going undercover

[stubbleupdate]

Thanks to Comics Alliance, I found the blog Covered. It does with comics covers what musicians do with other people's song songs - redo them with their own interpretation.

Some of these new covers are very good. Some of them bring in completely new style, some are just different techniques, some rework the cover completely, using a different image to tell the same story. Some look like the artist thought to themselves "What would this cover look like if it was drawn on a train?" and some are just very straightforward re-hashes with little imagination.


With all of these, the original cover is on the left.

Fantastic Four 4
Original cover by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson; DC 1966, cover by Bill Galvan (who you will of course recognise from one of the Age of the Sentry stories)


Justice League of America 45
Original cover by Mike Sekowsky and Murphy Anderson; DC 1966. Cover by Mark Grambau


Avengers 217
Original cover by Bob Hall and Dan Green; Marvel 1982. Cover by Matt Layzell

This is clearly, The Best cover

Captain America 137
Original cover by Sal Buscema; Marvel 1971. Cover by Mark Grambau

Much less dynamic than the original

Comments

[darkblade]

Some of those on the site were really good.

[icon_uk]

A mixed bag, to say the least, but a couple of cool ones in there.

[stubbleupdate]

There's some utter dreck in there, yes. But it's worth sifting through the shite for the good stuff

[koschei]

I'd say that actually most of them are actually pretty damn pants, but that Avengers advancing on Pym remake is da bomb.

[psychopathicus_rex]

'Pants'? That's a new one...

[koschei]

It means not good. The vast majority of covers there are unimaginative redos

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, yeah, I figured, but that's still a slang term I hadn't heard before.

[kamino_neko]

A lot of them strike me more as auditions to take over for the original artist than 'covers' - the style has so little difference, the composition is so similar, it simply screams 'hey, look! I can do the house style!'

[stubbleupdate]

Some of them, like I said are just dull and uninspired.

Some of them make it look like the reimagining that the artist is aiming for is "What if this was shit?"

The Donald Duck ones are gems though, and I think that we can all agree that the Avengers cover is great.

[long_silence]

The Shaggy Man looks like he's clumsily trying to get Bats and Flash to kiss.

The Avengers cover looks very intimidating.

[icon_uk]

Well, he's clearly just tried to get Bats and Arrow to kiss and broke Arrow, so is trying again.

[hurricane-jam.livejournal.com]

And the Atom is crying because he wanted to kiss Green Arrow.
I smell a love triangle! :D

[sherkahn]

Supes is going to have to have a talk with Shaggy forcing someone on Batman...

[tacobob]

Um, Johnny, he's in the freaking water! :O

[neuhallidae]

Love the Avengers one. It's so stark and creepy.

[stubbleupdate]

It's very simple as far as the design goes and it also does so much to tell the story and the mood. It's really what a cover should be.

[joysweeper]

So much motto.

The only negative aspect is marketing, I guess, since the title is hard to read.

[stubbleupdate]

Because of the angle of my screen, I didn't know that there was a title.

Now, look in the bottom left corner. There's still a Spider-man, but he's been incorporated organically into the cover, instead of just being a logo slapped on to it.

[lamashtar]

Thats hilarious. Maybe they ought to try that. Spider-man shows up inexplicably in all the Marvel cover scenes, even when its really inappropriate!

[cmdr_zoom]

The interesting bit about the last one is highlighting how Spidey's character design has changed over the years. (And I don't just mean, say, the McFarlane period.)

[stubbleupdate]

Bigger eyes, smaller eye lines and a different spider?

Isn't that it?

[yaseen101]

His face used to be very round, nowadays it's longer and shaper and angular.

[kamino_neko]

You gave the same credit for the originals on both the Fantastic Four and JLofA covers (it seems to be the JLA cover's credit).

On topic, I really like the Captain America and Falcon redesign - less for the image (which is nicely done) as the titles and sidebar. The Avengers one is quite nice, too.

[bariman]

Wow, that's some good artwork. The Avengers cover is particularly awesome.

I'm curious, why were Cap and the Falcon going to fight Spidey?

[geoffsebesta]

These are great; I have a piece I'm going to color up and submit.

[lamashtar]

But why are Pym's arms so skinny?

[marfisa]

I like this one. It is somehow the opposite of the trick with the avengers cover: a zoom-out and a slight shift, and all the pathos and drama is gone.

[neuhallidae]

I cackled at that one, I admit.

[halloweenjack]

I really like Jeffrey Brown's take on this old Secret Wars cover; granted, it's pretty easy to improve on Secret Wars II, but it's actually quite a bit less cluttered than the original and the expression on the Beyonder's face is priceless. Brown was one of the few cartoonists in the recent Strange Tales mini that I'd like to see in that sort of thing again.

[stubbleupdate]

I actually like both of those covers.

That was one that stood out to me as being a good re-doing.

[kingrockwell]

I've linked this site a couple times around here and noscans, it's a fun blog built on a great idea, even if the results are mixed.