As Marvel’s Avengers versus X-Men event looms on the horizon and Avengers: The Children’s Crusade wrapped up this week, this edition of Standard Deviations takes a look back at the set of variant cover images from 2005’s House of M. The Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” spell has been a defining moment for the Marvel Universe and set both of these recent series in motion. While the significance of House of M‘s story is clear, the series was also one of the first high profile examples of the return of variant coves since their hey day in the 1990s speculator market.

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In The Manhattan Projects, writer Jonathan Hickman proposes that the historic Manhattan Project, which focused on the development of an atomic bomb, was instead a high profile cover for the true nature of the program. In this reality, Oppenheimer and company were working on a variety of conspiracy-inspiring super science projects to aid in the war effort and far beyond. The first issue of Hickman and artist Nick Pitarra’s new series from Image Comics introduces a wild alternate history and some terrifying characters.

Spoilers for The Manhattan Projects #1 will follow.

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The solicitations for Supurbia would lead you to believe this book will be a combination of the Justice League and The Real Housewives of Astro City. After reading it, it’s far more accurate to say it’s JLA meets ABC’s GCB, which is a good thing. Based on the introductions of the principal characters, it’s clear we’re going to see more about the spouses of the featured super heroes in this series which makes for an interesting take on the genre even at a time when we’ve seen just about every examination of the caped set imaginable.

Spoilers for BOOM! Studios’ Supurbia #1 will follow.

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Over the next few weeks and months we’ll be publishing a series of articles discussing the general state of a variety of families of titles or of major comic book initiatives. With February marking the end of the sixth month of DC’s New 52 relaunch it seemed like an opportune time to revisit the line and evaluate its current status. PTB has only been following a few DC titles so we’ll focus on those while still addressing the broader line.

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Justice League was the title that kicked off the New 52. With superstar DC executives Geoff Johns and Jim Lee behind the series, it was guaranteed to be a sales phenomenon. Amazingly, the series has shipped relatively on time. At least it shipped more consistently than we would have expected, though I believe it was the only series that was part of the New 52 to ship any late issues. Now six issues later, we’ve reached the end of the first arc detailing the origin of the New 52 Justice League and it’s time to assess whether the series delivered on the promise of its superstar creative team.

Spoilers for Justice League #6 will follow.

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