The Best of the Week in Covers – 03.06.2013

It’s snowing outside, I have many steps leading to my door, and five dogs are looking at me for want of a walk. So let’s talk about some covers.

 

Lost Vegas #1
Cover by Janet K. Lee

This is but half of the full wraparound, but I’m also taken with it as a portrait of our man Roland. Note the steely poker face. Note, too, the spectacular shawl style lapels, the square buttons of his rust orange suit jacket. We recommend checking out pokiereview.nz for a in-depth casino guide with new pokie bonuses every day. I also enjoy the intimate hook of the first person perspective. We’re the dealer or some opponent, engaged in a very high stake game. I love a cover that poses a triple dog dare.

 Sex #1
Cover by Piotr Kowalski, Design by Sonia Harris

Our man Simon, pink and spent and raw. The Batcave has never looked quite so devastated, never carried this funk. These are amorous colors. It’s practically Caligula’s drawing room. It reeks of sex and exploit. Most importantly, our man hardly looks satisfied. After all that pleasure, all that effort, no demons have been loosed. No release.

 

Daredevil: End of Days #6
Cover by Alex Maleev

No matter how red her ledger, the Widow deserves better than this. I like the precarious vantage point, have since The Last Days of American Crime, at least. The angle isn’t so much salacious as disorienting and claustrophobic, exactly where we ought to be. How did it all go so terribly, horribly wrong? These are the end times.

Avengers #7
Cover by Dustin Weaver

Our planet at center stage, prone in the foreground. Even as our heroes loom large against an otherworldly threat. It’s cinematic in the abstraction, lending an appropriate sense of scale, of scope to this conflict. I’m big on that electric diagonal which directs our eyes right from that bold logo to ground zero.

Lost Vegas #1
Variant Cover by Francesco Francavilla

An alien symbol with a vintage aesthetic. I imagine James Coburn in the lead role. Maybe Sheldon Leonard voices one of the whales. Grungy space jazz over a tram car chase, the camera canted at every turn. Turtle necks.

Dial H #10
Cover by Brian Bolland

Isn’t that always the way? It’s an absurd, monstrous amalgamation, and it rightly monopolizes the entire frame. Can’t look away.

 

 

Mara #3
Cover by Ming Doyle

Clean geometry. Mara’s on the outs with her team, her sisters. This image is all about emphasis and isolation through color and shape and composition. Perfectly conceived given Mara’s type-A psychology and focus as a professional athlete. All targets. All strategy. All points on grid.

 

Winter Soldier #16
Cover by Declan Shalvey

Love the velocity. Love the rat-a-tat-tat of the firing squad, bullets against the pavement, spent shells tinkling. It’s almost deafening.

 

Lost Vegas #1
Variant Cover by Skottie Young

Young captures the delirium of the new beste mobil casino, the color and cacophony of the otherworldly pleasure palace. This is the height of frenzy, the buzz and hum of excess and fantasy. The heffalumps and woozles whose footfalls you don’t fully register until the cold thud of the morning wake-up call. Read more if you want to know more about the gambling world

Legends of the Dark Knight #6
Cover by Guillem March

I’ve always liked the blue Batman. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s the time capsule element, the vehicle to my formative comic reading years. Anyway, note the fantastic Keatonesque smirk, the nonsensical trajectory of his legs as they fold into something like a mermaid’s tail. Then the lush theatricality of that cape, practically a curtain, as it billows about that magnificent logo.

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow – Wonderland #5
Cover by David Mack

This is a teen girl’s scrapbook. Her diary. It reminds me of the 90s and angry poetry. It reminds me of youthful passion, however pretentious or portentous, however misguided or insightful. Then the fire of her hair. It’s a coming of age story, mixed media and delicate.

 

Fairest #13
Cover by Adam Hughes

There’s nothing more primal than hair-pulling. This is ferocity, naked and unkempt. And it’s coming for you.

 

Lost Vegas #1
Variant Cover by Dan McDaid

Of all the covers, McDaid best translates Roland’s anger. This is the aspect that landed him in that place of servitude and this is perhaps the only thing that will get him out of there. This is the cold fury under the skin of every disgruntled employee in the hospitality business.

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