Supernaturally

This has been a week of fits and starts, which only sort of explains the lack of updates here.

I was supposed to be out of town for most of the week on business, beginning Tuesday evening, but fickle fate plotted against me. As I scurried to pack, do last-minute laundry and write my weekly feature for The Great Curve, a water main broke, leaving me without water for eight or nine hours.

I had to abandon that feature as I tried to figure out how I'd do laundry, shower and shave. In the middle of that I get a call from one of the guys with whom I'd be meeting -- I'd be staying at his house for the week, too -- telling me he was ill and would like to postpone things for a day. On Wednesday, he calls again to say he's still sick, and also now behind on his daily work; could we postpone for another day? Finally, on Thursday, we decided I'll go there on Sunday, and try everything again next week.

Yeah, fits and starts.

Cover stories
I half-jokingly told a friend earlier this week that I could easily devote a blog solely to comic-book cover art and design. Coincidentally, a couple of days later, I received an email that may lead me to write regularly on the topic ... somewhere else. That's all I can say right now.

Speaking of covers, I've been meaning to link to PopImage's interview with artist Juan Doe, who borrows from Soviet propaganda posters and modern street art to create the striking covers for Marvel's X-Men: The 198 miniseries.

... We decided to base it in the roots of a propaganda campaign, each cover with a theme inherit to the story: "uprising," "revolution" and "death." We were working with some powerful ideas and were definitely on the same page. I loved David Hines' outline and the character of the project. Afterwards, it was just about sitting down and actualizing something.

They never asked me to do anything specific or draw a certain way; I believe they wanted a truly fresh approach, so I had free reign, a blank canvas for every piece. I thought that was really bold of them to allow me that much exploration, but it worked out great. I was able to design and interpret the whole cover, right down to designing the logo and type treatment. In the end, I think that my previous works in other arenas encouraged Marvel to use me for this project but there was no template for what the work should look like. That was a very exciting condition to work under-it allowed for a very natural vision to come through.

Back in December, I wrote about the covers for Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen's Nextwave series. Last week, Broken Frontier did the same, talking with the artist about his approach and process.

... In a rare moment of creative fraternity, Warren and I balked at the idea of the covers looking like everything else. I had a notion that they could maybe look like the cold austere work of Peter Saville, and Warren mentioned the Designer's Republic. After a long period of trial and error, and seriously deep thought on my part, I came up with a kind of "non-concept"-- that the covers would have nothing in common at all, except the layout; something in the upper three fifths and something else in the lower three fifths. I emailed "sketches" (essentially digital collages), which everyone loved, to my utter surprise. They are each, basically, a mess. But carefully constructed messes.

The article includes some of Immonen's early digital collages, which help to give the covers that energetic "found art"/pop culture mashup feel.

Hm. It seems strange to be discussing innovative, or even good, covers for Marvel titles, particularly given the publisher's penchant in recent years for generic, pinup-style images. Maybe Nextwave and The 198 are signs that the House of Ideas is turning the corner, at least when it comes to design.