Cover #5 by Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack - Comic Book Review

From the publisher: Comics creator Max Field has been recruited to be a spy—and now it’s beginning to affect his work. The lines of fantasy and reality are beginning to blur, and the world of comics may never be the same. A valentine to all that comics can be, COVER is a genre-bending series Comic Watch called “a masterful book” by the award-winning team of Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack.

I love this book. It's cool, and it's deep, and it's meta, and a bunch of other things all at once. David Mack's art and panel arrangements are like no one else's, and they drive the story as much as Brian Michael Bendis's narrative and characters. The colors are muted, and faded, and resemble watercolors, except when they don't. The book is funny and lighthearted, until it becomes deeply philosophical. Bendis uses the story-within-a-story technique (sometimes multiple stories) and he somehow uses a fictional comic (Ninja Sword Odyssey - man, I want to read a real compilation of this) to echo and mirror and supplement an actual based-on-real-life (maybe? sort of? a little bit?) comic about him, or David Mack, or both of them, and a bunch of their comic book friends (I think).

Oh yeah, in Cover #5, Max and Owen (and their family and friends) get invited to a con in Brazil. Guess who's there? Julia (the CIA handler) and Essad Sinns (a comic book artist/spy who tortured Max at a previous con).

I find myself flying through the current issue of Cover each month, and then waiting (sort of patiently) for the next one. This book is slow, in a good way, taking it's time to spin out it's story. I really should wait until it's collected, but it's so good I want to read each chapter as soon as I can.

Go pick up Cover, by Bendis and Mack. Don't start with this issue. Go buy the previous four, along with this one; sit down, and read them through. Then start counting the days until #6 brings this arc to a close (probably).

I received a preview copy of this book from DC Comics and Jinxworld in exchange for an honest review.