[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where Billy Shakespeare is a wizard who must fucking die!]

Kill Shakespeare #1

It’s Tuesday, which means only one thing. I’m shotgunning Diet Mountain Dews while praying to the Gods of the Weekly Releases that there’s something worth covering for the weekly comic book gig. And they have responded with charity and righteousness this week.

Kill Shakespeare. Amazing.

Why, what’s the premise behind this comic book? Uh, to fucking kill Billy Shakes! Duh! But more seriously, the premise of this comic book is that Shakespeare’s greatest heroes such as Hamlet, are pitted against the most bad-ass villains of his works, as they try to hunt down and kill reclusive wizard. Who happens to be Shakespeare himself. Is this brilliant? Is it stupid? Is it brilliantly stupid? I know that it’s totally pissed off Frank “The Goddamn” Miller’s girlfriend, who happens to be a Shakespeare scholar.

Me? I sort of fucking dig it. It’s absurd, and perhaps suffuse with metafictional awesomeness. The previews tout it as the Shakespeare equivalent of “Fables”, and that’s probably aiming a bit high. But I mean, just the ridiculousness of the comic alone makes me want to pick it up.

I can understand those who hold Shakespeare super reverentially to be crapping their pants at this heresy, but they need to chill the fuck out. I’ve always dug the acclaimed works of Billy, and this doesn’t seem particularly threatening. At the very least, it’s something of a shitty homage. At the best, it could be some sort of mind-warping exercise in mimesis. That seems worth the risk to me.

Daredevil #506

Daredevil is fucking legit. The Man Without Fear is running amok as the leader of the Hand, slapping down errant bitches with his baton-thingies. How can you not dig this guy? But seriously, I’ve been pumping Daredevil almost every month, and I’m sure you’re yawning and telling me to shut my trap. Maybe it’s just the week of Marvel releases its sent out with, but it’s constantly the most boner-inducing of the batch.

And if you’re one of those mouth-breathing completionists who has to follow every event no matter how drab or boring, you’re going to want to start checking out Daredevil. Matty Murdock is currently in Japan, trying to solidify his grasp on the five-fingers of the Hand. There’s so many vomit-inducing puns there. And all of this is tied around his desire to build a “Shadowland” underneath New York City. What the fuck is a Shadowland? I’m not really sure, but it’s going to be an Event in the Marvel Universe this year.

So yeah. If you want to understand what the fuck is going on, without having to buy Shadowland Prelude Preliminary # -1, then start reading Daredevil. It’s consistently terrific.

Elsewhere in the Marvel Universe is Lockjaw and Pet Avengers Unleashed #2. Just when you thought that Marvel had ruined the Avengers by casting everyone in their universe in some derivative of that title, they have dragged their pets into it. Oh lord. There’s also Siege spin-offs for Captain America, Loki, and Young Avengers. I’m sure they’re totally important to the fabric of the Marvel U, and its canon. Or not. I’m pretty sure you can skip this and miss nothing. Save your money and buy yourself a Double Gulp and some fucking Laffy Taffy.

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[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where a dude who is a Levi’s model and clearly touched can be a superstar penciler.]

Deadpool Corps #1

Pop-quiz, fuckers! What’s better than one Deadpool being drawn by Rob Liefeld? Uh! How about an entire fucking squad of Deadpools rolling out, being penciled by my favorite idiot savant? Oh hell yes. Deadpool Corps #1 comes out this week, and I’m fucking stoked. It’s like being excited for a train wreck. My love for the unhinged genius that is Rob Liefeld is well-documented. So this week’s title of the week can’t be anything less than a testament to the utter insanity that is Rob Liefeld and Deadpool.

I mean, we’re not just talking about Deadpool here. No, no, no. We’re talking Deadpool and his merry gang of uh, other Pools? I don’t really know who or what the fuck these people are. But I know they’re called Headpool, Lady Deadpool, Dogpool and Kidpool!

WHAT! No seriously, what the fuck is going on here.

And if you take a gander at the picture, you’ll figure out what I already have; apparently they have lightsabers and are hurtling through space. And Headpool is a disembodied skull. Just fucking insane.

I have no idea what the premise of this title is, nor do I really care to. I’m going to buy it on premise alone. It’s such a throwback to the insane 1990’s and absurd post-modern behavior that I have to buy it. Rob Liefeld is a slice of pizza wrapped in bacon. Even while you consume it and know what an asshole you are for enjoying something so filthy and bad for you, you can’t help but smile. I’m on this like fucking woah.

Superman: Secret Origin #5

With all the zombies running around trashing shit and eating brains in the DC Universe, I’ve missed out on following this series. It’s got a recipe for awesome in the creative team. Geoff Johns is the Czar of all things DC, and when he’s not writing awful, awful, heavy-handed, mind-bogglingly shitty dialogue in Blackest Night, I’ve enjoyed him. And then there’s Gary Frank, whose pencils on all thing Superman generally get my loins aflutter. Even though I’m beyond fatigued with every artist interpreting Superman within the funny books as Christopher Reeves, I don’t mind Frank pulling such a stunt.

Why? I don’t know, I guess I find him gorgeous.

Issue #5 of this shit sees Superman finally throwing down with Metallo, which is what every Superman origin story should find him doing. Are you listening, Christopher Nolan? At the end of a Superman origin, the guy needs to punch the crap out of something. He doesn’t need to be shanked by Lester Burnham. Seriously.

I feel bad for having not checked out this series yet in full. Pepsibones bought the first couple of issues, and I skimmed it and said something like “Nice artwork, I have to take a shit” and left it at that.

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After the events of Marvel’s Civil War, Steve Rogers aka Captain America was going to be tried for treason. Dude didn’t want to cop to making it mandatory that every superhero register their identity with the government. Before the guy could be tried though, he was totally killed, and sent into the time stream.

Having come back though, he was pardoned by Barack Obama in the pages of the funny book. And then someone got the actual Barack Obama to sign the page where it occurs. Amazing. I came across this today via Ed Brubaker’s Twitter feed. If you don’t know who Ed Brubaker is, he’s the dude who knocks it out of the galactic ballpark every month with his work on Captain America, amongst other things.

[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where Bruce Wayne is a zombie, and Reed Richards taps hot ass.]

Blackest Night #8

Last week I opined like a typical miserable fanboy that I was tired of Blackest Night, and that I didn’t really dig how they wedged in the twist regarding the White Lantern. It wasn’t the fact that Sinestro took the reins for himself, and if I came off that way I certainly didn’t mean to. I suppose it just happened so quickly, at what I felt was the backend of the storyline that it felt forced to me.

But now? Now I’m fucking stoked for the conclusion. I’m bipolar, leave me the fuck alone.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve dug Sinestro becoming the White Lantern. He’s the one dude who called out the Guardians of Oa for being a batch of manipulative douchebags. In his gloriously overwrought speech at the end of Blackest Night #7 he rocks the fuck out, and then he takes the power of the cosmos for himself. You have to hand it to the guy. For suffering being in the middle of the Zombie Apocalypse, he’s having a pretty good day.

So word up! This is the epic conclusion to the last couple of years of plot in the DC Universe, and I’m interested to see where they’re going. The tights-and-capes have a shitload of zombies to take care of in this issue, and then they’re totally turning the page and embracing Brightest Day. What the fuck is Brightest Day? Well, it’s a marketing plot, dummy!

But it’s a new direction they’re taking the entire DC hordes. It’s hard to imagine anything not being brighter than eight-months of Zombie Hawkman ripping out hearts and eating them, though. I mean, he could be tweeking out on meth sitting in a corner shitting himself, and I’d be like, man, he’s doing a bit better. But it’s cool, it’s refreshing. It’s time for some less ponderous shit, no? We just meditated on life and death, good and evil in the darkest way possible. And while yeah, isn’t that what all comic books are about? But let’s do it in a happier manner, maybe Plastic Man can get into a fist-fight with Mister Mxyzptlk or some shit.

Shazam!

A-Team War Stories BA #1

You have to fucking adore comic books. It’s only through them that we’re treated to something like this. This is a comic book complete with a painting of Rampage Jackson, who is filling the shoes of Mr. T in the forthcoming A-Team remake. If seeing an oil painting or some shit of Rampage on the cover of a comic book isn’t enough to sell it, I’m not really sure what would be. It’s ridiculously surreal. I mean, I was bummed with Rampage giving up if only momentarily his career in the UFC to film this movie. But now? I don’t know man, now it makes a lot more sense.

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[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where The Sentry can rip dudes in half even though he’s totally emo.]

Siege #3

The sun is finally shining, spring is arriving, and I’m excited for the next issue of Siege. Yeah man, I’ve been drinking the Siege Kool-Aid since the first issue. It’s such a refreshing spectacle. For starters, it’s short as fuck. This isn’t some prolonged storyline running over eight-issues and nineteen spin-offs. It’s four issues. Four. As well, there ain’t much going on besides people slugging the shit out of one another. Oh sure there’s minor developments and some inspirational speeches by Steve Rogers and others.

But for the most part? Just demigods swinging hateful knuckles at one another.

Last month, the fucking Sentry ripped Ares in half. It was one of the more memorable splash pages in recent memory. Guts and blood and rage vomited across two gorgeously drawn panels. Righteous. The Sentry is more than a blatant Superman rip-off, the dude is a schizophrenic mess with the powers of a God. He’s like Old Testament God, when Our Lord and Savior was totally emo and was like “Thou ain’t listening to me and shit, eat a flood!” They probably hang out.

So this month I’m begging for the throwdown between Thor and Mr. Bobby Reynolds. Listen, I had misgivings about Sentry being able to rip the God of War in half, but so help me if he’s able to take out the God of Thunder. That’s ludicrous. The first time I digested The Sentry splitting Ares like a shitty pizza, I was like, no way. One dude is a God, the other is just some byronic douchebag. So yeah, Marvel. I know you want to pump up The Sentry, but Mjolnir and The Mighty Viking better reign supreme.

Choker #2

The debut issue of Choker was a vulgar, insane, bloody detective story set in some depressingly shitty dystopian future. It should go without saying that I fucking loved it. The first issue laid the groundwork comfortably within the confines of familiar noir tropes. You have the beaten detective taking on a job promising some sort of salvation, that you just know is going to end poorly. What makes it so enjoyable is the odd world that Ben McCool and Ben Templesmith have envisioned. It’s dark as fuck, there’s lots of swearing, and apparently there’s vampires. Or something. The first issue set the stage, and I’m curious to see where they’re going this week with it.

I can’t recommend the title enough, if only because it’s a welcome alternative to my steady diet of capes and tights. Ian, you say, read some totally alternative indie comic book about a dude talking to his goldfish! Now that’s literature in graphic novel form!

No thanks.

I like my titles to be placed firmly in the fantastical, whether it be with mutants, or detectives up to their arms in shit in some dark future. I mean Jesus Christ, this title is set in Shotgun City. Am I simpleton? ‘Cause this shit seems awesome to me.

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Snap! Hugo Weaving has been cast as The Red Skull in the Captain America movie. Let me blast your tits with an analogy. This casting decision is as awesome as casting Jim from The Office as Steve Rogers would have been fucking awful. Take that to your Miller’s Analogies test. I dig on Weaving, the dude has owned my soul as Agent Smith, V from V For Vendetta, and as that Elf Guy whose name I won’t attempt to type from Lord of the Rings.

I tried to discuss this with my friend Andrew, and he went into such a blind rage about this casting being typecasting that I wanted to massage his testicles through the interwebz. I love you Andrew, it’s going to be okay. I’m fine with the casting, since I want The Red Skull to be some creepy, booming-voiced Nazi motherfucker. He’s got the sort of mug that screams “I’m creepy”, and his aforementioned voice is perfectly down for epic proclamations and monologuing, which we know all good villains must do at some point.

This is a total +50 to anticipation for the movie, and the first time I’ve been like, oh shiznit, this flick could work.

[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world where Jean Grey dies over and over again, only to return as a hot-ass redhead. Again.]

Cable #24

I think tomorrow may be the day when I hope aboard the X-Train again. I haven’t been following those kooky batch of freaks for a while now. The X-Verse has become so convoluted and expensive to follow that instead of trying to keep up with it, I just imagine days when Wolverine used to drink beer in Australia and get crucified, and everyone was hopping through the Siege Perilous. The good ole days!

Cable this week is the beginning of the X-Event that hath been dubbed Second Coming, and if I had to say of what, I’d guess: Jean Grey. It’s not the most complicated guess, given that Cable has been escorting around a super-special mutant with red hair and green eyes for the past couple of years. Also, last year at New York Comic-Con, when Matt Fraction was asked who Hope was, he was like “Uh, she’s got red hair and green eyes” and then he laughed.

Seriously.

So shit be poppin’ off with Jean Grey and Cable, having finally returned from the timestream, or an alternate reality, or wherever the fuck they were. And so I figure it’s worth checking out. The whole Hope and Cable storyline is an example of why comic books are both absurd, and great. Let’s deconstruct what’s going on here.

Cable is protecting Hope. Who is Cable? Cable is the son of Cyclops and Jean Grey’s clone, Madelyne Pryor. Alright it’s pretty fantastical. So then, Cable is shot into the future and shit because of some techno-0rganic virus that couldn’t be treated in the present day. This was just an excuse to make him look XTREME back in the 1990’s, but whatever. Then Cable comes back from the future, and is older than his Dad.

Sweet.

Then there’s Hope. This chick was the only baby mutant born after the Scarlet Witch went all bonkers and willed the mutants out of existence. And oh, she happens to have red hair and green eyes. Then she jumps into the future with Cable. Dude cannot, simply, will not get enough of the future. He fucking loves it. As an aside, when is the “future” for Cable? If he grew up fifty-zillion years in the future, is present day the past? Whatever.

So there’s Cable, Cyclops’ son. And he’s protecting the reincarnated manifestation of the chick his Mom was cloned from. It’s pretty fucking fantastic, and this is the sort of shit that could only happen in comic books. As I mentioned, the X-Books and myself have not been BFFs for a long time, but the whole culmination of Jean Grey returning has got my attention.

There’s nothing really else I’m checking out in the Marvel Universe this week, though there’s the usual Spider-Men and Deadpools afoot. Does anyone check out any of the fourteen Deadpool titles? I’m intrigued, and I figure there has to be one worth reading.

Weekly World News #3

One of the stalwarts of grocery shopping when I was a kid was the deli counter guy always giving me a piece of cheese. In retrospect, the pervert in me wonders if he was just trying to tap my Mom’s ass. Oh, how cute, he gave my son some food and look at him with glee. And look how he handles the meat! Fuck, I need my meds.

The other staple of grocery shopping with Mom was the inevitable begging for a copy of the Weekly World News. I’ve always been a sucker for ridiculous stories about aliens and freaks, and Bat Boys. Which seems pretty obvious, given the fact that I write a weekly comic book column. This was far before the internet, so I didn’t have dope columns on conspiracies and shit to read every week. I had to get my fill from the ole Weekly World News.

I haven’t read any of the comic iterations of WWN, but I’m glad that this comic is out there. Clearly having read this as a child has warped my mind in unforeseen ways, and it gives me comfort that it shall be doing the same to other little children. Or maybe just fat fanboys like myself who can’t let go of childhood nostalgia.

Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton #1

Superman has spent the last god knows how many months embroiled in some legitimate bullshit on New Krypton. What’s New Krypton? Oh, just some fancy new planet for the Kryptonians to live on that is opposite the Earth in orbit around the sun.

Yeah, fuck that. Even if you hate on Superman, you understand something simple. Superman is dope because he’s the lone survivor of a demolished planet, trying to make sense of his place in the universe. As I’ve always said, and I love because of this, he is the emo existential crisis personified. And I’m emo, and constantly in some sort of existential crisis. When you bring a zillion million Supermen into the fold, all of a sudden they’re not as cool.

Just like Jedi, or those douchebags from the Matrix sequels.

So finally, Superman is throwing down with General Zod – yes he’s back – and all sorts of other Super-dbags in this one-shot, that is setting up the War of the Supermen storyline this Spring. Sweet. If you’re in charge of the next Superman movie and you have the misfortune of reading this column, pay attention. This is exactly what Superman needs to be doing. Fighting shit. Ignore Bryan Singer’s movie where he was Superlifter and cried a lot and sired a bastard child. Superman needs people to punch. I don’t care if they’re robots, or other straggler Kryptonians.

And judging by the cover to Last Stand of New Krypton, he’s going to be fighting both. Perfect.

[Variant Covers is a column every Tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world of blind assassins and zombies.]

Daredevil #505

Daredevil’s my favorite book dropping right now, and it has been for a while. It doesn’t have the sensational bullshit of everything that interconnects with Siege, or Dark Reign, or Dark Siege, or Reigning Blood or whatever the epic event of the moment is called. And no, it doesn’t even have Jennifer Garner, or Ben Affleck in it. So what the fuck, I know. It’s a title brimming with nothing! Not even a Deadpool appearance! But the shit is excellent, and you should be reading it. Matt fucking Murdock is straight-up running The Hand these days. And if they weren’t a bunch of bad-ass assassins before, they look even more ballin’ with devil horns affixed to their ninja masks of awesomeness these days.

But the real reason that I enjoy Daredevil so much is that it doesn’t resort to status-quo restorations every nine months. Shit has been swirling around the toilet for years now in the life of Matty. He’s gone from an outlaw, to on trial, to a prisoner, to watching his wife go insane. Maybe I should be glad that Daredevil doesn’t pump any insane numbers in the sales department, or they would be way more careful with the title. Even the appearances by H.A.M.M.E.R or Norman Osborn feel less forced, and more in sync with the actual universe.

Our boy Murdock takes to Japan this month to solidify his grasp on The Hand through one of their international branches. Though, I suppose calling Japan the international branch of a league of ninjas probably doesn’t make that much sense. I’m waiting for the whole trying to run a league of assassins thing to go south for the ole’ Devil. It seems like a magnificently shitty idea to think he can run a squad of undead ninja-guy-things, especially since he doesn’t have the heart of coal it requires. Emo Kid Peter Parker should check out Murdock’s life next time he thinks he has it rough, he’d be in the corner listening to Taking Back Sunday and cutting himself if he had to deal with half the bullshit Murdock did.

Other shit coming out in the Marvel Universe? Uhhh. There’s Deadpool: Merc With A Mouth, which is one of the seven-thousand Deadpool titles at the moment. Then there’s a new issue of Uncanny X-Men, the events of which I have no idea about, and cannot understand. They need a jumping on point for that title, because every time I try to buy an issue I feel like I walked into some bizarre world where nothing makes sense, Magneto is back from the dead again, and Emma Frost is a bad guy/good guy/bad guy/good guy for reasons unknown.

Zombies Of Mass Destruction #6

There’s a comic book called Zombies of Mass Destruction. Either you’re sold, or you’re not. I’m not, but I can imagine a lot of people do cartwheels over anything zombie. Are they played out, yet? I mean, are they even scary anymore? I wonder if when the eventual and unpreventable Zombie Apocalypse occurs, we’ll all be so blase about the walking dead, and that will be our undoing.

Oh it’s just a zombie.

And we’ll forget that the zombie is intent on eating our soul and munching on our brains, and that’s how they’ll take us down. Yes, the zombies will finish us off the same way everything else does in life; they will take advantage of our apathy. We’ll be trying to watch Monster Truckers Crush Skulls or something on Spike TV when they just walk into our houses as we stare at the idiot box and eat us.

I called it here first.

Green Lantern #51

Hey kids, are you like me? Are you reading Blackest Night, and trying to enjoy it? Well, let me suggest something to you then: buy all the bullshit tie-in titles! My biggest complaint with Blackest Night is that they’ve turned reading the fifteen Green Lantern titles into a necessity. I call hogwash on this bullshit. For example: I was talking to my friend Charlie about Blackest Night, and he was all, yeah, I can’t believe they killed off Kyle Rayner. And I was like, huh? When the fuck did this happen?

Oh, only in Green Lantern Magicorps Redux (Blackest Night Tie-In)! What the fuck is this bullshit? You mean I’m plunking down $4 for some fucking epic event, only to have deaths and shit thrown about in the tie-ins? This isn’t fucking Solovar, this is fucking Kyle Rayner! Motherfuckers.

So trust me, if you want to have any idea what’s going in only the biggest event in the DC Universe right now, you better pick up this week’s Green Lantern. Otherwise you’ll be like me, a confused asshole who lives in their parents’ basement. Don’t believe me? Check out the solicitation:

The most epic battle in BLACKEST NIGHT yet comes to a shocking conclusion as Hal Jordan makes the ultimate move to take on the Black Lantern Spectre.

So…the most epic battle of Blackest Night takes place…in Green Lantern? If you say so! You fucks.

There’s also a bunch of other BLACKEST NIGHT tie-ins you totally should/should not pick up depending on your principals. There’s Blackest Night: Flash, where Barry Allen probably dies, and Green Lantern Corps, which is sure to have some epic event that unfolds, like maybe Kyle Rayner fuses with Lex Luthor and they both ride Metallo out of Earth Prime or some shit. Just to make you feel fucked if you only read the main Blackest Night title.

Choker #1

The first issue of Choker is coming out this week, and I’m jazzed because I’m a huge glutton for Ben Templesmith’s work. You may know him as the artist and co-creator of 30 Days of Night, or the co-creator of the barely-ever-released but no less awesome Fell. There’s something about his artwork that I can really get into, and so when I heard that he was putting this out with writer Ben McCool I was stoked. And if that wasn’t enough, McCool’s explanation of what the title was about sounded as though it came from the rotting canals of my own brain:

I guess I’d better lay down the disclaimers, then: language used is dastardly goings-on are repellent, and the characters are so lewd you’ll feel like only an industrial-strength jet wash will be able to rinse your tarnished conscience clean. Put simply, we’re hoping to give Bill O’Reilly a Rush Limbaugh-resembling hernia.

It’s a rotting, filthy noir fable. How the fuck can you not get amped for that? Wait, you mean you’re not a glutton for perversity and depravity? I can’t relate to that.

Batman and Robin #8

It really saddens me that Batman and Robin, a title that was created for Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne couldn’t twelve or so issues before delving back into the monotonous resurrection of Bruce Wayne. And if that isn’t enough, consider the fact that we know the actual return is coming in a stand alone title, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne. So what the fuck is going on in the pages of Batman and Robin? Why, they’re trying to bring Bruce back to life! It all just screams of redundancy and lack of progress.

Who the fuck knows, I could be wrong.

It is upsetting to me that an interesting storyline involving Grayson trying to wear the cloak and embrace the burden of filling his pseudo-father’s shoes has been canned so quickly into its run. Whether or not the timeline was intentional or not, I am the unhappy because everything is switching so quickly back to the Bruce Wayne type thang. There’s some speculation that Bruce could return and not be Batman, or even that the dude’s displaced spirit is going to be caged in the body of Damian and, and, and…I don’t fucking know, I don’t care.

So this week we find the emaciated, laser-blasted corpse of Bruce rising from the Lazarus Pit. I don’t need ingenuity or textual analysis to figure out that it isn’t going to work, I only need to look at the list of DC events this year to figure out that this attempt is going to be a steaming failure pile.

That’s the bad. The good? Well, the storyline is being written by Morrison, who has been Batman’s curator for the past few years, and as usual, I dig it. If you want to look aside all the annoying seemingly financial aspects of the storyline, Morrison continues to drill into Grayson’s psyche for interesting examination. While reading this newest arc where Grayson so badly wants to succeed in bringing Bruce back, there comes a debate. Is Grayson really bringing back Bruce out of a promise to be there and protect him always, or is it a selfish motivation, because he can’t handle manning the wheel of the Batmobile himself?

Grayson’s motivations have been interesting throughout. The dude had to don the Cape almost out of necessity, to prevent a pack of assholes from Damian to Jason Todd inheriting it. And since wearing it, he has been fumbling through the motions, trying to distance the symbol of the Cape from the symbol of the Man who previously wore it.

Hit-Monkey #1

Listen, it’s a fucking Monkey Assassin. You’re not sold? You’re saying it isn’t worth your three-dollars? C’mon now! I don’t know anything about Hit-Monkey, other than the cover features a monkey dual-wielding pistols in some dramatic pose. Apparently he’s from one of the seventy-three Deadpool titles that I don’t read. I’m so out of touch. I’m like the Awkward Uncle of comic book readers, I think I’m still hip but I’m sitting here in an Age of Apocalypse t-shirt covered in chunky peanut butter and wearing no pants.

That said, I bet it’s somewhere between “entertaining” and “not worth my money”. I’ll give it a whirl, since I’m comics-curious. And when I say I’ll give it a shot, I mean I’ll buy it and it’ll sit in the rest of my backlog, gathering dust and grimy fingerprints.

The entire week in Marvel seems dedicated to variant covers featuring Deadpool, and I’m on a nostalgic trip. I remember the good ole days when everything had a variant cover. If it wasn’t a tin-foil, ultra-rare, holographic, four-dimensional cover featuring Savage Dragon, I didn’t want anything to do with that shit! And it seems the good days have returned! Yes! This week you can get Deadpool variant covers of shit like Amazing Spider-Man, Invincible Iron Man, Wolverine Savage, X-Men Forever, and yes, more.

This will cure the ailments of the comic book industry! Variant covers! It’s all so simple, why didn’t they try this like fifteen years ago. Oh, they did. Collect them all to be a true asshole!

Man, I ain’t read shit in two weeks. There’s comic books piling up on my computer desk at an increasingly rapid rate. They sit there, begging to be read. I tell them, “Shh children, I will attend to thee soon”, and then I return to whatever activity I am currently caught-up in. All of this shit started when I began my grad school classes last week and I actually had to read real things.

The fucking pile continues to increase in enormity, and then it begins to intimidate me. I’m all “Holy fucking shit, I have ten comics I have to read”, and I say to myself that I don’t want to short change them, so I say “I’ll read them when I’m not exhausted and resentful of the written word.” Apparently, the time when that occurs is never. Sure, I could be logical and just read one at a time but that makes too much sense.

The entire thing runs tandem with a desire to actually comprehend the shit I’m reading. Earlier last year, I realized a several of things. First that I read comic books and things in general way too quickly. And because of this, two things happen, I retain very little of what I’ve read over the long term, and I analyze even less. I thought it was something just particular to me, but I asked around and some of my friends shared the same plight. They read a lot, but what happens and to whom slips their mind quickly.

Of course, it’s all compounded by the fact that you have to wait an entire month for the next installment, and you’re reading ten or twenty titles at a time. Everything begins to blur and blend and the next thing you know, you’re thinking of Daredevil fighting Cyclops while Batman jacks it in the corner. And as far as actually picking apart what was going on in the comic books? I really wasn’t.

So I decided to do what a college professor and mentor of mine recommended back in the day, “Read more, less.” Spend more time reading less material, and thereby ingesting that shit more thoroughly. But of course, that shit takes way more time than rushing through an issue, checking out the epic fights and the snappy dialogue. As well it requires a bit more of a higher brain function, and for anyone who reads this column regularly, it is apparent I struggle at composing sentences that are halfway intelligible, and don’t contain the word “cock” or “cunt” every other noun.

So along the way, and adopting something my bro told me, I really only allow myself to read a comic book every half an hour or so. It stems from him telling everyone and anyone to only read one issue of Watchmen a day back when all of our friends were checking it out prior to the movie release. It made sense to me, and since then I try and give every comic book its own time. Maybe the actual reading won’t take a half an hour, but then I’ll sit there, and rework what happened in my head. Recall the main characters, ask myself what is going on thematically.

I may be doing this while writing something up, or while vegging out to a video game. But there’s a secondary ingestion that goes on after I eat up the comic book itself. And by god, the shit has worked. My memory retention has gone up, my appreciation for the underlying shit has increased, and I have found it way more fulfilling that I did prior to adopting this method.

And then grad school came in and fucked it all up.

I’ve found myself reading five-hundred pages a week, going over dense literature and scholarly articles, and by golly, it vexes my brain. When I throw three or four hours a day into the wind by reading something by Sarah Fielding, my brain is spent. My eyes hurt, and I can’t fathom staring at more pages or giving them worthwhile attention. So I say to myself, “I’ll get to them when I can give them the attention they deserve”, which it seems, is never, lately.

Maybe my entire process is too rigorous, especially for a guy who reads almost exclusively books featuring aliens named Clark and fascists named Bruce and genetic freaks named Scott Summers. Maybe I’m digging too deep into them, but I’ve always thought there was something to be said for what is being done in the more “mindless” comic books featuring the typical tired tropes and enormous muscles.

Interlude out, regularly scheduled vapidity will return next week.