Variant Covers: A Sweet Tooth For the Apocalypse!
Good afternoon, internet populace! This is Variant Covers, the column that throws an unedited and poorly written eye at the comic books I’m checking out this week. Per usual, hit me up with your pull-list for the week, and let’s ring in this new year with some fucking funny books!
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Choker #5
The fifth issue of McCool and Templesmith’s jaunt through a futuristic mindfuck noir drops this week. The series has come out sporadically, but every time that it arrives I greet it with a smile. I’m a total slut for profanity, and dystopian futures, so McCool and Templesmith are really just lobbing fastballs down the lane towards me. I’ll eat it up!
This second to last issue sees protagonist Johnny Jackson throwing down with the psychopathic drug-dealing ex-con who has a dickcrush for Jackson’s death. It promises all the violence and profanity I’ve come to love. Oh! And there’s vampires. Buy it for your fourteen year old cousin and show her what sort of shit the real dudes start.
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Who Is Jake Ellis #1
This miniseries starting tomorrow by Nathan Edmonson and Tonci Zonjic is the raging hotness. Want to be the cool kid in your comic shop tomorrow? Either pick this shit up, or act beyond indignant when they say they didn’t order it or sold out. You’re going to gain some credit, duders. I promise. You can’t stop there though. Wear your Lantern Corp ring of choice. You know, the one you got from Free Comic Day. Tie that shit together with your t-shirt of choice (I’m thinking the Alex Ross Obama shirt that’s super unique!) and you’re the pimp now, fanboy!
Seriously though.
The good news is that the comic itself sounds bizarre. Which is, as always, plus-forty points in my book. The premise? It’s centered around Jon Moore who “is the most sought after spy-for-hire in Europe’s criminal world. This is because of Jake Ellis, a psychic man who is invisible to everyone except Moore. When a deal goes bad, the only one who can protect Moore from Europe’s most dangerous criminals is Jake Ellis. No one but Moore can see Jake Ellis. But Jake Ellis can see everything.”
Odd, odd shit. Intrigued? Edmonson spoke with Tim O’Shea over at Robot 6, and its an interesting read.
Color me stoked.
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Sweet Tooth #17
The best thing I’ve done in the past couple of weeks is catch up on Sweet Tooth. I blew through the entire second collection last week, as well as the issues proceeding it. Jesus Christ!, my friends. Jeff Lemire is a man who not only works within the comic book medium, but works with it. There’s a difference. As the series continues on, the paneling has become more creative. The construction of the pages seem to grow in ingenuity, which matches the plot which has been methodically increasing in scope and complexity.
It is the tale of a post-apocalyptic existence, but still stapled into the heart of common human themes. All the characters are attempting to reconcile their current station in life, with pasts that continue to sneak up on them. Lemire has wrapped these themes around a tale of a father’s either prescient or insane biblical ramblings, and some sort of shared collective unconscious between the two main characters. Heart. Scope. Metaphysical ponderings. Action sequences and gorgeous artwork. This book crushes it, and its only improving every month. Buy it.
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Wolverine The Best There Is #2
Honesty time: I was struggling to find a Marvel comic book to recommend this week. Personally, there isn’t anything that I read coming out. I choose the Wolvie title because of its divisive nature. My brother enjoyed the first issue quite a lot. A commentor on his article lit him up, and more than one review has called it things just short of a botched abortion. So at the very least, I’m curious about it. Has anyone else checked it out?
And since I’m soliciting responses, has anyone else checked out Generation Hope? The third issue comes out tomorrow, and I’ve been hearing good things about the title by Gillen and Epsin. As they say, curiosity killed the wallet, and so feedback by anyone would be dope.
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Elsewhere:
The ninth issue of I, Zombie drops this week. This is one of the titles that I’ve been meaning to catch up with. Now that I’ve cleaned the enormous Sweet Tooth backlog off my slate, here’s hoping I get to it. But it’s more than certainly going to be buried underneath caffeine and too many Black Ops matches. Then there’s Superboy #3. If I hadn’t already slobbered on Lemire’s knob for his work on Sweet Tooth, I would have featured this title. Superboy sucks? Yeah, sort of. But Lemire doesn’t, and he makes this title worth reading.
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What are you guys reading this week? Hit me!