Variant Covers: Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe
If this ain’t Variant Covers, then I’m fucking lost. Welcome to the weekly column where I haphazardly stare at the release list of this week’s comics and pick out the titles I’m sweating. Most of them it’s the usual shit! But who cares. It’s summer time, and the living is easy. Or at least I don’t feel bad for sweating through my shitty t-shirt for once, since I can just blame it on the weather and not my glands and caffeine addiction. After that fourth energy drink of the day I’m literally slathered in crevice juice. Crevice juice.
Secret Avengers #1
As I mentioned last week, we’re entering the Heroic Age. And no Age would be complete without seventeen Avengers titles to back it up, would it? So without having read them all, I’m going to blindly and foolishly tell you this: if you’re only going to read one Avengers title, pick this one up? Ed Brubaker has consistently rocked out on both Dardevil and Captain America through the years. The answer to the trivia question, “Who could bring Bucky back to life and not have it suck” will always be Eddie. And then there’s Daredevil. I can’t remember a more tortured and nuanced dude than Matty, and Brubaker took the reins from Bendis back in the day and it was a seamless transition.
So no, I don’t know what the fuck is going on in this title. Coming off of Siege, Steve Rogers ain’t no American captain anymore. Instead he’s dubbed some bullshit like “America’s Top Cop” (he’s Nick Fury), and apparently these are his Avengers that are also a secret. This is your on-ramp to the title, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the same as every other first-issue of a JLA or Avenger’s title these days: just the means through which the team comes together. For better or worse.
Around the Marvel Universe, there’s some other legit stuff dropping you might want to check out. For starters, there’s Fantastic Four #579. And if you read this column even semi-regularly, you’ll find me throwing rope over Hickman’s rendition of Marvel’s first family all the time. Buy this comic book, share it with your friends. Incontrovertible proof that Reed Richards can be more than a douchey guy in the Fox movie. I promise. Then there’s the latest issue of Thunderbolts, which has Luke Cage running the team. And Juggernaut? What the fuck?
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Speaking of Cain Marko, what the fuck is that guy up to these days? Besides being on the Thunderbolts, apparently. I remember when I was growing up Juggernaut seemed so fucking cool. I mean, he was a guy who could run a lot, and smash stuff with his head. As a kid, this was precisely what I spent most of my time doing. Running into shit, and smashing my head. The idea that it would make me a bad ass, and not make girls laugh at me as my size 15 feet tripped was comforting.
Also, where’s my Juggernaut/Juggalos cross-over? This seems like an untapped brand, right here. What happens when the Juggernaut becomes a Juggalo? It seems like it almost makes too much sense. Let’s get this shit done!
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Sense and Sensibility #1
I’m pretty sure that if this comic book doesn’t feature zombies, no one is going to read it. Sry, yo! No seriously, who in their right fucking mind is going to buy this comic book? Academic geeks like me? Natch. I just spent five months reading British women’s literature from this time period. I have no desire to see this novel drafted panel by panel. Girls? Double natch. They’re all iCarly and shit. They don’t need to walk into the creepy comic store dungeon with their father and pick this up. So uh, who exactly? Completionists? Pedophiles? Maybe.
Is this some sort of reverse cash-in? With Pride and Prejudice and Zombies making everyone go fucking bananas, did they think that maybe slipping out another Jane Austen book in comic form, sans zombies, could drum up some interest? Who knows. I had to listen to the professor from said class drone on and on about how misogynistic P&P&Z despite the fact that a) half the class was female and b) they had dug it. So if anything, I’ve learned something about Sense and Sensibility from this exercise: if it’s not being misogynistic, it’s going to be too boring for people to pick it up.
(Don’t hate on me, I actually enjoy Austen.)
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Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #2
I’ll admit it, I was trying to hate on this mini-series pretty hard when the first issue dropped. I was tired of time traveling, dimensional galavanting, whatever the fuck you want to call it. So when I cracked the spine and smudged the pages of the first issue, I did it was malicious intent. And yet! I fucking loved it. I’m never too much of an asshole to not happily admit when I’m wrong, especially when my incorrectness actually resulted in some enjoyment of mine. That was convoluted as fuck. I sound like Bilbo’s speech from Fellowship. Anyways.
So I was wrong.
And since I was wrong, I’m pretty pumped for the second installment tomorrow. Not being well educated, I have no idea what period of time the clothing Wayne’s wearing on the cover represents. Some witch type shit going on? Who knows. Last issue had Clarky Kent proclaiming that if Wayne makes it through the timestream and back into the modern day, they were all going to die. I’m not sure what that means, but I’m willing to bet the guy is going to return. Says so in the fucking title, yo!
Elsewhere in DC, the uh, Superman storm continues to uh, unravel or something in Superman: War of the Superman #4. I’m sure there’s some awesome kicking and punching going on. Maybe? I bought the first issue and was so bored I actually felt aggravated at pimping it in this column. Jesus Christ already, just let Superman kick some ass. Every time he sucks, I’m like “You’re proving all the Superhaters wrong, fuck!”
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Choker #3
I’ve already blabbed on and on about Choker. You should be reading it. It features dystopian noir, vampires, ultra-violence, and super-profanity. It’s a familiar but tightly written tale, and god dammit, it’s something slightly off the beaten path, albeit still on a large label. If I’ve buried it at the end of the column it’s because I’ve already gone on and on about it. It’s my favorite comic running right now, since it riffs off of so many of my beloved niches, and apparently its selling out rather quickly.
Do yourself a solid, check out this title.
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What are you guys reading this week?