Charts – 25 March 2022
We won’t be long with this one.
A third week for Dave in a very, very dull top ten – the top seven is completely static. By the way, his only other number 1, “Freaky Friday”, only had a week. So by that metric, this is comfortably his biggest hit.
Anyway, in search of new entries we have to trawl all the way down to…
31. Joel Corry, David Guetta & Bryson Tiller – “What Would You Do”
They’re not kidding about that strobe warning at the start of the video, by the way. Anyhow, this is very much what you expect from something credited to Joel Corry and David Guetta – it’s very polished, it’s very professional, you can hear their signature stuff in it. You don’t come to these guys for innovation.
X Deaths of Wolverine #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #5
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights Omega Wolverine. This is the other half of the image from the cover of X Lives of Wolverine #5, with elements of a fight between Wolverine and Omega Red spreading onto the page.
PAGES 2-4. Moira’s life flashes before her eyes as she dies.
She’s inside a sort of Krakoan battle suit thingy that she stole last issue.
Page 2, and the bench panels on page 3, are a parody of the flashback from Powers of X #1 in which Moira approaches Charles Xavier and reveals her previous lives to him.
Marauders #22-27
MARAUDERS #22-27
Writer: Gerry Duggan
Artists: Matteo Lolli (#22 and #26-27), Klaus Janson (flashback in #22), Ivan Fiorelli (#23), Phil Noto (#24-25 and # 27)
Colourist: Rain Beredo (#22-23 and #26-27)
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Jordan White
I’ve said before that the period between “Hellfire Gala” and Inferno showed some definite signs of drift for the X-books. Nowhere was that more obvious than with Marauders, which had been a very focussed, very successful book for its first 22 issues, but loses its way badly in the last few issues of the Gerry Duggan run.
The first 20 issues have a central spine to them, of Kitty feeling isolated, getting killed, returning to claim her identity and take revenge on Shaw, and so on. But that’s all finished by the time of the Hellfire Gala, and the book doesn’t really find anything to replace it in these closing issues.
By way of reminder, here’s what happens. Issue #22 is the Lourdes Chantel story, with guest art from Klaus Janson, which retcons the death of this minor character from a Classic X-Men back-up strip. It now turns out that Emma Frost created an illusion of her death to enable her to escape her abusive relationship with Sebastian Shaw, who to this day still looks back on that relationship fondly as his true love. This is the closest the book comes to a central theme in the closing issues, and it’s good enough as far as it goes, though Lourdes herself never really seems to develop much beyond a cipher.
House to Astonish Presents: The Lightning Round Episode 8
Lightning strikes eight times! It’s really very dangerous to be out here! Get to shelter!
Paul and Al are back to talk about Thunderbolts #21 and Captain America/Citizen V ’98, with all the extraneous cover blurbs, world-class pauldrons and embarrassing Pritt-Stick accidents that entails. Come on in! The water’s Thunderbolts!
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, in the comments below, on Twitter, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And as always, there are some beautiful shirts over at our Redbubble store. They would look great on you! I mean, obviously everything would look great on you. But these give us a few quid a pop.
Charts – 18 March 2022
Another quiet week for singles.
That’s two weeks, and it’s on course for a third.
2. Aitch featuring Ashanti – “Baby”
Dave might be able to afford to buy out the sample credits, but Aitch is still doing it the traditional way. Ashanti’s “featuring” credit is thanks to this track sampling her 2003 hit “Rock Wit U (Aww Baby)”. That track got to number 7 in the UK and was part of a respectable run of top 10 hits, though her only number one was as a guest on a Ja Rule single, “Wonderful”. She hasn’t had a hit single since 2008.
X Lives of Wolverine #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #5
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Joshua Cassara
Colourist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine fights Omega Red, with a Russian skyline and Omega Wolverine in the background. Needless to say, this is a companion to the cover of X Deaths of Wolverine #5, which will have the other half of the image (Wolverine fighting Omega Wolverine, with present-day Wolverine and a Krakoan skyline in the background).
PAGE 2. Omega Red possesses Wolverine and attacks Professor X.
Picking up directly from the end of issue #4. The background is a montage of images of Wolverine (or Logan) at various points in his life, mostly fairly generic. To the extent that they’re recognisable, starting top left on the first full row:
Charts – 11 March 2022
Behold the changing of the guard.
1. Dave – “Starlight”
Surprise release of (presumably) the lead single from his new album. It’s his second number one, the first being 2018’s “Funky Driday”, but he’s had another nine top ten hits in the interim. So hardly a surprise that he gets there in the end.
Somehow or other, Dave has managed to get himself a sole writer credit on this, despite the entire backing track being based on the Macaron Project’s cover of “Fly Me To The Moon”.
Sabretooth #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
SABRETOOTH vol 4 #2
Writer: Victor LaValle
Artist: Leonard Kirk
Colourist: Rain Beredo
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Jordan D White
COVER / PAGE 1. Angry Sabretooth in jail.
PAGE 2. Opening quote. This is a quote often attributed to the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass (1817/8-1895). It’s been circulating in his name for decades but those online sources that actually check these things seem to agree that it’s apocryphal.
PAGES 3-5. Sabretooth’s fellow prisoners are banished to the Pit.
This is a flashback which leads in to the end of the previous issue. It doesn’t really fit with any of the other times that we’ve seen people sent to the Pit, in which the whole Quiet Council was present. The previous examples are Sabretooth in House of X #6, Toad in X-Men: Trial of Magneto #5, Orphan-Maker and Nanny in Hellions #18 and X-Men Green in X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #12. Krakoa let them go, but it’s not obvious what happened to Toad – given that he was being set up by Magneto and Scarlet Witch, maybe he was quietly smuggled out too.
X Deaths of Wolverine #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X DEATHS OF WOLVERINE #4
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artist: Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Dijjo Lima
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Omega Wolverine going through a Krakoan gate.
PAGES 2-4. Flashback: the fall of Krakoa in Omega Wolverine’s timeline.
Although the caption calls this the “near future”, the grey hairs on Forge suggest that we’re a good few years into the future. Wolverine is also shown with some grey hairs, though not as many. Despite the suggestion in X Lives that Wolverine is basically immortal, that’s not really true; we’ve seen in Old Man Logan that his natural lifespan is still something under 200 years.
X Lives of Wolverine #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
X LIVES OF WOLVERINE #4
Writer: Benjamin Percy
Artists: Joshua Cassara and Federico Vicentini
Colourist: Frank Martin
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
COVER / PAGE 1: Team X Wolverine, possessed by Omega Red.
PAGES 2-4. Omega Red possesses Dr Cornelius during Weapon X.
The Weapon X Facility, as you surely know, is the place which gave Wolverine his adamantium skeleton against his will as part of a scheme to turn him into a soldier. This sequence takes place between the flashback and the main story in part 2 of Barry Windsor-Smith’s “Weapon X” story, from Marvel Comics Presents vol 1 #73. The images of Wolverine covered in cables are clearly meant to evoke “Weapon X”, which had a lot of that sort of thing.
Abraham Cornelius was one of the three main scientists seen in that story; generally speaking he tends to be presented as having at least some pangs of conscience about what he’s doing, and it’s the Professor who tends to be presented as outright evil, but this is right at the start of the arc from his point of view.
