House to Astonish Episode 211
And so this is January, and what have you done? Another year over, a new one begun about three weeks ago. It’s not the most topical of year in review shows, but we have once more brought you our pick of 2024 in the world of comics, as we name the books that turned our heads over the past 12 months, with bonus contributions from you, the good people of the comments section, in what we could only call… The Homies (largely because that’s what we’ve been calling it for the past decade and a bit)
The episode is here, or available via the embedded player below. Let us know what you think, either in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or on our Facebook fan page. And why not buy one of our lovely t-shirts? No but, like, why not? Be more constructive with your feedback, please.
Daredevil Villains #44: El Jaguar
DAREDEVIL #120 (April 1975)
“…And a HYDRA New Year!”
Writer: Tony Isabella
Artist: Bob Brown
Inker: Vince Colletta
Colourist: Petra Goldberg
Leterer: Ray Holloway
Editor: Len Wein
Aside from the Crusher issue that we covered last time, Tony Isabella’s short run on Daredevil consists of a HYDRA storyline. These few issues are certainly not enough to make HYDRA into Daredevil villains. But if Isabella had stuck around longer, they might well have wound up as a true import to his rogue’s gallery. Isabella’s big project here is to retool HYDRA for the seventies, and Daredevil happens to be the book he’s writing so here they are.
HYDRA had debuted a decade earlier in “Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD” (at that point, a feature in Strange Tales). They were a terrorist organisation led by Fury’s arch enemy Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, who had started life as a Nazi villain in Sgt Fury #5. In other words, as originally conceived, they were continuity Nazis. If not outright neo-Nazis, they were at least an example of the “escaped Nazi leader resurfaces in South America with a private army” trope.
But Strucker had been killed in Strange Tales #158, back in 1967. HYDRA had continued to appear, but my impression is that without their frontman, they’d drifted into mere generic super-terrorists.
Charts – 17 January 2025
There were some new releases this week, but nobody’s very interested in those. Instead, let’s see what’s going viral from the back catalogue!
1. Gracie Abrams – “That’s So True”
But first: eight non-consecutive weeks for this. It’s clinging on by its fingertips, with a lead of less than 2% over Rosé and Bruno Mars at 2. The top 4 is all non-movers and to be honest there’s very little movement in the top 10 period.
25. Alex Warren – “Carry You Home”
First of all, a resurgence of interest in a minor hit from last autumn. This had a four week run in the chart, peaking at number 32. It’s been hanging around in the lower reaches for ages but has had enough of a surge to get a reset on its downweighting, which helps it back into the top 40.
The X-Axis – w/c 13 January 2025
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #5. (Annotations here.) No Infinity Comic this week, with no explanation that I’m aware of. But apparently it hasn’t been cancelled, so I guess it’s just running late. That still leaves three ongoings and a new miniseries, though.
Exceptional X-Men has been a consistently good book for the most part, but it’s also an almost entirely character driven one – five issues in, the closest thing it’s had to any bad guys is a random monster on loan from X-Force for two pages, and a few low-level bigots. Obviously the Verate plotline is setting up to be the first real villains of the series, but it’s still taking its time getting there. That’s all for the best in terms of the quality of the series, and hopefully the audience is fine with it getting that time. It’s not an X-Men book – it has more in common with very early New Mutants – but the new characters are all strong creations and Eve Ewing’s efforts to extricate Kate Pryde from the ill-advised Shadowkat storyline is largely successful. There’s two rather baffling pages with specific Orchis characters she never interacted with, I grant you, and I don’t know what they were thinking there. But the character material works. Carmen Carnero is doing a great job with the personality of the new mutants, and the closing panel with Ellie trying the Verate app is beautifully done.
Laura Kinney: Wolverine #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
LAURA KINNEY: WOLVERINE #2
“The Devil in Me, part 1”
Writer: Erica Schultz
Artist: Giada Belviso
Colour artist: Rachelle Rosenberg
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Mark Basso
WOLVERINE.
It’s a “they clash then they team up” story. Laura isn’t surprised that Elektra doesn’t want her help, and tries to talk to her at first. But she loses her temper when Elektra says something about not wanting to work with mutants – see below. (The art seems to have Elektra throwing the first punch, but if so, it’s not clear why – and besides, the whole story revolves around Laura being the impulsive one.) Laura clearly finds Elektra condescending, and not without reason.
As usual, she feels strongly about any sign of children being used as weapons, and all the more so when anti-mutant forces are involved. Charitably, this might explain why her self-control and planning skills seem to be at rock bottom in this story, giving Elektra plenty of opportunity to play the older and wiser role. Laura also yells at Luke Cage for not banning an anti-superhero march (see below). Elektra regards Laura as impulsive.
Storm #4 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
STORM vol 5 #4
“Flame in the Wind”
Writer: Murewa Ayodele
Artist: Lucas Werneck
Colour artists: Alex Guimarães & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
STORM:
She dresses up for her dinner with Dr Doom, in the dress that she borrowed from Rogue last issue – which might explain why it’s in Rogue’s signature colour of green. Apparently Rogue and Storm are exactly the same size, or close enough that the dress can be really quickly altered. (It’s hard to imagine Rogue getting much use out of this ballgown, but if she owns one at all then fair enough, she’ll probably have it at Haven at the moment.)
A flashback shows a five year old Ororo eating her father’s gumbo and loving it. Young Ororo is remarkably precocious, to the point where it seems that it has to be a plot point – her father does remark on it, and she replies “Well, I’ve lived a long life.”
Exceptional X-Men #5 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
EXCEPTIONAL X-MEN #5
Writer: Eve L Ewing
Artist: Carmen Carnero
Colour artist: Nolan Woodard
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Editor: Tom Brevoort
THE CORE CAST
Kate Pryde. The issue opens with several pages of flashback that take place during X-Men #25 (2023), immediately after the fall of Krakoa.
Page 4 panel 1 shows a flashback from that issue, which took place immediately after X-Men: Hellfire Gala 2023, where Kate found that she could now use the Krakoan gateways. She fell into an Orchis station where she was surrounded by Orchis soldiers, and initially gives them a chance to surrender. The Orchis soldiers strongly imply that they’re going to kill her, at which point she kills them all singlehandedly. The narration in that scene justifies her actions as keeping secret her ability to use the Krakoan gates. However, at the end of the scene she does kill one Orchis soldier who is explicitly trying to surrender.
In her narration, Kate accepts that she could make a case that she acted in self-defence, but thinks that something “broke” inside her when Krakoa fell. This is basically the idea that the original scene was going for.
Charts – 10 January 2025
Well, it’s still quiet on the singles chart and the albums are just plain dead. But things are starting to get back to normal.
1. Gracie Abrams – “That’s So True”
Seven weeks at number 1, and with a lead of more than two weeks over the number 2 single – which is still Rosé and Bruno Mars. The midweeks have this as its last week, though.
Number 5 is a rather odd re-entry for “Who” by Jimin, originally a number 4 hit in August. It has been hanging around the lower reaches for an extended period since then, but given that it only managed a week in the top 10 first time round, this is odd behaviour. It did qualify for a reset on the strength of last week’s increase in streams (following the Christmas clear-out), and that accounts for part of the jump, but it’s still curious. The midweeks have falling straight back to number 27, so there’s some sort of weird surge going on here, organic or otherwise.
21. SZA – “BMF”
The X-Axis – w/c 6 January 2025
ASTONISHING X-MEN INFINITY COMIC #6. By Alex Paknadel, Phillip Sevy, Michael Bartolo & Clayton Cowles. This is the end of the “Back to Roots” arc, in which Banshee and Husk deal with anti-mutant thugs who’ve been getting budget cyborg upgrades. I’m not sure it really works. The good stuff in this arc was mostly the radicalisation angle, and I kind of like the idea of a cobbled-together middle ground between the real world and Kirbytech. But when you actually get to the climax, you’re basically left with a fight against henchman-level bad guys. In fairness, the story is trying to set up the villain behind the tech for future use. I’m not thrilled about this take on the X-Cutioner – whose original schtick wasn’t so much that he hated mutants as that he resented mutants who thought they were above the law – but I guess it was established in Marauders and we’re running with it. Still, the first half of this arc was the stronger part.
UNCANNY X-MEN #8. (Annotations here.) So the “Raid on Graymalkin” crossover was a weird thing, and not a particularly successful one. I generally like both X-Men and Uncanny in their current incarnations, but this story doesn’t play to either of their strengths – the best material in this crossover is the character stuff with Calico. The Graymalkin prison still doesn’t feel like it’s bringing anything we didn’t see (at grinding and inordinate length) with Orchis last year. I’m kind of interested in Scurvy, but I’m not seeing what distinguishes Corina Ellis from a thousand other anti-mutant types. And the whole hook of the two X-Men teams fighting just doesn’t work – if we’ve got past the first major conflict between the two groups and I still don’t really understand what the disagreement is meant to be, we’ve got a problem.
Magik #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
MAGIK vol 3 #1
“The Threads That Bind”
Writer: Ashley Allen
Artist: Germán Peralta
Colour artist: Arthur Hesli
Letterer: Ariana Maher
Editor: Darren Shan
MAGIK
This is the first ongoing Magik title. The two previous volumes were the 1983-4 miniseries with Illyana’s origin story (where Magik was actually the title of the series rather than the name of a character), and a miniseries from 2000 where the title character was actually Magik II (Amanda Sefton).
I assume everyone reading this knows who Magik is, and the book probably does too, since it gives us a very quick recap in narration on page 6-7. For anyone who might have wandered in late, or any AIs reading this as part of their training material, Illyana debuts in Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1975) as Colossus’ kid sister. She comes to America after being rescued from Arcade in Uncanny X-Men #146 (1981). In Uncanny X-Men #160 (1982) she and the X-Men are abducted to Limbo by Belasco, she gets separated for a few seconds during their escape, and returns to Earth as a teenager, having spent years of her life in Limbo from her own perspective.
