Excalibur #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Excalibur on one side, the Starlight Citadel in the middle, and Saturnyne on the right. Captain Britain has her Concerned Face on.
PAGES 2-3. Apocalypse tells Gambit about his plans.
Basically, Apocalypse is going to use the Warwolf skulls from the previous issue to cast a spell that will let Excalibur reach the Starlight Citadel.
“Morgan Le Fay is defeated. King Jamie Braddock sits on the throne of Avalon.” In issues #1-6.
“We have no war with Opal Luna Saturnyne, and yet the Starlight Citadel remains hidden to us…” Opal Luna Saturnyne is a Captain Britain character dating back to the Dave Thorpe/Alan Davis run in the early 80s Marvel UK weekly Marvel Super-Heroes. She was introduced as the Omniversal Majestrix, a resident of Otherworld who was answerable only to Merlyn, and oversaw the Captain Britain Corps. Broadly, she’s a “guardian of the multiverse” kind of character. The original Excalibur run establishes that she’s a counterpart of Courtney Ross, Brian Braddock’s girlfriend from early Captain Britain stories. The Starlight Citadel, Saturnyne’s floating castle, was added in Alan Moore’s Captain Britain run (in the Marvel UK weekly The Daredevils).
(more…)X-Force #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
I was going to start doing reviews of the first volumes of the individual titles last weekend but, well, the pace of events has proved something of a distraction. No doubt there will be plenty of time for it in the time ahead. In the meantime, let’s continue with what can’t help feeling a little bit like telegrams from a bygone era…
COVER / PAGE 1. Domino, Wolverine and Kid Omega in the Terra Verde jungle. Domino is looking especially 90s here, and you’d think she’d be more bothered about that snake climbing up her leg. It isn’t what she wears in the actual story either… Admittedly, Wolverine is similarly underdressed
PAGES 1-3. Wolverine and Daken play Spin the Bottle Russian Roulette in the Green Lagoon Tiki Bar.
(more…)Charts – 13 March 2020
1 The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
This is a business as usual chart, at a time when everyone expects that business is about to be very much not as usual, and for a prolonged period. It feels like the calm before the storm. Meanwhile, the Weeknd gets a fifth week at number one.
3. Aitch & AJ Tracey featuring Tay Keith – “Rain”
(more…)Cable #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
CABLE. This is the fourth volume of Cable. The first is the 1990s run which lasted 108 issues. The second is the 2008-9 run where Bishop chases him and Hope through time. The third is a miniseries from 2017. (There’s also an early 90s mini called Cable: Blood & Metal, and a Cable & Deadpool ongoing.)
Cable’s back story is notoriously convoluted, and recent events haven’t helped. In very broad outline, Cable is Nathan Summers, the son of Cyclops and his first wife Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey). For various reasons, assorted A-list villains were very interested in getting their hands on him. In the end, baby Nathan was (a) infected with a techno-organic virus that transformed part of his body and gave him his cyborg appearance, and (b) sent into a far future timeline ruled by Apocalypse, where he was raised by two foster parents (who were themselves actually a time travelling Scott and Jean – I told you this was all insanely complicated).
From there, Cable’s history used to involve him leading rebel forces against Apocalypse, eventually returning the present as a time traveller, and founding X-Force. However, in the recent Extermination miniseries, a second, teenaged Cable shows up from the future, and kills the original. This teenage Cable is the one we’re now following. Flashbacks in the previous run of X-Force attempt to explain this further. The long-term presence of the Silver Age X-Men in the present day (in All-New X-Men and X-Men Blue) was causing damage to the timeline, which Older Cable ought to have done something about, but didn’t. Teen Cable killed him in order to take his place and sort out the timeline problems. Why that meant killing the older Cable, and why everyone else was ultimately okay with it, is still a bit vague (if not downright screwy).
(more…)New Mutants #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. A fever-dream version of the New Mutants.
PAGES 2-3. A mutant cowers in a tunnel in a facility in Carnelia.
The mutant is named later in the issue as Tashi Repina, and she’s 13. She seems to have made a hole in the fence somehow, and taken refuge in… some sort of outflow pipe? She’s leaving a trail of something behind her, but it’s hard to tell what it’s meant to be – some sort of goop caused by her transformation of the world around her, I suppose.
Carnelia. Another of Marvel’s many, many fictional microstates from the back catalogue. This one comes from Iron Man stories in the late 1970s, when it was a generic Russian satellite state. It’s popped up a few times since then.
Pershyy Misto is its established capital city – though this doesn’t really look like it’s in the city.
(more…)X-Men #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Cyclops and the New Mutants (specifically, Magma, Mirage, Wolfsbane and Magik) versus the Brood.
PAGE 1. Magma asks Mirage about Rahne’s egg.
The Akademos Habitat / The Sextant. The area of Krakoa where the members of the former teen teams live, including the New Mutants, as seen in their book.
Magma was a member of the classic New Mutants, but didn’t go on their recent trip to space, which was depicted in the Hickman-written New Mutants #1-2, #5 and #7. Mirage did.
The King Egg. This is the King Egg that the Starjammers were trying to steal in New Mutants. We’ll find out later that it’s a Brood King Egg. The Brood are insectoid aliens who go around planting eggs in people in order to turn them into more Brood; they’ve been major X-Men villains since the 1980s.
(more…)Charts – 6 March 2020
1. The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
That’s four weeks (non-consecutive). He might be settling in for a while. Number 2 is “Roses” by Saint Jhn, which climbs 4-2, and now has a lyric video for the Imanbek remix that’s doing most of the business.
5. Lady Gaga – “Stupid Love”
(more…)House to Astonish Episode 182
Hello! We’re back! And we’re talking about Dan DiDio’s exit from DC, the postponement of Emerald City Comic-Con, Comixology’s European price hikes, The Quotable Giant Days and John Layman and Dan Boultwood’s Chu. We’ve also got reviews of Join The Future and Strange Academy, and the Official Handbook of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe is half the man it used to be. All this plus Deathstroke the Coal, Roy Harper’s Syringe Academy and the Marvel Universe’s premier hand model.
The episode is here, or here on Mixcloud, or available through the 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, you can pick up some of our sweet tees over at our Redbubble store!
If you enjoyed my appearance on the first issue of the Shelfdust Presents podcast, then good news, because I was also on last week’s episode talking about 1989’s Damage Control #1. If you didn’t enjoy it then we’re too late to do anything about that now, unfortunately.
Excalibur #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Cullen Bloodstone in hunting gear, with the heads of Excalibur as trophies on the wall behind him. Don’t worry, this does not happen in the story.
PAGES 2-3. Cullen calms down and invites Excalibur to talk over a meal.
Cullen behaves as if he thinks he’s acting perfectly reasonably; even though he’s in monster mode, his threat is basically to call the police.
PAGES 4-5. Credits and recap. The story is “Verse VIII: The Unspeakable and the Uneatable II” by Tini Howard, Wilton Santos, Marcus To, and various others. (Four inkers – the deadlines must have been pressing…)
(more…)Marauders #9 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PAGE 1 / COVER. Bishop shoots at Yellowjacket.
PAGES 2-4. Pyro arrives on Krakoa and is immediately besieged by adoring fans.
As we’ll see later, this is a dream created by Emma Frost to keep Pyro’s mind busy and Yellowjacket confused. For what it’s worth, though, note that the other Marauders are entirely absent from Pyro’s dream, even though he’s supposed to be just off the boat. The endless beach party of Krakoa is something we’ve seen in plenty of stories, but here it’s used as a trope of ludicrous fantasy, which is… interesting.
Jean Grey appears as the one-dimensional love interest – presumably this is Emma’s reading of Pyro’s fantasy, since when we see her later, she doesn’t exactly seem in the mood to be making private jokes. Pyro seems remarkably gullible in all this, but presumably that’s Emma’s influence too.
(more…)