As always, “Five & Three” brings you my favorite things in comics this week. Every week I pick my five favorite covers and three favorite panels to create “Five & Three”. I like to talk about why I picked the covers and panels and welcome hecklers and trend setters alike.
What a week! I hope your week has been as busy and exciting as mine. I was one of the lucky few who saw the first 30 minutes of Kevin Smith’s “Tusk” and this week I was fortunate enough to see it and then review the film in its entirety. This week in comics though, my favorite thing is the 2014 City Weekly Arty that I won with my fellow storytellers for “The Salt City Strangers”. We were voted the best indie comic book in the state of Utah by our fans. It is a wonderful honor and is probably going to end up being my favorite thing in comics for the entire year. Stay tuned.
One of the articles I’ve written for Big Shiny Robot that pulled in a ton of views was the teaser for “Spider-verse”. This week the Mike Del Mundo variant of the “Superior Spider-Man #33” tie in issue blew me away. It’s nearly the same as the teaser but it looks really spiffy in the full cover dress.
Image: 13thdimension.com
My pal @Savtastik send this really cool variant to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” by Rebekah Isaacs. It’s has a bit of an Archie Comics vibe to it and we both agreed it was awesome. If you want me to feature your pick, drop me a line on Twitter @MarkAvo.
I love this “Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Witches” cover and I haven’t even had a chance to read it yet. Archaia is producing top notch work and it’s thanks to creators like the amazingly talented S.M Vidaurri who is writing and drawing this issue.
This “Daredevil” cover by Chris Samnee is spooky and “Children of the Corn”-esque. It’s just another example of greatness coming from the Eisner award winning “Daredevil” team of Samnee and Waid.
Wow, the ending to “Translucid” by Claudio Sanchez, Chondra Echert, and Daniel Bayliss wasn’t the Batman and the Joker relationship dissection I thought it would be. The ending seemed completely different than how I see the characters but at this point, I’m not even sure who the Batman character was and who was the Joker character. It could really go either way depending on the Batman books you’ve read or on “your version” of Batman. It certainly would apply with Grant Morrison’s take on how the Joker is never the same because of his personalities. If that’s the case though, I always thought the Joker didn’t actually want Batman to die. You give the series a read and tell me what you think.
This first panel from Thor #25 was sent to me by my friend Chris Hoffman @Hoffmangler. He liked how the vision of the now, the future and the near future were stated succinctly in these three panels.
I love “The Private Eye” by Brian K. Vaughn, Marcos Martin, and Munsta Vicente. Read up on the latest release of issue #8 here. It’ll explain why I like the near future looking book and you’ll laugh when you find out that it’s a digital only book.
The last panel I picked for this week was from the punk rock “Deadly Class #7” by Rick Remender, Wesley Craig, and Lee Loughridge. I picked this because I instantly thought of a passionate highschool relationship I had and how I wasn’t quite sure if she was crazy. Maybe I was the crazy one for staying so long. She was my femme fatale story and whenever I see panels like this one my mind gets nostalgic and my heart has a panic attack.
That’s all for this week. If you disagree with a pick, let me know in the comments or on Twitter @MarkAvo or on Instagram @TheMarkAvo. If you think I should’ve picked something else or if you have a pick in mind for next week, give me a shout out and let me know. If you’d like to check out more “Five and Three” comic book moments start with “Five and Three” from last week. Until next week, meet you all at the Big Shiny Robot: Nerd Swap Meet at the Boehemian on Sunday!