Deadlines and Thanksgiving planning conspire to prevent me from writing a regular installment of Comics, Covered. So I thought, Why not put together a quick-and-easy gallery of Thanksgiving covers?
Easier said than done.
It s neither quick nor particularly easy: The Thanksgiving theme apparently isn t popular among publishers and creators. (Remind me not to try this again around Easter time.)
I loathe Dennis Mitchell, and I can t imagine the turkey thinks a lot of him either.
I like, though, that the cover artist senses impending bloodshed, as the Still 10 Cents banner is frighteningly reminiscent of police tape. Is Dennis using a garrote?
I d initially planned to look at the covers of crime comics in this installment, but I abandoned that once I realized and were releasing their February solicitations this week.
I m timely, if nothing else.
More often than not, attention is focused on character or action as the protagonist strikes a pose against a blank background, or the hero and villain battle it out in front of a generic cityscape straight out of an studio.
Granted, most readers who pick up a Spider-Man comic probably want to see Spider-Man on the cover, not a moody, but faithfully rendered, depiction of Manhattan.
Still, the setting can be key.
After three fairly lengthy installments, this week s Comics, Covered is a collection of quick-hit items:
The and issues of Vertigo s Jack of Fables bring something rare: a diptych that isn t part of some elaborate alternate-cover scheme.
The covers, by Eisner Award-winning and now artist , are more in keeping with his recent work on Fables than on the spin-off.
For the first five issues of Jack of Fables, Jean employed warm, vibrant colors: reds and pinks and golds. But here, for the two-part Jack Frost story, he shifts to a cooler, more subdued palette: blues and grays, with spashes of pink like a sunset reflecting on ice.
I particularly like how Jean, who s always good at integrating a book s logo into the cover art, transformed Jack of Fables into matching scrolls to bookend the diptych.
The vines beanstalks? are a nice touch, too.
One of the highlights of the January solicitations is the first issue of , the new Vertigo crime drama by (The Other Side) and (Heavy Metal), with covers by one of my favorite artists, .
Best known for his collaboration with writer Andy Diggle on Vertigo s The Losers, Jock is an Eisner Award-nominated cover artist whose vibrant illustrations have fronted that series, as well as Batman, Nightwing, Catwoman, Detective Comics, Rush City and others.
His upcoming projects include Faker with Mike Carey, and Green Arrow: Year One with Diggle.
Scalped #1 is one of my favorite Jock covers to date.
It s not as dynamic as his work on Rush City, or as designerly as some of his work on The Losers. But it exudes attitude and quickly establishes the mood and setting for the story. It s stunning.
Being a process junkie, I asked Jock to walks us through the creation of the cover, from concept to final product. Here s what he had to say about Scalped #1:
I can t remember where I got the copy of Detective Comics #455, but I was too young in January 1976 to have grabbed it, brand-new, off the spinner rack. It most likely came from a flea market or garage sale several years later, in a carboard box full of similarly well-read and well-worn comics.
All I know for sure is that cover, by Mike Grell, scared the bejeezus out of me. The story Batman versus a vampire in a creepy old house was thrilling, but that cover I had trouble getting to sleep if it were left out in the open. It had to buried in the bottom of a crate, stored safely in a closed closet.
Only then I could turn out the lights.
Some three decades later, I m not as creeped out by a good, scary cover; in fact, I like them. A lot.
And most of the time I can even go to sleep with one of them left out in the open.
So for Halloween, I put together a gallery of 20 great creepy covers. These aren t necessarily the Best Scary Covers Ever; they re just unsettling, and well-done.
You ll notice a few prominently feature little kids. That s because there are few things as unnerving as the soulless stare of a child. (Blame The Omen.
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Tomorrow, I ll return with the regular weekly installment of Comics, Covered. But for today, enjoy these:
dc:title="Comics, Covered: 20 great covers for Halloween"
Comics, Covered: Spy vs. spy (oh, and tentacles!
) I briefly had a blog dedicated to comic-book cover art and design called, appropriately enough, . Unfortunately, I had to abandon that to focus on other things. But now I m bringing it back as a weekly feature at Blog@Newsarama.
How s that for a brief introduction?
Shortly before I wandered away from the Comics, Covered blog, I d intended to write an appreciation of Jim Steranko s late- 60s Marvel covers, such as and . Mostly, though, I wanted to focus on his brief, but groundbreaking, stint on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD.
I d nearly forgotten that plan until last week, when Marvel released its . There I saw Greg Horn s cover for She-Hulk #15, which makes use of the black-and-white psychedelic swirls and op-art elements introduced by Steranko back in September 1968 s Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #4.
It s easily my favorite Steranko cover and, arguably, his most influential.
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