Charts – 28 February 2020
Billie Eilish got a week at number one with her Bond theme, but slips straight to number 2. So we’re back with…
1. The Weeknd – “Blinding Lights”
Three weeks total. Bear in mind that this has been out since before Christmas, and it’s been in the top ten for a total of 8 weeks now. Its staying power is impressive.
There’s not much else going on in the upper reaches. “Roses” by Saint Jhn is now up to 4. “Lonely” by Joel Corry climbs 14-8 to give him a second top 10 hit (he needs to reach 6 to match his previous peak). “Intentions” by Justin Bieber featuring Quavo climbs 10-9. And after that, there’s a bit of milling around in the teens before we reach…
20. The Weeknd – “After Hours”
…which doesn’t have a video because it’s a promotional single. It’s the title track of the upcoming album and, at six minutes long with an extended intro, considerably less radio friendly than the number one – though it’ll edit down nicely enough.
(more…)New Mutants #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. By the way, the original version of the digital edition omitted the data pages – a corrected version was issued literally minutes before I was about to post this. X-Force, which has the same issue, still hasn’t been corrected at time of writing.
PAGE 1 / COVER: Magma fights the weird Brazilian monsters.
PAGES 2-3: Recap and credits. We’re continuing here from the Ed Brisson issues. The story is “A-Hunting We Will Go”, by Ed Brisson, Marco Failla and Carlos Lopez. The small print has changed to “Nova Roma – mutant hunting quadripeds”. I assume that’s a misprint for “quadruped”, not their name.
PAGE 4. Maxime and Manon tell Sebastian Shaw about the Bohem Cartel.
Blackstone is Shaw’s home on Krakoa, most often seen in Marauders.
(more…)X-Force #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition. This isn’t an issue in need of much annotation, but hey, it’s a vehicle for an open thread.
This post has been edited to add the data pages, now that they’ve been included in the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Domino and Colossus, facing opposite directions, with blood and bodies everywhere.
PAGES 2-5. Domino stops the anti-Domino from killing a politician.
Apparently the minister was intending to support pro-mutant legislation. Well, they are offering very quick trade deals.
The anti-Domino seems to be removing her own ear to use as a weapon. We saw something similar in the autopsy of the Xeno soldiers who attacked Krakoa in issue #1, and the next scene confirms the link.
(more…)X-Men/Fantastic Four #2 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
PAGE 1 / COVER. Well, it’s some of the X-Men and some characters from the Fantastic Four, isn’t it?
PAGE 2. Recap.
PAGES 3-4. Cyclops tries to reassure the FF that the X-Men aren’t responsible for Franklin and Valeria’s disappearance.
Straightforward. Scott is trying to be as emollient as possible, short of departing from his mutant-nationalist line. His comment that Valeria doesn’t belong on Krakoa is meant to demonstrate that the X-Men wouldn’t have taken them both (and it’s a fair point in that context), but goes down predictably badly. This is the basic conflict set up in issue #1: the X-Men see their mutant separatism as a positive identity, the FF (Sue in particular) see it as divisive and supremacist. For her, the X-Men only care about what Franklin is, not who he is (and she has a point).
As in issue #1, Magneto doesn’t seem particularly disappointed by this. (Note that in his data page about mutants later on, Reed is actually much more sympathetic to the mutants’ desire for a homeland.)
(more…)Giant-Size X-Men: Jean Grey & Emma Frost annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Jean Grey and Emma Frost, as part of some sort of psychic imagery. Cyclops and Wolverine’s faces are visible in the background, each with an X in place of their mouths – presumably to do with the silence gimmick that takes up most of the issue. Logan’s hands and claws are clearer in the original art, but they’re partly obscure by the logo. There’s also a big evil face in the top left that’s harder to place, but resembles what we see in the snake within Storm’s mind later.
Jean is wearing her early 90s costume but in her late-60s colour scheme.
PAGES 2-3. Recap and credits. The recap page refers to Storm fighting Orchis (in X-Men #1) and the Children of the Vault (in X-Men #5). The story is “Into the Storm” by Jonathan Hickman, Russell Dauterman (who gets a co-writer credit) and Matthew Wilson. The small print on the credits page is the usual from X-Men.
PAGES 4-6. Two young mutants find Storm lying unconscious.
Not quite sure what the symbolic opening panel is adding, with everyone staring directly at the camera.
(more…)X-Men #7 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the collected edition. And since we’re running behind, I’m going to see if we can keep this week’s annotations posts a bit shorter. But there’s a lot to say about this issue.
COVER / PAGE 1. Apocalypse with his sword, smashing a stained glass window version of Nightcrawler.
PAGES 2-3. Melody Guthrie gets word that her Crucible ritual is today.
Krakoa. Note that in the establishing shot, there’s still smoke rising from the volcano on the atoll that appeared in issue #2.
The Akademos Habitat, the Sextant. The home of the characters from the X-books’ various teen teams.
Melody Guthrie. Melody Guthrie is one of the miscellaneous siblings of Cannonball who eventually turned out to be a mutant. It’s a large family – officially her first appearance is in New Mutants vol 1 #42, but that’s as one of a number of generic background children. She didn’t get a first name until Uncanny X-Men vol 1 #444, where she showed up as a flying student at the school. Not that long after, House of M hit and Melody – or Aero – was depowered. So basically she’s a minor background character who was very briefly promoted to slightly more prominent status before being relegated again. The name Aero is currently being used by an unrelated character who has her own series, so we’ll see if Melody is allowed (editorially speaking) to take it back again.
(more…)Charts – 21 February 2020
You’d have thought that by 2020 we’d have had a number one single by someone born this century. But as it turns out, this is the first one…
1. Billie Eilish – “No Time To Die”
This is the new Bond theme, which certainly helps to get mainstream attention. But that’s never been enough to get a number one hit in itself. In fact, this is only the second Bond theme to reach number one. (The other was Sam Smith’s “Writing on the Wall”.) Besides, in the streaming era, it’s not enough to get your record noticed; you need people to keep listening to it.
(more…)The Complete Moira, Part 8
Welcome to the final part of our Moira MacTaggert read-through. For the previous chapters see here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7.
When we left off, Excalibur had just been cancelled, leaving Moira without a regular title to appear in. But she’s still around, still hunting for the Legacy Virus, and still supposedly in declining health. The final years of Moira’s (original) published life turn out to be big on pointless cameos and appearances where she does little more than explain the plot.
X-Men Unlimited vol 1 #21 by Todd DeZago, Andy Smith & Andrew Hennessy (“Devil’s Haircut”, December 1998). Strong Guy phones Muir Isle to ask Wolfsbane and Madrox for help with a possible alien invasion. Moira is there, and she’s back to working on the Legacy Virus.
Gambit vol 3 #2 by Fabian Nicieza, Steve Skroce & Rob Hunter (“Stormbringers”, March 1999). Gambit visits Muir Isle so that Moira can run some tests on him. Excalibur have now left, and Moira is working full time on the cure (pretty much alone). Naturally, Gambit tries to steal some files, and sets off a ridiculously elaborate failsafe mechanism that he manages to stop before it wipes all her data.
(more…)Wolverine #1 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
WOLVERINE. This is volume 7 of Wolverine, and that’s just counting the titles that were simply called Wolverine. Volume 1 is the 1982 miniseries, volume 2 is the long-running ongoing title that started in 1988. The others are periodic reboots.
COVER / PAGE 1. Wolverine with his claws out, standing over some dead people, and with a butterfly on his hand. His X-Men belt buckle is lit up, for some reason. Like X-Force, this book carries the world’s smallest “parental advisory” warning.
PAGES 2-4. Alaska. A badly injured Wolverine wakes up surrounded by the corpses of X-Force. He sets off following a set of footprints.
Most of the issue is flashbacks leading up to this point. The implication is that the Pale Girl, leader of the Flower Cartel, makes Wolverine kill the rest of X-Force. (It really is fortunate that the X-Men came up with this resurrection thing in time for the Krakoa era, because ever since, they’ve become remarkably prone to getting killed…)
(more…)Marauders #8 annotations
As always, this post contains spoilers, and page numbers go by the digital edition.
COVER / PAGE 1. Storm and Emma Frost, in a very stylised version of their argument from later in the issue.
PAGES 2-6. Bishop reports Kate’s death to Emma Frost.
Mars. We’ve seen the Mars outpost mentioned a few times before, and I think this is the first clear confirmation that it’s being used as a farm for Krakoan flowers (or at least that’s a big part of it). This makes a degree of sense; Krakoa isn’t big enough for large-scale agriculture, and they need to grow the flowers somewhere that’s entirely inaccessible to hostile forces. (Wolverine this week suggests that they’re still struggling to keep up with demand, though, to the point where the transformative effect of Krakoan drugs remains somewhat theoretical as far as many humans are concerned.)
Forge’s automatons. These are new. Presumably they’re just organic tech robots… but, um, isn’t that essentially a person…?
(more…)