Maverick completely ignores his traditional role as the most decent member of Team X. And I really, really, don’t buy someone from Arakko giving lectures about the lessons of history regarding fascism.
Immortal X-Men #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
IMMORTAL X-MEN #9
“The X Lives of Moira VI”
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colourist: Davie Curiel
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Design: Tom Muller & Jay Bowen
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1: Kate Pryde, with swords, confronts a gun-toting Mr Sinister.
PAGE 2. Tribute to Stan Lee. He was born on 28 December 1922, so presumably we’re getting this page throughout the month of December.
PAGES 3-5. Kate Pryde attends a Quiet Council meeting.
Kate Pryde is principally a Marauders character, but the format of Immortal X-Men is to do an issue from the standpoint of each member of the Quiet Council. This is another issue where that format gets stretched a bit in deference to the wider plot, since this is mainly about Mr Sinister’s storyline and his abuse of clones of Moira MacTaggert.
X-Men ’92: House of XCII
X-MEN ’92: HOUSE OF XCII #1-5
Writer: Steve Foxe
Artist: Salva Espin
Colourist: Israel Silva
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Jordan D White
I am not the person you should be asking about this.
X-Men: The Animated Series ran from 1992 to 1997. It did air on British TV, as part of the Saturday morning children’s TV block, but I was in completely the wrong age group for that. Nor is the animated series all that similar to the actual comics from the era – it uses characters and costume designs from the period, but the tone is very different. It was aimed at a younger audience.
Of course, since the 1990s are now over 25 years away, they have a substantial nostalgia audience of their own – and their memories of the 90s are based on children’s TV and magazines. But it’s not my nostalgia and I am not the target audience for this in the slightest.
Given all that… this is quite fun. It’s a gimmick, of course, and you might wonder whether it’s really going to carry a five-issue miniseries, but it holds up surprisingly well.
