Variant Covers. The comics I’m interested in this week. I have poor taste, help it out by recommending titles from your own brown paper bag.

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DMZ #72.
The final issue of DMZ drops today, and I’m not caught up in time to check it out. There’s a greasy sadness lining my armpits where there should be anticipatory precipitation. DMZ’s a bit of a special comic book of mine, having followed it for the better part of five years through curious denials and momentary binges. Last week I finished up yet another semester of graduate school, and the first time I did was crack open the latest TPB, Collective Punishment. Wood and Burchielli have guided the reader through a gorgeous journey into the perpetually not-too-hard-to-believe second American Civil War. From allusions of the Iraqi War, to a stark fucking knife into the post-Obama disillusionment, the comic has been a guide post on our cheesy poof-covered culture and political descent into Oblivion. I’m going to miss the warmth of the comic. The warmth of finding a creator who can make sense of the nonsense in a way that I wish I could, if I only had the inclination or talent. Not only that, but finding solace in knowing someone else is feeling the same as you do, in these Bananas Times.

I’ll miss this fucking comic book.

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Secret Avengers #20.
Speaking of final issues, tomorrow is also the final Warren Ellis-fueled Secret Avengers. I’ve dug on his stand-alone blasts of typical Ellisian madness filtered through Marvel’s Rogue Avengers team. Not to be confused with the variety of other Rogue Teams the publisher has, such as Uncanny X-Force. What do these motherfuckers do when they run into one another during mutual covert operations? Especially since it seems like Beast, if not Wolverine, is on all of them.

Ellis is joined by Alex Maleev for this final installment, and that doubles my pleasure. Watch as I writhe in his pencil-powered-glory. Cramming crayons and pastel finger paints into my pants, trying to slather myself in the powers that grant him such utility. Yes, Maleev! Yes!

As I was saying, I’ll miss Ellis and his one-offs.

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Spaceman #3.
Boom! Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso are brining the crackling science-fiction glory in this mini-series. Of nine issues. Does that make it a maxi-series? Maxiseries? Quasi-maxi-post-mini-series. Something of that such. We got ourselves here a failed Mars program, Dystopian nightmares, riffage on the depravity of our Empty Celebrity Syndrome culture and more. All in a series you would have snagged the initial issue of for one measly dollar. Jump aboard this pig before she’s blowing up in a glorious tits-science-American-Nightmare fireworks display high in the atmosphere of our Organic Spaceship. You’ll be happy you did. Or you’ll be unhappy you did and keep it yourself. Thereby ensuring my much needed ignorance.

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Ultimate Comics Ultimate Avengers Ultimate Time! #5.
Jonathan Hickman. Esad Ribic. The Ultimate Universe. Short choppy sentences. Yo I have to be honest I just watched this video and I can’t get it out of my head while I’m trying to type. It’s difficult. Anyways yeah if you can survive that I love you. The Force is strong in your loins. Perhaps you were birthed up by the Force itself in some shitty sand-scarred planet to Shmi and now you have to podrace all day? Sand storms are very dangerous! Shit we’re off the tracks. Way off the tracks, and it don’t matter! Why? ‘Cause I got carte blanche! Just like Hickman. Just like Hickman does when it comes to the Ultimate Universe. [Phew.] It’s glorious to see the dude unchained from the typical bureaucratic nonsense that everything in the Mainland Marvel Monstrosity has to be funneled through. “Oh yeah, Hickman! You wanted to have Rachel Grey join FF? Well uh yeah here’s the thing she’s in the Avengers X-Cepted storyline this year, and next year she’s going to be in Fright Night: Vampire’s Children Crusade and then…and then…and then…” and so on.

Dude gets to play for keeps in the Little Universe On The Side, and it shows. Destroy Valhalla? Sure. Bring back Reed Richards from his heinous Jeph Loeb penned death? Double sure. Tweak everything out in a quasi-Authority vibe and give Caffeine Powered a raging dork-on? Filling in the applicable circle with violent pencil-on-paper force.

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Those are the titles I’m most interested in this week. I’m sure I’ll arrive at home with a panache of other fillings to faithfully frak my wallet’s chasms. What are interested in this week? Hit me.

Glory be to you, comic book friends. It’s 10:42 on Tuesday evening as I burp this out of a chemical-coated caffeine ravaged mind, and I’m writing it with a bit of a grin. ‘Tis the season for days off and leisurely loitering as we go into a collective slumber until January 2. How are you? Not rhetorical, how you doing? Hit me. This is Variant Covers, the comics column where I talk about this week’s releases that I’m either snagging, wish I was snagging, or am curious about. Per usual drop a line on what you’re digging, I’m always looking for new hotness in my greasy mitts.

Let’s party.

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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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There’s! There’s! There’s comic books dropping this week. As per every week, lest the Good Lords strike me dead. I can’t fathom living in a world without the weekly comic book shuffle. Snag the rags, dissect the diegesis and party until my pants come off. This is Variant Covers, the column where I blather about the funny books dropping this week that are keeping my sanity afloat.

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Gobble, gobble, gobble! How’s it going? We’re getting ready to celebrate LOL Sucker Indians Day! You know the one I talk about! We show thanks for everything by generally behaving like we really don’t appreciate anything. Packing in an inordinate amount of food, telling Uncle Steve he better pass that fucking drum stick, and then smashing Old Ladies in the nose for a good Black Friday deal.

Makes the human spirit sing!

Thankfully we have mofuckin’ comic books to hide within. Crack the spine, it shall provide an escape.

What are you reading this week?

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In the dismal dusk that accompanies every earlier falling light comes the opportunity to snuggle up with a comic book. Pull the blankets over yourself, dust the Chez-It crumbs off your chest and get your funnies on. As the Earth tilts slightly, ever so slightly, the temperature here on the Eastern seaboard dips. Not even climate change can prevent that. With the dip and the tilt comes the desire to over-analyze panels of Iron Man’s remarkably phallic repulsor rays rocketing off Thor’s  chiseled  chest. By myself. With you. Don’t matter.

Variant Covers. My pull-list for the week.

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Variant Covers. The comics on my mind this week.

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We’re shortly enclosing on the witching hour, the feast of October. The  ephemeral  time where the membrane between the expired and the wind-sucking melts before our eyes, unleashing torrents of evil and scares upon us. That ain’t the half of it either, dude. Motherfuckin’ candy up in the bitch and rotten teeth and syringes in the bags of your children. It’s dangerous out there! Stay inside. Read some funny books.

This is Variant Covers. The rags I’m stoked on this week. Share your pull-list after the spiel ends.

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While I’m writing this — assuredly not while you’re reading this — I’m sitting in a desolate café room on campus cranking out this column. Thinking of tomorrow, of comic books, of narrative-image fusion. Momentary escape. Fuck I love the funny books. I love sitting here, a momentary reprieve in a ten-hour day writing about them.

This is Variant Covers.

I’m Caffeine Powered.

These are the books I’m interested in this week.

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Bruce Wayne is a corporate fascist. Imposing his will outside of the jurisdiction of the law, causing Socrates and good willed citizens of the world alike to shake their head.  How many schools could Bruce Wayne build with the amount of money he’s spending to build his fascist rodent state?

Occupy Gotham.
Occupy Metropolis.
Occupy Emerald City.

(This is Variant Covers, your weekly guide to the comics I’m checking out this week. Your pull-list is encouraged to be shared.)

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