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Underground > Comic Books >

Best Comic Book Covers

15:14 / 13.07.06

A while back I remember Warren Ellis making a ruckus about ugly comic covers and how they should be more like album covers or something. At the shop today I was thinking how great Hellboy covers where. So that got me wondering what are nice, attractive comic book covers? What are you favorite comic covers of all time?

15:30 / 13.07.06

My favorite cover of all time:

Simple and attractive. Turned me onto both X-Force and Darwyn Cooke.

15:35 / 13.07.06

There's this.

But on the subject of album covers...

Really, any Promethea or Planetary cover is the bees knees to me, in that I wouldn't mind a big poster of them. They're referential and thematic, instead of flat out action (which is nice, but I don't fancy them so much). Trying to think of covers... more later I guess.

17:18 / 13.07.06

Bolland in animal man, they were all very good, bug this one is the best of all, breaking the fouth wall, the composition

Howard Chaykin as done great covers, the one of Black Kiss were very good (much better than the comic)

And my favorite of all time, Jae Lee's Hellshock.

by some reason, I only noticed that they all have a cross after previewing the post . . .

the credible hulk

17:29 / 13.07.06

My favorite cover:

Planetary #21

20:18 / 13.07.06

I really can't answer this. Really.

This one for nostalgic reasons, maybe:

This was before intercompany crossovers had become commonplace, and the promise it held made me giddy. I feel it even now.

There are other reasons apart from nostalgia, of course, and I fear the task is too big.

20:32 / 13.07.06

I just read that Supes v Spidey in a bt pack of Spider-Man 1976-1980. It is utter brilliance.

But what I really want to know is this: is there an areola visible in that Chaykin cover or have I just been sitting in front of a computer for too many hours? It looks like it's a coloring effect, not necessarily pencilled in...

20:55 / 13.07.06

Absolutly loved Web of Spiderman #1 by Charles Vess.

21:24 / 13.07.06

Well, for comedic purposes...

jo98

But really, there's just so many covers out there. One immediately popping into mind:

21:27 / 13.07.06

Trying that again:

Flex Mentallo #4

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

22:19 / 13.07.06

02:02 / 14.07.06

These are all pretty great. I agree about the Charles Vess cover, so I'm going to post it:

I also love this one for nostalgic reasons.

Spyder Todd 2008

02:56 / 14.07.06

When it comes to Spider-Man covers, there's really only one choice for me:

However, all time favorite comic book cover ever? It varies, but this one is always in the Top 5:

15:14 / 18.07.06

So, is that it then... the best comic covers ever?

Cowboy Scientist

18:54 / 18.07.06

THIS is the best comic book cover EVER:

Weird mummy insects. YES.

19:09 / 18.07.06

This is all very nice, and these are some pretty good covers, but it'd be nice if we could substantiate our reasons for our favourite covers a bit, please?

Thinking about the question, I've noticed of the three that sprung to mind they were all on white backgrounds. I just like the starkness of it, I guess. This is especially pertinent on the Shining Knight one, by Simone Bianchi, as it does serve as an emphasis to Ystin's isolation; 's magnificently overwrought stuff, drowning (hopelessly?!) in a sea of evil insect people. Somewhat disappointingly, the scene fails to appear inside.

Hmm, the ink blots on the actual published book aren't really notable, being obscured by the title letterhead.

I'm also a sucker for incorporating the typeface into the cover, as Chris Bachalo has done here, and in several recent X-Men comics (this one's upcoming.) Anyway, looks pretty intriguing.

The last one's really stark; three colours, and kind've unique for a superhero book - character out of costume, Japanese(?) typeset... I don't know if it's a Zatoichi trib, but it looks great.

01:29 / 19.07.06

Hrrrrmmmm. This is the best picture I could find online, but I have this on an actual 2000AD. The colours are a bit shit here, but the real thing's fantastic. Painting's flawless and you can even see the plooks on his chin.

It was my sister's comic. When I first saw this I was pretty wee and it made me feel kind of like he does. I didn't know it was possible to make pictures that looked as good as that.

09:06 / 19.07.06

I don't want to get into the merits of the story - Wonderstar does that more than adequately here - just to say that in 1986 my unprepared, eleven year old brane was utterly blown away by this book. I remember holding it in my hands and just staring at this cover. This was big stuff - serious, epic, grand stuff. This Batman wasn't some street smart vigilante, a mere tough guy, this was something else entirely: Batman as a force of nature -a god- riding the lightning.
Then there were the credits. Who the fuck were these guys that their names had a whole quarter of the image entirely to themselves. These were clearly important people, people with something to say, people I should pay attention to. Authors with a capital A, and all that that entailed.
And the title, well, it would have been at home on a movie poster. Christ, there was even a subtitle. Blockbusters had subtitles, Starwars had subtitles, comics didn't have subtitles. But this one did.

Twenty years on I still marvel at the economy: the swooping silhouette against the blurred lightning effect (we also didn't have blurry effects back then - something else that set the book apart), the towering font of the credits and subtitle, and the grey, stone wall "Batman". Along with the cover to Watchmen, this cover symbolizes important changes in the medium, when graphic novels reinvented comics as "literature" and the growth of a whole new graphic armory. And, more importantly, big changes in my understanding of what the medium could do.

Yay.

15:47 / 19.07.06

I remember having a similar reaction to Dark Knight, only to me it looked like a movie poster.

What really flipped my lid was this:

and this:

Partially because they were covers like children's book covers -- most comic books were still wrapped in things that looked like panels or splash pages from inside the book. These were different. The Muth Moonshadow covers sold me on the book -- in part, I think, because I was equating the watercolors with "art," but also because they were warm and pretty and set the tone for a story of childish fantasy. Far more dreamy than any of the superhero books. What is that spherical thing? Obviously, they're not going to FITE! And there's also those swoopy art-nouveau frames and lettering, which was pretty radical at the time. What do you mean, not block letters and not primary colors?

The McKean cover was like that, too, only even moreso because it was collage. I loved the items in the collage, too -- bones, shells, whatever else. And this was clearly not standard comic book stuff. It was more like a music video or a record cover. Paintings with elaborate frames, maybe. The idea of frames. Or, really, more like just having an idea at all, rather than just loudly declaring whatever dude in tights was in DEADLY DANGER and you HAD TO BUY THE ISSUE to FIND OUT!!!!

This is more what did I like and why, but some of the same things are true. Specially the thought of children's books illustrations.

16:15 / 19.07.06

On a very similar tip to grant, I also love the - frankly terrifying - Doom Patrol #61, which looks very much like a McKean but isn't - can't remember who did it? Oh, there it is, Tom Taggart.

18:34 / 12.02.07

Spyder, that Spiderman cover is aces.

The limited colouring technology of the 80s was responsible for some very beautiful imagery, imo. Colourists had to be very creative, even innovative, to get the most out of the limited pallete and derth of FX.