Jeph Loeb as Marvel Executive VP, and Head of Television? Oh noes.

via comics alliance:

Marvel Entertainment has announced that Jeph Loeb, writer of comic books like “Batman: The Long Halloween” and “Ultimatum,” has been named an Executive Vice-President and Head of Television at the company. Loeb, who previously worked as a writer and Co-Executive Producer on the Emmy-nominated NBC superhero TV show “Heroes” and a writer and producer on “Lost” and the Superman series “Smallville,” will be tasked with developing both animated and live-action television projects for Marvel properties as well as direct-to-DVD content.

Jeph Loeb used to be awesome. Superman: For All Season, The Long Halloween, and other tales were fantastic. He used to be one of my favorite writers. But for awhile he’s been meddling in the gulches of bullshit, penning titles that are so painfully painful, they’re either meta-amusing, or like watching your Dad trying to slow dance at some club. His “edgy” storylines on Ultimatum and Ultimates 3 were train wrecks, and either elicited groans or sympathy.

To be fair though, he has been in charge of Smallville, and despite ripping off Watchmen for Heroes, both of them were eminently watchable. Perhaps the dude is more suited for the moving pictures these days.

I don’t want to be too harsh, like I said, Loeb’s penned some excellent, excellent stuff in his lifetime, and has more creative talent in his used toilet paper than I ever will. But like Claremont, I will be forever grateful for his past work, while skeptical of his future endeavors.

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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Yeah, welcome to Variant Covers! I’ve been slacking like a fucking asshole. I have a thick ass stack of stretchy-limbs, sociopaths, mutants and blind dudes with nunchucks to catch up with. Float me this week and I’ll float your boat. Instead of previewing what is coming out this week, I’m going to give you the lowdown on the shit I heartily recommend you check out, if not follow with an insatiable ass-lust.

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Choker:
Choker is the demented love child of Blade Runner and super-vulgarity. It’s super profane, super gritty, superly super. It’s a detective story at the peak of expletive-laden blood-soaked awesomeness.

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Daredevil:
Daredevil. Oh, do I love thee. One man’s internal struggle with his demons made literal, as the bro attempts to control the Hand. This is going to end in tears. Or maybe it already has. Like I’ve said, I haven’t read the latest issue. Inorite? Fuck me.

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Fantastic Four:
Jonathan Hickman is fucking fantastic. Puns ahoy! But seriously. I don’t read enough comic books that can intertwine the intergalactic with the heart. Or really, I don’t read any besides this.

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[via comics alliance: click images to enlarge]

I’m already pretty stoked for Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry to be taking over Thor this September. And now I’m geeking out Viking-stylee over the new mini-series Thor: For Asgard by Robert Rodi and Simone Bianchi also dropping in September. Why? Jesus Christ, look at Simone Bianchi’s pencils. They’re like getting eye-fucked and loving it. Thor’s hammer of justice is crushing you, and you’re going to love it.

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Wolverine’s deep, furious crotch action can only mean one thing! A new fucking Marvel Vs Capcom 3 trailer! This one is a straight-up character teaser. We got Ryu looking butt-hurt, Wolverine with his crotch-groan of fury, Morrigan trying to rub down Iron Man, and other thrilling, exhilarating, creamifying shit going down. Stop listening to me blather. Hit the jump and check out the teaser.

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Variant Covers is the only weekly comic book column to feature headlines featuring puke covered boobs! Welcome to all ye enter, and I sure hope you’ve got a good taste for the depraved. Here at Variant Covers I give a run down of the comic books I’m excited for, catch my eye, or seem hilariously rotten in a given week.

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #2
The second issue of the most ridiculously named X-Title ever is arriving on shelves this week covered in puke, tits, and sociopolitical commentary. While I didn’t dig Warren Ellis’ first run on Astonishing X-Men that much, I really got into the first issue of Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis Fun Pukey Time. The storyline is centered around an African village that is giving birth to particularly mutant-looking children. The whole OMFG stems from the fact that once Scarlett Witch went all fucking insaneo and banished mutants from the Earth, ain’t none been born. Let alone the fact that generally muties manifest around puberty. Because you know, they’re an extended metaphor for adolescent longing as well as commentary on ostracized ethnic and cultural groups.

So shit is going down! What I really enjoy about the title is how Ellis manages to float political commentary rather elegantly into the affairs of a bunch of latex-bound demi-gods. In the middle of the first issue, Wolverine drops some knowledge bombs about Nelson Mandela that even if you disagree with, are pretty interesting to hear coming out of a mainstream comic book.

It’s a fun romp, and features ridiculous postures and absurd ass and tit shots by Kaare Andrews. And while I’m ultimately a horndog who finds himself aroused on occasion by the curve of inanimate objects, the artwork stems the line between ridiculously sexualized and rousing the inner feminist in me. There’s some sort of line that Andrews is straddling for even the most reluctant readers as myself, and definitely sending more engaged feminists into apoplectic aneurysms.

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Meta 4 #1
Meta 4! Metaphor. See what they did there? This comic comes out this week, and I’m particularly intrigued. I hadn’t read about it, but while skimming the release list this week it caught my eye. Even the title is a metaphor! Intriguing. And then I read the plot description which seems trippy enough to at least try out the first issue:

An amnesiac astronaut is helped by Gasolina, a muscular woman who dresses up as Santa all year round. As they travel New York City for one man’s answers of self, it becomes an expedition to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves.

Too bizarre to pass up for me. I have the feeling that the comic book is either going to be a refreshing exploration of metaphors and life through metaphor, or really just a pretentious bunch of hogwash. I’m hoping it is dope as fuck. If you stop and ponder how essential metaphors are to not only understanding and communicating with one another, but also as means to make sense of the world, the idea of the comic books pretty cool. Metaphors layered upon metaphors! I know, I’m a lame-ass literature nerd.

Mea culpa, mea culpa.

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[click to enlarge]

Matt Fraction pens my favorite monthly comic book, Invincible Iron Man. And Pasqual Ferry? The dude is utterly gorgeous. Like, ridiculously pretty. So the idea of the two of them teaming up for a run on Thor has me doing cartwheels of destructive glee.

via comics alliance:

I can’t WAIT to unleash our Thor on you unsuspecting humans,” said Fraction. “Things were intimidating enough when Pasqual, Matt, and I had to follow up JMS and Olivier– that we’ve got to take up arms after Kieron and company’s stellar stand makes it all the moreso. All we can promise you is that Thor will overflow with colossal and cosmic action, giant space gods smashing each other in the faces with hammers, and all of the earth trembling in the balance. In short: everything that has made Thor great.

Matt Fraction is promising “giant space gods” smashing one another in their fucking face. Win. Win.com/awesome.php

The dude from the best (not really) movie of all time, Jumper, who totally fights Anakin from Attack of the Douchesabers is going to be Spider-Man? Maybe? We’ll see?

via slashfilm

I’ll keep this short, since we have no reliable info to go on. The site Bleeding Cool  is reporting that multiple sources have told them that actor Jamie Bell has been tapped to star in Sony’s reboot of Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb.

Well then! I really have no idea about this dude, save for the fact that no seriously, I enjoyed him in Jumper. Oh wait, he was fucking Billy Elliot?! I’m double sold.

As an aside, I knew my girlfriend was either a) crazy in love with me or b) crazy when I took her to Jumper like three weeks into our relationship. “Oh hey! Come see a shitty action movie with me, because I love lighthearted slop starring Robotic Jedi and Apparently Spider-Man!”

Nice!

Jeremy Renner plays a ridiculous bad ass in The Hurt Locker. And he plays a sharpshooting bad ass in 28 Weeks Later. So fuck yeah!, at him playing Hawkeye in the Avengers movie.

via slashfilm:

Man, the past twenty-four hours have been all Marvel, all the time. From Captain America and Thor concept art to more Cap casting and now this confirmation of a rumor that started around Thanksgiving of last year: Jeremy Renner is close to signing a deal to appear in The Avengers as the hero Hawkeye.

Righteous! Who the fuck is Hawkeye? You newbie! In the regular Marvel Universe, Hawkeye is a douchebag with exceptional aim with a bow and arrow. Then he died, and uh, became this guy Ronin, who had exceptional aim and shit with swords.

But in the Ultimate universe, dudebro is a master of bullets and gunpowder-based ownery. Since the Marvel Movieverse seems based off of the Ultimate mythos, here’s hoping Renner gets to be a bad ass with dual-wielding enormo-guns. And not some schmuck with a purple outfit and a quiver.

[via slashfilm, click to enlarge]

These are confirmed concept images of the Captain America suit from the upcoming movie. I dig the look of the suit. A lot. It’s got the whole paramilitary meets superhero costume thing going on, and well fuck, I’m sold. It’s more Ultimate universe than the regular ole’ 616, but they announced they were going that way a long time ago.

Try to ignore how douchey Evans’ face looks photoshopped into the whole thing, since these are concepts works and not actual shots. “But Ian, it may very well look assy once it’s filmed!” Well, you got me there. But for now, these images are theoretically cool. To me.

Hit the jump for a couple more pictures.

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