Judging (Marvel’s August 2024) Books By Their Covers

“Judging Books By Their Covers” is a feature where I pick out my favorite comic book covers from the monthly solicitations by the various comic book companies.

As I noted in the one I did for DC, I am picking back up this regular feature I used to do for years after just a BRIEF hiatus of…you know, fifteen years or so.

As I pointed out in the aforementioned DC one, back in the day, I would make a quick comment about every cover in the solicitations. Obviously, as you all know, comic books now have, like, three-four covers PER ISSUE, so since I stopped doing the ORIGINAL column because it was too time-consuming (granted, part of that had to do with how much work we used to have to put in to get images for articles. I literally would have to create my own thumbnails and image file names for images used in the articles back in the day), you KNOW I’m not doing THAT much writing, so instead, I’m going to just count down my ten favorite covers of the solicitations (note that not every cover for Marvel’s August 2024 releases has been revealed yet, so I’m going just by what was actually featured in the solicitations, which you can click on here to follow along). I’m considering perhaps working in one or two cover images that I think didn’t quite work, but I guess I’ll stick with just “pros” for now, and no “cons.”

10. Greg Capullo makes his triumphant return to Marvel with an offbeat Wolverine cover

Greg Capullo became a star working at Marvel in the early 1990s, starting with a run on Quasar (where Capullo introduced THE iconic Quasar costume), and then moving over to X-Force after Rob Liefeld left Marvel to form Image. Capullo was tapped by Todd McFarlane to take over on art duties on McFarlane’s hit comic book series, Spawn. Capullo drew the series for a number of years before transitioning into mostly outside comic book art work (doing video game designs, and stuff like that). He returned to comics in a big way with the new superhero, Haunt, with McFarlane and Robert Kirkman. Now that he was back, he decided to do new “Big 2” work for the first time in over a decade, and he chose DC, doing an iconic run on Batman with Scott Snyder, and then followed that with the crossover events, Death Metal (and a few other special projects). He announced his return to Marvel last year, and has been doing some striking variant covers while keeping his first Marvel project a secret.

He finally revealed his new Marvel series last week, with the prestige format miniseries, Wolverine: Revenge, with superstar writer, Jonathan Hickman, and this cover by Capullo perfectly captures that over-the-top, dynamic style that Capullo has had for decades, and showing off that sense of FUN that permeates his work, as the site of Wolverine in a dinosaur’s mouth is an unusual (but cool) cover idea, and the design was made so that it could easily just add blood to it for Marvel’s “Red Band” variant version of this series. My only critique is that I wish that the logo wasn’t built into the image (that’s just because I would love to crop it and use it as a header, and I can’t with the logo mixed in there like that).

9. Alex Ross makes some intriguing choices on his Fantastic Four cover

Roughly speaking, there are two types of Alex Ross covers. There are the “pin-up” covers where he just does a classical version of a character, which are QUITE good, don’t get me wrong, but then there are the “story” covers, where Ross is the official cover artist on a series, and this is where I think he really shines. Ross doesn’t get nearly the attention he deserves for his storytelling. He’s a very good storyteller, and I love when he gets to use his covers to, you know, tell a story.

This current Fantastic Four cover shows the Fantastic Four heading into battle. It works as a “pin-up,” but it also specifically ties into THIS SPECIFIC battle, and I love that about it. It LOOKS general, but it is actually specific. And it is awesome either way.

8. Luciano Vecchio makes a surprising homage reference on a variant cover

There’s a saying that goes something like “You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” but Marvel is trying to see if it can prove that saying wrong by trying to make a big deal out of Storm’s SECOND time joining the Avengers. I think everyone involved would admit that Marvel’s first time having Storm join the Avengers (back at the tail end of Brian Michael Bendis’ famous run on the series) was a bit of a dud, as it was quickly overshadowed by Avengers vs. X-Men that followed soon after she joined (and then she was right back off of the team).

This time, Marvel wants her joining the team to be a BIG deal, and we’ll hopefully see it be just that. This clever Luciano Vecchio cover pays homage to the FIRST time that a member of the X-Men joined the Avengers, when the Beast joined in the 1970s, and then brought Hellcat to the team with him in Avengers #144 (and Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia drew Hellcat joining the cast of the series on the cover that is being homaged here, with Black Panther in the place that Beast was on the original cover).

7. Alan Davis pays tribute to 50 years of Iron Fist

This one is tricky, as this cover celebrating the 50th anniversary of Iron Fist (which, as we know, was actually a few months back) is a pretty straightforward design. However, I think what makes this Alan Davis cover stand out from the pack is that, well, first of all, he’s Alan freakin’ Davis, so his Iron First main figure is a striking feature of the cover, but even more so, I appreciated how Davis managed to make all of Danny Rand’s various Iron Fist costumes from over the years look really cool, while also maintaining their respective distinctive looks.

It’s a major achievement, and one I wanted to applaud.

6. David Marquez doubles up on great covers for Uncanny X-Men #1

The X-Men are going through a relaunch called “From the Ashes,” and let me tell you what, the covers for the various new X-books are ON POINT. I could have easily seen myself picking any number of them for this post, especially Ryan Stegman’s covers for X-Men #2 and #3 (a dynamic action shot for X-Men #2, and a clever cover showing Cyclops being held at gunpoint while eating on #3), but I think that with Uncanny X-Men launching in August, David Marquez pulled out ALL of the stops for his covers for the debut issue.

If I had to pick one, I’d go with the main cover, highlighting the various iconic aspects of the members of this X-Men team (Gambit’s glowing playing car, Jubilee’s fireworks, Wolverine’s claws, Nightcrawler’s tail, Rogue’s touchin’ hand), but his action shot of the team in action is excellent, as well. The X-Books are in a great spot, artistically (Nicoletta Baldari’s Phoenix #2 variant was the last cover cut from the top ten).

5. Gabriele Dell’Otto pulls off a dynamic Daredevil variant cover

Generally speaking, let me note that after looking at both Marvel and DC’s covers for a month, I think it is fair to say that Marvel is MUCH better at avoiding just “pin-up” covers. Again, as I noted in the DC entry, part of that might be a different approach overall, as DC charges a buck extra for their variant covers, and puts them on cardstock covers, so the idea might be that you treat them LIKE a print of a cool pin-up, so “avoid” is probably the wrong term when DC is actively seeking OUT pin-up covers, ya know? That said, Marvel has plenty of pin-up variants, as well, but they definitely do LESS of them.

One of the covers that stood out to me in this regard is this Gabriele Dell’Otto variant cover for Daredevil #12. Now, Dell’Otto has been at this game for a long time, and I routinely praised his covers back when I was first doing this feature, but this cover, in particular, made me think about how you could EASILY see this just being a generic “Daredevil on a rooftop on moonlit night” cover, and instead, Dell’Otto had it be a dynamic fight that tied in with the actual plot of the issue in question. That’s AWEsome in my book.

4. Amanda Conner pulls off a hilarious homage on this Deadpool Team-Up variant cover

Obviously, I’ve written a LOT about cover homages over the years. I think cover homages are fine, but a lot of times, they can be a bit…not BORING, but not exactly thrilling, either. The best ones, in my opinion, are the ones that are surprising in terms of choices (like the aforementioned Avengers cover homaging the cover when Hellcat joined the cast of the Avengers, although not technically the official team), and the ones that are surprising in terms of WHAT they do with the homage.

Here, Amanda Conner drew a hilarious riff on the iconic Todd McFarlane cover for Incredible Hulk #340 with this Deadpool Team-Up #1 variant, with Wolverine having sliced off Deadpool’s nose.

3. Maria Wolf blows the roof off the place in this striking NYX variant cover

Again, as I note, I typically do not like so-called “pin-up” covers, as I don’t mind a cover that is not showing an active part of the story, but I would prefer the cover at least have some specific connection to the story. You know, don’t have the spotlight be on a character who isn’t in the story, or whatever.

Here, I think this Maria Wolf variant for NYX #2 is both A. a fair description of the book, which is about Laura “Wolverine” Kinney and a group of young mutants living together in New York City, and B. just a standout image on its own. It is just brimming to the edge with energy.

2. Mark Brooks tears away from the competition on this Spider-Gwen: The Ghost-Spider cover

When I was last doing these features, Mark Brooks had already started doing covers, but boy, he has transformed into one of the very best cover artists ever in the past 15 years. He routinely takes the most imaginative approaches to his covers, delivering story-specific covers that also serve as mini-posters in their own right.

Here, I don’t know what the SPECIFIC story is (perhaps Chameleon?), but the main thing is that this cover clearly references the story, and it is so brilliantly told.

There is a meme about artists and writers who “knew what the assignment was,” which is a reference to the concept of artists knowing what they are asked to do, and then doing it. Here, Juan Ferreyra clearly “knew what the assignment was” when he took on the assignment of this comic book, which is merging symbiotes with zombies.

And so, of course, Ferreyra, one of the peak comic book horror artists working today, drew an amazingly spooky zombie on this cover. So good.

Okay, this column is a bit less reader-interactive, but hey, if you want to share your thoughts on Marvel’s August 2024 covers, feel free to make comments when I share this on social media, or drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!