Variant Covers: Brucey Wayne & A Six-Shooter
Variant Covers, is at its core, a weekly comic book column. Most weeks are like this one, a round-up of the comic books that I am planning to acquire through galactic credits tomorrow at the local Pictures And Words dealer. Other weeks, the status quo is subsumed by a desire to pontificate on a particular topic. Like Peter Parker and his amazing Non-Progress Adventure. All columns are sponsored by a permanent state of juvenility, and made-up words.
Shall we?
Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #4
This is my column, and while I maintain a sense of duty in pleasing others and keeping it fresh, I’m going to go ahead and recommend the latest issue of Bruce Wayne and his righteous riding of the Time Waves. I know that I’ve popped off on this mini-series previously, but I’m sorry.
It’s one of my favorite things dropping every month, and I’ll be god damned if I ain’t excited to read it tomorrow. The latest issue finds Sir Wayne of Forevermore riding the time stream into the wild, wild west. Or is it the wild, wild east? After all, it seems that every time that the Island jumps for him, he ends up in Gotham during Period To Be Determined.
I may be reading it completely incorrectly, there’s always the chance of that.
The series is centered around the essence of Bruce Wayne, and how those essential tropes can carry through the millennium. They’re applicable everywhere. The concepts of symbols as power, great sleuthing, and an undying regret towards being unable to save a loved one (in this case it seems ‘ole Anne Elliot) can work while existing in the realm of Cave Dudes just as well as it came amidst the Red Dead Redemption set.
This shit rocks me like a rock star rocks things.
Spin on that, ya’ll.
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Artifacts #1
This comic is being billed as “the event five-years in the making!”, but it strikes me as “epic shit starring characters I stopped caring about ten years ago!” Featuring Witchblade, the Darkness, and other characters that were totally super-sexual and x-treme during the 1990’s, the most exciting thing about this comic book and its selling points as that it kicks me back to my childhood.
Looking back on it now, I am impressed at the fact that I snagged Witchblade back in the day purely and solely based on the fact that my fifteen year-old dong and sex drive went fucking bananas for the artwork. And while it titillates me to a certain degree now, I can’t believe I actually bought that shit.
Also, O-M-F-G, fucking Witchblade and Darkness have a kid? That’s so epic!
Snark aside, fucking Garth Ennis of all people wrote The Darkness back in the day, and half of me wants to dig the fuggin’ issues out and see how they hold up. I mean, they can’t be any worse that the super-derivative Boys slop he’s pumping out, can it? That comic started off novel, and then turned into one of my bile-filled nonsensical columns: three or four over-used cock jokes and some reference to hyper-violence.
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Northlanders #30
Northlanders this month kicks off a new storyline, about a couple avenging the woman’s wronging at the hand of corrupt Christian missionaries. They swear themselves to some truly foreboding and ballin’ shit: violent retribution. C’mon, you have to be sold now.
No? Well let me try this.
Like other great works of fiction, Northlanders operates on two distinct levels. Topically, it serves as an awesome old-school conglomerate of swords and shields and Vikings. But as I remarked last month, it also works as a venue for some really interesting commentary on power, religion, and other hot-button topics.
I know it may seem silly calling something like Northlanders a “great work of fiction”, but when you’re able to critique Christian missionaries while swinging heated metal and issuing death, you’re deftly conflating two seemingly distinct entities.
There’s overly didactic slop, and there’s writings that allow you to engage in some fun, while having themes introduced and topics discussed in a fashion that makes them enjoyable, and not some groan-inducing lecture or heavy-handed diatribe.
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Fantastic Four #581
Continuing my line of comic books that will stimulate your nerdglands while massaging your intellectual nodes, I have to once again big-up to Fantastic Four. Yeah dog, I know! Repetitious as fuck, these columns are! When they’re not a mangled garb of Yoda-speak! And fake-words! And hyphens!
This month, motherfucking Daddy Richards returns to the scene, hitting up Reed and Doom when they’re in college and shit. This is back when they were BFFs, and would totally pay D&D until like three in the morning and coo to one another about how hot Sue Storm was, as they looked longingly in one another’s eyes.
Homosocial circles ahoy! And they say there’s no room for vaporous literary psycho-analysis in comic books! Well, I’m sure they don’t say that, given the rampant sexuality and everything. But most academics are too busy researching some esoteric 16th Century Blind Carribean Women’s Literature to deign as to look at the funny books.
So Daddy Richards – hey look, more room for some Lacanian or Freudian or other -ian psychoanaylsis – returns and he needs to recruit mad peeps for a trip to the Future! Maybe even Future in bold! Who knows.
But again, I’m sure there will be some eerie meditation on power, or responsibility or something! intelligent interwoven so well into the first of a two-parter that you’ll be diggin’ on not only the substance given, but the sentiment underneath.
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What are you troglodytes diggin’ on this week? Hit me with recommendations. There’s some comics I couldn’t get to, as brevity isn’t in my non-existent list of skills. The newest issue of Secret Avengers comes out, as does the latest Cowboy Viking Ninja. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention you can be so lucky as to buy Sense and Sensibility #3 this week, as well as Alien Vs. Predator: World War Three #5.
Hit me.