#July2011
Variant Covers: Reality Is A Special Effect!
Variant Covers. Column giving the rundown of the week’s comic releases. Trite, super-personal and irreverent. Share your finds, friends.
I’ve been sick lately. For the past five days my life has consisted of scraping the existential paste out of bed, nodding somewhat coherently as I teach, and napping. Fitful, sweaty naps. The sort of naps that could fill a Gatorade bottle and whose flopping fiction could power a small town.
I have not slept. I cannot breath. I am here though. When there’s a dance you have to show up. Do your courtesies and press your fleshes.
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‘Fear Itself’ Continues Ripping Off ‘Blackest Night’ With The Mighty.
I acknowledge that all comic book storylines are a bit incestuous. There’s only so many world-beaters you can tackle and events you can make the best of before everything stars to bleed together. However if you’re one of those people (hi!) who feels like Fear Itself is so very Blackest Night, you’re going to find this amazing. Introducing The Mighty, from the pages of Fear Itself.
‘Batman: Year One’ Animated Movie Gets A Trailer.
The animated adaptation of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s classic Batman defining tale has gotten itself a trailer. It’s hard to adapt the son of a bitch into anything, but it seems to be relatively dope. Within the parameters and everything, it could work.
Save for Wayne’s voice. Youch.
Hit the jump to check it out.
Variant Covers: Scalps, Stretchy Junk, and Futurists.
It’s that mid-summer moment where the comic books are twisting in my greasy palms, affronted by humidity and my general toxicity. Comic books! One of the great stalwarts of summers, the MEGA-EVENTS coming out weekly. Say what you will about the general quality of the EXPLODEY TIME STORY ARCS that permeate the shelves during the summer, I’ve come to need them just as a means of passing time. Like marking days off a calendar, they’re there. And they’re omnipresent. Keeping me company.
Like the drunk Uncle at the Christmas parties who you thinks annoys you, but then when he dies in a horror shit-show of cirrhosis and bloody vomiting, you miss him under the mistletoe. Trying to kiss your Mom, his first cousin.
I don’t know what I’m writing about anymore. This is Variant Covers, your weekly take on the tasty licks hitting comic books shelves.
Green Lantern: Brown Bag of Dog Crap.
I saw Green Lantern last night. It’s a bad movie. Like, real bad. I hold the unfortunate culpability of dragging along my girlfriend and another couple to the theater, and costing them hard earned bucks. Despite what you may think, I at even mid-week I still held out hope that this movie would be passable. To the point of inviting other people alone. By Friday afternoon I knew that I was in fact an asshole. By Friday evening after the movie I felt a certain sense of guilty.
This movie fucking stunk. This shit stank with the power of a thousand dog craps baked in the muggy Boston air.
For those of you who intelligently pointed out a while ago that it was going to suck, I tip my cap. Should have listened.
Dan Didio Confirms The End of The Lois Lane/Clark Kent Marriage?
It seems that DC is gutting the marriage between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in the post-Flashpoint world. I suppose where there’s a reboot, there’s the idea that you can separate a couple and get rid of their marriage. That way you can totally get them married again, and get those cheap sales. Right? High-five!
Russell Crowe To Play Jor-El In ‘Man Of Steel?’ One Cast To Rule Them All.
Russell Crowe is in talks to play Jor-El. If he lands the gig, this movie may fucking rock in spite of Zack Snyder directing it. A cast so filthy is has to be a great movie. Right? Right?
Grant Morrison On The DC Reboot and Action Comics #1.
Here’s the gorgeous Scottish writer talking about what the DC reboot means to him. You also get to hear him call Superman the greatest creation ever in the history of human thought. Okay, not something crazy, but pretty close.
Variant Covers: Giant Lizards, Vikings, and Damn Canadians.
I hope everyone is safely buckled into their seats. We are riding the Wayback Machine, as the comic book landscape is desperately trying to scramble back to the 1990’s. DC is relaunching their brand. Marvel is ending Uncanny X-Men. Greg Capullo is drawing Batman. Joey Mads is drawing Spider-Man. Everything is seemingly returning to how it once was. A nostalgic attempt to recreate the magic and sales of a time before the internet, or digital sales, or all the naughty things mucking up the landscape.
What can we do though? Nothing. We continue buying the comic books. We kvetch. We moan. But we buy. That’s where this column comes in. Variant Covers. The watering hole that we all gather around. I tell you the titles I’m sweating this week, and you share yours. Communal. A group therapy session. My arms are open, my armpits are sweaty. I will hold you.
‘Northlanders’ Canceled By Vertigo. I Am A Sad Viking.
This is seven shades of bullshit smashed into a can of failure Motherfucking ‘Northlanders’ by Brian Wood and a litany of extremely talented artists such as Becky Cloonan has been nixed by Vertigo due to poor sales of the trades. I am awash in a raft of sadness, floating across a sea of hate. We’ve all failed guys. Failed.
