How about this one, MacQ?

Um, you know that rant that people keep doing about how stupid it is when gangbangers are shown holding their pistols sideways? It's worse with a bow. It looks stupid, it doesn't work, and usually the artist ends up having the string pass through or over the archer's arm.

Note on the first cover that Connor is drawing the bow up over his shoulder. Try it sometime. He's also got his draw hand palm-down. Dumb.

Note on the second cover that Ollie's draw hand is positioned vertically. He can't possibly be holding the string. It's in the correct position if his bow were vertical, but this pose is basically impossible.

Ditto Alex Ross's JLA cover. The best archery in this month's covers is Ty Templeton's Teen Titans Go, and he's got Speedy shooting off the wrong side of the bow.

Gene Ha did a JLA cover with Red Arrow (Roy Harper), and he had the good sense to e-mail and ask for advice. It looks gorgeous and actually looks like somebody who knows how to shoot a bow.

Seems to me to stongly echo (if not directly homage) the classic "Days of Future Past" cover where Wolverine protects Kitty from unseen but presumably impending doom on the other side of the spotlight.

The Jeff Smith Shazam! cover is striking, but it's also the same image they showed when the project was announced at the 2004 SDCC. I'd be inclined to rank it lower just for that reason.

But that's just it. Corrigan is actually a more conflicted character than Crispen Allen. Corrigan is torn between his base desire for vengeance, which fuels his desire to exact Aparo-esque acts of grotesque cosmic slaughter, and his natural, human senses of conscience and empathy, which tell him what he's doing is wrong and insane. His dilemma is that he's been given the power to get revenge on anyone and anything, and the only limit is his own morality. Throughout the Ostrander/Mandrake run, the conflict is between the essential role of the Spectre as the "wrath of God" and Corrigan's growing realization that such an entity makes no sense.

Allen, though, starts off with this conflict more or less resolved. He already knows the Spectre is crazy, and he doesn't seem to have any desire to go around avenging the murdered dead; in fact, he's started off his ghostly career thoroughly disgusted with the whole concept of the Spectre. The only explanation for why he continues to be the Spectre at all is a fatalistic one: Allen is explicitly presented as a man who's been robbed of his autonomy by a higher power, and is helpless to prevent the Spectre from going off on its merry, death-dealing way, much less control it. Corrigan's conflict was internal, between his base and better natures; Allen's is entirely external, caught in a hopeless struggle between himself and an entity that arbitrarily possesses him from time to time. Allen's dilemma is far less interesting because it doesn't really tell us anything meaningful about ourselves or our world. Corrigan's question is "can justice be immoral?" Allen's question is "what if you were dead and a ghost, and this bigger meaner ghost kept bossing you around?"

We could totally make out.

Seriously, though, you should come to Rocketship.

Well, I don’t think Absolutes are determined by quality but rather by popularity. Is the book popular enough to convince people to drop over $70 to purchase it? There are many books that are great quality but wouldn’t get many sales at $75. Long Halloween is total crap, but it’s crap that people inexplicably love and find to be one of the greatest works of the medium.

I still love you, T.

In fairness, each issue of New Frontier was double-sized and more costly. It had better be good by then!

New Frontier was an awesome book within the first part of the first issue!! The Losers story, by itself, would be enough to make that book awesome.

Am I missing something? Why is the idea of the Spectre with a goatee so lame? It’s just facial hair, people.

Lame facial hair!

The Robin cover is an homage, right? But what’s it an homage to? I’m irritated that I can’t quite place it.

I'll give a cool point to the person who can find it!

I mean, a poster book of Michael Turner covers would ALSO sell well, wouldn’t it?

Trust me, if he stays exclusive enough at either company and produces a sizeable enough amount of covers to fill up a book, it'll happen. And it'll be an expensive hardcover to boot.

Can't disagree with that. Long Halloween wasn't that bad. The story was fair to middling, but the art is some of the best art ever to grace a Batman story (behind Batman: Year One obviously) so an Absolute edition seems as justified here as it is for most of the other editions.

With that Superman cover I'd definitely say he is touching the world. If you couldn't see his cape an leg behind the moon it would be less obvious. A bit reckless really though. At the very least he'll have caused a tidal wave doing that