Comic Book Resources

Straight for the art | A pair of covers by Terry Dodson

Uncanny X-Men #518 Cover Art

Artist Terry Dodson shares two "work in progress" covers over on his blog. First, the above cover for Uncanny X-Men #518, and second, the pencils for an upcoming issue of What If? about Spider-Man.

'Covered' covered by Wired

Captain America No. 2 by Danny Hellman

One of my favorite comics art blogs, Covered, received a nice write-up this week on Wired's Underwire blog. If you haven't seen it before, Covered features new takes on old comics covers by a variety of artists.

In addition to showcasing some of blogger/artist Robert Goodin's favorite submissions, Underwire also featured commentary from Goodin on each of his favorites (including Danny Hellman's Captain America cover, above.)

Via The Beat

Comics and wrestling tag-team in Chikara

Uncanny X-Men #141 & Chikara DVD cover

Chikara is a Lucha Libre-style wrestling promotion based in Pennsylvania that uses a lot of comic book imagery in their promotion. Case in point, check out these covers to some of their DVDs, which feature homages to classic comic covers by Marco D'Alfonso, or check out their roster page to see their talent turned into comic book heroes and villains.

Via Nerd Dads

Process junkies, prepare to be overstimulated

I've ended up with several process-related posts in my saved links file, so I thought I'd share them all in one swoop.

• Let's start with Jeffrey Brown, who has been posting up a storm of process goodness on his blog. Brown's new book, Funny Misshapen Body, was just released; here are some early cover "brainstorming" sketches:

Cover process for 'Funny Misshapen Body'

Here's some of the initial brainstorming for the 'Funny Misshapen Body' cover. There were about a dozen more ideas, but these were the strongest ones. All the ideas were passed along to the editors at Touchstone, who then looked at them and decided which parts and aspects of the concepts they liked most.

In another post, he develops the concept further, and then later shares the final art before it went to the designer. He also shares a flow chart he used to put together the story.

• Next, Joshua Middleton covers Supergirl #45 ...

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Exclusive: Marc Silvestri's Invincible Iron Man #14 cover

Invincible Iron Man #14 cover, by Marc Silvestri

Thanks to our pals at Marvel Comics, we are pleased to present the exclusive debut of the Invincible Iron Man #14 variant cover by none other than Marc Silvestri!

Continuing the next chapter in Matt Fractions "World's Most Wanted" storyline, this issue features Tony Stark on the run from his rogues gallery -- and the big bad guy in the Marvel Universe, Norman Osborn! Invincible Iron Man #14 hits stores this June.

Be sure to catch this issue in its glorious variant cover by the Top Cow himself, Marc Silvestri.

Click on the image at the right to see it full size.

WonderCon | Paul Pope moves into The Unknown

The Unknown

During their panel at WonderCon today (or yesterday, I guess, as it is now past midnight -- crap, I need to go to bed) BOOM!revealed one of the covers for The Unknown ... this one by Paul Pope. Watch for my full panel report soon on the main CBR site. And by soon I mean most likely in the morning, as I'm sure all the sane people who work for CBR are asleep, while I'm still up and about.

Sleep awaits ...

The 25 best comic covers of 2008

The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard

As difficult and time-consuming, yet thoroughly enjoyable, as it was to narrow down my 25 favorite covers of the year, it was a task made much tougher by one thing: the holiday calendar.

Despite what the DC Comics website led me to believe, this week's releases came out today (2009) and not Wednesday (2008), which meant a couple of early entries had to be bumped off the list late in the game. I'm a stickler, at least when it comes to that. Maybe those covers will make the next edition.

I've tried to explain, to the best of my ability, what makes the covers so successful, at least in my eyes. In some cases I've probably gone overboard, while in others I've failed to put a finger on that indefinable quality that makes an image stand out. That's the nature of art, I suppose.

So now, without further delay or caveat, here is my list of the 25 best comic-book covers of the year (in alphabetical order):

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