Into the Wild: Welcome to Wilderness Festival

By
August 20, 2012
Art, Festivals, Food, Music

“Are you sure you need that much fancy dress?” my boyfriend asked as I reeled off the 10 or more items from face paint to a tigers tail I had crammed into my bag.

“You just don’t understand,” I moaned, trying to work out a way to fit an Indian headdress into already over-packed rucksack without crushing the multi-coloured feathers.

“This is Wilderness festival!” I added with a sense of smugness. “Everyone will be doing it!”

And you know what? I was right.

From the moment we walked into the festival on Friday afternoon, to the day we left, you could hardly go five minutes without seeing someone dressed as a fox (the most popular costume of the festival by far), in a headdress, wearing facepaint or just casually wandering about in a tail.

Families, teenagers, twenty somethings and everyone else joined together in a festival of fun, frivolity and fancy dress.

Welcome to the wild. Welcome to Wilderness.

Wilderness Festival caught my eye many months before; it seemed like a dream come true. I had already point blank refused to go to another festival containing loud awful reggae mixed with no sleep and unbearable heat (my experience of Exit Festival last year in Serbia borders on the traumatic).

I wanted plenty of fun, with clean (ish) toilets, melodic indie music and a cool relaxing lake to wash away my hangovers.

I can say that it truly delivered: a magical, often hilarious, sometimes tiring, but mostly brilliant three days in the wild.

As the lovechild of the Secret Garden Party and Lovebox, Wilderness focuses on the festival beyond the music. While many music festivals include a disproportionate amount of time missing things, due to drunkenness, bar queues, weather etc, Wilderness is quite the opposite.

Every corner was filled with art, theatre or music. Hundreds of people performing the Birdie Song at the Village Hall tent and a group of flight attendants encouraging people to join the ‘Mile Pie Club’ by getting stuck into a mass cream pie fight, were just two of the highlights.

And though it may not have all been about the music, there was plenty to listen to. The main stage was tiny in comparison to most festivals; the crowd could barely fill a Northern Quarter bar on a Saturday night.

The bands differed from the upbeat beats of Crystal Fighters, to the melodic tones of Cloud Control.

The crowds danced and cheered accordingly, or lay in the grass sipping various alcoholic beverages.

Slowly as the evenings began to close in, people appeared in that nights’ fancy dress attire; on Friday girls in flapper dresses were surrounded by boys in fedoras, Saturday saw masks of varying degrees of quality for the masked ball and on Sunday it was tribal paint and headdresses.

Around 10 o’clock people would wander towards the woods where they were treated to a film, a club or a roller disco.

From midnight people would move further into the forest and explore the late night parties. Lights hung in the trees, mystical circus performers danced as people moved from tent to tent dancing to electro swing and Balkan beats.

It’s difficult to review Wilderness; there were so many things we missed from an attempt at a record breaking skinny dip, to making all number of craft items, from rings to wooden chairs. There was a freezing cold lake that only I, out of my friends, managed to successfully swim in.

The food could be a review in itself and ranged between Thali curries to mac and cheese. Those with money could treat themselves to one of the exquisite banquets by Michelin star chefs but, alas, our wallets could not quite stretch that far.

The only disappointment was Moro, a Morrocan restaurant, hyped up heavily by the organisers. Nearly 40 mins in a queue left us with a very disappointing lamb wrap each, which could have been eaten in one bite.

Wilderness was a festival that required no effort. There was no grimacing as you waited for a band through endless sound checks, no waiting for 30 minutes for a lukewarm beer and no suspicious burgers or poorly cleaned toilets.

Dancing to a swing band dressed as a flapper girl, falling ungracefully into the lake, seeing people run in slow motion to Chariots of Fire, singing along to Stornaway, discussing drunken facts about Who Framed Roger Rabbit, facepaint, tails and literary slams.

Wilderness was truly magical.

Photography by Sarah Khoo.

Breakfast at Gorilla

By
July 30, 2012
Drink, Food, Uncategorized

I clocked him before he reached our table gliding serenely, lighter than air, across the polished exposed floorboards.

‘Strumming my pain with his finger…,’ Lauryn Hill purred from the PA system. I stared at his tray, my eyes popping out my skull at the sight of the oreo cookie garnishing the glass. Pathetically grateful and desperate for sugar.

The sweet creamy milk laced with woody chocolate cookies, diffused with flecks of ice: the sugar instantly absorbed, the ice soothing my throbbing head.

‘…and so I came to see and listen for a while.’ sang Lauryn. It was a perfect moment. Serene.  After a slurp I pressed the glass to my temples, one at a time, and prayed the staff wouldn’t judge me.

Despite questioning in a previous post if Manchester’s bar and club scene was becoming a little  samey,  I have to admit I like Trof’s latest offering, Gorilla, on Whitworth Street.

Not sure how I’ll feel about another Black Dog Ballroom, mind. The night before we’d been past it as we stumbled through the Northern Quater on our way to Stevenson Square, a long line of Printworks refugees tailed around the corner.

But Gorilla I like. It’s got a dinner feel to it with these angular aluminium tiles above the bar, and there’s a gin parlour upstairs that, thankfully, is not open at 11am on a Saturday morning, which is when I tend to stumble in, pick something off the breakfast menu and slump on the table waiting for someone to bring me liquids.

Last time, I chose the waffles, bacon and maple syrup, which was possibly a mistake. Kristian went nuts for it, figuring there’s nothing not to like about a dish that contains salty, sweet and bready elements. But I’m someone who likes savoury and pudding to be clearly signposted and the bacon just seemed out of place to me. Good coffee though.

This time round there was no messing about. I was dying and there was no room for error. I plumped for the vegetarian breakfast, knowing that my stomach couldn’t handle a plateful of pork.

I asked for extra veggie black pudding, our server told me that I was making a wise choice. I felt comforted by his assurances.

The Mediterranean vegetables that it came with were glossy with olive oil and herbs de provence. The homemade hash brown, that came separately, was like tasting a hash brown for the first time, as it should be. Pure and good. The egg, perfect and fresh.

And our server had been no false prophet; while the veggie black pudding lacked the depth of its blood-filled counterpart, it was crumbly and unctuous.

I work close by and I’ve popped  in once or twice on my way home. They have a deal going on cocktails and wines between five and eight, but if I’m drinking on a school night it’s because I want something specific and Augustiner Helles comes in at around £4.50, which while not far off the going rate for a decent beverage can still come as a bit of a shock.

I was pretty enthusiastic when the waiter politely asked if we’d enjoyed our meal.  I said it was          amazing and maybe that was a bit much, but it seemed, with the sugary milkshake working on my hangover, that anything was possible now.

I could go into town, watch a film, get out of the city, catch a train to the coast, I could do it all again if I wanted to. It was all there for the taking now that I’d steeled myself with grease and milk.

(I ended up in Bury.)

Welcome to Avenue Q

By
May 13, 2012
The Lowry

Avenue Q

In the year that Jim Henson’s Muppets got their big screen revival and Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey – the story of Kevin Clash, the man behind the infamous puppet – hits UK screens, it seems appropriate that the award-winning Broadway puppet musical Avenue Q should embark on its first UK tour.

For those who aren’t familiar with the Broadway smash hit, imagine that the muppets from Sesame Street grew up, discovered booze, sex and swear words, and sang about it. The show follows the trials and tribulations of young Princeton, fresh out of college with no idea about the world, and the residents of the rundown estate of Avenue Q.

The show is hilarious, the songs are as catchy as they are rude, but best of all it is heartwarming, and a clever homage to the man who reinvented the sock puppet into one of the world’s best-loved characters all those years ago.

It is easy to see the links with childhood favourite Sesame Street, from the two room-mates – the uptight, closeted Rod and the sweet but bumbling Nicky – to the loud, overbearing Trekkie Monster, the innocent Kate Monster, and the washed up janitor Gary Coleman. Avenue Q even teaches important life lessons through some of its brilliant songs, including “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet is for Porn.”

However, the true brilliance of the show may lie in the production techniques; each puppet is either controlled by one or two people, and many of the cast play two or more characters, often conversing with themselves on stage.

The actors perform alongside the puppets, giving a personality and expression to their furry exterior. It is an incredible feat, one that should be admired.

It is hard to pick out anyone in particular who shone brighter than the rest; whether it was Sam Lupton as the preppy straight-faced Princeton and the overly camp conservative Rod, or Katharine Moraz as the sweet Kate Monster and Lucy the Slut (I’ll let you work out that one).

Chris Thatcher played some of the best characters, from the perverted Trekkie Monster to the bumbling Nicky.

Out of the human cast (the ones who don’t have a puppet on their arm), it was probably Matthew J Henry as down-and-out Gary Coleman who had the audience in the most giggles.

The true joy of Avenue Q is that it is as funny as it is sweet, as camp as it is ridiculous, as controversial as it is innocent, but really there is nothing quite like watching puppets talk about sex, booze and masturbation in the form of song.

Avenue Q was on at the Lowry Theatre between Tuesday 8 May and Saturday 12 May. More details of the tour can be found here.

Have One On Us #6: BrewDog Manchester

By
May 12, 2012
Have One On Us
2 Comments

We’re only just recovering from the almighty hangover we acquired following the BrewDog launch night last Thursday, so apologies for the delay in sharing our thoughts with you.

To open, a rather grandiose statement that is nevertheless absolutely true: without BrewDog, the microbrewing revolution would not have progressed at the same pace these last few years, and as a result the state of Manchester’s bar scene would be very different.

The explosive growth of the company has inspired individuals across the country to try their hand at brewing, and as craft ales have grown in both popularity and quality an increasing number of establishments have started serving them.

Take Font, for example. What was once nothing more than a venue providing students with £2 cocktails to get them pissed now has one of the best stocked bars in the city. Other similar tales are not hard to find.

Why? Because craft ales are suddenly big business, with a large part of the credit due to BrewDog taking them mainstream.

This raises an important question: is there a place for a BrewDog bar in Manchester? If everywhere from the dives to the pubs to the bars already serve BrewDog, can a dedicated venue truly offer a unique experience?

The answer, we’re happy to report, is “yes.” What helps is BrewDog’s choice of location. Initially planning to setup in the Northern Quarter, the company shifted its focus to Peter Street, an area that has fallen on hard times after once having plenty of (admittedly awful) drinking establishments. Which Sam can attest to, having once worked in Brannigans, where she was made to dance to “Don’t Blame It On The Sunshine” at four in the morning – wearing a papier mache comedy head, no less – before cleaning the bar. BrewDog’s arrival could well spark positive revitalisation.

Whilst the exterior might put you in mind of an All Saint’s shop, and give rise to fears that this is little more than a fancy spot for trendy arseholes, inside the aesthetic is kept pleasingly simple, with good use of wood and glass and extra illumination coming from raw light fittings, which gives an industrial rough-around-the-edges feel to the place.

Seating is sparse, and includes a handful of wooden benches that reminded us of secondary school science class, and the music is kept quiet, creating the perfect ambience for conversation. The bar staff were friendly and attentive, clearly clued in about what they were selling and happy to dish out samples.

The place was quiet when we arrived post-work but soon became busy. We dubbed the press wristband we were given the “booze band,” and endeavoured to take full advantage of the free drinks it entitled us to. If you happen to come with someone for whom good quality beer is not a big deal, then there is a range of good quality spirits, ciders, and wines available. But, of course, the main attraction is the extensive range of BrewDog’s own beers.

The brewer has a well-deserved reputation for quality, with Punk one of the best flagship brands offered by anyone anywhere in the world, a sharp fruity burst of pure flavour. Dead Pony Club is a new pale ale that clocks in at just 3.8% yet still offers a firm, robust taste. Zeitgeist is a deep, smoky black lager. Riptide is a rich, chocolatey stout. IPA is Dead Galaxy is like a supercharged version of Punk. Hardcore a wonderfully malty, bitter ale with notes of caramel and toffee.

We were also lucky enough to sample BrewDog’s fifth anniversary beer Dog A, which clocked in at 15.1% and combined chocolate and coffee with Naga chilli. We went out on Tokyo, which we’d been meaning to sample for some time. Given its high percentage, it was no surprise the evening ended in a blurry haze, but we had a great time reaching that point.

Reading the notes we’d made the next day – hastily scrawled sentences that were barely legible and of no great use when composing this piece – was a fun experience. The message was simple enough: not only do BrewDog do an incredible job with their beers, they also get their bars right too.

We’d wholeheartedly recommend making your way down to BrewDog one night. You’ll need to make sure you’re rather flush when you do, though, as the prices are a little on the steep side. That being said, you do have to pay for quality, and more often than not it really is better to spend £20 on a few good beers, as opposed to many mediocre ones.

The One Where We Went to See Friends at the Academy

By
May 9, 2012
Academy, Music

I had a bit of a moan in my SFTOC post about delayed running times. I guess this is a little “square” of me. After all, “it’s rock ‘n’ roll, man.”

If a train I was expecting to catch were to run 45 minutes late I would complain loudly, possibly in writing (well, maybe I’d compose a passive agressive tweet). But artistic tardiness I’m expected to take with good grace because, as everyone knows, creative people can’t possibly be expected to be punctual too.

The band were meant to come on at 9:30pm and, not being too bothered about the support act, that’s what time I showed up. The audience were a mixed bag; half second year undergrads, half responsible-looking over thirties. As 9:30pm came and went the rag-tag audience were treated to a half hour of various band members and roadies tooling around with the main keyboard.

Wires were disconnected before being reconnected to sockets and heads were scratched in confusion. The undergrads sipped on blue VK’s and waggled their arses to retro house filler tracks. The over thirties chatted politely before fixing their increasingly impatient gazes upon the people ineptly trying to reconnect the non-functioning instrument.  At two minutes to 10, someone had a flash of inspiration and replaced the broken keyboard with one that worked. Genius.

I guess I was just tetchy because it was a week night and I had work in the morning. I wanted to see the gig and get home in time for a brew and an episode of South Park before bed. As you creep closer to thirty things like a brew and an episode of South Park before bed become increasingly important to you. It’s not Friends’ fault I work a nine-to-five.

Anyway, Friends.

Friends are a five piece band from Brooklyn, who are currently on a UK tour. They are comprised of lead singer Samantha Urbani and her childhood friend Lesley Hann on bass, percussion and backing vocals, with  Nikki Shapiro on guitar, percussion and the ill-fated keyboard, Oliver Duncan on drums, and Matthew Molnar playing second keyboard, percussion and bass.

Given the shaky start the band and the audience took a little while to warm to each other, but once the gig got going there were moments of magic. “I’m His Girl,” released last October as part of a double A side,  was one such instance.

The song is about being in a loving relationship but still being individual and independent. It’s catchy and has the feeling of an anthem to it. It’s something you might sing when you are on-top-of-the-world in love and every girl in the Academy was dancing like it was written about her and her man.

There are R&B influences to Friends. Their music is bright and funky with Urbani at times channeling the spirt of Debbie Harry. Percussion-fuelled and dreamy, “Friend Crush” saw her sashaying around to the twangy top-noted melodies, and was a high-point of the 40 minute set.

Urbani’s a great frontwoman, drawing the crowd into her performance with Monroe-like purrs and whoops as she slinks about the stage like a veteran disco cat. You can imagine groups of kids playing jump-rope (as they might say in New York) and chanting Friends lyrics. However, Hann’s moody backing vocals and the group’s penchant for raw percussion stops their sound from becoming overly saccharine.

All in all, worth getting home slightly too late for that before-bed brew.

Sounds From the Other City

By
May 7, 2012
Music, Salford
2 Comments

Sounds from the Other City is a one-day independent music festival set up by Maurice and Mark Carlin seven years ago after they decided they wanted a platform for promotors to showcase the best new artists emerging from Manchester and beyond.

Having established its pedigree by hosting ‘career-changing performances’ from  Marina and the Diamonds, The Ting Tings and The Whip, I felt that this year I needed to check it out.

For me, listening to new music and planning who I want to see is all part of the fun of going to a festival; I’ve even been known to go as far as colour-coded spreadsheets. So, true to form, in the run up to SFTOC I listened to as many of the artists as I could, devising a list which included Verity Susman, New Hips, Withered Hand, Au Palais, Butcher The Bar, Molly Nilsson, The Kites of San Quentin, Ghost Outfit, Easter, Keep Shelly in Athens, Walls, and (finally) Maria Minerva.

Well, that was the intention; my meticulous list-making failed to take into account the effects of numerous beers, delayed running times, bumping into friends, and generally everything else that happily goes along with being at an all-day event.

I began in St. Phillip’s Church, on time to watch Withered Hand, but because the venue was already running half an hour behind schedule, I saw the whole of Dancing Years and only half of the act I’d come to see.

No matter though, for Dancing Years provided an excellent and unexpected performance. “Father” won the award for best song of the half hour set, with the line “Father I know I’m not the best son, because I always make a mess” holding poignant resonance beneath the church’s stained glass depiction of the crucifix. I managed to catch the first half of Withered Hand, but had to leave before  ”Love in the Time of Ecstasy,” in which Dan Wilson is at his lyrical best.

I headed over to the cavernous, grungy Islington Mill to see Au Palais, who are a two piece from Toronto (via London). Their music is electronic pop with dark overtones and sinister, nonchalant vocals. I felt that they would have benefitted from a later slot; the crowd were really getting into the title track of their latest EP Tender Mercy – a subtle onslaught of a song that just keeps pushing – and had they been on at 10 rather than 5, the crowd’s Red Stripe bop would have turned into fully fledged shapes.

Speaking of beer (and at Onward, Manchester we so often are), Islington Mill had a lot to offer. The selection behind the bar was respectable, and in the courtyard there was a stall featuring some gems from Dunham Massy, amongst others. I really appreciate it when venues give a bit of thought to what punters are drinking, and it cheered my boozy heart to sip on quality real ale while getting down to some top music.

After Au Palais there was a break in my schedule, and it was time to replenish my energy levels with food. So it was on to one of Salford’s best kept secrets, the Kong Won Express.

To call it a restaurant would be a bit of a stretch. The neon pink interior could only hold twenty-five covers max and the colour co-ordinated plastic chairs don’t really lend themselves to a fine dining experience, but trust me, this is the best Chinese food to be found in Greater Manchester. I shared the Four Treasure Rice and Szechwan Pork and Pancakes. Both were succulent and well-flavoured and the knowledge that they deliver to my postcode can only be bad for my overall health.

Refuelled, it was on to The King’s Arms to catch Molly Nielson. I arrived a little late, weighed down with a happy belly, and clearly half of Manchester wanted to hear Molly’s dreamy, DIY, bittersweet stylings. I had to do some quite shameless queue jumping in order to get into the gig, but it was worth the sideways glares and quiet grumbles to hear “Hotel Home” live.

Having sated my appetite for what could good-naturedly be described as 90s instructional video music, I walked back down Chapel Street and stopped off at the New Oxford to sample its wide selection of draft beers.

As someone who falls into the category of festival spreadsheet fanatic, and who likes to know exactly what she’s going to listen to and when, I sometimes have to remind myself to freestyle it a bit. And for the most part, it’s generally a gamble worth taking.

The New Oxford was playing host to a selection of spoken word performances, and I arrived just in time to catch Les Malheureux (Sarah-Clare Conlon and David Gaffney) perform a series of short stories that comically twisted subjects from potato smiles to class divides to dress down Fridays and set them to honky keyboard music against a backdrop of PowerPoint projections. It was a thoroughly funny half hour and I was very glad I caught it.

Post-Les Malheureux I tottered down to the Creation Cafe, along the way taking in the disparity between recently installed blue-stripped pavements scattered with sleek geometric benches and the burnt out offices and bricked-in pubs of Chapel Street. I arrived in time to watch the crowd raucously jigging to the last couple of Frazer King numbers before settling into the set of Crumpsall four-piece Easter.

From there it was back toward the city centre and The Black Lion for Walls, who I saw  supporting The Field at the Deaf Institute last year, but who are well worth watching again. Unless, that is, they keep you waiting for over an hour.

Of course you can’t expect a festival with no less than 18 stages and more than 80 acts to run without any hitches, but by this point I’d been drinking since 2pm and was beginning to flag. I listened patiently to Dam Mantle, an accomplished Burial-inspired techno artist, and waited another half hour for Alessio Natalizia and Sam Willis to connect an infinite number of wires, as well as check instruments and projectors before they began their set. Two tracks in though I realised that it was time to call it a day.

I headed back downstairs, just in time for the main bar to call last orders. I bought one more drink and stood about, sipping on end-of-the-night pints and swapping notes on who had seen what with friends before slipping off into the night, and the chaos of Manchester city centre on a bank holiday weekend. It had been a good day.

X-Men: Regenesis, part three

By
March 4, 2012
Comicbooks

Starting with issue #260.1, Christos Gage took over X-Men Legacy from the title’s long-serving writer Mike Carey, who has probably done more for the franchise than anyone since Grant Morrison exited New X-Men back in 2004. Gage’s first issue suffered from a few problems: the need to establish the cast of characters he’ll be using going forward got in the way of the story’s structure to some extent, the writing occasionally lapsed into cliche, and at times it felt as though he was trying a little too hard to make an impression. However, three issues in and he’s definitely found his voice. If Uncanny X-Men is a traditional superhero comic and Wolverine and the X-Men is overblown fun, X-Men Legacy looks set to be the soap opera book, following on in the grand tradition established by Chris Claremont, and that’s as good a function as any for it to serve in an already crowded line.

The current storyline sees the team pitched against Exodus, who – like many superhero villains – has been defeated so often and so decisively that it’s difficult to take the declarations of his supposedly unstoppable power seriously. As tends to be the case when he appears, he plays the role of self-anointed mutant saviour (despite the fact that he’s never done one thing to actually help the species), and Gage does a good job of rehabilitating him, making him interesting to old and new readers alike. On art, David Baldeon is well suited to the material; his facial expressions could benefit from a little more emotion and variety, but he’s certainly one to watch. The buzz around this one is growing, and I’m only too happy to validate it.

X-Factor has for years now been Peter David’s corner of the X-universe, with the writer (almost) free to do as he pleases, consistently taking unpromising characters and making the reader care about them. His stint on the title has had its ups and downs, with some story arcs more successful than others, but he’s built up a loyal audience, which is why X-Factor has avoided cancellation despite being a low seller. When the X-Men brand undergoes one of its frequent relaunches/reshuffles, David generally pays lip service to it, and that was certainly the case in They Keep Killing Madrox, the tale running through issues #229 to #232. Unfortunately, the arc fell a little flat, despite having such a wonderful name.

The positives: well, Emanuela Lupacchino is a spectacular superhero artist, and will propel herself to the A-list sooner or later if she maintains the high standard of these issues. On the writing side, by this point David has full command of his characters, and has worked hard to develop a unique voice for each and every one. That sense of identity is really beneficial in a team book setting, where even the best writers can sometimes struggle to differentiate the voices of each individual. On the downside, in this arc his pacing and structure isn’t always effective. Issue #230 is the only one that features all of the book’s extended cast, and yet barely features Madrox at all; when read in one go, the effect is particularly jarring, as the flow of the main story grinds to a halt so that the other characters can stand around and argue a lot, before the final page then introduces two major new additions who don’t feature at all in #231 and #232. It’s possible that the Regenesis initiative interrupted David’s intended narrative to some extent, and the work that eventually surfaced was subject to a few last minute changes. Even so, at four issues the story feels overlong and inconsequential, as though the book is treading water ahead of whatever comes next. That will be the real test for X-Factor, and it will need to justify its place in the line once more.

And finally, there is Uncanny X-Force. Disappointingly, I appear to have jumped on at the wrong time. Issue #19 was essentially a postscript to the critically acclaimed Dark Angel Saga, and in the last three issues Rick Remender has been telling the story of Otherworld, a magical realm based on Celtic and Welsh mythology. The mix of this fantastical element and the title’s modus operandi of grim and gritty, violent antics has proven interesting but ultimately unsuccessful, and a large part of the problem has been Greg Tocchini’s art. To be charitable, his work could be described as an acquired taste; his influences are clearly more interesting that your average comicbook artist, touching upon impressionism and other staples of art history. Taking a less generous stance, one could argue that the work featured in issues #20 and #21 had no business being published, given its lack of clarity and detail. Issue #22 is fortunately a vast improvement, and if he could raise the bar just a little and then operate at that standard consistently, he’d be one hell of a talent. He was presumably chosen for this story arc because of the almost dream-like qualities Otherworld is supposed to evoke. However, when he’s called upon to deliver a particularly gory scene in issue #22 (spoiler: one of the characters loses their face) he can’t pull it off. His style simply doesn’t suit the hyperviolence that is supposed to be a part of the book’s high concept.

As for the story? Well, it has been underwhelming so far, to be honest. The setting and stakes aren’t particularly interesting; Otherworld rarely crops up in the Marvel universe, and most of the individuals who inhabit it are so minor it’s hard to care about their fates, or else they’re C-level superheroes that, regardless of the outcome, will crop up in someone else’s story in a few months time, ostensibly unchanged by the events of this tale. Like X-Factor, Uncanny X-Force seems to be killing time, and hopefully the next arc will be a return to form.

So in summary: X-Men Legacy stands out as the best of the satellite titles; it doesn’t quite achieve the same level of quality as Uncanny X-Men and Wolverine and the X-Men, but it’s up there. As for X-Factor and Uncanny X-Force, wait and see: the talent involved with both titles have delivered in the past, and hopefully the next storylines will be an improvement over the current ones.

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