Variant Covers: Blacklights, Fist Fights, and Tights.
This is Variant Covers. Comic book column. I tell you what I’m interested in this week. You share your pull-list with me. Together we form the comic book community that even the Heavens can only dream of! Or at the very least it is me blathering for hundreds of words in poorly constructed run-on sentences and way too many adverbs about superheroes and splash-pages.
Save me from myself.
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Sweet Tooth #23.
The final issue of Sweet Tooth’s current arc, “Endangered Species” ends tomorrow. From the cover you get the impression that some shit is going to hit a fan of some assort. I am going to wager that it won’t see the death of one of the main protagonists as the cover playfully suggests. Gus, Jeppard and the rest of the gang are holed up in some beautiful refuge inside a dam. Well, that just won’t do! With the group divided as to whether or not they should continue their pilgrimage, I predict something will take the choice of their hands.
Never trust dudes alone in a refuge during the Apocalypse! That’s the lesson that shall be learned. Mark me.
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[Typical.] Flashpoint #3 / Fear Itself #4.
Us Americans celebrated our birthday this week. I can’t think of a better way than to have the Two Behemoths That May unleash their respective event titles on the same week. Corporate powered money grabs! America, fuck yeah! If you subtract my snark, you’ll find my true feelings. Which is? Or is it which are? I actually don’t mind the events. Fear Itself was boring me until shit got real last issue, and Flashpoint has been entertaining to me since the beginning. I’m a total slut for alternate histories, be it in the form of comic book or Phillip K. Dick.
Are these stories going to reassert the power of the sequential narrative? God no. Are they going to save the comic book industry? You induce giggles in me. Maybe, just maybe they’ll entertain me tomorrow.
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[Interesting.] SVK.
Tomorrow sees Warren Ellis and D’Israeli’s collaboration with BERG come to light. The title is something fucking else. The little Ellis fanboy in me swells and giggles with glee at the notion of being able to get my paws on this. SVK isn’t just an Ellis comic. That on its own is enough to put me into back-arching fits if delight. It’s something of a high-concept tech boner. BERG is a London-based designed futuristic awesomeness factory design studio that it is reported Ellis helped name. They provided a bit of a technological wonder to help with the comic.
To understand what they did, you must first understand the premise.
SVK is set in a hyper-paranoid world where detective Thomas Woodwind lives. Woodwind isn’t your run of the mill detective. No sir. Motherfucker can read mind and you can read them along with him. SVK uses an invisible ultraviolet ink to conceal the thought bubbles of the characters within the pages of this comic. With your purchase of SVK you snag a UV light source. Hover the light over the characters, and behold. You’re reading their goddamn mind.
Doubly awesome is an introduction by William “Neuromancer Is Caffeine’s Bible” Gibson, as well as two other essays.
Not is all grand though.
Pitfalls and bummers!, though. The comic is only available through BERG’s website. Us heathens bound in the US Empire have to pony up some serious cash to float the thing over here into our warm bosoms, and it is the monetary woes that has me waiting to see if they put the pig out over here.
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[In-Between.] Vengeance #1.
Put the right people on a project, and I’ll read it. Regardless of characters or publisher. I made my love for Joe Casey apparent last week, and he’s been joined on this comic by Nick Dragotta. If you weren’t up on the Dragotta tip from his work prior to or on FF #588, here’s your time to hop in his glory hole. As a brief, egregious moment of self-promotion, the dude is also really, really cool. Glad to see him getting some work.
Anyways. End self-promotion.
Casey and Dragotta are teaming up to provide a look at a new generation of Marvel villains. These youngsters are trying to make sense of a world where douchebags like Magneto regularly turn from Heel to Face without much thought or repercussion. Genocide? No problemo, Erik! Sign on the fuckin’ line and everything is solid.
Solid!
I’m looking forward to seeing the two work together, and hopefully bring some insight and intrigue into the nooks and crannies of what constitutes villainy in the world of comic books. The universes that comic book characters inhabit are a bit odd. People did and then come back to life every other week. There is nary a month or two that passes without civilization being on the brink of destruction. And dudes and dudettes can go from homicidal maniacs to fighting the good fight.
Everything’s a bit queer. Can you imagine Bin Laden turning Face? Yeah, me either.
Looking forward to it.
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What are you guys checking out this week? Hit me.