Variant Covers: guaranteed to aggrandize superpowers, outside the pants underwear, and splash pages. I spent a lot of last week catching up on the ridiculous backlog of comic books that I hadn’t touched in a while. And I remembered something: good god damn, I fucking love comic books. Seems a bit obvious, dunnit? Alas. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed with the concept of ingesting the funny mags that I forget that at the core of them are the same tireless themes that I could read ad nauseam. Aristotle rocked out in the Poetics stating that not only do us wacky monkeys with self-awareness love narrative, but we can never get full, and we seem to gravitate towards the same concepts over and over again.

I think the dude is on to something. I’ve watched Magneto get his ass owned so many times, and yet his ironic struggle towards fascism born out of his own oppression still gets me. Bravo Aristotle, we may keep you around yet.

Superman #700
Superman turns 700 this week. Good lord, that’s a lot of dialogue bubbles. Superman hits its 700th issue, and of course, like every comic that hooks a something-hundredth milestone, the issue is packed to the brim with stories, artists, blah, blah blah.

I’m bored with Superman. And I love him. That’s the tragedy really. Everyone seems to dog on the dude, and even I, who loves the guy, can’t stand him. 700 issues. Let’s do something new with him. J. Michael is coming aboard with #701, and I’m hoping he uses it as a springboard towards something new.

Maybe I’m alone in this, but can we stop jerking off a 32 year-old movie? Am I the only one who is tired of seeing Clark Kent/Superman drawn to reflect Reeves? There’s so much homage paid to it, that it feels creatively stifling to me. I’ll take Kingdom Come’s Superman, or All Star-Superman, or Superman: For All Season’s depiction of the Man of Steel any day. I get it – we all love Reeves. It’s fantastic. But I prefer the beefy bumbling Clark Kent as a farm boy to the sexy grin of Reeves as Superman that Gary Frank loves penciling.

It isn’t about a disrespect for the movie, it’s about turning the page.

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Elsewhere in the DC Universe:
I’ve spent a good amount of time masturbating to Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, and perhaps its because it does everything that Superman doesn’t do in comics today: something new. The third issue comes out this week, and if it is as ballin’ as the first two, I’m fucking sold. As well, the newest issue of Green Lantern Corps is coming out, and you can get your sexy magician fix in Zatanna #2.

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