Jonathan Hickman is a resident god amongst the Brothers Omega these days. It may not be forever. For much as it occurs on the Mountains of Olympus, Gods can fall. Just ask us about Mark Millar. But right now he’s spitting prose-gold, and he’s teaming up with Nick Pitarra to bring us ‘The Red Wing.”

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

After some deliberation, I’ve made the executive decision that OL is going to officially endorse FF #1 as the comic book of the week.

So why the hesitation? Well, I guess I was concerned that my choice would be scrutinized, determined to be nothing more than a declaration of pure fanboyism. After all, I did award the Images & Words honors to the final issue of Fantastic Four. And then I interviewed Nick Dragotta, said comic’s illustrator. And since I’m coming completely clean, I might as well admit that I featured the penultimate issue of Fantastic Four, as well.

So I didn’t want to come across as yet another Internet mouthbreather, shamelessly celebrating his current favorite bit of entertainment.

But after reading and re-reading FF, there’s no denyin’ that Jonathan Hickman has got me hooked. Indefensibly. The dude scripts the First Family with an earnestness that makes me weep. Forreal. As I read this issue, I can feel my heartstrings being yanked on with a violent fervor, reminding me that at its best science fiction is a genre concerned with the human condition. Hickman understands that the most outlandish of scenarios can resonate sympathetic.

Hell, even interdimensional conflicts and premonitions from the future can be imbued with familial strain.

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The skull threatens to crack. Athena surely rests inside. The caffeine isn’t cutting it, and I have a mental list to transcribe into a word box. This is Variant Covers, the column where I tell you the funny books I’m buying on a given week. This is also Caffeine Powered, exhausted, with a splitting headache, cursing the Christian guilt that won’t let him skip a week. I can detach myself from the Bearded Floaty Guy, but I can’t remove myself from the morals drilled in by the indoctrination process.

Save me.

In the interest of saving my rotting synapses, I’m going to be succinct this week. A mere one-week trifling attempt to counteract my raging verbosity. Shit, I’m blowing it already.

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Finder Library Volume 1.
When Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder: Voice came out this year, I became aware that I was missing out on something fantastic. It happens a lot. Never stops me from feeling shitty about myself, or from feeling surprised. Gasp! I missed something else? I’m a philistine, man. Anyways, this may be the place for me to start. Finder Library Volume 1 collects the first four Finder books. It’s a massive motherfucker. For $25, you can snag 616 pages of what is purportedly awesomeness. I’m being vague as fuck, I know. Caffeine interested! Caffeine want!

Want a premise? Boom!

The series is set in a vastly depopulated far-future Earth where numerous hunter-gatherer cultures, some human and some not, surround densely overpopulated domed city-states of recognizably modern urbanites functioning at a high technological level. Our own civilization and its considerably more advanced successors are lost to prehistory save for a few twentieth-century pop cultural artifacts conveniently recovered by well-paid psychics.

I’m sure it’s generalizing a lot. But when  Laura Hudson of Comics Alliance calls the series “one of the best comics ever“, I pay attention. Smarter minds with sharper opinions garner my intrigue.  Martyn Pedler also has an awesome interview with McNeil over at io9.

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Future Foundation #1.
I never thought I’d live in a universe where the most hotly awaited title of a week would be a Fantastic Four-based comic. Such is the power of Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting. Fucking Hickman, man. Dude is a philosophical warrior, somehow managing to plot roughly a thousand arcs at once, while mixing in utilitarian philosophy, the Negative Zone, and outstanding emotional moments starring a dude who has been one-dimensional for god knows how many years – yeah, I’m still weeping over Johnny Storm.

This is the fucking title I want. I want it tomorrow. I want it now.

If you’re not down with the cosmos, the First Family of Marvel, or Sue Storm in a skin-tight minimalist costume, I don’t know. I respect your opinion, but I’m positively losing my cool over it.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

At this point, it’s old news: Johnny Storm bit the dust. All that remains of the Human Torch are embers, flickering reminders of a hero that lit up the Marvel Universe for the better part of fifty years. Dedicated readers of OL know that both my brother and I have been wholly enamored of Jonathan Hickman’s Fantastic Four epic. In addition to covering nearly every Hickman-penned issue, I sang praises for The Last Stand of Johnny Storm and then Caffeine Powered offered his own pontification.

So at this point, one has to wonder: can anything else be said?

In reading what is being billed as the final issue of Fantastic Four, it’s clear that Hickman has nothing else to say.

But he’s got plenty to show.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. // caffeine powered note: I begged rendar to let me write about shield #6. I had such a hard-on I needed to ejaculathink about it. He’ll be back next week.]

The final issue of the first volume of Jonathan Hickman and Dustin Weaver’s Shield came out this week, and it struck me at the very core of my philosophical soul. An imbecile dabbling in impracticality, I spent a good portion of my twenties floundering through school and accumulating credits in various philosophy classes. Modern philosophy, medical ethics, existentialism, Ancient Greek, Medieval, and Social Ethics among others.

I absorbed them all but I did so with a problem lingering in the back of my head. The brightest philosophers, the most powerful thinkers, my very heroes; they were all, to an extent, full of fucking shit.

In ways both gorgeous and clinical, Hickman and Weaver make this argument in the final issue of the first volume of Shield. In a way I never could. I don’t have the components, I lack the wiring. But I know a classic when I see it.

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The final arc of Fantastic Four had some serious fans around OL. Serious. Fans. Rendar threw inter-splooge all over the final issue in I&W, and I dedicated a good five-hundred words to fawning all over it. That ultimate arc paved the way for the forthcoming FF #1, where Reed and the rest of the family along with Spider-Man set up to solve tomorrow.

The Gods at Marvel, or perhaps more specifically the Marketing Gurus, have seen fit to drop the first six pages on our gaping asses. They’re fantastic, and I can’t help but be slightly aroused when Sue Storm calls Peter Parker “young man.”

Hit the jump for the preview if you’re so inclined.

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Thank goodness it’s almost Wednesday. The weekly grind demands a brief respite, and on that third day of every week comic books come to the fucking rescue. This is Variant Covers. Inside you’ll find the comic books dropping tomorrow that I’m interested in.

Opinionated? You’re on the internet so you fucking must be. Hit the comments section with the funnies you plan on snagging this week.

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Jennifer Blood #1.
Jenny Blood is a new comic dropping tomorrow by Garth Ennis and Adriano Batista. The premise? Something fittingly Ennis. Blood is a suburban housewife by day. She feeds the kids, takes them to soccer, cooks them dinner. But by night! Oh you knew this was coming. But by night, she’s a totally elite assassin. In a latex get-up, which is always, always, always a good thing to me.

There was a time when Garth Ennis was my fucking idol. Between Preacher, Hitman, and his take on the Punisher, the good man owned my soul. Over time, I’ve grown less and less enthused with his efforts. While some people may find it heretical to say, I got tired of The Boys. I get it, I get it. A vulgar deconstruction of superhero motifs. Like I said, I probably just pissed a good amount of people off. I’m hoping that Jennifer Blood can rekindle my love affair.

If it’s nothing more than a female twist on the Punisher, I’d be fine with that. Perhaps my time away from the Ennis bag of tricks has been enough to recuperate my love for him.

—-

S.H.I.E.L.D. #6.
The first volume of Marvel’s most mindrapingly fantastic title concludes tomorrow. It is, without doubt, going to be my title of the week. Hickman and Weaver’s panel-smashing, contemporary narrative structure-defying, philosophically curious title has been nothing less than the fucking belle of my pull list ball since it started.  This week we get the epic battle between Leonard Da Vinci and his free spirits versus Isaac Newton and his Hobbesian belief that mankind must be  corralled. I think these motherfuckers are going to come to blows.

Hickman has been nothing short of brilliant to me in everything that I read of his. His killing of a member of the Fantastic Four? Had this guy in tears. His exploration of ideologies and the fictionalization of historical figures in S.H.I.E.L.D. has been something special. It isn’t a question of whether or not the sixth issue will be fantastic, but if the second volume can possibly top this first arc.

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Morning Glories Trade #1.
I have not read Morning Glories yet. However, I have only heard wondrous things regarding the title written by Nick Spencer and drawn by Joe Eisma. In fact, the buzz was so good that it drove me to pick up Spencer’s newest title, Infinite Vacation. Conclusion from reading that title? Spencer can fucking pen, yo! I’m not certain what Morning Glories is about. There’s been a concerted effort made by myself to stay away from any plot synopses, because I’ve read there’s a mystery afoot in the title.

Basic plot summary from various sites is, “Morning Glory Academy is one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country, but something sinister and deadly lurks behind its walls.” It doesn’t sound amazing, does it? Probably why I passed on it the first time. Do these copywriters realize people make financial decisions based on their bland fucking description of something that could be fantastic? Doesn’t seem that way.

I’m there.

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[The Brothers Omega are way late on the FF #587 tip. Apologies.]

I can understand the consternation people feel when fucking offing characters. I get it. I’ve been embittered by it. You kill off Jean Grey. She rises. You kill off Magneto. He’s back. You off Spider-Man. Whatever.

I really get it.

But this storyline felt much different. It didn’t feel driven by an editorial mandate. Maybe it was, but we’ll never know. It didn’t feel that way, and that’s what matters. Hickman didn’t off Johnny Storm on a whim. He was meticulous in building towards this climax.

The great irony is that when the nucleus of the First Family split up and went its separate ways, it was the two Best Friends who had to stem the tide of the actual threat. Saving Nu World turned out to be incredibly easy, and Sue Storm stemmed her problem with a fucking pimp slap.

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[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

It’s been over a week since the release of Fantastic Four #587. In that time, the comic has inspired a few mild debates here at OL and no doubt countless others across the globe. Hell, maybe even the galaxy! But it’s to be expected, as this issue has long been designated as the comic in which one of Marvel’s First Family would be killed off.

Do superhero deaths ever last? No. Absolutely not. The decision to kill a character is almost always rooted in the hopes of driving up sales. After all, there’s nothing more attention-grabbing than “HEY, KIDS, YOUR FAVORITE HERO IS GOING TO DIE!” Hell, when old Kal-El bit the dust millions of comics were sold and the story hit the news:

Even in the news clip, it’s no secret that Clark Kent would eventually return. And you know what, I’m okay with that. I don’t mind the deaths and resurrections of caped heroes, provided that they are treated appropriately. If it seems like a hollow cash-grab, then count me out. But if it seems like a creator is murdering or reviving a character to tell an affective story, then I say go for it. `Cause the fact of the matter is that although rare, it can be done.

Case in point? Bucky Barnes. Ed Brubaker took a dead sidekick, turned him into a villain, and then made him Captain America’s replacement. And while this might seem like a gimmick, the quality of the comics has always been way above most superhero books. Will Steve Rogers eventually reclaim the shield as his own? Certainly. But the ride we’ve been taken on is damn amazing.

It’s this same sense of enthusiasm that I find flowing through my veins when reading Fantastic Four #587.

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Spider-Man is joining the Fantastic Four in Future Foundation, the title effectively replacing F4 in the Marvel line. Let’s talk more after the break, where the dying member of the F4 will be exposed. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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