Variant Covers: DC Says Peace Out to Zombies, Hello To Lite Brite

[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where Bruce Wayne is a zombie, and Reed Richards taps hot ass.]

Blackest Night #8

Last week I opined like a typical miserable fanboy that I was tired of Blackest Night, and that I didn’t really dig how they wedged in the twist regarding the White Lantern. It wasn’t the fact that Sinestro took the reins for himself, and if I came off that way I certainly didn’t mean to. I suppose it just happened so quickly, at what I felt was the backend of the storyline that it felt forced to me.

But now? Now I’m fucking stoked for the conclusion. I’m bipolar, leave me the fuck alone.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve dug Sinestro becoming the White Lantern. He’s the one dude who called out the Guardians of Oa for being a batch of manipulative douchebags. In his gloriously overwrought speech at the end of Blackest Night #7 he rocks the fuck out, and then he takes the power of the cosmos for himself. You have to hand it to the guy. For suffering being in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse, he’s having a pretty good day.

So word up! This is the epic conclusion to the last couple of years of plot in the DC Universe, and I’m interested to see where they’re going. The tights-and-capes have a shitload of zombies to take care of in this issue, and then they’re totally turning the page and embracing Brightest Day. What the fuck is Brightest Day? Well, it’s a marketing plot, dummy!

But it’s a new direction they’re taking the entire DC hordes. It’s hard to imagine anything not being brighter than eight-months of Zombie Hawkman ripping out hearts and eating them, though. I mean, he could be tweeking out on meth sitting in a corner shitting himself, and I’d be like, man, he’s doing a bit better. But it’s cool, it’s refreshing. It’s time for some less ponderous shit, no? We just meditated on life and death, good and evil in the darkest way possible. And while yeah, isn’t that what all comic books are about? But let’s do it in a happier manner, maybe Plastic Man can get into a fist-fight with Mister Mxyzptlk or some shit.

Shazam!

A-Team War Stories BA #1

You have to fucking adore comic books. It’s only through them that we’re treated to something like this. This is a comic book complete with a painting of Rampage Jackson, who is filling the shoes of Mr. T in the forthcoming A-Team remake. If seeing an oil painting or some shit of Rampage on the cover of a comic book isn’t enough to sell it, I’m not really sure what would be. It’s ridiculously surreal. I mean, I was bummed with Rampage giving up if only momentarily his career in the UFC to film this movie. But now? I don’t know man, now it makes a lot more sense.

Fantastic Four #577

Don’t like Reed Richards? Buy this anyways. Hate the Fantastic Four? Buy this anyways. Don’t have any money? Steal it. I’ve always subscribed to the idea that a great writer could make any comic book franchise dope. And because of this, I have tended to gravitate towards writers are opposed to specific titles.   I ain’t no completionist. I know people who buy titles they fucking despise, just because they don’t want to “break their run”. They haven’t read the fucking rag in months, but they feel some insane compulsion to maintain the series.

Johnathan Hickman makes the Fantastic Four fucking radical, dude. No, seriously. I’ve always been off and on with Fantastic Four for aforementioned reasons. Writers would come and go, and my love for the family wasn’t strong enough to keep me reading. But Hickman is blowing my mind with his current run. He gets the Fantastic Four.

The First Family of the Marvel Universe should always be catered towards the extraordinary. The moment you bind them down and force them to fight some dickbag on the streets of Manhattan, you’re missing the point. Hickman’s had them time and space already in his run, and I got the feeling he’s working towards something special.

As an aside, does Black Bolt lay waste to cities when he orgasms? I mean, his mere voice liquefies assholes, if he’s even wimpering a moan, the dude is destroying infrastructures. And god damn, how can he not squirm with a beautiful powerful bride like Medusa?

This issue is dealing with the Fantastic Four on the moon, discovering some sort of ruins of the Inhumans. Already sounds dope.Take them off the planet, have them discover the enormous. Hickman does all this through the lens of a family you can actually care about. He grounds them enough in their family affairs to give rise to the feeling that they’re not just four people with quasi-cool powers, they’re a family of intergalactic explorers.

If you’ve never read the Fantastic Four, or more specifically, never dug them, it’s still worth picking up at least to give it a try.