Cover scale

Post by **JohnMayo** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:56 pm

We've been discussing the generic nature of Marvel covers for a bit now. I figured that since I've got my stack of Marvel comics to read for this week that I'd analyze the cover of each before and after reading the comic to see how much they do or don't relate to the contents of the comics

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #678
Before: The cover implies Spider-Man is injured and there is a Daily Bugle with "New York Destroyed!" as the headline. This seems like it will be related to the contents of the issue but I can imagine a number of stories about Spider-Man being injured as New York is destroyed that this cover is not overly specific about the contents of the issue.
After : No injured Spider-Man and certainly while the story fit the cover, it wasn't exactly what I expected from the cover. So while the story was generally implied by the cover, I can imagine a number of other covers that would have been specific to this issue.
Verdict: Story related but not story specific
Suggested cover: Spider-Man standing at the doorway to the "bad Tuesday" stating the he only had hours to prevent that destructive future from happening.

AVENGERS #21
Before: The cover has the Avengers apparently regrouping during a fight with Storm front an center with lightning coming out of here hands. No indication of who or what they are fighting or why. My expectations are Storm as a major guest star as Iron Man, Captain America, Vision, Spider Woman and an injured Hawkeye fight someone or something. So, not an entirely ironic cover as it seems vaguely story related but it is certainly far from story specific.
After: Well, all of the characters on the cover were in the issue but the story was not really implied by the cover at all. Many major player in the story weren't on the cover (such as Red Hulk and Protector) and the nature of the battle runs counter to the cover. While Storm was in the issue she was unconscious the entire time which against runs counter to the cover
Verdict: Potentially story related (vaguely) but not story specific and very misleading.
Suggested cover: I'm not really sure what to suggest since this is a classic middle chapter that moves a number of different but parallel story treads forward slightly with no single clear focal plotline.

AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #3
Before: Spidey is getting trounced by the villain of the story arc. While sort of story specific, it could apply to any issue of this arc or any arc with Spidey going up against this foe. The Red Hulk is mentioned in the upper left corner which I missed at first.
After: The cover fit the issue but wasn't entirely specific to this particular issue. While the image on the cover didn't happen in the issue, it easily could have on the pages at the staple.
Verdict: Story related but a very poor sales job

DAREDEVIL #8
Before: Spidey guest stars in the second part of a two part story. No idea what the story is about from the cover
After: Spidey does indeed guest star in this issue as does the Black Cat that is not on the cover. Unsurprisingly, the cover gave no indications of the specifics of the story.
Verdict: Iconic cover for any Spider-Man/Daredevil crossover story

FEAR ITSELF FEARLESS #7 (OF 12)
Before: The cover had Crossbones unloading two uzis into Wolverine at point blank range. Clearly those two are going to fight in this issue. No clue as to why they are going to flight so this cover could apply to any issue with those two fighting. No hint of the Asgardian nature of the storyline.
After: We did get Crossbone unloading a machine gun into Wolverine. But that was just one scene in the issue and not even the central scene of the issue. But that is the dilemma with the modern story telling style in which each issue doesn't always have a clear beginning, middle and end to a single plotline.
Verdict: Generic/uninformative face-off between Crossbones and Wolverine. Fails to sell that particular issue.

GHOST RIDER #8
Before: Iconic cover of Ghost Rider. No story clues at all.
After: No hint of Hawkeye on the cover and he was a major guest star.
Verdict: Completely iconic

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #512
Before: The cover is Iron Man versus an army of flying robots. So not completely iconic by a long shot but also not completely issue specific either. This cover does nothing to get me back into the story or sell me on the story.
After: Iron Man is in the issue as at the Dreadnoughts but the two never meet in this issue. While the cover relates to the story arc, it does not relate to this specific issue.
Verdict: Midleading cover that would better fit the next issue in the storyline.

MOON KNIGHT #9
Before: Iconic cover of Moon Knight with a potentially metaphorical aspect to it. Give no clear indication of the contents of the issue. For that matter, it isn't even entirely clear that really is Moon Knight. Overall, it is a confused cover that fails to pitch the issue.
After: As expected, no connection between the cover and the contents.
Verdict: Iconic cover

THUNDERBOLTS #169
Before: Generic team in action cover with a period piece riff which is evocative of the story arc. No real story hints except for the "We're about to get medieval on ya!" above the logo. So, if you have been following the series, you can guest the team lands in medieval times.
After: No hint of the Camelot and Black Knight aspects of the story.
Verdict: Generic team in action cover

VENOM #12
Before: The cover has Venom versus Jack O'Lantern, presumably in Las Vegas given the unclear background. Seems story related but maybe not issue specific. No idea why they are fighting.
After: Venom and Jack O'Lantern do fight but Venom is in his classic look, not the new military look, during that fight. So, it was kind of issue specific but also slightly misleading.
Verdict: Specific to the storyline/issue but misleading

GENERATION HOPE #15 XREGB
Before: Iconic shot of Hope and Shaw with the Phoenix force in the background. No story clues.
After: Hope, Shaw and the Phoenix force were all in this issue so the cover, as uninformative as it was, wasn't misleading
Verdict: Iconic cover

NEW MUTANTS #36 XREGB
Before: Cover has the New Mutants fighting the band Diskhord. It was storyline specific enough to remind me roughly were things left off in the story.
After: The cover was a reasonably accurate reflection of the nature of the storyline in the issue.
Verdict: Specific to the storyline/issue

UNCANNY X-FORCE #20 XREGG
Before: The cover has X-Force fighting various Captain Britains. Storyline specific but with a layout that feels like a generic team pose.
After: While thematic of the issue, the cover was a bit misleading. At the end of the issue, X-Force fights alongside the Captain Britain Corps, not against them as the cover indicated. Psylocke isn't part of the fight. The image of Fantomex in chains is reflective of his role in the issue.
Verdict: Specific to the storyline/issue but slightly misleading

UNCANNY X-MEN #5
Before: The cover has Psylocke fights a huge Bat creative using a huge sword.
After: The mage on the cover could have happened around page 6 of the story. But the flying creatures were a momentary threat, not the real problem. No indication of Tabula Rasa or the rest of the Extinction Team on the cover
Verdict: Story related but not really indicative of the nature of the issue

ULTIMATE COMICS SPIDER-MAN #6 (RES)
Before: Generic action pose of the new Spider-Man wall-crawling and partially invisible. No story line hints at all.
After: Miles is in costume in this issue but never turns invisible. This cover could have been on any issue of this series.
Verdict: Generic action pose.

So this has me thinking of a scale for the relationship between the cover and the contents of an issue. I'm wondering if the more generic covers are favored more by some editors who don't want to have to deal with matching the covers to specific issues. I think the lack of text/dialogue on covers makes it much harder for a cover to really pinpoint the crux of the story in that issue the way older covers did.

Here is the cover scale as I currently see it:
0: Symbolic (example: the emblem for the team/hero)
1: Completely Iconic (posed, no action)
2: Generic hero/team-in-action (hero is flight, team racing forward)
3: Generic/uninformative (face-off between characters that could apply to almost any meeting/confrontation between those characters)
4: Specific to the storyline
5: Specific to that particular issue

Thoughts?

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 4:57 pm

I think if you have a one-in-done issue, it's easier to have a cover with dialogue saying what the crux of the issue is about. Those old comics were pretty simple in setup. "Shocker is planning on flooding the city, will Spider-man save them?" etc.

I think as plots start to crossover multiple issues it's harder to do that. Of course you can still have the cover depict something that happens in THAT issue, but it doesn't bother me too much.

Actually, as long as a cover looks good then I'm happy. I think dialogue was removed because it looked too corny.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:42 pm

abysslord wrote: Actually, as long as a cover looks good then I'm happy. I think dialogue was removed because it looked too corny.

We can agree to disagree on this.

We discuss this in greater detail on the upcoming episode 600.

Personally, I'm tired of generic "poster image" covers that strive for nothing more than looking good.

Obviously this resonates with some segment of the fan base, so I cannot say the companies are wrong to just be producing these kinds of pinups. I'm guessing they are easier for the artists to sell for big $$$ on the secondary market of they have a big pinup-of heroes in costume, so that's an added benefit for someone other than me also.

It all bundles up into why my Marvel consumption has dropped to a 20-year low.

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:47 pm

BobBretall wrote:
abysslord wrote: Actually, as long as a cover looks good then I'm happy. I think dialogue was removed because it looked too corny.
We can agree to disagree on this.

It all bundles up into why my Marvel consumption has dropped to a 20-year low.

It's not just Marvel though, right? I don't remember any comics having dialogue on the cover anymore. And did you mean disagree about the poster covers or that you think dialogue on the covers aren't corny?

I think John may have hit the nail on the head about this change also being due to being able to produce covers even before a story is written. Instead of having to wait for the script to draw the cover, they can have tons available and ready.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:39 pm

abysslord wrote: It's not just Marvel though, right? I don't remember any comics having dialogue on the cover anymore. And did you mean disagree about the poster covers or that you think dialogue on the covers aren't corny?

Not just Marvel, certainly, but Marvel , especially in the ultimate line, seems to do more covers that are just ridiculously generic images.

As far as dialogue being "corny", I do disagree. There can certainly be corny dialogue, but that doesn't mean dialogue on a cover has to be corny any more than dialogue inside a comic has to be corny.

Webhead · Post by **Webhead** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:42 pm

abysslord wrote:
BobBretall wrote:
abysslord wrote: Actually, as long as a cover looks good then I'm happy. I think dialogue was removed because it looked too corny.
We can agree to disagree on this.

It all bundles up into why my Marvel consumption has dropped to a 20-year low.
It's not just Marvel though, right? I don't remember any comics having dialogue on the cover anymore. And did you mean disagree about the poster covers or that you think dialogue on the covers aren't corny?

I think John may have hit the nail on the head about this change also being due to being able to produce covers even before a story is written. Instead of having to wait for the script to draw the cover, they can have tons available and ready.

I gotta agree it not just Marvel, it seems every company does it.

I personally do not pick up books because of their covers, in the 70's a good cover would get me to pick up an issue and thumb through it and decide whether or not to buy it. Now all covers do is tell me what title it is. I am so sick of the poster covers and cover done by sperate artist or worse yet covers that show characters not in that issue that I just ignore them completely.

On the flip side I have not bought issues that I normally do not get
because of the issues I have with today's covers, unless I have heard good things about that title or story arch.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:39 pm

Check out this review of Captain America & Bucky #624 by Jim Shooter, especially his critique of the cover:

http://www.jimshooter.com/2011/12/revie ... y-624.html

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Mon Jan 30, 2012 8:37 am

Webhead wrote:I am so sick of the poster covers and cover done by sperate artist

I agree with this strongly. Variant covers by different artists, sure. But take Morning Glories. The covers are beautiful ... then you open it up and it's a drastically different style art. I still like it, but it's a surprise for sure.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 3:18 pm

abysslord wrote:
Webhead wrote:I am so sick of the poster covers and cover done by sperate artist
I agree with this strongly. Variant covers by different artists, sure. But take Morning Glories. The covers are beautiful ... then you open it up and it's a drastically different style art. I still like it, but it's a surprise for sure.

This brings up an adjunct to John's rating scale, maybe add a letter to the #0-5:

A: Cover art by interior artist
B: Cover art of similar style/quality to interior art
C: Cover art radically different style/quality from interior art

GABE! · Post by **GABE!** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:00 pm

I think I mentioned it before, but I hate when the interior artists' cover is the variant. It doesn't make any kind of sense to me. I always though they did cover artist because the interior guy wasn't great, or fast enough to get through 22 pages plus a cover in a month. But if they are putting out a variant from the interior artist, then why not just use that cover as the main image for the book?

Post by **JohnMayo** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:30 pm

BobBretall wrote:
abysslord wrote:
Webhead wrote:I am so sick of the poster covers and cover done by sperate artist
I agree with this strongly. Variant covers by different artists, sure. But take Morning Glories. The covers are beautiful ... then you open it up and it's a drastically different style art. I still like it, but it's a surprise for sure.
This brings up an adjunct to John's rating scale, maybe add a letter to the #0-5:

A: Cover art by interior artist
B: Cover art of similar style/quality to interior art
C: Cover art radically different style/quality from interior art

I agree that some indication of how similar the cover art is to the interior art. How would you handle photo covers, blank covers and themed variant covers with no relation to the interior at all?

Webhead · Post by **Webhead** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:38 pm

JohnMayo wrote:
I agree that some indication of how similar the cover art is to the interior art. How would you handle photo covers, blank covers and themed variant covers with no relation to the interior at all?

I have no problem with blank or photo cover, in fact if I have the choice between an photo cover or one with regular art I will pick the photo cover.

I think blanks are great as long as they cost no more than the regular cover cost.

Themed variant covers can be cool, but once again I will not look at it if it cost more than the regulare issue.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:01 pm

JohnMayo wrote: I agree that some indication of how similar the cover art is to the interior art. How would you handle photo covers, blank covers and themed variant covers with no relation to the interior at all?

A: Cover art by interior artist
B: Cover art of similar style/quality to interior art
C: Cover art radically different style/quality from interior art

P: Photo cover
S: Blank cover to allow for a sketch
T: Theme cover (like "Iron Man month")

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 9:22 pm

Btw, when did they start putting the writer/artist/inker/etc. on the cover? That seems weird to me still.

About the dialogue covers and such, I thought in the past it may have been more important to capture the issues's story in the cover because comics were sold in the supermarket and you had to let people know what they were getting. But that should still be important even with the internet, right? If someone didn't know "Fatale", what is walking by a cover of a woman's face going to tell them?

I guess at the end of the day the cover needs to make a person say "Hmm, let me look through this one". Whether that's a poster shot or a scene, who knows. It'd be interesting to get a study to see which type of covers intrigue the typical person more ... you never know, having the plot on the cover could turn off just as many as people as it turned on.

IanG · Post by **IanG** » Thu Feb 02, 2012 2:11 pm