Welcome to the twenty-fourth installment of Comic Book Cover-Up! Every week, We the Nerdy assistant editor Henry Varona weighs in on his choices for the best comic book covers coming out, along with some great honorable mentions worth checking out! Looking at the layout, artistic talent, and the overall craftsmanship, the covers are analyzed and ranked accordingly. At the end, each book will be given points based on their ranking. Then Henry adds up points for the various series, which will work towards earning further accolades in the future! Here’s a point breakdown for what every ranking will earn:
- First-10 Points
- Second-7 Points
- Third- 5 Points
- Fourth and Fifth- 3 Points Each
- Still Gorgeous- 1 Point Each
So without further ado, here’s the week’s best!
5. All-New Ghost Rider 5 by Tradd Moore (Featured Image)
Tradd Moore’s interior artwork on All-New Ghost Rider has made it one of my favorite Marvel titles over the last few months. Often though, I find that his covers have lacked the same creative design that the book showcases. Here, Moore steps up his game as he uses the camera angle for the shot to great effect. What we’re looking at is simple. It’s Mr. Hyde vs. Robbie Reyes. But by taking the camera and framing the shot from below Hyde, through his legs, it gives us an exciting moment. The intensity is amplified and Mr. Hyde looks larger than life, which is perfect for the character. Even more so, it allows us to fully see Reyes, the crowd, and the car. This gives us great context and makes the fight feel urban, which is crucial to this book. The focus on Hyde’s musculature (THOSE CALVES THOUGH) really makes him look strong and it gets you excited for the insanity that the book contains.
4. Samurai Jack 10 by Andy Kuhn
This cover is just fun. Despite how unhappy Samurai Jack looks on this book, there is a child-like joy that comes from this image. The puzzle imagery here leaves you with tons of different interpretations. First, we can say that Aku is just playing with Jack, and that he doesn’t take him as a serious threat. Then we could say that Jack has lost a part of his mind, or something of that sort. Or, we could just simply say that Jack is unhappy with being a pawn in Aku’s games. Any way you slice it, the cover is fun and whimsical. The look on Jack’s face is what sells the image entirely, as he clearly wants to just slice Aku to bits. One of the biggest problems that comics based on cartoons face is replicating the style of the series, but Andy Kuhn clearly loves and understands how to capture the source material. All of this and yet it’s so simple, and can reach any demographic. That’s a winner, right there.
3. Batman Eternal 17 by Dustin Nguyen
Two weeks in a row, Dustin Nguyen has brought his A-Game to Batman Eternal. As with last week’s cover, Nguyen uses the cape to great effect, completely shaping the image around it. Here, the folds of Batman’s cape perfectly form the face of Jim Corrigan, better known as the Spectre. The color transition from black to blue to green emphasizes this transformation and makes the Spectre all the more haunting. His presence is especially ominous as we watch Batman fall to his doom, tangled in his own cape. With nothing in the background except smoke and doom, it’s a frightful image that is equal parts spooky and awesome. Nguyen proves here why he is one of the modern masters of Batman. Though he has been stripped of Gotham City and is dealing with supernatural elements, this is unmistakably Batman in every conceivable way.
2. Hawkeye 19 by David Aja
It’s easy to forget about how truly beautiful Hawkeye’s covers are. The book is so often delayed that the covers are released practically six months in advance. When you factor in the themes of these covers and how they repeat one another’s style, it makes it especially difficult for them to stand out. But, if you throw all that aside and get lost in the cover, it will astonish you. Here, Aja shows The Clown, a mysterious killer that we first met a year ago. The hexagonal pattern places focus on his rifle, clearly showcasing the threat he presents. But beyond that we also get great detail without having to go to great lengths to clutter the image. What makes Aja such a master is that he is able to suggest so much to the reader through so little. The way that he so cleverly plays with the cross-hairs of the sniper in relation to the Hawkguy logo we’ve seen for all this time is wonderful. There is a reason Aja won the Eisner Award for best cover artist. This is why.
1. Regular Show 13 by Fellipe Martins
This just might be one of the weirdest comic book covers I have seen all year. Fellipe Martins uses hyper-realism to draw these cartoon animals and it’s honestly pretty terrifying. However, unlike last week’s Archie cover by Alex Ross, the terror is appropriate here. Regular Show is a very bizarre program and the comic is suitably so as well. It’s sometimes a little bit creepy when you watch it, like when hotdogs start eating themselves. This sick sense of humor makes the creepy stuff cool. Mordecai and Rigby are completely in character and just freaky. Once you get past that, the cover is still masterfully done. The angle is incredible, heightening the bizarre. The image of Benson in the sky is hilarious. Even the attention to detail on Rigby’s steaming hot drink is really cool. Sometimes it’s hard to describe just why a cover works. And man, this week it really just does on every level.
Still Gorgeous:
- Evil Empire 3 by Jay Shaw
- Harley Quinn 8 by Dan Panosian
- Regular Show 13 by Cole Closser
- Sandman Overture 3 by Dave McKean
- Witchblade 177 by John Tyler Christopher
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