Author Archives: Doc

Bates Motel S1 E2

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Spoilers

“Nice Town You Picked, Norma”

Man, Freddie Highmore can give some death stares unlike anyone else. His eyes are amazingly creepy and, at times, simply frightening. You can see the insanity inside them, making him a great Norman Bates.

Norma’s first son and Norman’s half-brother Dylan arrived at the beginning of episode, creating tension within the Bates family. He had so much anger directed toward Norma, who he did not call Mom, but by her actual name, and the tension between him and Norman was obvious. Dylan’s anger toward Norma boiled over as Norman tried to defend his mother’s honor.

Vera Farmiga played Norma with such a depth that elevated this character into one of the most compelling character on the show. She is so mysterious and enigmatic. You are never quite sure what she is thinking behind each stare. When she was questioning Emma about her disease, I could not tell if she was interested because she was being empathic or if she was saying it to let Norman hear about the things about her cystic fibrosis because she was jealous of any other girl who might have a connection to Norman.

Romero continued to be suspicious of Norma after they found the truck of Keith Summers and a witness had said that Keith was seen arguing with Norma and Norman at the Hotel. Norma is cool as can be during the interactions, hiding the real anxiety beneath the surface. Keith was the man who raped Norma and whom she killed and dumped in the lake. Some of the word play between Norma and Romero was well written and jumped off the screen.

The town that they have moved to is shown to be a darker place than Norma had expected, with a deep criminal underground involved.

After episode number two, the storytelling is excellent. They bring up storylines that continue to service these characters while focusing on the unhealthy relationship between mother and son. A relationship that we know will end up in tragedy.

Bates Motel S1 E1

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Spoilers

“First You Dream, Then You Die”

Whoa. I had forgotten how much I loved this series.

I needed a new series to rewatch and I came across Bates Motel on Amazon Prime. I used to love this show when it was on A & E, but rewatching this first episode reminded me how amazing this show was.

Norma Bates and her son Norman leave Arizona to get a new start six months after her husband died. They wind up at an iconic house and motel from the movie, Psycho.

The idea of having a show that took place as a prequel to Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Psycho was a great idea and the execution was even better.

Freddie Highmore and Vera Farmiga are absolutely brilliant as son and mother in this remarkable series. They both totally embody these characters and you just ache for them, especially knowing their ultimate fates.

The first episode pulled no punches either as there is a brutal scene where Norma is raped by the motel’s disgruntled former owner and an equally brutal scene where Norma stabbed said rapist to death with a butcher’s knife.

You can’t help but root for these people as Highmore and Farmiga are absolutely exceptional. You can see the mental illness that takes root inside Norman. Just a glance in his eyes tells so much about his lack of stability.

I loved the inclusion of Richard of LOST, Nestor Carbonell as Sheriff Alex Romero. He is an excellent actor and he brings Alex alive. He creates a totally different character than Richard of LOST and that is a tough thing to do. Admittedly, he does not appear to be that quick in the opener as he takes a pee beside the shower where the dead body of the rapist was hidden. That’s okay. Just prevents Norma from having to kill a couple of more.

This was a fantastic show and I am really looking forward to rewatching the entire run over the next few months.

The Detective Daniel Prophet Podcast

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Welcome. This is the first ever EYG Podcast. I am a teacher at a middle school and we do a weekly squad. My squad was the Actor’s Guild and we would do some improv and acting exercises.

Then I took a class for license renewal that dealt with podcasts in the classroom, and i was inspired. I decided that the Actor’s Guild could do a podcast. I would write up a ficitonal “true crime” type story and we would record it.

I set the podcast in my ficitonal setting of Dalton hill, which is one of the books that I have written. We then spent our time in squads working on recording these scenes.

I am very please with how it came out. A goal was to get this on Spotify, and I am proud to announce that epiosode one is live on Spotify.

We are not professionals and a lot of the voices are kids, so there are some stumbles and some errors, but I am overall very pleased. If we had more time allotted to the recording, we could have really done a fabulous job.

There will be six episodes of this podcast, entitled “The Detetcive Daniel Prophet Podcast” being released over the next few months. I am very proud of these kids and I am proud of the podcast, warts and all.

Here it is…

The Jinx Part Two s2 E5

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Spoilers

“Mostly the Truth”

It’s Bob’s turn to testify.

He had to testify because they had stipulated the fact that Bob had written the cadaver note and Bob had to explain that for the jury. Because he had to explain that fact that he wound up admitted to, Bob was able to be cross-examined by the prosecutor John Lewin.

Lewin planned on showing the jury that Bob was a liar… perhaps even pathological. Lewin picked his testimony apart. Bob had told a story of how he would play Uno and throw the frisbee with his mom, brother and father. Lewin pointed out that Uno was created in 1971 and frisbees were created in 1958 and Bob’s mom died in 1950. This showed clearly that those ‘memories’ were not true.

Nine days of cross-examination. Whoa.

Lewin got Bob to admit that he had lied about some things during his testimony and that if he had killed Susan, he would lie about it.

Those words are shocking.

The trial started really strong for Bob and it took a major downswing.

When they played the “Killed them all, of course” clip from the first Jinx show, it was an amazing moment. Bob said that he had said that he muttered the words “They will all think that I” ahead of those five words. However, they did not let that stand.

Another amazing moment was when Bob, who was saying things that he would lie about, said that he would lie about where Kathie was buried. The prosecutor jumped on that phrasing immediately and it sounded terrible.

The verdict came in: Guilty. Durst was not there at the time because he had been exposed to Covid.

Shockingly, since Bob was not there, someone had to tell him that he had been convicted. But none of his own lawyers did it. They left town imediately.

It was Bob’s current wife, Debbie’s lawyer who told him.

And that feels like the next piece of the story.

Twister

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I wanted to do a rewatch of the 1996 film Twister starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton since there is the movie Twisters, which I do not know if it is a sequel, reboot or continuation, coming out this summer. I rented it on Amazon Prime tonight and gave it a rewatch.

I was not a fan of Twister the first time I watched it back in the 90s. I did not see it in a theater so it must have been a rental. I remember thinking it was pretty dumb.

I do not think my opinion of the film changed much after watching it in 2024.

According to IMDB, “TV weatherman Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) is trying to get his tornado-hunter wife, Jo (Helen Hunt), to sign divorce papers so he can marry his girlfriend Melissa (Jami Gertz). But Mother Nature, in the form of a series of intense storms sweeping across Oklahoma, has other plans. Soon the three have joined the team of stormchasers as they attempt to insert a revolutionary measuring device into the very heart of several extremely violent tornados.“

One of my biggest problems was the lack of any real characters. There was near zero development among any of the characters. A slight attempt was made to give Jo a background with a childhood trauma, but it was barely touched upon in the movie and the few times that it felt like it was handled, it was tossed in with little to no explanation.

The rest of the cast was just people to read the doppler and yell “Yahoo” as the tornados whipped.

Admittedly, the special effects looked pretty good for the mid-90s, although the flying cow was unintentionally funny. However, watching Bill and Jo running through the fields towards a barn with all kinds of things flying past them made me wonder why the tornado was unable to pick them up as it was pulling fences out of the ground.

The story is basically going between different tornados and trying to release this new device and failing. There is not much, if any, real human conflict. They gave them a rival tornado chaser, played by Westley himself, Cary Elwes, but that character was as one-dimensional as you could get.

I did not recognize the late, great Phillip Seymour Hoffman in his role as Dusty, the oddball who yells a lot. Alan Ruck from Ferris Buhler’s Day Off and Jeremy Davies, who would play Faraday on LOST, were here too in unimportant background character roles.

I do like Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as leads, and their chemistry did make up for the lack of plotline between the couple. I did feel bad for the fiancé Melissa because you could tell that she never stood a chance. I did like how they wrapped up her story though, with her just realizing the truth and breaking it off like an adult.

Some of the tornado sequences became kind of boring after awhile since there was little else to keep me engaged. The final tornado was better than some of the others, but it was also a big chunk of the time I was rolling my eyes at this movie.

It is a watchable movie, but you have to shut down your brain and just watch the spectacle around it to enjoy it.

An Afternoon with the X-Files

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S4 E21-24, S5 E1-2

SPOILERS

“Elegy”

“Demons”

“Gethsemane”

“Redux Part I & II”

With a lazy Sunday on record, I decided that I wanted to go ahead and finish the X-Files season four, knowing that there were three episodes remaining.

However, when I arrived at the season four finale I discovered that it was going to be a three part arc and it was Redux, which I remembered when it first aired as a very key episode. So with nothing else planned, I decided to go ahead and watch the five episode stretch for the day.

The first two episodes of the day, “Elegy” and “Demons,” were both solid episodes. “Demons” especially was a favorite episode as the inner mind of Mulder was explored and the memories of the incident with his sister was examined with a cool new twist.

Of course, the whole Samantha situation is redefined again during the Redux episodes as the Cigarette Smoking Man, in an attempt to tempt Mulder to the dark side, brought Mulder’s sister (or what he claimed was Samantha) to meet her brother. There have been several answers to what had happened to Mulder’s sister, so I remember not believing that this was her when I first saw the episode.

The reshaping of the concept of the series, with Mulder convinced that the government had been orchestrating a hoax with UFOs the whole time and had played Mulder and Scully for fools taking center stage.

Of course, it also saw the end of the Scully cancer storyline. The script does a fine job of keeping the reason Scully’s cancer went into remission debatable. There is the microchip that they reinserted in her neck, her faith returning, as well as the doctor trying to get her body to fight against the disease.

The whole Scully cancer arc was up and down. There were a bunch of episodes that basically ignored the fact, but the resolution of it was well done. The tension with Scully’s brother added some real anxiety to the scenes, especially those with him and Mulder.

CSM was shot and killed at the end of the episode, but it was not a satisfying moment for a couple of reasons. One, because it was not Mulder doing it. It was from a hitman. And two, because there was no body and he was clearly not dead. No body, no death.

Mulder calling out Blevins as the mole inside the FBI was a truly dramatic scene. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson both had some great scenes in these episodes, in particularly in “Demons” and in “Redux Part II”.

Bodkin S1 E4, E5, E6, E7

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Spoilers

I chose to finish this series up this morning with the final four episodes on Netflix. I found Bodkin to be a fairly enjoyable romp that had moments of messiness. Still, I think the strength of the show was the characters and the shades of grey that they all displayed.

The mystery of what happened to the missing kids from 25 years prior is dealt with by the sixth episode, where we basically knew everything that we needed to know. It would lead into a climatic confrontation with all the forces in episode seven.

Honestly, episode seven was convoluted and, as I already mentioned, messy. Still, I think the show stuck to our characters, Dove, Gilbert and Emmy, and provided a satisfactory end to the series.

I did like how the mystery itself played out. When we discovered that one of the bodies in the trunk of the car that had been sunk in the bog was not Fiona, that took the tale in a different direction… back to the Yoga-using nuns.

The mystery aspect of the story did blend together very well, with all of the different tentacles of the story fitting together well.

Then there was the eels.

Apparently, eel smuggling is a major crime in Northern Europe and the producers, after discovering this, felt as if they had to include this bizarre fact in their series. It did work with Seamus, as he was known to be a major smuggler from his past.

And when Seamus discovered that he was the father to Sean, who was the son of Fiona, who died in childbirth and was buried by the nuns, things got really chaotic.

It all took place on the night of Samhain and the big celebration going on in Bodkin. And a bomb? Yes, a bomb. This is the part of the story that felt over-the-top and messy as everything is set up for a major showdown.

Overall, I enjoyed this series. It was passable entertainment, and it was carried by the three main characters. I especially liked how none of them were necessarily great people. Dove, in particular, would be clearly defined as an arse.

You can stream Bodkin on Netflix.

Doctor Who S14 E3

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S14 E3

S1 E4 (Disney +)

Spoilers

“Boom”

What an episode.

Three very different episodes this season and this was just suspenseful as it could be. I have to take a moment to catch my breath.

“Boom” was so different than “Space Babies” and “The Devil’s Chord” and it shows how flexible the series can be. It can be silly with fart jokes, or over the top with music numbers or absolutely nail-biting with tension.

The Doctor spent nearly this entire episode standing on a land mine, part of the time on one foot. Ruby is absolutely a boss here and her near death brings such a dramatic moment filled with unbelievable stakes.

There are so many messages in this episode dealing with religion, religious wars, and faith. The use of the term “thoughts and prayers” speaks to the uselessness of the statement. There were also a major father theme working its way through the episode and helped with the finale.

This was just so amazing.

Kiss Kiss

The Strangers Chapter 1

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This film was promoted, seemingly, as a prequel to the original The Strangers, which was a surprise classic. However, it does not feel like a prequel when you watch it. Worse yet, this feels like a terrible movie.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 takes all the worst parts of the horror/thriller movie genre and highlights them through a ninety minute film that felt considerably longer.

The worst parts of horror? Jump scares. There are plenty. Characters being stupid? Check. I do not know how many times one of the Strangers appeared directly behind the character, particularly Maya (Madelaine Petsch), and was not seen, and was gone when she turned back. That is a scene that is overused in horror films and had to have happened in this movie ten times at least.

There were several times that I had to laugh out loud at what was happening in the movie, and it was not a scene that was intended to be a laugh moment.

I honestly would say that there was not one moment in the film that was an original idea. I think every last bit was from films that were much better. Now I understand that there have been a lot of horror films and it might be getting difficult to find things that have not been done before. So I would guess that you should just write something clever or create some suspense instead of just relying on the tropes.

The following may be considered a spoiler….

By the way, the ending of the film was quite a cop out. TO BE CONTINUED? I mean, really? My guess is, after watching this thing, we won’t have to worry about a Chapter 2.

End of Spoiler

So far this year, there are four films that are in contention for the worst film of the year and I am not sure which one will take that ‘crown.’ The Strangers: Chapter 1 is not at that level, but it is not too far off either.

1.25 stars

If

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Ryan Reynolds is back in a new film named If. If stands for Imaginary Friends, which has had a long history in the films. There are quite a variety here as these Ifs are trying to find purpose after their kids forget them.

There were several references to Ifs fading away, particularly from Blue (Steve Carell), which I believe is an allusion to Bing Bong from the Inside Out film.

According to IMDB, “A young girl who goes through a difficult experience begins to see everyone’s imaginary friends who have been left behind as their real-life friends have grown up.“

The young girl, Bea, is played by Cailey Fleming and she does a good job opposite Ryan Reynolds, who played Calvin, and John Krasinski, who played her father. Fleming is charming and has a nice chemistry with the other actors. There is a lot placed on her shoulders and if she is unable to carry the load, this movie would absolutely fail. She is very good in this role and very believable.

The designs of the Ifs are fine, albeit fairly average. Nothing really stands out on the design but none of them are bad either.

The voice cast of the Ifs are tremendous. besides Steve Carell, there is Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Awkwafina (who is in every animated program now apparently), George Clooney, Emily Blunt, Jon Stewart, Matt Damon, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Keegan Michael-Key, Christopher Meloni, Sam Rockwell, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper, Blake Lively, Matthew Rhys, and Sebastian Maniscalco.

The film does run a little long, and the final twist was pretty obvious, but the story itself was charming and showed the strength of the film. Ryan Reynolds is always likable and funny, and this is another example.

I did not feel that this was exclusively a children’s flick. In fact, I believe there are some big time concepts that will appeal to the adults in the crowd as well.

3.75 stars

EYG Comic Cavalcade #98

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May 17, 2024

We are back with the EYG Comic Cavalcade this Friday night.

Made a bit of a mistake. I went to eBay to start working on filling out my New Warriors collection. I ordered several different issues, but I had looked at several of them. A few days later, I was sent an offer from a seller on eBay for the New Warriors Vol. 2 #1-10. I knew I had looked at this before, so I jumped at the offer.

Then, I received the package of the ten issues and they were great. I went to eBay to leave feedback and found out that on that first day, I had already ordered the Vol. 2 issues, and another set was on its way. They arrived this week.

This was my dumb mistake, so I decided just to keep the double set of issues and not go and try and return one of them. I just have two copies of these books.

Books this week:

Saga Vol. 4. Okay, this week I was able to read the fourth volume of the complete set of Saga I picked up at Free Comic Book Day. This continues to be a fantastic trade paperback. I hope to get some time carved out to continue reading this soon, but summer vacation is coming soon, and, if I have not finished it by then, that would be a great opportunity.

X-Men Forever #4. “No Hope” Written by Kieron Gillen and art by Luca Maresca. Cover art by Jim Rigg (Silver Medalist). Jean Grey as the Phoenix is back once again, but it comes at the end of the road for Hope.

Bear Pirate Viking Queen #1. Written by Sean Lewis and art by Jonathan Marks Barravecchia. I mean… that title? How could I possibly pass up Bear Pirate Viking Queen? It is a beautiful book with a cool story with a dangerous bear. I enjoyed reading number one. I believe it is a three issue mini series from Image and I am excited to see where this goes.

Ice Cream Man #39. “Decompression in a Wreck (Part One)” Written by W. Maxwell Prince and art by Martin Morazzo. Cover art by Jeffrey Alan Love (Gold Medalist). One of the most interesting and creative concepts for an issue, Ice Cream Man #39 tells a five second story, going through a fatal car crash. Great issue.

Free Comic Book Day: MAD. It’s absurd…it’s inane… it’s… MAD. Todd picked this one up for me a few weeks after Free Comic Book Day and it was a hoot. It focused on DC Comics characters given the MAD treatment. EYG Hall of Famer Sergio Aragones did several of the bits. It also includes some Spy vs. Spy classics. Fun.

Amazing Spider-Man: Blood Hunt #1. Written by Justina Ireland and penciled by Marcelo Ferreira. Ferreira, Roberto Poggi & Rachelle Rosenberg did the cover art. The story continued from the Amazing Spider-Man regular series as Spidey teams up with Misty Knight and …The Lizard? to go in search of a missing Morbius… aka Dr. Mike. More vampire action than you can shake a wooden stake at.

Displaced #4. “Chapter Four: Go Our Own Way”. Written by Ed Brisson and illustrated and cover art by Luca Casalanguida. Displaced continues to be an excellent book. We see the group splitting apart which is causing some of them fade away. There is still a LOST vibe to this book and I am loving it.

Doom #1. “Days of Doom” Written by Jonathan Hickman and art by Sanford Greene. Cover art by Ari Granov (Bronze medalist). This was strange. It was one of those potential future stories. I am never a huge fan of these and this one with Doom in space was not what I expected. I did like the inclusion of Valeria. I’m just not sure the purpose of this book.

Redcoat #2. Written by Geoff Johns and art by Bryan Hitch. Redcoat is one of my favorite new comic series. Simon Pure has seemingly found himself a sidekick… Albert Einstein? And there was a new antagonist… Benedict Arnold. Creativity abounds in this new series.

Dark Ride #12. Written by Joshua Williamson and art by Andrei Bressan. Cover art was by Andrei Bressan and Adriano Lucas. The series comes to an end as things go fairly poorly for Arthur whereas his kids, Sam and Halloween get everything they ever wanted. As happy of an ending as Hell could provide.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man #20. “Sibling Day” Written by Cody Ziglar and art by Federico Vicentini. Vicentini & Matt Milla did the cover art. Miles and his clone “brother” Shift take their little sister on a sibling trip. They meet up with Kamala Khan!

Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #3. “Reunions” Written by Iman Vellani & Sabir Pirzada and art by Scott Godlewski. Cover art was done by Carlos Gomez and Jesus Aburtov. Speaking of Kamala Khan, this series sees her reunited with Red Dagger and we get a bit of a love connection. Also zombie Cyclops.

Something Epic #10. Written, Illustrated and cover art by Szymon Kudranski. The investigation into the death of Sherlock Holmes and the disappearance of Zeus continues as Noa goes in search of the first goddess. The imagery of this book is always gorgeous.

Fishflies #6. Written by Jeff Lemire and illustrated by Lemire as well as Shawn Kuruneru. We find out the origin behind the creature and Helen has a shocking loss. Fishflies #6 is the penultimate issue of this run and it was one of my favorites of the series so far.

Ultimate X-Men #3. Written, art and cover art by Peach Momoko. Hisako and Mei get some more specifics in their powers, and they drop the word…mutants for the first time. I really like the way the Ultimate X-Men is very different than the regular X-Men. I love how the Ultimate X-Men are their own character and not just repeats of the normal team.

What If…?: Aliens #3. Written by Hans Rodionoff and art by Guiu Vilanova. Phil Noto did the cover art. I have been loving this new type of What If. You have the rights for Aliens so why not tell a What If story with these characters. Paul Reiser and his son Leon came up with the concept.

House of Slaughter #23. “The Butcher’s War Part Three” Written by Tate Brombal and illustrated by Antonio Fuso. Cover art was done by Nimit Malavia & Werther Dell’edera. The Houses come together to try to plan what to do about Jace Boucher.

Other books this week: Wolverine: Madripoor Knights #4, Napalm Lullaby #3, FCBD: Ultra Duck, What If…Venom #4, and the Energon Universe #1.

The X-Files S4 E21

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Spoilers

“Zero Sum”

No Scully this episode.

Instead we get Skinner involved up to his neck with the Cigarette Smoking Man.

He is stuck because of his attempt to save Scully.

We also see some of the bees, which have been used as a transportation device for smallpox. Tested on a group of children at a school? CSM is truly a heartless bastard. These bees become a major piece of the mythology, even being a focus of the first X-Files movie.

How does this rotten bastard continue to escape? Skinner stood in the dark with a gun to his head, and fired three shots. However, Skinner allowed his shot to the side, not plugging him in the head. I still wish someone would just finish him off. How bad could it be?

It was also a key moment for the relationship between Mulder and Skinner. Mulder caught Skinner in his lies, but listened to what he told him and he believed him.

Apparently, Gillian Anderson was off filming The Mighty during this time. There is no doubt about it… Scully was missed in this episode. It was still entertaining though.

Bodkin S1 E3

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Spoilers

“Perfectly Innocent Life”

Bodkin episode three saw Dove, Gilbert and Emmy head to an Irish wake.

The wake of Darragh led to a lot of drinking, dancing and some intriguing clues to what happened on Samhain when the three strangers went missing.

They discovered more about the connections among Seamus and both Malachy and Fiona. Seamus was Malachy’s brother.

Dove and Emmy also found a suspicious image in a local bog. It looks like a car. Several comments about a car crash that night sent them to this bog to see what might be in it. Dove went into the water finding a car.

It was pulled out, but it was empty. At this point I was saying out loud to my screen for them to look in the trunk, but they seemed to not plan on doing that. Fortunately, Dove kicked the back end of the car in frustrations and the trunk popped open revealing two bodies that had been in the trunk, in that bog for 20 years.

With the bodies in the trunk, it supports the theory that these two were murdered.

The Netflix series has been a decent watch so far. I really do enjoy Will Forte in his role.

EYG Favorite Comic Cover of the Week

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Week of May 13

It is that time again this week to give out some medals for the best covers from this week’s comic books. Interestingly enough, this week has three variant covers as our medal winners. Oh, and no Alex Ross this week…

Bronze Medalist

Doom #1

Variant cover

Cover Art by Adi Granov

This one became the Bronze Medalist by the skin of its figural teeth as this one held off Ultimate X-Men to take this prize. The imposing nature of Dr. Doom in close up dominates the cover and stands out like a boss.

Silver Medalist

X-Men Forever #4

Variant Cover

Cover art by Jim Rugg

A beautiful painted looking cover with Jean in her Phoenix outfit, having the fiery bird land on her arm. And it is lovely. It is compelling of a piece of art.

Gold Medalist

Ice Cream Man #39

Variant Cover

Cover art by Jeffrey Alan Love

Ice Cream Man typically has some frightening horror covers and this one is creepy as heck. The Ice Cream Man with the arms coming from his back, in the black and white cover is really excellent.