Here are the “rules“.

If you’d like to see the full DC February Cover Solicits head on over to CBR.

Come one, come all, to our bi-monthly installment of DRUNK COVER SOLICITS IN THREE SENTENCES OR LESS!

And this week, we have a very special feature and a very special (also drunk) co-host!  Sue from DC Women Kicking Ass is co-drunk bashing the solicits with me this month.

I am, as per usual, drinking a bottle of Veuve (to start)…Sue, what’s your poison?  Smirnoff Raspberry & Lime cooler, which she says is “pretty delicious”.

ACTION COMICS 6.

SUE: Honestly, that is one of the ugliest covers I’ve ever seen.

KELLY: I appreciate that it’s nice and “equal opportunity” with all the tentacle covers chicks have been subjected to over the years…

SUE:  What’s it supposed to be…is it a bug.

KELLY: Oh, well I don’t know what it’s ACTUALLY supposed to be, I just know it looks naughty.

SUE:  It DOES look like he’s about to get embraced by 7 penises…but why do they have hair on them?

KELLY: I don’t know what the little hairy bits are about

SUE:  This is very dirty.

KELLY:  Agreed.

SUE:  This is VERY dirty…the more I look at it.

KELLY: Yes, it’s extremely suggestive…which I’m not really a fan of, except I appreciate the equal opportunity-ness of it.

ALL STAR WESTERN 6.

KELLY:  I think this is kinda cool, nice color choices.

SUE:  Yeah, the colors are nice.

KELLY:  The darks and lights are good, the composition is nice, and it’s scary.

SUE:  Yeah, it’s suitably horror but not gross.  I like the contrast.  The use of the yellow tones are nice and kind of tones down the grossness.

AMERICAN VAMPIRE 24.

KELLY: Love the illustration, but I find it really creepy the more I look at it…which is probably the point.

SUE:  Well I think the girl looks a bit young.  When I first saw it, I found it very Norman Rockwell like, like the 50′s magazine ads.  Creepy and nostalgic at the same time.  It definitely creates a very visceral response.

KELLY:  It creeps me out, but I feel like that means it’s doing its job.

SUE:  Definitely – it feels very American and evokes that great 50′s nostalgia but with this creepy twist of horror.

ANIMAL MAN 6.

KELLY:  I love Travel Foreman but this cover falls really flat for me.

SUE:  Yeah, I agree.

KELLY:  I like the forward figure (Animal Man) and there’s a nice looseness to it, but the rest is too flat and uninspired for me.

SUE:  Yeah, I feel like he’s wearing Wonder Woman’s pants or something, it looks wrong.  And I can’t really tell it’s Animal Man, at first I felt like it was Aquaman.  And the colors are strange – a lot of red, but not enough contrast.

AQUAMAN 6.

SUE:  (Laughs) It’s MERRRRRAA AND HER THIGGGGHHHS!

KELLY:  Yeah, it’s nice to see Mera front and center but this cover kinda sucks.

SUE:  Yeah, it’s a mess.  Too much going on. Way too much, it needs to be seriously toned down.

KELLY:  Totally.  I like that she’s very powerful and proactive and not some kind of headless damsel in distress, but it’s just a terrible cover. I mean there’s lightning bolts of water, and crazy spirals of water, and cars full of water, and then water explosions, and also fire.  I mean WTF?

BATGIRL 6.

KELLY:  I love this Batgirl cover.

SUE:  This cover is gorgeous.  One of Hughes best. Everything that I think of with Barbara Gordon being Batgirl is represented here.  I love that she and Batman are in synch with each other.  She doesn’t feel secondary to him, but separate.  Great body language.  I just love this.

KELLY: I think you nailed it with them feeling separate.  Like they feel united but also completely their own.  He feels powerful and dark and strong and she feels graceful and fluid.  And I love that they make a graphic symbol while combined, but they also form their own individual symbols too.

SUE:  The minute I saw it I was just like “ah! they got it!”  The expressions, the body language, everything.

KELLY:  Yeah, all the Hughes covers have been fairly pretty, but they haven’t really worked for me, this one just works on every level.

SUE:  It’s really timeless and iconic, just lovely.

BATMAN 6.

KELLY:  I actually really like this, you don’t?

SUE:  I’ve been back and forth on it. I don’t know.  It’s certainly provocative and interesting.

KELLY:  Provocative and interesting is half the battle though, right?  I find this totally terrifying, just scary good horror stuff.  I also like the composition and use of black, and how it’s used graphically i in the bottom half.  I don’t like the cheap photoshop gradient tool for the background, but other than that I really love it.

SUE:  It reminds me of a cover of Gotham Knights.  It feels very 90′s to me.

KELLY: I can see why it feeling 90′s would turn you off, but I don’t really get that from it.

SUE:  I’ll have to look for the cover I’m thinking of…

BATMAN & ROBIN 6.

SUE: Um. I actually kind of like parts of this.  I think the Batman part of it is better than the Robin part of it.

KELLY:  Yeah, it’s funny, Robin (Damian) had not worked for me on ANY of these B&R covers so far.  I really like the Batman parts of this though.  The Batman figure is great, I also like the lightning strike pretty we4ll and the nice shadows that creates.

SUE:  Yeah, if that’s supposed be Damian then it feels very off.

KELLY:  Well, it’s got to be Damian right?  He’s the book co-star.

SUE:  I kind of like how they seem to be doing this air-dance with each other, but because that aspect of it feels similar to the Batgirl cover, it kind of loses by comparison.

KELLY: That’s true.

BATMAN BEYOND UNLIMITED 1.

KELLY:  I really only put this on so we could go BARDDDDDDAAAAA!

KELLY/SUE:  BAAAAARRRRRRRRDDDDDAAAAA!

BATMAN BRAVE & THE BOLD 16.

KELLY:  I only put this up for you.  I’ve got nothing.  :)

SUE:  This is the last issue, which is really sad.  It’s got Batgirl which is nice…this is not one of my favorite covers. I’m so sad their canceling this book, I love it so much.

BATMAN ODYSSEY VOL. TWO 5.

KELLY:  These covers are just Batshit insane.

SUE:  Yeah, I read a little bit of this series and IS just batshit insane.

KELLY:  I guess it gets points at least for being accurate to what’s inside then.

SUE:  Let’s just be glad he has clothes on, because he’s been naked for a good part of that story.

BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT 6.

KELLY:  WHY?!?!  WHY?!?!?!?!?!

SUE:  It’s like Odyssey and Dark Knight…there’s the “Bat Books” and then there’s just these weird books that they let people do that are way off on their own doing their own thing.

KELLY: I guess I wouldn’t be against those books doing their own thing, if it was actually interesting.  But this is LITERALLY just a complete retread of what we’ve all seen before.  What’s the point?  It’s so damn stupid.

BATWING 6.

KELLY:  Eh.  I have nothing.

SUE:  Is that the same knife/sword that Selina had on the Catwoman cover not long ago?  What is up with that?

KELLY:  That knife/sword is like the musical chairs of the Bat-verse – everyone gets a turn!

SUE:  Yeah, I can’t quite get what’s going on.  I do like the glowing Bat on his chest.

KELLY:  Yeah, I’m down with the glowing.  Everything else is MEH.

BATWOMAN 6.

SUE:  Amy Reeder’s Batwoman cover!

KELLY:  Yup, so excited to see this one finally.  We’ve been teased with it so long it’s nice to finally see it popping up in solicits.

SUE:  Yeah, it’s a nice cover.  It’s very thoughtful of the character, well-considered.

KELLY: I agree.  It’s also legitimately scary looking I think, with her putting on the mask, which looks really intense and well-detailed.  It’s great.

BIRDS OF PREY 6.

KELLY:  I read that this is not Saiz…but it looks A LOT like his covers and it’s pretty great.

SUE:  Yeah, can we just say thank God it’s not David Finch again.  Those covers have been just awful.  That said, I don’t think this is a great cover.  It just looks like a panel from inside.

KELLY:  I actually like it quite a bit.  I agree that it looks a bit like a panel, which is too bad, but I really like what’s going on with Poison Ivy and the vines, and her design in general.

SUE:  Yeah, I’m having trouble figuring out how Barbara Gordon fits into this book?  Even from a costume point of view, it’s almost like nobody told her they weren’t doing “full costume”.  It’s like Babs showed up and it’s all “Awwwkwarrrrd”..nobody told her this wasn’t a costume party.  It’s very “one of these things is not like the other.”

KELLY:  I don’t disagree with any of that.  I think I’m just so excited to not see another Finch cover that it’s like THE GREATEST COVER EVER.

SUE:  Haha.  Yeah, no dolls were used in the creation of this cover, and no backs were broken.

KELLY: hahaha!

BLACKHAWKS 6.

SUE:  It’s the CHRISTMAS COVER.

KELLY:  I actually quite like the colors.

SUE:  Yeah, this is the kind of cover that I’d be likely to pick up.

KELLY:  I have to go down as a win for this one, it’s got great colors and composition, I like the use of a single figure, and has wonderful movement, and the positive and negative space is great.

SUE:  Yeah, I agree.

BLUE BEETLE 6.

KELLY:  Another shitty Blue Beetle cover.  Will it ever stop?!

SUE:  Yeah, I have to agree with you.  The covers for this comic have not been good.  They’re not doing this book any favors with these covers.

KELLY: Not at all.  At this point, I pick this book up IN SPITE of the covers.

SUE:  What people liked about Blue Beetle and why it had such a big fanbase was because Jaime Reyes was this great young teenaged character, with a great story, and very little horrifying baggage, people really loved him…and you can’t see any of that here.

KELLY:  Yeah, someone on my column suggested that the Blue Beetle book should be equivalent to new Ultimate Spider-Man, and I said “It should be, but so far it’s not.”

SUE:  Yeah, it could be.  But the covers say nothing about what makes JR such a unique character.  There’s no charm to it, the first Reyes series really had a lot of charm.

KELLY:  Agreed.  If I didn’t have a vested interested in JR and BB in general, I’d never pick up the book based on theses covers.

CAPTAIN ATOM 6.

SUE:  No interest in this book or the cover.  I get just nothing from it.

KELLY:  I have no interest in the book or the cover.  Plus the split screen thing is just so played.  At least the split here is somewhat interesting…but it’s not enough to make it a good cover.

SUE:  Yeah, Captain Atom is not selling well…so it’s odd to me that we’d not even feature him here – you’re getting like 1/3 Captain Atom and 2/3′s who knows what.

CATWOMAN 6.

SUE:  What the fuck?

KELLY:  Seconded.

[both of us flip it upside down to look at it more clearly]

KELLY:  According to this image, Bruce has the smallest dick of all time, based on his hand-size…do you see how small his hand is?!

SUE:  I don’t even think he’s got the correct number of fingers.  I think he’s got a tiny hand, like Kristen Weig on the SNL skit where she has those baby hands.

KELLY:  BWHAHAHAHAHA!

SUE:  Why is his chest sunken in some parts?

KELLY:  What about the sheer size of it?!  It’s so massive…I don’t even…how is it possible.

SUE:  This should be called Drunken Anatomy.

KELLY:  It’s beyond drunken.  Look at how his arm attaches to his torso/back?

SUE:  And her shoulder and boob are the same size…I guess?

KELLY:  Can we also talk about her face?  WTF is up with her face?!

SUE:  Oh, he always draws her all pointy like that.

KELLY: It sucks.

SUE:  Look at the thigh on Batman?!

KELLY:  I know! Do you see how DEEP IT GOES!?!?

SUE:  What a mess.

KELLY:  Do you think he was just counting on nobody every flipping this over so that nobody could see how fucked up it was?

DC UNIVERSE ONLINE LEGENDS 23.

KELLY:  I just put this in so we could talk about BOOBS.

SUE:  I don’t think the boobs are that bad.

KELLY:  It’s ironic, because this artist actually KNOWS what real boobs look like and how they behave, which is part of what’s confusing me.  I’m so used to seeing boobs that are so unreal and jammed into costumes in such unrealistic ways…that this cover ends up freaking me out…but really just because this artist knows what he’s doing.

SUE:  Yeah, we should start a new MEME – BoobsDOworkthatway

KELLY:  Yes!

DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS 6.

KELLY:  This is nice.

SUE:  Well, it’s Sook.  Composition’s great, Sook’s a great artist.

KELLY:  Agreed.  Sook is fantastic, the biggest problem with Sook is that the interiors are not Sook and so you’re frequently disappointed.

DEATHSTROKE 1

KELLY:  Did you read any of this book?

SUE:  No.

KELLY: I had to read this first issue and it TRIED SO HARD to prove that he’s a badass, it told you (over and over) and then  showed you (over and over) and then eventually he kills a handful of characters that they had tried to make you like…so now the idea that 5 issues later they want me to care that he’s crying on a cover…?  BULLSHIT.  Man up dude, you’re a BADASS.  So says your book.

SUE:  The only way I’d read Deathstroke is if they brought back little chipmunk teethed Tara.  I would have read the hell out of Cheshire, Tara, and Deathstroke in a Threes Company style book.  THAT I would read.  This?  No thank you.

DEMON KNIGHTS 6.

SUE:  I love this cover, I love everything about it.  Mike Choi.  I think it’s great. I love the fact that she’s powerful and has all this muscle definition…she’s fighting a fucking triceretops!  This was my second favorite cover of the month next to the Batgirl cover.

KELLY:  Yeah, this doesn’t really do anything for me.  I like the concept a lot, but something about it…I just don’t like the way it looks.  You almost convinced me with your passion though.

SUE:  Like how many times do you see a cover where a strong woman is not posed and pretty…?

KELLY:  I concede that you’re right…I just don’t quite love it.

DETECTIVE COMICS 6.

KELLY:  This is MY 90′s flashback (well, one of two).

SUE:  Tony Daniel channeling Jim Lee.  That is all.

KELLY:  It honestly could not be less interesting if it tried for me.

SUE:  I get that Lee is the house style, and Daniel does that well, but I just have no desire to read what this is about…I’m not the person this is designed for.  I have no interest in it.

KELLY:  Me either.  And look at all the linnnnnnessssss.  Blech.

FABLES 111.

KELLY:  This is a creepy fucking cover, but I like it.

SUE:  I was thinking the same thing – creepy and intriguing and beautiful.  Great use of color.

KELLY:  Just the face on that ship changes the whole tone and dynamic of what it’s about.

SUE:  Definitely.

KELLY:  And as always with Fables, great use of text.

FRANKENSTEIN AGENTS OF SHADE 6

SUE:  Let’s put it this way I’m not reading FAoS and this cover does nothing to make me want to change that.

KELLY:  I just don’t get it.  The color choices make no damn sense.  They seem so arbitrary.  Perhaps they make sense if you pick up the book, but a cover should draw you in and intrigue you, not confuse the fuck out of you.  Why is that big hand AND Frankenstein red…and then everything else are random other colors…Yeah, I don’t get it.

GREEN ARROW 6.

KELLY:  What a fucking horror show.

SUE:  It’s got a lot going on, that’s for sure! It’s got arrows, and guns, and people getting kicked in the face, and women falling down stairs, and kneepads the size of saucers, and doves?!  Was John Woo here?

KELLY:  You really nailed it…you left nothing for me to talk about, except the costume.  Which is just a complete trainwreck.

SUE:  I’ll be picking this up when Nocenti comes on, but I hope the art is better.

KELLY:  Ditto.

GREEN LANTERN 6.

SUE:  I do kind of like this, because like anything that makes Hal look like a douche…which he does here.

KELLY:  Yeah, I don’t think this is a good cover, but the face on Sinestro is good.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS 6.

KELLY:  So many “big gun/penis” jokes spring to mind, I can’t really decide which one to go with.

SUE:  I like that Guy’s gun is dead center and John’s is off center -

KELLY:  What does that MEANNNN?!

SUE:  And look at the size of their calves/boots?!

KELLY:  It makes no sense…and look at Guy’s legs in general…they look like they came from two entirely different people?!

GREEN LANTERN NEW GUARDIANS 6.

SUE:  Yay! Another cover where everyone looks like they’re being thrown up by the universe.  I just don’t get these.  And look at the way Star Sapphire is contorting…so ridiculous.

KELLY:  I appreciate that the artist took the time to draw the little teeth of Star Sapphire’s unzipped zipper, so that we know for sure she COULD zip her top up if she was in a situation that warranted such a thing.  Because you certainly wouldn’t want to zip it up during battle or anything.

SUE:  Yeah, when you’re being burned up by the sun, or whatever is happening here, that’s definitely not a time that you want to protect your boobs.

KELLY:  Definitely not.

GRIFTER 6.

KELLY:  Why is he bound by seatbelts?

SUE:  Bound by seatbelts and surrounded by lower intestines and part of a brain.  Ugh.

HAWK & DOVE 6.

SUE:  Ah yes, it’s Batman has pointed feet cover. Dove and her little cantalope boobs.

KELLY:  I mean let’s just break it down…first of all, she LITERALLY has no neck. He doesn’t have much of one either, but she’s worse. Then you’ve got the hideous gloves and boots, silly feet, terrible posing, terrible expressions, and Batman’s costume is so generic…how does he get away with that when everyone else has to be so careful about the “new designs”?

SUE:  He’s the Batman that can fly in the air by holding onto a balloon string.

KELLY:  BWAAHAHAHAHAHAA.  Yes!  There’s totally a little red balloon just off panel, holding him up.  You nailed it.

HELLBLAZER 288.

KELLY:  Great illustration.

SUE:  It is.  It’s John Constantine.  It’s a traditional Hellblazer cover.  Colors are great.

KELLY:  Yeah, colors are great, lights and darks are awesome.  Good stuff.

HUNTRESS 5.

SUE:  Yeah, I’ve gone full circle on these.  I thought the first was awful…so bad they actually tweaked her face. then the second one was okay, then the third was here in the ditch which was pretty good…and then the fourth was not bad, and now here we are back to terrible.  The face on her is just terrible.  I bet if you overlayed with on the Catwoman face, you’d see a lot of similarities.  I’d be better with this if the face was better…I don’t mind a woman being angry…but the eyes are just so crazy.  Ugh.

KELLY:  This is fucking terrible.  Which is a shame because I agree with you that two or three of these covers have been good, but this is the worst one yet.  The anatomy is so painfully off.  Her boobs are swelled to an INSANE size, yet the rest of her torso is almost completely missing…her arm is coming out of what…directly out of her boob?  And the face.  Ugh.  Plus…look at the guy she’s straddling…look at HIS anatomy…how does that even work?  What a mess.

IVAMPIRE 6.

KELLY: I love this cover.

SUE:  Yeah, I like this too.  This must be “get Batman into all the books month”, cause he’s showing up everywhere as a guest star.

KELLY:  Yeah he is, but he really works on this cover.  I love the monochromatic red, and the composition how it’s all sliding off the page, it had great movement and use of space.  I also love that Batman kind of looks a little bit like these bat/vampire characters.  Probably my favorite from I,Vampire so far.  Very cool.

SUE: Yeah, very cool.

iZombie 22.

KELLY:  This cover is not good.  I love Mike Allred’s work, but this just doesn’t work.

SUE:  It doesn’t bother me that much.

KELLY:  Ugh.  Gwen doesn’t really look like she’s sitting on that statue…she seems like she might fall off at any second, like she’s not really IN the space.  While I don’t mind everything but Gwen being grey, I think there’s not nearly enough variation in the greys, it’s all very the same color, from the background to the foreground, to the statue itself.  It almost feels unfinished to me.

SUE:  Yeah, I do think the perspective looks a little wonky.

KELLY:  Yes!  Totally wonky.  Disappointing.

JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK 6.

SUE:  I liked this.

KELLY:  I like this too.

SUE:  I like Janin’s art, I know not everyone does, but it works for me.  It’s a team cover, which is nice. It balances nicely, with kind of a mirroring between Zatanna and Madame Xanadu.  It feels very magical which I think is good.

KELLY:  Yeah, some of Janin’s interior art suffers for me with “sameface” especially on his ladies, but this is really nice.  Well detailed, good colors and expressions.  Composition is a little busy for me, but it works.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL 6.

SUE:  Okay, yeah, so I told anyone I’d pay them if they could pose in that post that Vixen is in..

KELLY:  It’s not the posing so much for me as the impossibility of Vixen’s leg actually being connected to her torso.  And the same is true with Godiva…had Finch never seen a woman’s leg and torso that connected to one another.  Cause he could just go outside and look around for that kind of thing…

SUE:  Vixen is also really whitewashed here.

KELLY:  Yes, both in her literal coloring and in her facial features.  All the women look exactly the same in the face, yet there’s quite a bit of dude variation.

SUE:  Yeah, the best thing about the cover is the shit eating grin on Guy’s face, which feels right.

LEGION LOST 6.

SUE:  Yeah, I just feel like this is so seen it before.

KELLY:  I agree, there’s nothing bad about it, but there’s just nothing of note.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES 6.

SUE:  I actually don’t hate it.  It kind of makes me wonder who she is and makes me wonder about what’s going on.

KELLY:  Well, that’s a pretty successful cover then.

SUE:  Yeah, I don’t love the colors, but it’s intriguing and I don’t hate it.

KELLY:  The anatomy is a little wonky but the composition is good.  I don’t love the colors either, but at least they have pop.

LEGION SECRET ORIGIN 5.

SUE:  Looks like fan service for people who love the Legion.  It succeeds as a cover because it has a lot for fans to appreciate I guess.

KELLY:  Yeah, I think that’s fair.  It doesn’t do anything for me as a cover, but I can see why people who love the Legion would appreciate it.

MEN OF WAR 6.

SUE:  I like this cover a lot.

KELLY:  Yeah, Men of War has had pretty good covers so far.  They have a lot of visual punch.

SUE:  It’s very intriguing.  The image of the mushroom cloud also looking like a helmet, and the colors are great.

KELLY:  It’s getting progressively harder to type as I drink more…

MISTER TERRIFIC 6.

KELLY: Love JG Jones, but these last few covers have not been good, after the first two being absolutely gorgeous.  I don’t know what happened.

SUE:  Are they like a wrestling team?  Is that what’s going on here?  Is this supposed to be appealing to people who like tag team wrestling?

KELLY:  Haha.  I love the pale colors on this but the anatomy is just terribly and everything is so stiff.  It’s bad.

MY GREATEST ADVENTURE 5.

SUE:  I have no interest in this.

KELLY:  Yeah, I also think that while the illustration work is good, it really suffers from context.  What’s her name – pinky there – Tanga – whatever her name is – just looks like the “cute sexy objectified character” since she’s on a cover with a giant robot and a big trash dude.  It’s unfortunate.

NIGHTWING 6.

KELLY:  I hate this cover with the heat of a thousand suns.

SUE:  And what is he pointing the gun at?  Is that Dick?  Or is it just Dick in the sky…?  I do like Dick’s very pretty hair.  So I’m torn if only for the hair.

KELLY:  Yeah, I’m not torn at all.  I hate the illustration work, it’s so emo and overly emotional.  Also, I don’t want to just bathe in stereotypes, but if that’s Dick crying there with the shoulder wound, then I just want to be all “Man the fuck up man!  You’re Fucking Nightwing!”

SUE:  But is that him?

KELLY:  Then that’s just another failing of the cover.  If it’s not then it looks WAY too much like Dick.

SUE:  You know what would be great, if this WAS a story about Dick suddenly just having a giant head. If this was the issue where Nightwing’s head got ginormous.  Every page could just be ginormous Nightwing head with pretty hair going “HEEEEEYYYYY!!!”  “NOOOOOO!!!!”  “STTTOOOOOOPPP!!!”  It could be called “The Adventures of Nightwing’s Ginormous Head!”

KELLY: I would buy every issue of “The Adventures of Nightwing’s Ginormous Head”.

NORTHLANDERS 49.

KELLY:  Love this.  Great movement, great lights and darks.

SUE:  Beautiful, very intriguing.  Who is this?

KELLY:  I think it’s Carnevale.  I believe he does all the Northlanders covers…?

O.M.A.C. 6

SUE:  I guess the whole thing is that they’re channeling Jack Kirby and so if that’s what they’re going for, then they’re successful.

KELLY:  Yeah, I don’t get it.

PENGUIN: PAIN & PREJUDICE 5

KELLY:  I like this, it’s smart and the execution is very good.

SUE:  Yeah, he’s created a robot Batman, it’s good.  And I like that he doesn’t look like a parody of the Penguin, like on the Detective cover.

KELLY: Yes, I agree.  He feels like a real person…a real character.  It’s good.  Nice limited color palette as well.

RED HOOD & THE OUTLAWS 6.

KELLY:  At least it’s not offensive? ;)

SUE:  Yeah, I don’t hate this, the colors are nice and the idea is intriguing. I can see people being pulled in by the cover, so that makes it pretty successful to me.  You have a lot of variety in the dead men.

KELLY:  I agree that the colors are wonderful.  And I agree that the variety in the dead bodies is unique, not a lot of artists would pay that close of attention to bodies.  But on the whole there’s not much there to me.

RED LANTERNS 6.

SUE:  Ugh.

KELLY:  Ditto.

SUE:  They’re ANNNNNNNGGGGGGRRRRRRYRYYYYYYYYYY.  I guess that’s all we need to know.  If it was starring Dex every month, I’d read that, or if Mera defected to Red Lanterns, I’d read it then.

KELLY:  I still wouldn’t.  Especially if Benes was drawing it.

RESURRECTION MAN 6.

SUE:  Oh, is it Arkham Asylum?

KELLY:  How original!

SUE:  I guess I’m intrigued by why.

KELLY:  I don’t care at all.  I guess I’m just grateful the models…the Body Doubles or whatever they are are gone.  Blah.

SCALPED 56.

KELLY:  Very nice Scalped.

SUE:  Yes, very nice.  Simple.

KELLY  Simple and smart.  It has great texture to it.

SUE:  Yes, and the way colors are used, and the paper effect is great.   You get the sense this is an important issue.

SPACEMAN 4.

SUE:  Did you read the first issue of this?

KELLY:  Not yet, I’m trying to track it down.

SUE:  It was pretty interesting.  I like this cover okay.  It’s like Clockwork Orange met the Punisher and a giant pair of boobs.

KELLY:  I concur.

STATIC SHOCK 6.

SUE:  This is the same thing I was talking about with Blue Beetle…now he looks pretty badass there which is a good thing, but it doesn’t look like a cover of a book so much as a poster of the character.  He’s such a great character, but I just don’t think they’re playing up enough the idea that he’s a teenage boy with these incredible powers.  The cover isn’t bad but doesn’t SAY anything about him.

KELLY:  I can’t really do anything better that.  The first Static Shock covers by Brunner and Renzi were pretty good – they had great movement and really impactful color and they felt really youthful and vibrant to me, but they’ve gone off the rails in the last few issues for me.

STORMWATCH 6.

KELLY:  Yuck.  What a mess.

SUE:  What is that thing?

KELLY:  I have no idea, and I’ve been reading this book.  Here’s the thing to me…you barely even see the characters there…what’s the point?  I’m not reading for whatever that thing is…I’m reading for the characters…and they’re completely lost there.

SUICIDE SQUAD 6.

SUE:  There ya go.  It’s putting what it’s selling right out front, right?  Most recognizable character and her boobs right out front.  I guess that’s what this book is about, and so that’s what will sell this books.

KELLY:  Yeah, I guess you’re right.  If comics is about selling books, and we know this is what this book is about, then I guess it’s the perfect cover.  I, however, fucking hate it.

SUE:  I don’t hate the cover…it’s not that original, but in terms of what this cover is supposed to do, it makes sense.

KELLY:  I still hate it.

SUPERBOY 6.

SUE:  As I said, February is “beat the shit out of Supergirl month”.

KELLY:  Yeah, this is a weird trend.  Also, having her guest star in other books really shows off the extra-badness of this costume.

SUE:  Oh yeah, the knee boots especially look terrible here.  And even the cloak which her artist does very well with looks like you’d buy it at a Medieval Faire here.  Cheap and cheesy.

KELLY:  Totally.

SUPERGIRL 6.

KELLY:  This one is pretty good actually.

SUE:  Yeah, the facial work is good.

KELLY:  Totally. I also appreciate that in the hands of a lesser or more cheesecake-y artist we’d see Supergirl’s ass here, but its nicely covered by her cape, which is great.  This has good movement though, and composition, positive and negative space.

SUE:  Yeah, the background color is a bit off to me.

KELLY:  Yeah, I see what he was going for, but it’s not my favorite choice, I think something else might have worked a bit better.

SUPERMAN 6.

KELLY:  His costume is even worse than hers honestly.  Which says a lot.

SUE:  This cover makes me very uncomfortable.  Why does someone want to buy this?  They want to see why Superman is beating her up, or why someone has beaten her up?  I guess for people who like the super-family, this is intriguing to them, but I don’t get it.

KELLY:  Does nothing for me, but then I’m not a big “super-family” fan.

SUE:  Too many memories of Crisis for me.

KELLY:  Yeah, I can see that.

SUPERNATURAL 5.

KELLY:  I just put this in for Dustin Nguyen…so pretty.  Great colors and texture, great looseness to it.

SUE:  Yeah, this is very creepy and cool.

SWAMP THING 6.

SUE:  Yeah, I like this one.  It has all the concepts you would expect to see in Swamp Thing, executed nicely.

KELLY:  I really like the composition, and the use of the green is great, the way it leads they eye.  I appreciate the way the female character is rendered, very realistically and not objectified.  This has great texture to it as well – in the way the background is rendered, which is key for the content of the book.  I usually hate it when artists work their large signatures into the composition, but this one kind of works for me, strangely enough.

TEEN TITANS 6.

KELLY:  I hate this so damn much.

SUE:  I don’t like any of this art.  The scraggly scratchy lines. It’s got Tim Drake the Swan King or whatever his name is…

KELLY: Yes, I’m with you on this, it’s overly fussy, why use one line when we could use 42 lines?!?!?!  So much going on, there’s no cohesion, nowhere for you eye to go.  There’s no way to guess what the story is or to relate to any of the characters, just terrible.

THE FLASH 6.

SUE:  Great.

KELLY:  I love the way the Flash figure is handled – great execution.  And the colors on the whole are great, but I don’t live the background images of the people.  They’re kind of saccharine to me, or overly earnest or something.

THE RAY 3.

SUE:  Great cover.

KELLY:  Agreed.  Very cool.

SUE:  It’s got a touch of art deco which I like.

KELLY:  There’s several things I love about this cover – first and foremost, the glow Igle has created for The Ray is just fucking fantastic, he totally looks lit from within.  And that contrasted with the very deep dark shadow he’s creating, it’s just great.  The way the whole page is tilted is wonderful and the composition and negative and positive space.  All great.  Also…is she wearing spanx?  I find that hilarious, but accurate.

SUE:  Hmmm.  I think they might just be boy shorts.

KELLY:  Seems a little long to me to be boy shorts…

THE SHADE 5.

SUE:  I think it’s a compelling cover…very interesting  Pirates don’t really do it for me though.  Also there’s too much going on for me I think.

KELLY:  I agree too much going on, but moreover I don’t really feel like it’s a good tonal fit for the book.  I feel the same way about the Cully Hamner issue that came out, which was beautiful but tonally not a great fit for the story.  It feels that way here too, even though it’s a great piece by a great artist (Harris)

SUE:  I think the way the baby is lit throws everything off a bit.

KELLY: I agree.  It’s hugely distracting to the piece overall.

THUNDER AGENTS 4.

KELLY:  Pretty cool, great colors and movement, wonderful composition.  Such emotion in the face.

SUE:  Great cover.  Very nice.

TINY TITANS 49.

KELLY:  I put this in just for you Sue.

SUE:  I love Tiny Titans…the Squishy Titans are not my favorite, but it’s still adorable, makes me smile and laugh.

KELLY:  It’s just so fun.

UNWRITTEN 34.5

SUE:  Great cover.  Scary, foreboding, real wrath of god shit coming down. Beautiful covers overall, very compelling.

KELLY:  Yeah, Unwritten covers are always great.  This is no exception.  Love the colors on this one.

VOODOO 6.

KELLY:  At least she’s covered up, right?

SUE:  Yeah, I did say when I saw this earlier that I appreciate that her cleavage is covered up.  But I don’t like this very much.  I appreciate that she looks like a woman of color, but I don’t really find much appealing about this.

KELLY:  I repeat my first statement, that’s all I got.

WONDER WOMAN 6.

KELLY:  It’s awesome when someone like Cliff Chiang is doing Wonder Woman covers, because you always know you can end on a good note!

SUE:  Yeah, I love this shot. I love that she’s down on one knee and it actually looks exactly like that, unlike so many of the characters we saw this month from artists that don’t know how to draw that.  I love how strong and powerful she looks.  There’s a lot going on here and it’s all really good. The glowing lasso is great.

KELLY:  Yes, she looks powerful and strong, but realistic.  The composition is great, the colors palette is very interesting to me, and I love that about it.  The glow of the lasso is great.  This is probably my favorite cover thus far.  It would be second if the first issue had been Diana with the axe instead of the arrows, but it wasn’t, so yeah, this gets #1 for me.  :)

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AND THAT’S IT FOLKS!  Thanks for playing along.  This was actually really difficult to do…especially since I was drinking…so I’m not sure when we’ll do it again, but let us know what you thought…as always!