Search Results for: cover wars

OK, gloves off. CP’s Rennie Harris puppeteer cover is straight out of the Big Book Of Alt-Weekly Arts Cover Cliches, though the bordello-red tones ARE gorgeous. That’s compared only to itself, when you put it next to PW’s double amputee Iraq vet shocker, CP looks like the wop who brought a knife to a gun fight with Sean Connery in The Untouchables. It’s a hard slog for city-based alt-weekly to telescope their mandate into national stories like the abattoir Iraq, but returning local vets are the most obvious entree into the war beat and PW’s Cassidy Hartmann has found a […]

Whenever we would see sisters around town rockin’ a black burqa in the August swelter, we would wonder aloud: Why would a modern Western black woman become a Muslim? It just seemed to us like trading one form of slavery for another, especially for women. And then we heard an NPR interview with a Muslim sister that asked this very question and her answer, transcribed from memory, had a sad but compelling logic: In a world where I walk around unveiled and get called ‘bitch’ & ‘ho’ routinely, Islam offers less freedom but more respect. Word, that. However, it depresses […]

Well, well, well. The bitch is back. Not sure what we mean by that, but it sure sounds like a badass opening. First a few words about our boy Jeff Fusco — hardest working family man in show business, great big grizzly of a man, but a real Gentle Ben. Always a gentleman and a scholar. He always gets The Shot, too. Although for reasons that elude us, PW elected NOT to use one for this week’s The Year In Photos cover. Why the hell didn’t they use that Obama money shot and plug into the zeitgeist for a second? […]

Last week CP struck a decisive blow against the tyranny of PW’s seemingly unbreakable Cover Wars winning streak. But this week the Empire has struck back. Hard. So jump down, turn around and pick a bail of cotton, City Paper, because PW is the master now. What’s that you say? ‘Only a master of evil, Darth’? Perhaps, Rabbit. Perhaps. Still, all this is good news for people who STILL read alt-weeklies. Hands down the most singularly disturbing alt-weekly cover of the year, PW’s music issue rocks the dumbly-named Man, Man on the cover, dubbing them Band Of The Year and […]

Well, it would appear that the worm has finally turned. After weeks of being shut out by PW, the Daily News and even our own Election Day dead pachyderm cover, CP comes back stronger than ever. Truly, Evan M. Lopez‘s cover illustration is the finest aspirational visual representation of Christmas in the 215 since, like, ever. Seriously, we take our hat off, Sir. Meanwhile, PW‘s cover may well be pink and scrapplicious at first glance, but if you squint real hard you can almost see the marks from the hands-free headset they used to phone this one in. It just […]

There something sick going on in Atlantic City, or shall we say something sicker than usual, which is really saying something. The Inquirer and Daily News have been reporting — and we’ve been echoing — what the cops won’t say: a monster lurks in A.C. And no, we are not just talking about Gamblor. Though authorities refuse to label him as such, a serial killer has wasted four street walkers, dumping their bodies in a drainage ditch in the briny swamplands nearby, all within a stone’s throw of each other, all facing East, towards Atlantic City. Fox News, no stranger […]

The CP‘s royal billiard Tanenbaum actually pops quite nicely at this size, but when you pull it out of the box and hold it in your hands for some reason it just screams WE ARE OUT OF IDEAS. Which only makes PW‘s smashing pumpkin orange navel-gazer seem more brilliant than it actually is. Still, outies are sexy. WINNER: PW, by a landslide

Allow us to break the code on the City Paper’s cover: Nobody felt like cranking out a cover story over Thanksgiving so they farmed it out to poetess/childhood sex abuse survivor/activist Samantha Barrow who gets on her hawg and workshops her way across the U.S. of A. swinging heavy-duty sharp-as-an-axe free verse like Shiva The Destroyer:     Why I am grateful for my sexual traumas, particularly the childhood stuff Because I earned every poem / orgasm the hard way stroking with sutures my heart to my cunt loving my body more intimately since she has wrestled me down with […]

This week it’s kind of a no-brainer and besides after last week’s Moby Dick-sized Cover Warz tell-all we’re gonna keep this one short but sweet — for the winner that is. The loser, of course, will spend a week munching the cold and bitter turkey sandwich of shame, doubt and self-recrimination. But please, don’t take it too hard. Remember, this is only a game. And so, onto the commentary: CP laid this bizarre egg of a cover image that looks, best we can tell, like a bird-on-man gang rape to illustrate their WHY PHILLY ACTUALLY SUX self-haterade. Remember City Paper, […]

Since my work history at the local alternative weeklies has somehow become a matter of public interest, I feel obliged to set the record straight: I was NOT “shitcanned” from the PW last week. That happened TWO YEARS AGO, and really, that was a matter of them being just as tired of me as I was of them. If I can blow my own horn for a moment, only a month prior to my dismissal I had swept a couple entire categories at the Keystone state journalism awards and walked away with a buncha First Place plaques from the Society […]

Jesus Chrysler! It seems like every week we’re having some kind of pissing contest with one of the city’s esteemed alt-weeklies. First it was the City Paper and this week it was a brand new hot mess from PW. Fear not dear reader, we vow not to back down from these piss-crossed sword fights until the other guy runs outta ammo. We drink water ALL DAY LONG. We could go for days, if need pee be. We also vow to compartamentalize said piss-matches and remain objective because we are THE DECIDER in this Cover Wars thing we started and it’s […]

HOLD THE PHONE! What’s this? Jeebus, nobody saw this coming, not even us — and we run this thing. In a surprise move, the People’s Paper trumps both PW and the CP this week with this inspired cover art for the DN’s story on online predator/quickchange artist Jeffrey Marsalis. Not only did the DN trump both weeklies’ artfag kung-fu — sorry ladies, neither of you ‘popped’ this week, hey, it happens — but they are the only major publication we are aware that actually found a real life monster to put on their cover for Halloween. Well done People Paper […]

Alright, we’re finally catching up with the alt-weeklies’ breathless pace of publication and we’re actually doing this in almost ‘real time.’ Despite that bit of unpleasantness with the City Paper earlier this week, and our tenuous grasp on gainful employment with PW, we vow to remain objective. And this week, it’s a toss-up: Both papers have fairly killer covers, so hats off to all involved. PW rocks the Yankee Hotel vertigo shot for Steve Volk’s I-spent-a-night-there-last-week story on the creepy ol’ Parker. CP goes with a gorgeously retro cartoon recreation of that classic image of car show babia majora showing […]