Variant Covers: Stretch Your Stocking With Some Hardcover
I’m covered in peanut butter. Even my big toe. I dropped that shit and lacking the wherewithal to pick it up I just sort of smudged my big toe round and round. Grinding the peanut butter into the floor and praying that the Better Half doesn’t find it. I tell you this, because this is the environment I’m churning out this disaster in. It’s Tuesday evening, and the Black Hole of End of Semester is sucking what is left of my sanity into its gaping chasm. Freudian imagery or something. Gape! Gape! One of my few insanity repellants left are the funny rags I’ll be snagging and snacking on tomorrow. In a desolate world filled with deadlines, here are the comic books I’m holding to my charred bosom in hopes of feeling something tomorrow.
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The Company That Wants You To Enjoy Defending Things!
Try as I might, I can’t seem to give a shit about Defenders #1 dropping this week. I mean fuck Matt Fraction is a favorite of mine. A favorite. Sometimes I follow him on Twitter and just think of how haughtily he’d laugh if I could ever tell him a joke. We ride bikes together. Despite our futuro-BFFL status, I can’t get stoked. It isn’t buzzing in the loins. Will I buy it? Probably. There’s also Avenging Spider-Men, this week. Let me tell you something. Spider-Man ain’t never avenged. Stuck In The Past Spider-Man? Sold. Quieting Crying Through His Witty Remarks Spider-Man? Makes sense. Avenging? C’mon now. Then there’s Remender who is bumping Venom #10 with new artist Lan Medina. Great writer, new artist on the title. There’s all that, and no less than five titles with an X on the cover.
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Hardcovers, Softcovers, Undercover Lovers?
Just in time for Christmas there’s a boatload of classic collections getting shoved down your wallet-gullet. There’s a new printing of Alan Moore’s Watchmen. You may have heard of that comic. If you’re one of the three people who reads comic books and hasn’t read this….oh who am I kidding? Just buy it for your thirteen year-old cousin. Get real subversive on his or her ass. Slide it across the table at whatever holiday party you’re attending. Heft the heaving tome across the table, dragging napkins and table cloth and whatever else. Let it fall off the table with a resounding thud. Then clap your hands and yell “that’s the sound of your mind getting fucked!”
Use your one phone call to tell me about it.
There’s also a new printing of Days of Future Past dropping. I read that this comic came out in 1980, and all of a sudden my entire life unraveled before my eyes. The linear fallacy swept over me, and I saw myself in succession being born, growing pubes, reading this comic, mashing my fat fingers on a keyboard on an AOL message board, eating McDonald’s Chicken Nuggets, and arriving here. That’s my life right there. Keyboard masturbation, fast food, and Wolverine creeping on Kitty Pryde in some wildly outstanding Oedipal machinations.
Quickly now, that’s not all! There’s also Alexandro Jodorowsky and Moebius’ The Eyes of The Cat. That’s a collaboration made in the Mind Warp, delivered to your Delectable Third Eye. Finally! Finally! Can I sell you on one more classic reprinting? I’m making karmic comissions. Money? Pshaw! I deal in assurance that I’m not going to be reincarnated as a strip club toilet seat. Finally! There’s Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus. Getting itself a fresh new printing. Smiling for the ladies. Flexing for the bros.
Phew. That’s a collection of hard and covered affair.
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Animals, Supermen, Hybrid Ordeals.
Men who are Animals. Hyrbid creatures. Weird ethnographic gazes. Jeff Lemire is double fisting me this week with new issues of Animal Man and Sweet Tooth. While I ain’t crazy about the current direction of Sweet Tooth, I’ll be goddamned if Lemire isn’t some of the tightest writing around. One time a man commented that he thought Lemire merely average. A qualified writer, but lacking a certain panache. That man now lives in my dungeon, begging for forgiveness and muttering about how uncomfortable his antlers are. DC should be lighting vigils to him. This week we’re also snacking on the mossy underside of Swamp Thing #4. If Lemire has brought the thunder this year to DC, then Scott Snyder has brought the lightning. With their powers combine they cook a lot of fish in the ocean and then push the haddock in an underground fish market. What the fuck am I saying? Do you really like the #4? Then snag Action Comics’ newest issue. Grant Morrison promises to have Clark-El fighting Braniac. Or I’m promising that he’s promising. But he it doesn’t deliver, bother him. Not me.
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There we go. That’s what I’m mildly excited about. To be frank it’s all a haze of paper writing fatigue, over-caffeination, and a desire to somehow sleep and play Skyrim at the same time. What are you feeling this week? I have bad taste, I know I do. Save me with your recommendations. I’ll be your valentine.