CBR Live! Archive
Judging (Image's April) Books By Their Covers
Image's April Solicitations went up awhile ago, so let's make some prejudgments based just on the covers (as we all love to make prejudgments, don't we?)!
Let's begin!
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I am thrilled to see Madman return, and just the awesomeness of that was almost enough for me to place this cover in the Top Five, but while the drawing by Allred is good (as usual), I don't think it had as much pop as one would hope for in a cover.
It's also pretty weird to cover up the logo on a first issue.
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Very neat William Stout cover for Alien Pig Farm.
Quite trippy.
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The cartoonish nature of this Tone Rodriguez cover for Unravel stands out a bit with the style of the cover in general, and not in a good way.
With that disconnect excluded, Rodriguez lays out a strong cover design. I am impressed.
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Pretty decent Chris Brunner cover for The Ride.
Is The Ride one of those comics with the car company deal? There are at least TWO comics out there based just on advertising cars, right?
How weird is THAT?
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Not as impressive with Manny Trembley's cover for the Sam Noir: Special Edition comic.
Decent drawing, but not too gripping.
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Is this Chaz Truog cover new?
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Very strong Jason Armstrong cover for Ferro City.
Reminds me of Grist.
Grist is awesome.
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This is a good job by Ottley for the latest Invincible hardcover collection.
but I do not like this regular Invincible cover by Ottley.
All that type doesn't look good.
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Nice Frank Espinosa cover for the latest Rocketo collection.
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Surprisingly strong Greg Capullo cover for this Sam and Twitch collection.
It IS pretty funny to see them hype Bendis NOW, while his departure was not taken too well back then.
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Decent Juan Ferreyra cover for After the Cape.
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Did Ant just read a review of her comic?
But yeah, not a very attractive cover by Mario Gully.
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Nicely noir-like cover by Jordan Raskin for Black Mist.
What's Raskin been up to lately?
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Not my scene, but Jimmie Robinson sure does commit to his themes.
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Nice enough Sana Takeda cover for Drain.
Pretty standard fare, though.
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Nice, moody piece by David Lloyd.
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Strong Girls cover.
Man, I am so happy to see this book end, and for the Luna Brothers to work on something good again.
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Here is an example of where cartoony can hurt the dramatic impact of a cover.
Yildiray Cinar is not bad on this cover, but the mood doesn't fit the style.
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Vasilis Lolo and Becky Cloonan both do nice jobs on Pirates of Coney Island, but nothing exactly stand out, either.
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Nice enough cover by Erik Larsen.
Fairly routine, though.
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Interesting cover from new Spawn artist, Brian Haberlin.
Haberlin is a nice pick-up.
I don't like this cover, but that's not Haberlin's fault.
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Decent enough Dave Ahn cover for Strongarm.
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Very nice layout by Mario Boon for Texas Strangers.
I am not thrilled with the execution, but the design and layout is top notch.
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Nice enough Tom Beland cover for True Story Swear to God.
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A bit too low key Walking Dead cover for me by Charles Adlard.
I think he could come up with a cooler cover design.
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Really nice David Nakayama cover for City of Heroes.
I am especially impressed by the effects on the cover by Blond.
It really helps the cover flow.
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Very bland Conrad/Migliari cover for Freshmen.
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There is a lot of good design work on this Madame Mirage cover by Kenneth Rocafort, which makes it disappointing when he goes to the lame T&A stuff.
He has some nice design sense.
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Not liking this Witchblade Manga cover by Kazasa Sumita.
It doesn't flow well at all.
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Pretty good Joseph Michael Linsner cover for Witchblade/Punisher.
Nice layout....not great execution, but better than some other Linsner covers.
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TOP FIVE!!
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5. Very striking Mahmud A. Asar cover for Dynamo 5.
It really pops off the page.
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4. Ladronn infuses such emotion in his pieces when he has his mojo working.
Still, he does the "whole face on the cover" schtick a BIT too much for me to have it ranked even higher.
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3. I really love the way that Hickman draws the reader's eye where he wants it to go.
A really nice creation.
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2. Manny Trembley makes up for the other Sam Noir cover with this much stronger piece.
Covers like these are usually difficult to convey the idea being expressed, as it is a bit too subtle, but Trembley really pays it off here.
A LITTLE more prominent, and it would be #1.
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1. This awesome Tom Scioli cover for the Godland collection takes my top spot this month.
What brilliant cover design.
Place this cover amongst a bunch of other collections, and it truly "pops."
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Well, that's it for me!
Feel free to tell me your prejudices, and your top five covers!
- Posted on January 31, 2007 @ 07:03 PM
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11 Comments
Dan K
January 31, 2007 at 7:17 pm
You have to give that Invincible cover credit for its shameless groveling for new readers.
I'm so glad Madman's back. I've missed my regular Allred fix since X-Statix ended.
Scott King
January 31, 2007 at 8:30 pm
I really like the "ELEPHANTMEN" cover.
DubipR
January 31, 2007 at 8:54 pm
I'm thrilled that Madman's coming back as well, but I have to say the Elephantman and the Godland covers have always been strong..
And props for Blond's kick ass coloring job too!
DanLarkin
January 31, 2007 at 9:34 pm
That Godland collection cover is definitely the pick of the bunch. Good call.
MarkAndrew
January 31, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Good buncha covers in general. It always throws me that Image still publishes SO MANY books.
And the Sam Noir cover would be a lot better if he wasn't holding a sword.
Anonymous
January 31, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Ferro City is beautiful.
I also like the Godland cover. I'll have to try that 60 cent issue. Haven't picked up an issue of Godland since #1, and it didn't do much for me. But for six dimes, I'll try another.
I'm thinking about picking up Madman. I've never read any Madman before, and can't afford the Gargantua, but Mike Allred is awesome.
Paul
February 1, 2007 at 11:12 am
Have to disagree about the first Pirates of Coney Island cover...I like the colors and the design. Of course, I've never seen the comic before, so maybe every issue is very similar.
I also think it's funny that a cover with a guy jumping through the air taking his shirt off behind another guy posed funny and vomiting bright green liquid is considered "bland," but then I look at it again...and yep. That's a monumental failure on the artist's part. Or at the very least, a great indicator of why that crappy pseudo-Alex-Ross style is maybe not the best for every situation.
Michael
February 1, 2007 at 1:34 pm
How I wish I could name Madman cover of the month. Hopefully it will at least be the issue of the month! Cover of the month has to go to Godland.
The second Pirates of Coney Island cover could have been great if there was more interaction between the monster in the background and the character in the foreground. Is that Cloonan or Lolo? Of course, the coloring is great.
Eric TF Bat
February 2, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Is the other car-related comic the "online novel" on NBC's Heroes website, or are you thinking of something else? At least Hiro is amusing in his constant plugging of the car in question.
Portable Hal
October 9, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Love the picks. But how can you NOT blame the Spawn cover artist for the Spawn cover?
Brian Cronin
October 9, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Good question. I'm sure I had a point there, but I can't recall what it was now.
Maybe because the character he has to draw isn't visually interesting? That might be what I was thinking of.