The non-stop flood Zombie of books and variant covers that Marvel has been pumping out for like, five years now, apppears to be spiraling further out of control. How else could you possibly justify the need for providing New Mutants No. 6, with a cover featuring a close-up of Zombie Doug Ramsey…
Needing a Zombie Variant Cover?
I’m well and truly over the whole Zombie craze, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s finally reached its nadir with the whole Blackest Night/Necrosha thing.
If I may remove my dunce cap and put on my philosopher’s hat for a moment, there’s a wonderful book called The Monster Show that makes a very strong case for the theory that the most popular monsters of a given era are reflective of that era’s most prominent sociological problems and anxieties. The fact that we’ve been zombie-obsessed for years, at a time when the country is ignoring news about world-threatening calamities in favor of American Idol voting results, and eschewing original art in favor of pre-fab teenybop garbage and endless rehashing of music and literature created decades past, I can’t help but think that we identify with zombies so much because we have become a culture that borders on the mindless and survives by cannibalizing itself.
I’ve moved on to a new favorite recurring comic book monster: “meat men” of the sort seen recently in Buffy Season Eight, Manhunter, and Batman: Unseen.
After all, if popular monsters represent our real world phobias, the time is right for an avatar representative of the teror of meat.
Sundays are great “wrap-up” days. The news takes a holiday from following current events to summarize the week in wars, health scares, and environmental disasters.
Or, switch the channel, and you’ll see a similar recap of the week in scores, wins and losses, and life-changing injuries from the week in sports.
Change the channel again, and you can enjoy the banter of doughy pundits, along with a token still-hot-but-not-for-much-longer female columnist from the Times, trading barbs about politics.
So, in lazy sunday “here’s what you missed” tradition, here are the highlights of the week that was at Comics Cavern.
Don’t forget – new Venture Bros. tonight! We finally meet Captain Sunshine, who’s come back to avenge his fallen sidekick Wonderboy – and recruit Hank as his replacement! That usually goes well, take the second Robin for instance… oh. Maybe not so much.
Here’s hoping Hank doesn’t fall victim to the sidekick sophomore slump, Jason Todd-style.
So you went to the comic store yesterday and came home with a pile of New Comic Book day goodness. Now you’re stuck with a giant pile of dead trees, comprised of awesome indies, endless crossovers, and the occasional trade paperback. Now what? Which books go to the top of the reading list?
Our pals at the excellent TFAW.com don’t just provide me with my comics fix, they also provide public services, like videos highlighting the week’s new releases. Check out their picks for this week’s funnybooks:
Blackest Night is all that DC has been talking about for as long as I can remember now. They began hyping it immediately after the Countdown/Final Crisis debacle, they hyped it during the long prologue, and they’re hyping it as the story continues. Since the publisher has made it clear that Blackest Night is the single most important thing going on this year, the very axis on which the DC Universe spins, you’d think they might want to exercise a little quality control, particularly in the Green Lantern books.
You’d think. But if that were the case, Green Lantern Corps Editor Adam Schlagman would be out on his ass after letting this typo slip into the single most climatic panel in GLC #41:
Yes, spell checkers will tell you that vial is, in fact, a properly spelled word. It means a flask, or beaker, a physical container. An abomination is not a vial. An abomination is vile. The scene for which this entire book is written falls flat, and pulls the reader right out of their suspended disbelief that makes a story fun, when sloppy editing shows up and brings the whole affair crashing down to Earth.
Editing is more than using spell check. It’s nice to see your name in credits, but editing is, when done correctly, a slow, laborious, hard job requiring concentration and a willingness to at the very least READ THE COPY you are editing.
I’ve never met Adam Schlagman. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen DC’s editorial process in action. This may not be his fault. I, for one, have worked as an editor, and I have had the experience of moronic superiors “correcting” my work as it went to press, resulting in errors showing up under my aegis. Maybe that’s what happened here. The bottom line is that one or more people should have their professional asses handed to them for this. As a reader of one comic with one (glaring) error, this is not a life-changing event for me. But a publishing company that cares at all about quality control should consider this a huge deal.
Pardon the armchair editing, but if DC Editorial isn’t going to enforce high standards than it falls upon the consumers, the readers shelling out their hard-earned $2.99 or more per book, to ask them why.
Zombie ghost dummies? I don’t know about you, but I’ve had that nightmare so many times, it actually sort of freaks me out to see it on the printed page.
Also, it presents a moral dilemma - is re-killing undead wood good or bad from an environmental perspective? Meet undead Scarface - and the last Black Lanterns Batman and Red Robin ever wanted to face - in Blackest Night: Batman #2.
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