Comic Book Cover to Cover for 03/26/08

No, I didn't scrap the Cover to Cover feature. If I had to use an excuse, I'm lazy and forgot about the new feature, especially when I was sick all last weekend and missed it there as well. Last week was a pretty dull week in terms of the covers books shipped with. We had the controversial New Avengers cover where David Mack traced referenced an old magazine and it had to be changed at the last minute, but other than that, I couldn't find a single cover that really caught my eye or was otherwise noteworthy. To see what covers I did manage to string a few words together about or to let me know what your favourite cover was or just general thoughts or comments, hit the jump.

Cover of the Week - Blue Beetle #25 Cover by Rafael Albuquerque

To start, this was a rather weak week for comic book covers. I mostly only looked at the ones I bought, but I couldn't find any in the solicits that caught my eye either. That said, this Blue Beetle cover, while on first glance not overly special, really grabs me for some reason. It helps I know what's going on in the book already and seeing the JLI members coming to back up Blue Beetle against the Reach is definitely something I want to see.

I'm open to suggestions from anyone for an alternate Cover of the Week, but of all the covers I surveyed, this was the only one that managed to pull me in or make me feel any positive kind of emotion one way or another about the book.

Teen Titans #57 Cover by Eddy Barrows

This cover has all the makings of a good cover. Good composition. The 'turning to face the reader' pose is always a surefire way to draw someone in. However, a basic anatomy course would have helped this image immensely. For starters, look at Rose's waist. Even if you account for the warped perspective, from profile view, it's still thinner than her bicep. Her back leg looks like it's attached by some peg and is a separate piece of the body. And then there's her right thigh and knee / calf. It looks like some freaky alien with inverted leg joints, like how a dog's legs bend.

The whole image looks like it was drawn from the top down without any rough drafts or proportion layouts, as it starts out fine and slowly gets worse and worse the further down you go. This cover gets the best looking worst cover award.

Countdown to Final Crisis #5 Cover by Scott Kolins & Kamandi #1 Cover by Jack Kirby

The homage is the only noteworthy thing about this cover. Personally, I would have went with Karate Kid's dead body or Buddy Blank and his grandson in a raft in the water where Kamandi's boat would have been in the same image instead of some weird Karate Kid bathed in blood perspective they ended up going with. Kind of hard to screw up an homage, though, and as far as this cover goes, it's not great, but gets the job done.

Daredevil #106 Cover by Marko Djurdjevic

I'm really getting bored of Djurdjevic's covers lately. Taken on their own or in small doses, they are beautiful and some are down right amazing looking. However, it seems like the monthly grind is wearing on him as they've been getting progressively worse as time goes on. Well, 'worse' isn't the best way to describe. This is still well drawn and technically sound artwork. But for a comic cover, which is supposed to be dynamic and serve as the first glimpse into a book, it should be something that draws my attention and makes me want to pick this book up. I see this and there's nothing. I don't hate it, but there's no emotion here and if I had never read this book before, I wouldn't really be inclined to even pick this up to look at it.

Green Lantern #29 Cover by Ivan Reis

Not sure who's idea it was for the pastel colours on this cover, but they really clash with the random photoshop effects, such as the differeing styles and colours of the lantern and GL symbols on the right with the wispy, tealish coloured ring effect. It's like two different colourists were given half the page to do and they just pasted them together in the end. Even the the green eye glow effect looks different in colour and style.

These all combined with the pastels make the otherwise great pencils for this supposedly retro "secret origin" tale's cover look terrible to me. Personally, I would have went with a homage to Emerald Dawn or one of the other Year One or origin stories' covers or used an old school colour pallet, similar to the way Mighty Avengers handled the Doom, Iron Man and Sentry trip to the past with the Kirby dots and newstand fading and limited colour pallets.

Flaunt Magazine 2005 and blatant David Mack "referencing" for scrapped New Avengers #39.

You may remember the bitchfest when previews for New Avengers #39 came to light and everyone and their mother pointed out the obvious "similarities" between the above two photos. The updated cover image can be seen below if you want to see how much it changed from the above one.

New Avengers #39 Cover by David Mack

Well, the other cover didn't even look like Echo and that was weird, considering Mack helped design and create the character. I wasn't surprised when it turned out to be a random copy and paste effort. The replacement image is a much better version, but I hate the fact they kept that retarded Wolverine outline in the background. It adds nothing to the cover and is only there to cash in on the Wolverine effect, where him being on the cover gets more people to buy the book. I just want to take a black marker rub him out of it everytime I pick up this issue.

Otherwise, a great second effort by Mack. Oh wait, I guess this would be the first effort all things considered?

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Comic Book Cover to Cover for 03/12/08

For how many books I bought last week, there were very few covers even worth a second look, let alone mentioning in this week's Cover to Cover feature. Annihilation: Conquest picked up my Cover of the Week and while it's one of my favourite covers in recent memory, there wasn't exactly much competition for that award this week.

Anyways, let me know what covers caught your eye this week, random thoughts on the covers I've highlighted this time around or if there was a certain cover I might have missed that deserves some recognition.

Cover of the Week - Annihilation: Conquest #5 Cover by Aleksi Briclot

The only thing wrong with this cover is the amount of clutter from the title, UPC and random Marvel and Secret Invasion crap littered about. Say what you will about how Conquest stacks up to the first Annihilation, it's hard to deny how visually striking this cover is.

Worst Cover of the Week - Amazing Spider-Man #553 Cover by Phil Jimenez

For the second week in a row, Jimenez manages to spew out one of the worst covers imaginable for Amazing Spider-Man. If this is the best they could do for this 'brand new day', I'm beginning to think the new shipping schedule might be affecting the art quality already. Disproportioned, unimaginative and just plain ugly all describe this cover.

Fantastic Four #555 Cover by Bryan Hitch

There's a bit of controversy going around with this cover. I don't really subscribe to that train of thought, but many are complaining that only "white people" get to be evacuated from Earth based on this cover's mass exodus. The only thing I really notice when I look at it is the Fantastic Four, who are the only things brightly coloured in the image and designed to draw our attention. The rest are a dingy colour and just there to show a sea of people. It would have taken me effort to go through it looking for random nationalities and I think people are just looking for something to bitch about if this is the best they can come up with in terms of racism in comics.

As for the actual cover, I really like the look of it, but, aside from the building of Nu-World, nothing remotely close to this happens in the book and it's way too misleading. It's the name of the game with cover designs I guess, but still annoying. I, also, hate the magazine style cover format and interiors of this issue. I actually found it harder to read the text at the top of the page and those by-lines, like you see on random trash magazines at grocery stores, piss me off for some unexplainable reason. I like the spartan look of the page with the lack of the logo at the top, though.

Green Lantern Corps #22 Cover by Rodolfo Migliari

The actual drawing and colouring of this cover is great. It's like something I'd want for a poster or background on my computer. As a cover that's supposed to draw me into a book and make me want to pick it up, though, I just find myself bored and uninterested in it for some reason. It's just some random robotic looking Green Lantern (yes, I know it's an Alpha Lantern) with a glowing hand. There's no conflict or indication of what the book is even about and the tagline at the bottom is even more confusing as no one was lost last issue and no one is lost in this issue and I can't figure out what, "Alpha Lantern Lost!", even means in the context of the cover or after having read the story.

Cover looks great, in a poster or picture book-like way, but does nothing for me as a comic cover.

Nova #11 Cover by Alex Maleev

This is a rather simple drawing for a cover and not usually something I'd think twice about, but the colouring and faded, almost like a colour pencil, look to it elevates the piece to a new level in my eyes.

However, it suffers a bit from the same thing the GLC cover did - that being it's just Nova posing on the cover and has nothing to do with the actual contents of the book. This one at least makes me wonder what Nova's thinking about and why he's sitting there with his helmet off, so it's a little better in that regard that most random posing covers.

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Comic Book Cover to Cover for 03/05/08

Cover to Cover is a new feature I started last week. The nuts and bolts of the column is to take the covers from the various books released this week and give general thoughts and comments on them. I'll pick a Cover of the Week for the best cover, try and look for any homages a cover may be alluding to and generally discuss what I liked or didn't like about any that stand out to me. As always, feel free to let me and everyone else know what your favourite cover was this week or point out anything I might have missed.

Cover of the Week - X-Force #2 Cover by Clayton Crain

The covers this week weren't anything really to write home about, but this X-Force cover is probably my favourite of the bunch. My only complaint is that the colours all bleed into each other. It's basically one big grey and black smudge. It's like a lot of new video games with their brown and dingy colours. Think Gears of War or even Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess' colour pallette. While they, and this cover, look great, they would really benefit from some contrast. Still, I like the cover and it's my favourite from this week.

Green Lantern #28 Cover by Mike McKone

This cover has all the makings of a good cover, but falls just short in my opinion. I dislike the overly flashy 'Green Lantern effects' used for the chain, the Alpha Lanterns and the platform. They seem out of place to me for some reason. Even the lantern-shaped chain links in her handcuffs seem like they are only there for the sake of having pretty green colouring effects. Then we have Hal Jordan, the main character, thrown off in a corner with a face that looks like it was beat in with a pan shovel. Just about everyone in the outer circle has awkward looking faces. Finally, we have the center character looking like she's in a different room than everyone else with her hair blowing in the wind for dramatic effect, I assume.

Don't let the overly negative criticism give you the wrong impression, it's not a bad cover, but there's so many little things that just annoy me about it that it keeps it from being elevated to a great cover in my eyes.

Raven #1 Cover by Damion Scott

Who is responsible for , "Finally in her own EMO series!"? Seriously, her own "emo" series? Is that something to be proud about? Was the series going to be "her own unicorns and rainbow series" until they changed it at the last minute? I don't know what world they live in, but emo is generally considered a bad thing by most people and typically used to ridicule most things on just about every internet forum I've ever gone to.

Also, from what I understand, the book had nothing to do with Raven acting emo. She was attending high school, getting hit on by a boy and making a couple friends while dressed something like how Layla in X-Factor would dressed. The conflict in the book dealt with someone doing emotion experiements that were interferring with Raven's empath powers or something.

That one line detracts from an otherwise fairly nice looking cover and marketing or Wolfman or whoever is responsible for putting that tagline there should get a kick in the arse for this one.

Amazing Spider-Man #552 Cover by Phil Jimenez

Spider-Man is a pretty iconic character. His power set and numerous high profile and visual engaging villains allow just about any cover to look good. This just begs the question, how did Jimenez produce this hideous monstrosity? Spidey's head looks like it was squished on both sides into that elipitcal / egg shape it's in and I can't tell if his arms are going straight back or are on an angle or if there extending straight up from his head as he falls in this belly flop pose towards the reader / ground. The entire perspective and proportions are terrible and I don't see how this even got approved by an editor.

Countdown to Final Crisis #8 Cover (left) by Scott Kolins & Cover (right) by Unknown

Does anyone know what happened with this week's issue's cover? The ugly and overly busy cover with the corny tagline on the left is what we were given, but the visually striking cover on the right is was what solicited for the longest time. Did the story change from several weeks back when the right cover was solicited? I don't recognize the extended hand with the belt strapped wrist. Was it pushed back and will be seen as an upcoming issue's cover? It's an excellent cover and would have been my cover of the week if it had actually be used, so I'm genuinely interested in this.

Countdown Homage Source

Reader nu informed me about the above cover being the homage source for the new Countdown cover. It's quite obvious after seeing this that it is, indeed, what inspired the new cover. I don't know if this New Gods issue relates to Countdown or if that story is similar in anyway or if it's just a cool cover that the artist decided to reference.

Justice League The New Frontier Special #1 Cover by Darwyn Cooke

The JL:TNFS cover reminded me of the cover to New Frontier #6 from the original mini-series, pictured above on the right. Where they're reaching for the stars / victory / Hal to his ring in that picture, in the new one, they are all reaching for answers from the classified film reel. I would have liked something more akin to the Absolute New Frontier cover, which featured dozens of heroes posing, but this isn't a bad cover and does fit the style and tone of the book.

Nightwing #142 Cover by Rags Morales

Despite being a great book, Nightwing gets the award for most misleading cover. There is no battle at 2000 ft, there is no battle in the air and this villain shows up for all of maybe 5 pages in a rather grounded fight that ends as quickly as it started. They don't even fight in the city. At least is looks good, I guess.

Teen Titans: Year One #3 Cover by Karl Kerschl

I like this cover, but it seems quite generic and cliched to have the kids in the mentor's costumes. That said, I could not, for the life of me, find a single cover that this could be an homage to. I went through a couple Teen Titans cover archives, but not one turned up something remotely similar to this. So, props to Kerschl for an actual original cover that should have been used long ago, but apparently wasn't?

Another thing I found amusing is they've all pretty much grown up to wear these costumes at one point or another. Well, poor Aqualad didn't, but the rest have graduated to bigger and better things or taken over for their mentors at one point or another.

This was just a fun, light hearted cover that really fits the tone of the book.

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Comic Book Cover to Cover for 02/27/08

Cover to Cover is something new I'm going to be trying out this week. It's basically a glorified Cover of the Week post that also includes an analysis of various covers from the past week's comics, including what I liked about them, maybe showing what a cover was an homage to and so on.

As this is the first time I'll be doing this, please let me know if this is something you'd like to see more of, what you liked about it, what you hated, if I should just make it a single Cover of the Week, a brief caption and that's it or if you like the comments on the various covers. Basically, anything you feel is relevant.

Cover of the Week - Kick-Ass #1 Cover by Steve McNiven

Kick-Ass #1 gets my cover of the week because it screams, "READ ME!", whenever I see it. When I saw this cover of this random guy, who looks like he's had his own ass kicked numerous times, standing there defiantly in a, "Is that all you got?", kind of way while bleeding all over himself, I knew I had to read this book. Combined with detailed and violent nature of the image and the striking red, white and black colour scheme and I just had to know what happened to this guy in this issue, which is what all covers should strive to do.

Daredevil #105 Cover by Marko Djurdjevic

It was a toss up between this cover and the Kick-Ass one, but I found, as good as this cover is, it's very safe at the same time. Like a Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Starcraft, etc) video game, it excells in composition, technique, etc, but it offers nothing new and is a typical cover you'd see every other month, but with prettier artwork. You could say the same thing for the Kick-Ass cover, but I found the colouring scheme, the fact it was a first issue and the state the main character was in turned a typical hero posing cover into something quite unique and visually striking. This DD cover has all the elements of a great cover, but lacks any imagination and doesn't set itself apart with anything except better art. Still an exceptional cover though.

Blue Beetle #24 Cover by Rafael Albuquerque & Batman #674 Cover by Tony Daniel

I just wanted to talk about how two similar covers can illicit different responses. Both of these feature the hero battered and beaten with the off panel villain moving in for more punishment / the kill.

However, the Batman cover is far more dramatic and engaging, to me, than the Blue Beetle one, despite both featuring excellent artwork and similar composition. The Blue Beetle cover suffers from the hero being the Blue Beetle and not Batman, simple as that. I see Blue Beetle's cover and I see a new hero, most don't know him, he's down and out, but meh, why should I care about him?

The Batman cover, on the otherhand, features (the goddamn) Batman bound and bleeding, he's got drill holes in his shoulder and the off panel villain has the drill in hand and is moving in to dish out more punishment. I don't expect Batman to die or anything, but I sure as hell want to see what happens next and the Blue Beetle cover doesn't elicit the same response to me, despite my undying love for that book.

Of note, I love the use of the text bubble on the Blue Beetle cover. That really sets the two apart in terms of style and tone. Blue Beetle is a much more carefree book and reminds me of a more modern version of the 70's and 80's comics and few comics use text bubbles on covers anymore and only go for the 'magazine cover' look. Props for something so simple, but hardly used anymore.

Captain America #35 Cover by Steve Epting

One word describes this cover - generic. I don't care about this cover and, if I wasn't an avid reader of this title, I wouldn't even give it a second glance. Why is Captain America posing in the foreground while a riot goes on behind him? Nothing on this cover really goes together and it looks like they just pasted a standard sketch onto a background and slapped the logo on it. Great book, terrible cover.

Young Avengers Presents: Hulkling Cover by Jim Cheung

I just wanted to point out that those background images are all drawn by Cheung. He referenced all the old comics with Captain Marvel and drew each individual image with the style of the different artists and eras that defined the character. I'm sure many probaby assumed they were stock photos Photoshopped into the image after the Hulking was drawn, but that's not the case. A+ for effort on an otherwise minimalistic cover.

Ultimate Spider-Man #119 Cover by Stuart Immonen

This gets the award for Most Misleading Cover. Magneto shows up on the final splashpage cliffhanger. There is no fight between the Amazing Friends and Magneto, there is no dialogue or interaction or even build up to his appearance. He just shows up at the end. USM is guilty of this practice all the time, especially with the Venom and Carnage covers, but it doesn't make this any less annoying when I see it.


Conclusion

Well, that's it for the first Cover to Cover post. I'm a fan of covers and had been thinking about doing a simple Cover of the Week for a while, but felt it ignored so many other covers from books in a given week. That lead to this more detailed post, but I'm still not sure if this is the format I'd like to stick with.

Again, please feel free to let me know what you think. Whether you would rather just a quick cover gallery with a simple Cover of the Week award, if you would like more covers featured, if you like the format I've chosen or even if you simply don't care about covers. Any and all comments are welcomed and appreciated.

Oh yeah. It's okay to talk about the covers in the post or ones you liked from the past week as well. Doesn't have to be all about me and my post format. =p

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