Thursday, September 27, 2018

DC Comics Best Covers of the Week: September 26, 2018


Jenny Frison wins, anywhere on the list.
To Make it Clear, Jenny Frison Wins Every Week

Sometimes, I struggle to pick five covers for my Best of the Week list. And whenever that happens, you can usually count on the Jenny Frison-drawn variant cover for Wonder Woman taking the top slot. It occurs to me that I have been mishandling the situation, because Jenny Frison's covers are nearly always among the best offered whenever they're available. I intend to remedy this in the future, and consider Frison's covers more equitably in the future, but let me state in this space, for now and all time: when Jenny Frison's work is in the mix, she should be on the list. Jenny Frison wins.


 Titans #26
Brandon Peterson
Well here's a pretty gross cover. It's really the color and composition that works here for me, and Wonder Girl in the foreground especially. The muted red of the sinew holding Beast Boy and Robin against the brighter red of the series logo is a nice contrast. Why isn't Jenny Frison's cover in this spot? Good question.





 The Flash #55 variant
Howard Porter
This is the kind of thing you see on the Flash television show all the time: a slowed-down scene of him speeding around, giving the viewer an idea of what Barry sees when he's in the Speed Force. Porter has done this by freezing a moment that Barry runs on water and takes a fast turn...or something. Whatever the case, it looks glorious.





 Batman Beyond #24 variant
Dave Johnson
It's sort of a mean trick to design your protagonist in a stark black-and-red costume, because then your cover compositions are great. Batwoman employs the same technique. Way to make your covers look terrific, folks!





 Batgirl #27 variant
Joshua Middleton
Here's your pin-up classic cover of the month. Seeing Batgirl's new costume expressed so cleanly is nice, but it's the circular contortion with an actual circle behind her that makes this cover such a home run. Every aspect, from the gold ring around the circle to the background cover works perfectly to create an image that would not look out of place as the image for "October" on your wall calendar.





Wonder Woman #55
David Yardin
Whoa, here's a switcheroo! I spend the whole intro talking about Jenny Frison's variants, then I put the regular Wonder Woman in the number one slot. But this one has a lot of stuff I like: the forced overhead perspective, the facial expressions, the coloring that evokes pencil or pastel work. But, of course, it's the word balloons on the cover that strokes my covers bone. I just love seeing it so much.

2 comments:

  1. Good choices. Frison is awesome, but her cover this week was not (quite) as good as the one for issue 54. The Yardin cover seems to be channelling an earlier age with its dialogue and the prominence of Diana being tied up. The odd perspective really makes it stand out, though.

    I really like that Titans cover, too. It *is* creepy. Creepy is, in this case, good!

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    1. Yeah, it is a little weird that I crowed about Jenny Frison on a week that her variant was just good--which is to say, pretty damned good--but not dynamic. But still, she's created a very impressive body of work and I've sort of shunted it to the side many times for whatever reasons! No longer!

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