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. 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.
This week I scoured covers via ComiXology after picking my favorites from the “New This Week” at Dr. Volts Comic Connection in Salt Lake City. I found that if I had stuck with the physical rack and not checked the digital one that I’d have missed out on a great cover from Alternative Comics. “Sunbeam on The Astronaut” by Steven Cerio jumped out at me and I just had to pick it as my opening salvo.
Image from ComiXology
The next cover I picked was a killer nod of the hat to Batman on during his 75th anniversary year by The Shadow. In a crazy cool version of Ouroboros, the cover to “The Shadow” #26 by Alex Ross is something I want up on my wall. Give it a long look because, if you love comics, you’ll know it’s a nod to “Detective Comics” #27 where The Batman made his first appearance.
After that cover I’d like everyone to check out the amazing one brought to my attention by my wife. She not only kicks my butt at everything creative she also has a wonderful artistic pallet. The cover to “The Returning” #3 from BOOM! Studios with cover art by Frazer Irving is an example of Brandi always finding the great ones I happen to have missed.
Oh “Wasteland” from Oni Press, how many times have you barely missed my list of favorite covers? This one just had to make the cut. Christopher Mitten is s champ and deserves to have his art in every “Five and Three”. As an interesting aside, I think this “Five and Three” is the most diverse “Five and Three” in terms of publishers since I started doing them last year.
The cover that immediately caught my eye this week is my final cover. “The New 52: Futures End” #2 by Ryan Sook is so very cool and eye catching I instantly knew it would I’d be including it in this week’s list of my favorite things in comics.
On to the panels and I had a rough time picking out things that weren’t spoilerific or out of context to people who weren’t reading the books. With that in mind, how about some panels with a nifty cat baking cookies from the new book “Shutter” from Image comics? Written by Joe Keatinge and with art from Leila del Duca, I can honestly say that “Shutter” was the trippiest thing I read in comics this week. Note that this week was the final issue of Joe Casey’s “Bounce” about a stoner super-hero and you’ll understand how trippy-dippy and awesome Shutter is. Anthropomorphic animals and magic and a beautiful photographer are all reasons you should go pick up this book and grab issue 1 if it’s still there.
I love Bendis’ All-New X-Men. I also love The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants from the future that first showed up in the “Battle of the Atom” storyline. Stuart Immonen draws some pretty intimidating villians and they’re on full display in this panel (except for Raze).
My favorite moment this week came from “Captain Marvel “ issue 3. The look on Carol Danvers face as the alien kid bursts into tears was terrifically illustrated by David Lopez. I can’t get enough of Kelly Sue DeConnick’s work and I’m loving every page I turn of “Captain Marvel”.
That’s it for the art and panels this week. If you’d like more of the same you can check out last week’s issue here. For more of my nonsensical ramblings about other people’s wonderful creations, I do just that with some buddies for the video podcast The deviantArt Podcast over here. Let me know what you think about my picks in the comments or on Twitter & Instagram. Thanks for coming, and I hope to see you next week.