Variant Covers: It Ain’t Wrong If The Vegetable Loves You Back.
There are comic books coming out tomorrow, which can mean only one thing. Actually, it can mean a lot of things. The you factor into the geek wet dream of a Multiverse and it can mean…literally an infinite amount of things. One!, one of the things it means is that I’m here. In front of Microsoft Word. I am charged with bringing you the list of comic books I’m looking forward to this fine Wednesday. It’s a small charge, one I am capable of answering. My fat brain is filled with too many capes, not enough indies. A smattering of quasi-smaller publishings by actually relatively large companies like Image and Dark Horse.
Whatever the case, whatever the case. My taste is poor, I’m sure yours is better. So when I’m done mash-mash-mashing away on the keyboard and you have engaged in ultimate altruism and answered the bell by reading this mess, I implore you: share the comics you’re buying this week. Share them right up.
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Comic Books I’m Interested In Buying This Fine Week
It’s a bit of a slow week for me. The usual caveats apply. Slow week considering comic books that I know about, have heard about, have read, want to read. Et cetera. I do not delude myself into think I’m not missing countless dope titles. Or rather I want to live in a world where there’s a deluge of excellence underneath the veneer of mediocrity I have trouble piercing by myself.
There’s Activity #2 by Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Gerads. Edmonson had a hell of 2011, breaking into the mainstream collective with his work in the New 52 after catching my attention with Who Is Jake Ellis? I caught a preview of the original issue of Activity and it seemed pretty friggin’ appealing. Here it is. My comic book shop in predictable fashion didn’t have a copy. I’m seriously no bitter. I swear it.
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Comic Hotness: Our Love Is Real
This comic one-shot dropped last year and you can buy it on the cheap courtesy of an Image reprinting. When it dropped back in the oh-so-antiquated-by-now beginnings of last year I remember hearing about it. I noted it to myself. I was informed I could even snag a digital copy of it. Then I forgot. I fucking forgot. For another ten months. Remembrance was only brought to me courtesy of a solid commenter over in Eduardo Pluto’s Year’s Best! List. Cheers, MORS! Ordered the motherfucker and–
—-wow. What a fucking doozie. Not for the faint of heart, but it manages to terrify, entertain, amuse, and promote some thought within a scant amount of pages. Cheers to the good lad who recommended it. Go buy it. You’ll get all the vegetable-fucking-ultra-violence you could ask for.
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Comic Books I’m Interested In Buying This Fine Week. [Cont]
There’s another issue of Wolverine and the New Gang Crush Shit dropping this week. Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo bring my X-gene with humor and wit. I haven’t enjoyed a “main” X-Title in a good goddamn while, and every time this comic entertains me it makes the glorious corpse of my childhood momentarily raise up. Slagging off rotten flesh and decaying eyeball ocular mess dribbling down its face, it high-fives me. The longer Bachalo persists on the title, the more I’ve come to enjoy him. Listen, his style is never going to be my favorite. Listen, if you feel the same way. Just pause and check out all the shit he’s doing. The unique panel structure and the activity on every page. It’s begun to sway me. I appreciate it. A real lot.
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Patiently Waiting For You: Nonplayer #2
One of my favorite joints last year was Nate Simpson’s Nonplayer. Yeah, I said joint. I’m just another suburban white kid (actually aging fucking adult at this point, incapable of accepting his own furthered march towards rot) feigning what is now passe and discarded urbanity. Besides the point. It was a visually stunning trek through a not-too-distant-future where our realities will be so augmented the thinning membrane separating the virtual from the “real” (note the scare quotes, us failing and would-be academics love them) will explode, vanishing into nothing. Wrapping MMO lingo with augmented reality and ideas of what constitutes your true life, it was a breath of fresh air. Simpson has mentioned on his blog that he needs some real life work to support this gorgeous endeavor of his, so here’s hoping he can grab it in this calendar year. Make some cheddar (there it is again) and get the comic out before the Mayans arrive out of the UFOS on Dinosaurs With Laser Guns and obliterate us all.
That’s how they said it was all going down, right?
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Comic Books I’m Interested In This Fine Week. [Concluded]
A new issue of Unwritten is coming out for those who are on that title. Me? Naw, there are debut issues of Scarlet Spider to buy. Just kidding! Jeff Lemire is drizzling horrorcore monster adventures in Frankenstein: Agent of Something if that gets you up in the morning. I had to shed that title from my dangerously filled brain-stem. Dangerously filled with smut and ETID breakdowns but filled nonetheless. Following the horror tip, Scott Snyder, Scott Tuft and Attila Futaki are dropping a new issue of Severed.
Then There’s the final issue of Warren Ellis’ run on Secret Avengers, and this week he’s teaming up with Stuart Immonen. You may recognize them for their genre-defiling glory opus Nextwave. You may also remember I mentioned the last time an issue of this dropped that it was Ellis’ last issue. Listen man! Fact checking is for professionals. Or people with class. Or most importantly people who get paid for this shit.
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That’s me this week. What are you guys and gals of the Sequential Page buying? Elucidate me. Improve me. Or at the very least just contemptuously pass me that can of Diet Dew on your way out of the room. I’m comfortable and don’t want to get up.