Breaking Coverage: Bagley’s Binder of Mutants

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“Every Mutant Ever” drawn across six comics might not fly on Krakoa.

WARNING
Post contains mild spoilers for House of X and Powers of X.
Post also contains gluten.

Early last month, Marvel officially relaunched their line of X-Men books with X-Men #1. These books are spinning out of the super exciting and critically-acclaimed (and sometimes kind of culty) House of X and Powers of X combo mini series. Under the banner of “Dawn of X,” Marvel is kicking off the new generation of X-Men books with six titles released over a month and a half: X-Men, Marauders, Exclaibur, New Mutants, X-Force and Fallen Angels. If you happen to be curious about how I feel about each of these, you can find out on my podcast, Cover B, where I talk about each of these. Today, however, I’m not going to be discussing the titles themselves. Instead, I want to talk about the connecting covers by Mark Bagley.
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Breaking Coverage: Phil Noto

From time to time, it’s good to salute the fine, hardworking men and women that give life to the comics we know and love.

This week I wanted to point out Phil Noto. Currently, Noto is doing a run of Marvel 80th Anniversary variants that combine to make the absolutely lovely full image posted above.
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Breaking Coverage: This Week People Get Straight F***in’ WRECKED from Behind

Interesting trend in covers this week. It seems many people just wanted to go about their day and enjoy their lives when suddenly SOMEONE SNEAKS UP BEHIND THEM AND FUCKS ‘EM UP PROPER.

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Me thinks comic characters really need to be more aware of their surroundings.

I like to think this is a metaphor and the comics industry is trying to keep us mindful of the truth. It’s a new year, and we’re all making resolutions or introspectively planning out how to better ourselves. It’s nice to be reminded that you’ll be strolling along with the best intentions when life and the real world will pop out from behind a bush or partition and kick you in the spine. Gotta be ready for that.

Thank you, comics, for reminding us all of the inevitability of getting ambushed from behind!

Good lookin’ out.


On second thought, this could be a cry for help. Comics industry, are you okay? Do we need to call someone? If you need assistance, next week have your covers featuring characters blinking twice. That’s how we’ll know.

Poor comics industry. I told you that you were hanging with a bad crowd.

~C

Breaking Coverage: Return of Wolverine #3

Scenario: Your friend of many years, someone who you have shared many laughs and hard times with, possibly even been intimate with, dies. A few years later, you find that someone has exhumed your friend’s body and later find that this person is actually alive after all, though you aren’t entirely sure how. How would you react when coming face to face with that person? Bursting with joy? Overcome by sadness? Generally overflowing with questions?

Well, if you’re a member of the X-Men, you’ve definitely had this experience…. Probably a few times. I mean, the X-Men have a tendency to just up and die only to be back later like “what’s for lunch, guys?” It’s understandable that after a few times losing teammates to hell or giant space bullets, you’d probably get a little desensitized at some point. Case point:

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Breaking Coverage: Shippin’ Out to West Coast

Occasionally, a cover comes along that just perfectly summarizes the direction the comic market is going oh so perfectly.

Case in point, Marvel and this week’s cover to West Coast Avengers #1.

West Coast

Let’s look at the characters on that scooter, real quick:

Hawkeye (Kate Bishop) = Solo Title – Cancelled – Last Issue 3/7/18

Gwenpool = Solo Title – Cancelled – Last Issue 2/28/18

America Chavez = Solo Title – Cancelled – Last Issue 2/28/18

Quentin Quire = Team Series (Generation X) – Cancelled – Last issue 2/21/18

Fuse = Brand new to the series, was also in Kate Bishop’s solo series (?)
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Breaking Coverage: Batman’s Nemesis

Well folks, it’s happened: The most ambitious crossover in history has hit the shelves. That’s right. Archie Meets Batman ’66 is finally here.

archie bats

Damn, Batman… chill.

Here we have some innocent teens in the 1960s just trying to have band practice and then BAM, in swoops AdamĀ  West and a guy in man-panties and now Archie has to explain to his dad why the shed’s window is smashed. I mean look at them all, they’re terrified. What the hell did they do to deserve such swift, brutal justice?

Wait, hold on.

archie bats

Okay, so Jughead totally did something.
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Breaking Coverage: A Twist of the Knife

Batman #50 came out this week, and people are fairly disappointed in the result. For those Not in the know, Batman and Catwoman were getting married this issue, and the event was HIGHLY publicized, with news sites that aren’t even comic-specific reporting on the impending nuptials, most notably the New York Times. Throughout the 26 issues following the proposal, writer Tom King handle the relationship of Bat and Cat extraordinarily well and made their resolve to marry really just fit with their personalities and roles in crime fighting. It was a romance grounded in crazy world of killer clowns and patent-leather justice. Somehow, it just felt real.

So, what happened?
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Breaking Coverage: Kitty Pryde’s Powers

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For those who aren’t aware, Kitty Pryde, previously Shadowcat at points, is a member of the X-Men family and is easily one of the most important remaining X-Men. She rose from sideline character who was often the source of teenage antics and damsel distresses to cold, badass mentor over her X-Tenure and has recently taken up the mantel of Headmaster at Xavier’s School for People Who Can Do Weird Shit. Her powers, aside from some random inserts for story purposes, consist predominantly of being able to “phase” through solid matter, walls, people, etc. Though that particular power seems simplistic, it has been fairly useful for Kitty and she has trained herself to be an incredibly effective combatant and make use of her phasing for more than just hiding/running. She also has the ability to phase through electrical components and effectively fry them, become entirely invisible, and use her phasing to resist telepathic intrusion. One of her shining moments in X-History involved her phasing into a giant bullet that hurdled toward Earth and changing it’s trajectory, becoming adhered to the bullet as it flew endlessly through the cosmos (don’t worry, she came back…. because comics). So, it’s pretty badass, in the end.
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Breaking Coverage: Amazing Spider-Man #800

No I am not here to talk about how this issue has a metric TON of different covers.

800 all covers

I’ve also decided I’m not gonna talk about how out of that myriad of covers, half seem to think this issue is some sort of milestone, “this changes Spider-Man comics forever” kinda issue and the other half seems to think “let’s just focus on this Red Goblin guy.” Seriously though, the amount of Gwen Stacy on these covers is just a big ol’ bait and switch. I guess it’s because Norman is the focal point? I don’t really get it, just seems like weird covers that are unrelated to the action of the book.

Anywho, I wanna talk just about the main cover:

Spidey 800
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