Number 1s of 2009: 5 July 2009

Last week, La Roux's "Bulletproof" entered at number one, and nobody noticed, because they all too busy listening to old Michael Jackson records. Six of them entered the chart last week, on the strength of two days of download sales. "Man in the Mirror", last week's number 11, was generally assumed to be the frontrunner, and was indeed leading the iTunes chart for a couple of days. But the Jackson sales slacked off as the week went on, and as it turns out, the song only climbs to number 2. That was probably its only shot.

However, a bunch of other Michael Jackson singles also climb. That gives him a total of 13 tracks on this week's top 40, shattering the previous record (which stood at either 6 or 7, depending on your tolerance for dodgy late-50s charts - see last week's post for more details). Counting Jacksons singles, he has a staggering 26 entries on the top 75. The previous records were set in the pre-download era, and Jackson is the first megastar whose back catalogue was readily available on his sudden death. This record will stand for the foreseeable future; it's not unbeatable, but I don't see it happening except in similar circumstances, and even then for an artist with the profile and back catalogue of a Madonna or a Paul McCartney.

But even without Michael Jackson, the number 1 slot still changes hands for the fifth week running. And this week's lucky winner is...



...Cascada, "Evacuate the Dancefloor." They're a German dance/pop act (lead singer Natalie Horler has British parents, but she was born in Germany). This is their sixth top 40 hit, and their first number 1, in a chart history that goes back to 2004. They're probably best known for the thumping 2005 single "Everytime We Touch", which was a number 2 hit in Britain, and even made the top 10 in America - unusual for a Euro-dance record.



Now, I rather like "Everytime We Touch." It's got a great tune. It is unrepentantly anthemic. It gets to the point. By thirty seconds in, it's as subtle as a brick to the face. And then, at the one minute mark, it reaches for a second brick. Awesome. And "What Hurts the Most" (number 10 in 2007) isn't bad either, once it gets going, in a thudding sort of way.



On the other hand, they also tend to make treacly ballad versions of their songs, for airplay on channels that wouldn't touch dance music. Here's "Everytime we Touch" with fullbore piano-driven sincerity. It's awful. And some of their upbeat tracks are a bit dodgy too - their cover of Savage Garden's "Truly Madly Deeply" is very questionable.

"Evacuate the Dancefloor" is somewhere in the middle. It's trying a bit hard to be a Proper Song for my tastes, and ends up with a verse that sounds like a Britney Spears B-side. The chorus isn't bad, but it's not their best. Still, they've been around long enough that I can't really begrudge them their moment in the sun.

Oh, and unless I'm forgetting someone, I believe this is the first German record to reach number 1 since "Loneliness" by Tomcraft in 2003. I recall the UK mix being slightly different to this, but this is the only one YouTube and DailyMotion seem to have.

House to Astonish, episode 18

This week, Al and I review Existence 2.0, Justice League: Cry for Justice (guest starring Weeping Gorilla) and Greek Street, plus the usual news round-up.

Download it here, or visit the podcast webpage (where you can stream it, if you want), or subscribe via iTunes.

The X-Axis - 5 July 2009

Okay, then. Two weeks of stuff to get through, one of which saw an enormous quantity of X-books dumped on the market, with the other seeing a ton of first issues. So some of these might be on the concise side, but it'll get up back up to speed.

I'll come back to the "Ghost Boxes" storyline from Astonishing X-Men, and the "Messiah Complex" crossover arc from Cable and X-Force, both of which finished in the week before last, since they really merit more attention than this. And later tonight, on this week's House to Astonish, Al and I are planning to look at the first issues of JLA: Cry for Justice, Greek Street and Existence 2.0.

But let's take a deep breath and get into the backlog.

Astonishing Tales #6 - The final issue of this low-selling anthology title, from the look of it - which is to say, they don't seem to have formally announced a cancellation, but they haven't solicited any more issues, and that's usually a bit of a giveaway. There's not much here to change any opinions you might have formed before. The Wolverine/Punisher story is lightweight fluff, but it does have quite interesting art, and I like the colouring a lot. Jonathan Hickman's Mojoworld serial with Cannonball and Sunspot is utterly absurd (and, with this chapter, depends on you knowing that Sunspot was a huge fan of Magnum back when he was first introduced in 1983, a character point that has understandably been allowed to fall by the wayside in the intervening years), but it's genuinely funny. The rest is competent but forgettable - an Iron Man 2020 story which seems to be trying to set up the character as an Ellis-style futurist for subsequent stories, and good luck with that one, and a Sabra short which kind of circles the topic of Israeli conscription without ever quite managing to say anything about it. To support an anthology title in this day and age would take much stronger material than this, but then Astonishing Tales was primarily a means of reprinting material originally commissioned for the website.

Batman and Robin #2 - Now this is a good comic. That opening page is a lovely piece of art, and Morrison is doing a great job here with the basic idea of Dick Grayson taking over as the new Batman. Even if they don't know who's in the costume, everyone who met Batman regularly can immediately tell it's a different guy, and his new Robin is just an infuriating brat. So there's a nice little angle about whether Dick can ever meaningfully be the new Batman, as opposed to just a Batman impersonator, which ties back to the old theme of "was Bruce Wayne pretending to be Batman, or was he pretending to be Bruce Wayne?" Alongside that, there's a wonderfully bizarre fight scene with some circus freaks, and more genuinely creepy stuff at the end with the Pig. Better than the first issue, I think.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #26 - Either I've missed an issue somewhere, or worse, I've stopped caring enough to remember what happened in the previous issue. And I have a sinking feeling it might be the latter. Vampires have insinuated themselves into the mainstream, and the Slayers are on the run from a world that no longer has much time for them. Basically this is a whole issue of people running away and regrouping, with an admittedly cute ending that I'm sure would work much better if I could actually identify the character in the final panel from the art alone. (You can work it out, but I don't think it was intended that you should have to.) Perfectly alright, but not really grabbing me for some reason.

Cable #16 - Well, "Messiah War" sure didn't advance matters a lot, did it? Cable's still on the run with Hope, they're still fleeing further and further into the future because his time machine won't go back, they're still being chased by Bishop, and even Stryfe is still hovering around on the fringes. If the recap page is anything to go by - and so often, it isn't - Hope is supposed to have been deeply affected by meeting X-Force, because they're from her own time period, and "for the first time in her life, she feels like she's found some friends whom she doesn't want to leave behind." Quite why Hope would have any particular attachment to a time period she doesn't remember, let alone care about X-Force more than the people she lived with for five years earlier in the series, I don't really understand, but then, reading the story, I'm not quite sure that's how writer Duane Swierczynski was trying to sell the idea in the first place. What actually happens in this issue is that Hope gets separated from Cable during a time jump and lands two years early, meaning that she's going to have to make her own way and grow up a bit more before being reunited with him. There's some quite nice intercutting between the two of them, and some very good art from veteran Paul Gulacy. It's actually quite a decent issue, but undercut somewhat by the nagging awareness that "Messiah War" ended up heading nowhere, so why should this one be any different?

Captain America: Reborn #1 - Which is effectively an issue of Captain America with "#1" on the cover, but hey, that's what it takes to shift units these days. It seems we're doing the "lost in the timestream" angle, as Steve Rogers relives scenes from his past - which feels like a bit of a cop-out after he got shot in the chest and buried. This is decent enough, but it doesn't have the emotional weight of issue #600, and really, the return of Steve Rogers is the single least interesting aspect of Brubaker's story, so far as I'm concerned. Bryan Hitch seems awkwardly cast on this book - inker Butch Guice and colourist Paul Mounts seems to be trying their damnedest to maintain the tone of the regular Captain America series, resulting in what feels like a stylistic tug-of-war between Hitch's polished faces and something darker and looser that comes through at times. Not sure it really works.

Chew #2 - Thanks to his power to pick up psychic impressions from eating stuff, Tony Chu settles into his new job at the FDA, "the most powerful law enforcement agency on the face of the planet." As with the first issue, there's plenty of dark absurdity and a dash of gross-out comedy, but all while keeping a grounding in reality - a tricky balance to pull off. The basic set-up of Chu and his obnoxious boss is familiar stuff, but it's the comic timing and the details in the art that make it fly. As I said last month, I'm not quite sure where you go with this in the long run, but so far the high concept is working nicely. Oh, and it's interesting to note that, even though this is officially part of a five issue storyline, the first two issues have both been largely self-contained. You'd almost think the creators wanted the book to be accessible to new readers. How unfashionable.

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Utopia - The first part of the Uncanny X-Men/Dark Avengers crossover, all of which is being written by Matt Fraction, and which should certainly help raise Uncanny's profile. The Humanity Now! Coalition (is the exclamation mark compulsory? Because if it isn't, I'm going to stop using it, if you don't mind) marches on San Francisco with a million people, which rather comes out of nowhere, given that the storyline has only had a couple of mentions in Uncanny to build it up. Actually, this makes a bit more sense when you get to part two, but it comes across very strangely here. And then you get a riot with the humans versus the mutants, and Cyclops singularly failing to calm everyone down. All this provides an opportunity for Norman Osborn to declare that HAMMER need to move in and take control, and there's your plot. If you can buy that premise, the rest is fine, but my problem here is that - repeat after me - there's only supposed to be 300 or so mutants in total, and even though Fraction has clearly been searching through the darkest recesses of The 198 Files to find obscure ones, I just don't buy this storyline with a grand total of 300 rioters (minus the ones who are trying to control the situation, minus the ones who aren't in San Francisco at all). Add another one to the increasingly long list of theoretically decent story ideas, strangled in the crib by M-Day. You can't do this stuff with 300 mutants. It just doesn't work. I'll keep saying it until it stops being true: if the X-office have no ideas for what to do with the post-Decimation set-up, and it sure looks like they don't, then they should be reversing it ASAP and at least provide a set-up that works for the stories they apparently do want to tell, about mutants as a minority population in San Francisco.

Dark Wolverine #75 - In other words, a Daken solo title. The actual Wolverine isn't in this story at all, but with the recent launch of Wolverine: Weapon X, I rather suspect that this is the soft launch of an ongoing Daken series, which will get a more sensible name once Dark Reign is out of the way. (No doubt with a shiny new #1.) In this issue - you'll never guess - Daken is impersonating Wolverine, charming the ladies, and scheming against his fellow villains. I've been skipping most of the Dark Reign tie-ins, but something tells me there's a lot of variations on this storyline being told right now. To be fair, it's well paced, and I like Giuseppe Camuncoli's art, which almost manages to make Daken's dodgy mohawk work. Curiously, even though this is co-written by Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu, Daken doesn't act much like he did in Way's previous stories - he's more flippant than before, for one thing. Granted, it probably helps that he doesn't have to interact with Wolverine here, and he gets an interior monologue to explain himself, but the dialogue doesn't read much like Way at all. As for the story, there's really not much to it other than "Daken winds up his fellow Dark Avengers" - which is done quite well, but where's it heading?

Deadpool: Merc with a Mouth #1 - Because you apparently are perceived to have demanded it, it's a second ongoing Deadpool series. This one is written by Victor Gischler with art by Bong Dazo. (Google says his real name is Angelo Dazo, but you've got to love somebody who changes his name to Bong.) AIM hire our demented antihero to retrieve an item from the Savage Land, and so he goes there and discovers... something that looks like it was intended to be a twist at one point, except they've been giving it away in house ads for weeks. It's the head of the Deadpool from Marvel Zombies. This is a straight Deadpool story in more or less the same style as Daniel Way's work on the main title, and there's no obvious sign of this book bringing a different angle to the character. It's basically an action comedy. But the comedy works - lots of good dialogue, and Dazo pulls off the visual gags effectively - which is really the bottom line here. It's entertaining.

Exiles #4 - The Exiles arrive on another world and have to liberate it from the robots who've already wiped out the human race. Um... that's basically it, really. Entirely solid, not sure what to say about it that we haven't covered in previous months, and it's a busy week so let's move on.

Gotham City Sirens #1 - A team book for female Batman villains, with Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. The cover is faintly embarrassing, but the interior art by Guillem March is more acceptable (albeit also a bit more wonky). The idea is that Catwoman's not on top form at the moment, and ends up, somewhat against her better judgment, having to hook up with the two crazy girls. Paul Dini writes a pretty strong first issue here, setting up the characters well for those of us who don't read the Batman titles, and pitching his throwaway first-issue villain about right. Rather better than I was expecting, and actually quite enjoyable.

Marvel Divas #1 - This book drew an awful lot of flack for that admittedly godawful J Scott Campbell cover. The title is also somewhat mystifying, since of the four main characters, only the Black Cat could remotely be classed as a "diva" by my understanding of the term. Either Marvel need a dictionary or I do. In fact, they were being a lot more accurate when they billed Robert Aguirre-Sacasa and Tonci Zonjic's comic as Sex and the City with female superheroes (albeit C-list ones, which is kind of the point). The interior art is excellent, in fact, and the opposite of the cover in almost every conceivable way. As for the story... well, they talk about men for 20 pages and then an Issue of the Week plot is unveiled, which is a bit underwhelming. If only there was a stronger story I'd say this was a good comic; as it is, I'd still say it's worth a look on the strength of the art. And in fairness to Marvel, I suppose I can understand their logic in trying to attract attention to the book, but the problem is, they've done so by appealing to lowest common denominator - and in so doing, they've pretty much sent the message that the book would be of no interest at all to those people who might actually want to read 20 pages of Monica Rambeau and Patsy Walker discussing their romantic difficulties. I think that cover will alienate at least as many readers at it attracts - but to be fair, the book was always something of a niche proposition.

Uncanny X-Men #512 - The Beast's "Science Team" go back to 1906 to get blood samples from the parents of America's first mutant. This is in a different league to the preceding "Sisterhood" storyline, and it's hard to believe that both stories are by the same writer, Matt Fraction. Which isn't to say that this is perfect; it starts piling on the cute moments a bit too blatantly by the end, eventually reaching for one of the ultimate time travel cliches. But it's got a focus and enthusiasm that just didn't seem to be there before, perhaps because Fraction is getting an opportunity to write about some of his pet themes, and pay homage to Tesla. He also gets to work with Yanick Paquette on this story, who is rather better suited to draw Fraction's ideas. Best issue in quite a while.

Uncanny X-Men #513 - And then we have this, which is the second part of "Utopia", the crossover with Dark Avengers. It's perfectly fine, it has characters politicking nicely for control of Norman Osborn's new "X-Men" team, and it has the Dodsons on art (actually, with rather less of the cheesecake than usual). It's also unbelievably camp, with Emma wearing black to signify that she's one of the baddies in case anyone hadn't picked up on it yet. I'm in two minds about this; there's a lot of amusing bits, but it also sees Fraction hauling out a cast of thousands yet again, something which has contributed to a lack of focus in many of his stories. He's mentioned in interviews needing a flowchart to keep track of the characters, and one can't help thinking that if the writer's having that much trouble, what chance do we have? I wonder whether this is going to turn out to be another Matt Fraction story in need of streamlining. But it is quite fun if you're prepared to run with the idea.

Wolverine: First Class #16 - Guest starring Siryn and Dazzler, written by Peter David, and with art from the Gurihiru duo. And who wouldn't want a Wolverine series drawn by Gurihiru? They could call it Adorable Wolverine. I love their work, and they're actually very well suited for this book, which, despite the title, is really a Kitty Pryde series. It's a straight Kitty Pryde story for younger readers where she feels jealous of Siryn and Learns An Important Lesson, but it's Peter David and Gurihiru, for heaven's sake, of course it's good.

Wolverine: Noir #3 - In which this version of Logan explains his origin story, and Mariko turns out to be the Japanese equivalent of a flapper. Um... yeah, it's alright, but you know the drill by now: I just don't get why someone thinks the world needs noir versions of superhero characters.

Wolverine: Weapon X #3 - "The Adamantium Men", part 3 of 5. Wolverine runs rings round the twelve members of Strikeforce X for an issue, more or less. The reason why this book works is that Jason Aaron and Ron Garney can take a fairly basic concept for what happens in this chapter, and then make it work with the little details that allow the individual Strikeforce X members to have a bit of personality. That's what makes the difference between an enjoyable issue, and Wolverine beating up randoms for 20 pages. There's a slightly jarring bit toward the end where Aaron starts defending the credibility of his plot in the post-Bush world, which doesn't really work, but he pulls it back pretty quickly with the henchmen from Blackguard's human resources department (who summon back-up by radioing in an "HR Emergency!"). It's what you want in a Wolverine story.

X-Factor #45 - Somebody reminded me the other week that I hadn't actually reviewed X-Factor fully in ages. But then, the story just never seems to come to a natural break point. This issue, in the far future, Madrox meets up with what's left of Dr Doom, while back in the present, some of the team fight a mind-controlled Shatterstar, and the rest of the team aren't even in the book. The future sections are probably the most successful - there's something very likeable about a senile Dr Doom in chronic denial about his reduced circumstances - but it's another solid issue all round.

X-Men Forever #2 - Better than the first issue, I'd say. Claremont teases the death of Wolverine - which he could actually do in this series if he wanted to, since it's out of continuity. Of course, having set up a romantic triangle subplot in issue #1, he's hardly going to end it like that - but it's a good point in the series to remind readers that in theory, at least, this book can tell the sort of stories that would have been ruled out by inter-title continuity even if Claremont had stuck around. And it's got the requisite "How do they get out of that?" factor too. Oh, then Sabretooth shows up for a fight. Nothing groundbreaking here, but it flows quite nicely, the story is definitely stronger than the first issue, and there's a definite retro charm to it.

Playlist: God Help The Girl

I've been listening to Stuart Murdoch's "God Help The Girl" album repeatedly the last couple of days, so let's give it some publicity.

Murdoch is the lead singer of Belle & Sebastian, and "God Help The Girl" is going to be a film musical. He hasn't made it yet. But he has released the soundtrack album, mostly original songs with a couple of B&S covers given an orchestral polish. He also apparently ran open online auditions to find singers; that's where he found Brittany Stallings, who does the lead vocal on this version of "Funny Little Frog."



Do pay attention to the lyrics, it's worth it. Belle & Sebastian's version got to number 13 in 2006, and their video makes the point a little more clearly than GHTG's project trailer.

Housekeeping

For those of you wondering, here's the plan. From last week's books, I'm going to do full reviews of Astonishing X-Men and the "Messiah War" crossover. Everything else, I'll cover in this weekend's capsules.

We're recording House to Astonish on Sunday, so it should be up Sunday evening.

Oh, and in the meantime... if anyone can tell me what on earth is supposed to be happening in the closing pages of "Messiah War", I'd love to know, because I've read it several times now, and I haven't got a clue.

Number 1s of 2009: 28 June 2009

Everyone knows that when a major star dies, his records start flying off the shelves. And now that the UK singles chart counts downloads of individual album tracks as "singles", it's easier than ever for old records to make the chart thanks to a spontaneous surge of interest. As long as it's floating around iTunes on a compilation somewhere, it could theoretically chart at any time.

So when Michael Jackson died last week, a lot of people assumed that there was guaranteed to be a Jackson single at number one. What they got was La Roux, "Bulletproof".



(Incidentally, if you'd prefer to see it in the correct aspect ratio, here's the YouTube link. Which isn't embeddable, even though the equally official version on Daily Motion is. Don't ask me.)

La Roux are the duo of Elly Jackson, who's in the video, and Ben Langmaid, who has taken the traditional synth duo role of "standing motionless in the background" to its logical extreme by vanishing almost completely from the band's public profile. This has led to plenty of Blondie-style confusion about whether "La Roux" is supposed to be the name of the woman in the videos... but officially, it isn't.

They are, of course, 80s revivalists. It's somewhat ironic to see people deliberately re-creating a style of music which was driven in part by the technical limitations of early synths. But of course, if you're too young to remember it, it won't sound dated. And, after all, this stuff is getting on for 30 years old.

There's a lot of this around at the moment; a lot of year-end predictions had 2009 pencilled in as the year of the "electrogirl", mostly because a glance at the release schedules showed that La Roux, Lady Gaga and Little Boots all had albums out soon. Lady Gaga has done very well for herself indeed. La Roux are on their third single - the first, "Quicksand", failed to chart, but "In For The Kill" did very well earlier in the year, spending four straight weeks at Number 2. I'm not sure "Bulletproof" is quite as good, but it's a grower.

And then there's Little Boots, who might be giving her record label cause for concern. Despite ample quantities of hype, her first proper single "New In Town" stalled at number 13 before exiting the top 40 after four weeks. Odd, since it's quite a good record.



So what happened to Michael Jackson?

Well, the UK charts are calculated over a week's sales, from Sunday to Saturday. Since the news of Jackson's death came out late on Thursday night, there were only two days for the download sales to mount up. But on top of that, he has such a big back catalogue that a lot of people went for the greatest hits album instead. And the Number 1 on the album charts is indeed Jackson's album "Number Ones." That would be American number 1s, presumably, since he only had seven in the UK.

Those people who wanted to download a single had plenty to choose from, splitting the vote. The most popular was "Man in the Mirror" at number 11 - an unexpected choice, since it didn't even make the top 20 on its original release. It will climb this week, and it will challenge for number 1. To judge from the iTunes chart, sales have tailed off a bit, but he might well get there on the strength of a surge of sales on Sunday and Monday.

In total, six Michael Jackson singles made the top 40. Technically, the record for most appearances on a single chart stands at seven and is held by Elvis Presley - but it doesn't really count, because it was on a wonky late-fifties chart where the A- and B-sides of three singles were inexplicably listed separately. Despite having seven chart placings, he actually only had four singles on the chart. Disregard that, and Jackson matches the record set by, er, Elvis Presley again, this time in early 2005 when his record label decided to re-issue all his old singles on a weekly schedule.

Those casting around for an unequivocal piece of record-breaking will have to satisfy themselves by noting that Jackson had sixteen singles in the top 75, plus four singles by the Jackson 5. Nobody really cares about numbers 41-75, but technically they're part of the official chart. And 20 singles in the top 75 is unprecedented - the previous record was thirteen, set by the Jam, of all people, whose entire back catalogue was reissued when they disbanded in 1983. And since Wikipedia tells me that the Jam never even grazed the US chart, here's "Going Underground" and "A Town Called Malice", number 1 hits in 1980 and 1982.

X-Men: Legacy #225

No capsules this weekend, because, well, I haven't read any of the books yet. But there's always this to tide you over...

X-Men: Legacy #225 (untitled)
Writer: Mike Carey
Artist: Phil Briones
Colourist: Brian Reber
Letterer: Cory Petit
Editor: Nick Lowe

The X-Men books don't do single issue stories very often. But Legacy #225 is one such story. At first glance you'd think it was an epilogue to Professor X's world tour. But really, this is finale - this is the story which brings some closure to the whole thing, as Xavier returns to the Acolytes (who were in the first arc), and basically tells them what he's learned.

Having spent the last year visiting old characters, having flashbacks, and generally coming to terms with his past, Xavier's message is, of course, that it's time to move on. The Acolytes are a relic from an earlier incarnation of the series, still obsessed with factional in-fighting and the future of the mutant race. But after Decimation, there are no factions, and there is no race. They're just wasting their time, and Xavier is there to persuade them to go and do something more productive.

If nothing else, this answers the question of why Mike Carey was assembling a rather unlikely batch of characters into a new incarnation of the Acolytes: the pointlessness of the team pretty much was the point. And as usual, Carey makes this work with the small character details. The remaining Acolytes may be mostly D-list obscurities, but they still get more personality than usual. And since Xavier isn't trying to beat them so much as persuade them, Carey gets to use his telepathic powers more imaginatively than usual.

The story makes unusually good use of Exodus, too. As a zealot, he's always been a somewhat interesting character, but one who can easily end up one-dimensional in the hands of the wrong writer. Here, he's a somewhat well-meaning character who's been holed up in a secret base with a bunch of henchmen because it's all he really knows how to do; Xavier prompts him to go and do something more constructive instead, and there's certainly some potential in having Exodus wandering around as a loose cannon trying to find a new role for himself.

So it's a decent issue, well paced, very readable. But the big question, of course, is where this is all heading. The X-books have been struggling to find a workable direction and gain any traction since M-Day, and that was four years ago now. By spending the last year revisiting old Professor X stories and drawing a line under them, Carey has dodged that problem rather than actually answering it. Nor does he offer any particularly concrete answers here. Yes, the situation has changed, the Acolytes and the X-Men need to do something else... but what? The last few years of stories rather suggest that nobody knows.

Carey's approach is to make the problem into the solution - to do stories about the characters trying to figure out what they're going to do now. That's fine as far as it goes, and it's certainly a phase that the book needs to go through. But at some point they need to come up with an answer, and really, that point should have come a couple of years ago. The San Francisco set-up doesn't seem to offer an answer so much as an attempt to ignore the problem.

And that's my reservation, I think. Carey is saying all the right things, and doing all the right things (or rather, the things that should have been done in 2006, but he wasn't here at the time, so it's not his fault). He's saying that the characters need to come to terms with their past, accept what has changed, and find a way to move forward from there. All well and good, and if I had faith that this was heading anywhere, I'd say this was a very good issue. But after four years of watching some of Marvel's best writers repeatedly fail to find that way forward, in favour of ducking the issue time and again, I long since stopped believing that it's ever going to happen. Maybe this time it'll be different, but I'd have to be some sort of sucker to have any faith in that until I see it on the page.

The Bash 2009

The WWE is an increasingly eccentric and erratic place these days, seemingly unable to hold to an idea for more than a day or two before losing in faith in it, or becoming captivated by another passing fancy. Hence "The Bash."

This show used to be called "The Great American Bash." It's an old trademark that they picked up when they bought out WCW, and which they dusted off when they were adding pay-per-views to the calendar. And then, earlier this year, they apparently decided they didn't like it after all. Can't say I blame them, really. It's a dreadful name. Still, apparently they'd already started the local promotion by this point, so we end up with this weirdly truncated name. "The Bash"? Who thought that sounded any good?

It's been only three weeks since the last pay-per-view. That's too short anyway - but this time round, the company has been derailed by the USA network requesting two special episodes of Monday Night Raw - one with a three hour running time, one with no commercials. Since those had to be attractions in their own right, Raw only got around to promoting its pay-per-view matches at the last minute.

And making matters even worse, the company spent those weeks on Raw introducing, and then almost immediately dropping, a bizarre and garbled story about Donald Trump buying the show, which was borderline gibberish even by the low standards of professional wrestling.

It has been said that the writers are a bit demoralised at the moment. It's certainly easy to believe. In fact, ironically enough, most of the actual matches on this show make reasonable sense in terms of long-term planning (particularly those involving wrestlers from Smackdown, the B-show, which tends to escape the worst of the company's changing whims). But the build-up over the last few weeks has been a mess.

1. WWE Championship, "Three Stages of Hell" match: Randy Orton v. Triple H. Quite a few of these matches make reasonable sense - but not this one. The WWE Title has been bouncing around like a pinball lately, which does nobody any favours. Orton won the title from Triple H in a six-man tag match in April. Triple H was then written out for a few weeks with an injury angle so that the character (undeniably overexposed) could be rested for a bit. Orton then went on to feud with Dave Batista, who promptly went down with a genuine arm injury requiring surgery. But the WWE apparently felt Batista's credibility couldn't withstand another unsuccessful challenge for the title. So he won it at the last pay-per-view three weeks ago. Then, the next day, they did an injury storyline; Batista vacated the title; and Orton won it back a week late.

This is all a bit chaotic. But it could have been worse; at least Orton, the heel champion, got his title back quickly, and got credit for injuring two of his main challengers. That keeps him suitably strong.

Now we're back to Orton and Triple H, a match we've seen many times before, and which is usually not that memorable. They already did a title match on Monday night's Raw. That ended in a draw (which means Orton retained the title). Now, at the last minute, we have a rematch which is not merely gimmicky but positively bloated. Basically, it's a best-of-3 series. First match is a straight wrestling match, second match is falls-count-anywhere, and the third ("if needed", cough cough) will be a stretcher match.

I'm fairly bored of this pairing already. I don't want to see them wrestle three times in one night. And I certainly don't want to see them in a stretcher match, where the aim is to put your opponent on a stretcher and roll it over a white line. They're almost invariably crap, mostly because you can't use near falls to build tension. In fact, I have so little interest in seeing these two wrestle yet again that this match is probably the decisive factor that makes me not want to buy this show. One match, on an otherwise interesting card... maybe. Three? Spare me.

Orton should win. It's far too soon to switch the title again, and there are ways of doing screwjob endings with his lackeys to give Triple H an excuse.

2. World Heavyweight Title: CM Punk v. Jeff Hardy. The Smackdown title. On the last show, Jeff Hardy won the title from Edge in a ladder match, only for CM Punk to bounce down the ramp and claim the any-time-any-place title shot he won at Wrestlemania. So, for the second year running, Punk ambushed a weakened champion and won the title.

Except last year, Punk did it to Edge, a dastardly villain who had done the same thing twice before to other champions, and had no business complaining about it. This year, he did it to the beloved Jeff Hardy. Cue heel turn. And it's a well-judged heel turn, since Punk is well placed to make the argument that, hey, nobody complained last year, so what's the problem? His "straight edge" gimmick, which he's been doing since his days on the indie scene, works well as a self-righteous, condescending heel convinced that he's in the right. The slight downside is that Chris Jericho is already doing a very similar heel character on the same show, but so be it.

So far, Punk hasn't officially turned heel. He's still wrestling like a babyface, he's not cheating, he's saying the right things in interviews - but he's just being slightly more smug and condescending about it. And, of course, he's being paired up against Jeff Hardy, who is bound to be cheered against him.

This could go either way. On the one hand, Jeff Hardy is still meant to be taking a break in the not-too-distant future; on the other, the show is short of top babyfaces at the moment, so Punk would quickly run out of challengers. My instinct would be to extend this storyline a little longer, which would mean Punk winning in slightly dubious fashion.

CM Punk doesn't always mesh with all his opponents, but I suspect he'll be fine with Hardy. This could be a good match.

3. ECW Championship, Scramble Match: Tommy Dreamer v. Jack Swagger v. Christian v. Mark Henry v. Finlay. Meet the top tier of wrestlers from the C-show. Dreamer, a veteran of the original indie promotion ECW, won the title from Christian on the last show. On paper this was obviously meant to be a terribly emotional moment, but it suffers from the usual problem that nobody cares about ECW storylines. The show is taped on the same night as Smackdown, before an audience who largely don't watch it. To make people care about Dreamer finally winning the ECW title that he was chasing for much of the 1990s, they'd have had to show a lot more footage from the original shows - something they understandably don't want to do, as the production values weren't fantastic, and it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the current show. WWE fans know Dreamer, if at all, as a low-ranking jobber from five years ago. Many of them would probably be quite surprised to learn that he was still under contract at all.

What this means is that we have a lame duck champion, who will probably be losing the title tonight. The likely winner is probably Jack Swagger, the rookie heel, to set up further matches down the line. The company apparently has high hopes for Swagger, and understandably so.

The scramble match was an idea that the WWE first tried last year, when they did three of them on one show. It didn't really work. Basically, it's a match with a 20-minute time limit, and whoever gets the last pinfall wins. I say "basically", because last year they explained the rules in a staggeringly elaborate and confusing way, with nonsense about "interim champions". All you need to know is that the aim is to pin someone, and then stop anyone else from scoring a pinfall until time runs out. Last year's matches were reportedly a bit of a mess, and this is unlikely to be much of an improvement - but hell, it's only the ECW title, and they've already given up on pretending that it's an equal world title.

4. Intercontinental Title, mask vs title: Chris Jericho v. Rey Mysterio. The storyline here is that Jericho has beaten Mysterio twice (and won his IC title), by taking advantage of Mysterio's mask - for example, tearing it off and then pinning him while he's covering his face. Now, Mysterio is putting his mask on the line in order to get another title shot. If Jericho wins, Mysterio removes the mask for good.

We're not supposed to mention this, but Mysterio already unmasked back in 1999 when he was in WCW. The WWE simply ignored that when they brought him into the company a few years later. (This apparently causes some controversy when they tour Mexico, since the authorities down there, believe it or not, actually enforce unmasking stipulations. I suppose the get-out must be that Mysterio unmasked after a WCW match, which the Mexicans don't necessarily have to recognise. But still...)

Mysterio without the mask isn't a very good idea, as we found out a decade ago. He just doesn't have the same presence without it. So the chances of him losing here are minimal. And in theory, this is a good next step for the storyline. The problem is that it's all running a bit too quickly - they haven't done nearly enough to build up this match. My instinct would be to do a DQ finish and set up for a properly promoted rematch down the road. If they do have a proper finish, then Mysterio has to win. As for the match quality, with these two it should be excellent.

5. WWE Unified Tag Team Titles: Carlito & Primo Colon v. Cody Rhodes & Ted DiBiase. The Colons (that's pronounced "cologne", if you're wondering) are the "unified" tag team champions, having won the Smackdown tag titles earlier in the year, and picked up the Raw tag titles in a Wrestlemania match which didn't even make it onto the show. Such is the prestige of the tag division. As unified champions, they're theoretically the only wrestlers entitled to appear and defend their titles on all three shows, although in practice they were sent to Raw in the last draft, and they've stayed there. For some reason, even though the titles are supposed to have been unified, they're still carting around all four belts.

Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase are Randy Orton's henchmen from the Legacy stable, and a tag team feud is a very good move for them. In theory, they're supposed to gain credibility from being involved with a main event wrestler like Orton. In practice, they end up being the guys who get beaten up while Orton escapes - so they spend most of their time losing matches to main event babyfaces. None of which helps their credibility much.

So a tag title reign would be a smart move. The Colons haven't been doing much since they won the belts, and it's probably time to move on. If Rhodes and DiBiase win (and Orton retains) then the whole Legacy group will have titles, which is always a good visual. You could even do a storyline with Rhodes or DiBiase trying to give the group a clean sweep of the Raw titles by picking up Kofi Kingston's US title as well. Or, more plausibly, you could send Rhodes and DiBiase to Smackdown or ECW to defend their tag titles against other teams, away from the shadow of Randy Orton and the main eventers. This too would be good for them.

I'm rooting for a heel win, then. It has many upsides, and not much downside. As for the match... well, it'll probably be okay, but I doubt they'll get the time to do anything particularly memorable, and the live crowds don't seem to care all that much.

6. WWE Women's Title: Melina v. Michelle McCool. I'm trying very hard to think of anything to say about this. It'll probably be short. It probably won't be very good. And there isn't that much to get excited about.

7. John Cena v. The Miz. This, on the other hand, is more interesting. Mike Mizanin was a reality show contestant who the WWE initially signed more as a gimmick. As it turned out, he's not bad - he's got decent heel charisma, which is to say that he's the right sort of annoying, and he's come a long way in the ring. His tag team with John Morrison was a big success, but with the spring draft, the WWE has taken the questionable decision to try and make them both solo stars.

This remains a debatable strategy. Miz is good enough to carry his end in a tag team, but has yet to prove himself as a singles wrestler. Still, they're trying. The story here is that former world champions John Cena and the Big Show are trying to get on with their own feud, while Miz has been hovering around the sidelines repeatedly challenging Cena to matches, and getting ignored. Since Miz chooses to regard each unanswered challenge as a win by forfeit, he claims to be on a remarkable winning streak against Cena. For his part, Cena regards the midcard heel as beneath his notice.

Now, Cena has finally turned his attention to the Miz, and this is where we find out how serious they are about him. If Cena just squashes him, then we've been wasting our time. Here's what will probably happen, though: Cena dominates the match, Big Show interferes, and Miz picks up a technical win. This might be okay, depending on how much credibility Miz is given. If Big Show does all the work, that's bad. If Cena just gets distracted and Miz capitalises, that's fine - it means you can do a rematch down the road, and Miz can brag about a highly questionable win, but at least he'll have achieved the upset largely through his own efforts.

This could be a great storyline match. It probably won't be, since they've botched plenty of opportunities during the build-up on Raw, and generally erred on the side of making Miz look like a harmless nuisance. It probably won't be a technical classic, either. I'd bet on a frustrating missed opportunity... but you never know.

8. No count-out, no-DQ: Dolph Ziggler v. The Great Khali. Dolph Ziggler is an undercard wrestler who has been given something of a push since jumping to Smackdown in the draft. You're not supposed to recognise this, but he's actually Nick Nemeth of the Spirit Squad, the male cheerleader group who were floating around Raw as comedy heels a couple of years ago. When they first repackaged him as Dolph Ziggler, he was given the bizarre gimmick of persistently introducing himself to people. Now there's a belated attempt to give him some credibility.

The Great Khali is a virtually immobile seven-foot giant now cast in the awkward role of fun-loving monster babyface. Ziggler has beaten him twice on technicalities (count-out and DQ, by tricking the referee), so this is the rematch where, in theory, Ziggler can't do that. This is logically the point where Khali gets his win back, and Ziggler's probably already got as much credibility from this storyline as he's going to get, so fair enough.

The match, of course, will be god-awful. It's the Great Khali, for heaven's sake, the man can barely walk.

Worth buying? Well, Jericho/Mysterio will be good. Punk/Hardy and Cena/Miz have some genuine interest. But there's quite a bit of filler on this card... and three Orton/HHH matches? I don't think so.

Uncanny X-Men #508-511

"Sisterhood"
Writer: Matt Fraction
Pencillers: Greg Land with Terry Dodson (epilogue)
Inker: Jay Leisten with Rachel Dodson (epilogue)
Colourist: Justin Ponsor
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Editor: Nick Lowe

Actually, there's no title on the published stories. But the solicitations say it's called "Sisterhood", so we'll go with that.

This is one of Greg Land's arcs, and it's all too tempting to roll my eyes heavenward and lament the plastic pictures. We've been there before, though. The problems with Land's art, and there are many, have been exhaustively documented. It's lifeless, it's airbrushed, it's stiff, it doesn't convey emotion, his women all look alike, his rictus grins are absurd. All true, all very familiar.

But usually, I would then lament that Land was undermining the story. And there's the rub. "Sisterhood" is just a lousy story to start with.

On the plus side, Fraction is getting better at juggling his subplots. Before, major storylines were going missing for months at a time, even when they should have been a huge concern for the characters. This time, the first two issues spend more time keeping the plates spinning, before focussing in on the Sisterhood in the climactic second half. That's a big improvement.

Sadly, though, the arc is just all over the place. The plot boils down to this. The Red Queen (apparently Madelyne Pryor, although it's never explained with much clarity) is a disembodied psychic thingie. She wants a body back. Her plan is to revive Jean Grey's corpse and occupy that, because apparently only Jean is powerful enough to hold her. She recruits a bunch of villainesses, she does a test run with Psylocke, she attacks the X-Men in order to recover a lock of Jean's hair, she uses the hair to magically locate Jean's body, but the X-Men trick her in the end, she tries to occupy the wrong corpse, it won't hold her, and she vanishes.

That's the basic plot. I think. It's presented in a terribly confusing way, and it's riddled with garbled developments and outright plot holes.

Why does the Red Queen want a physical body anyway? She seems to be fine as she is. And if that's her only concern, why was she involved in the Hellfire Cult in the arc before last? What was the point of her connection with Empath? If it was only a device to get him into the X-Men's mansion, why didn't she just send him to knock on the door and sign up? Why did the Sisterhood need to go to the trouble of recovering a lock of Jean's hair just to discover that Jean's body is in the X-Men's long-established graveyard under a gravestone clearly marked JEAN GREY-SUMMERS? How does burning through an unsuitable host body leave the Red Queen any worse off than she was before? What's all this gibberish about Psylocke and "murder spirits"?

And that would be bad enough. But there are more fundamental problems. There is a cast of thousands, almost none of whom have any emotional anchor to the plot. The Sisterhood members seem to have been selected using the Official Handbook, a blindfold and a pin. Obscure X-Men associates show up for two panels and then vanish again for the rest of the story. Yes, yes, I know, it's not a formal team book any more. Fine. But it still needs some sort of focus on a defined cast. It's just a hazy mess right now.

Even if you can look past the plot problems, and forgive the lack of focus - what was any of it about? What was it even meant to be about? I really haven't a clue.

For all his faults, Greg Land is not the major problem with this story. The story is the major problem with this story. Fraction has written some very good stuff in recent years, but his work on Uncanny has been inconsistent at best. This one is a shambles.

Wolverine #73-74

"A Mile in my Moccasins"
Writer: Jason Aaron
Penciller: Adam Kubert
Inker: Mark Farmer
Letterer: Cory Petit
Colourist: Justin Ponsor
Editor: John Barber

"One-Percenter"
Writer: Daniel Way
Artist: Tommy Lee Edwards
Letterer: John Workman
Editor: John Barber

Wolverine #73-74 have an unusual history and an unusual format. They're basically fill-in issues, seemingly intended to fill the gap between Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's "Old Man Logan" storyline, and issue #75's Dark Wolverine story. But rather than run the stories intact, they split them in two and put half in each issue.

Good idea? Well, from Marvel's perspective, it does mean that you get two Adam Kubert issues rather than just one. The stories are different in style, though it would be going it a bit far to say they complement each other, rather than just co-existing comfortably. As it turned out, they were never needed at all; "Old Man Logan" ran so far behind the schedule that these issues had to be rushed out in May.

When they rescheduled the issues, Marvel solemnly claimed that they were an ideal tie-in for the movie, suitable for new readers. Well. In their favour, I suppose, there's one story by Jason Aaron (Weapon X) and one by Daniel Way (Origins), so you could argue that new readers get to find out which book they'd prefer. Except there's nothing in the issues to tell them that. And although Way's story is a reasonably accessible, self-contained affair, Aaron embarks on a breakneck parody of Wolverine continuity which will be utterly meaningless to new readers.

Way and Tommy Lee Edwards provide a traditional fill-in story where Wolverine helps out one of his seemingly inexhaustile supply of previously unmentioned old friends. This time it's an aging biker called Horrorshow, a cuddly chap with a beard who presumably lived up to the name back in the seventies. There's an internal squabble for control of his biker clan, and a wayward son to deal with.

The wayward son provides the hook that makes this a Wolverine story: Way gets to play up the parallels with Daken. But the story doesn't actually get bogged down in any of that continuity, and really, it's a perfectly decent affair. In fact, it's a welcome reminder that when Way steers clear of his unfathomable conspiracy storyline, and has the discipline of a limited page count, he writes a good Wolverine. It's still a fill-in issue, but a solid one.

Aaron and Kubert turn in something rather more unusual, playing off Wolverine's ridiculous overexposure. The poor guy has two (now three) solo titles, New Avengers, Uncanny X-Men, Astonishing X-Men, X-Force and New Avengers. He's awfully busy. And that's the basic idea - most of part one is a bouncily insane patchwork of one-panel snapshots, labelled "Monday", "Tuesday" and so forth, each with Wolverine fighting a completely different villain alongside another team, guest star or whatever. You'd think it wouldn't work, but it's brilliantly paced, Kubert gets across enough information to give the general impression of some typical Wolveirne story in progress, and every week seems to end with Wolverine in yet another bar with yet more of his ever-growing army of previously unseen acquaintances. Aaron even manages to get in some good lines. (The X-Men, facing Mystique with a flamethrower: "I thought I told you to kill that woman." "I thought I did...")

Now, none of this will make the slightest sense to new readers, as I say. But pausing to explain it all would kill the joke. For once, I think it's worth the inaccessibility.

The second half has a stab at bringing things down to earth, with Spider-Man showing up in a bar and trying to persuade Wolverine that he's working himself into the ground. Aaron tries for a bit of tragedy here - Wolverine's got an awful lot to atone for, and doesn't feel he can let up - but it doesn't really fit with the first half of the story. Problem is, if you take Wolverine's continuity literally, and try to make sense of all his many, many engagements, it's just too stupid - and too cynical - to form the basis for drama. You can laugh at it, but when you try and shift gears and go for emotion, it rings false.

Mind you, Aaron and Kubert very nearly get away with it, which proves how good they are. But even with an ending that doesn't quite convince, the first half is so impressive that the story is worth reading for that alone.

Number 1s of 2009: 21 June 2009

I have no idea what the deal is here, but for some reason, while YouTube won't show me the official video for this song on the artist's channel, it will give me a version of the song accompanied by a rotating graphic, which is, in fact, embeddable. That makes so little sense that I'm assuming it's an error rather than an intentional decision to exclude the video from the UK. So here's a version posted by someone else instead.



This is "When Love Takes Over" by David Guetta featuring Kelly Rowland. It's a very radio-friendly song, and they've been hyping it for some time. It was supposed to go straight in at number one this week. But the record label dragged it out for so long that a couple of spoiler versions started climbing the iTunes chart , resulting in a hasty midweek release that landed the single at number 7 last week. (The Airi L spoiler version still made it to number 22, but has now vanished altogether.)

Kelly Rowland, formerly of Destiny's Child, has the misfortune to have seen her solo career entirely overshadowed by Beyonce Knowles. In fact, her singles have generally done okay, but somehow she hasn't managed to acquire Beyonce's star aura. Even so, it's her fourth UK number one. Kind of. It depends whether you count her two number 1s with Destiny's Child, "Independent Women" in 2000 and "Survivor" in 2001. The third was "Dilemma", her collaboration with Nelly from 2002. And to be fair, her solo career has racked up another four top-5 hits. Yet she doesn't have the A-list aura about her. Moving to dance music might be a smart move, switching genres to escape the comparisons with her more successful ex-colleague.

She is, however, only the guest vocalist on this track. It's the lead single from the new album by French producer David Guetta, who's been around for the better part of a decade. He's yet to put in an appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 (though that could change with this single), and his chart record in Britain is somewhat spotty. Like many dance acts, rather than having a loyal fanbase, his singles sell according to their individual merits.

This is his first UK number 1. His previous biggest hit was "Love Don't Let Me Go (Walking Away)", credited to David Guetta versus the Egg, which reached number 3 in 2006.



But it's slightly debatable whether this really counts, because the single is a mash-up. The backing track comes from the Tocadisco remix of "Walking Away" by the Egg, a record which never made the top 40. The vocals are by Chris Willis, Guetta's regular vocalist, and come from Guetta's single "Love Don't Let Me Go" (number 19 in 2001).



Guetta's other previous top ten hit was "Love Is Gone", another collaboration from 2007, which only reached number 9, but seemed to crop up on video channels forever. I've still not sure quite what to make of the video, which seems unsure whether it's trying to be arty or lowbrow, and ends up not quite being either.



Since "When Love Takes Over" had enough interest to generate spoiler versions, I suspect it's going to be number one for a while yet. Good news for Kelly Rowland's profile.