DC's next gimmick cover theme may be a gimmick, but that doesn't mean it can't be pretty!

[icon_uk]

Bleeding Cool has some pictures up which appear to be some April covers for DC.



But not the WHOLE cover... so to speak, as the gimmick appears to be gatefold covers, since each of these looks to be HALF a cover;

Starting with the pretty one (IMHO of course)



They seem to be modifying Dick's costume again, the fingerstripes are back, they've added in some highlighting around his hips, but the colour is still red.

And a couple of nice looks covers for the ladies too.

Comments

[darth_cloudo]

Fingerstripes! It also looks like he has...um...knuckle-nubs? Some sort of knuckle-armor/padding in any case.

The art for all of those covers is amazing. :O

[darkknightjrk]

Makes sense--gives a bit of protection for the knuckles and probably gives a little more impact for when they punch someone.

[darth_cloudo]

Kind of like sap gloves, I guess?

[darkknightjrk]

My guess is that this has something to do with what BC's been hinting about for a while about putting different villains with heroes they've never faced before.

[beyondthefringe]

Acts of Vengeance?

[darkknightjrk]

I guess? I don't know of that one. Some of the things that were put on Bleeding Cool as what would happen is stuff like Nightwing vs. The Prankster and Batgirl vs. Ventriloquist.

[icon_uk]

Acts of Vengeance was a 1989/90 Marvel "event" where the villains decided (at what turned out to be Loki's secret instigation) to trade heroes to target, taking advantage of the fact that the heroes wouldn't know how to cope with a villain they'd never met before.

This overlooked two rather obvious problems; 1) Heroes face off against against new villains a LOT, so it's not a new situation to them and 2) Just as the heroes were unprepared for the villains, so the villains were unprepared for the heroes.

No surprise how it ended out. It DID have some fun stories, and a great subplot where Loki assembles some A-list villains to instigate his plan; Doctor Doom, Kingpin, Magneto, Mandarin, Red Skull, and the Wizard all joined, but Magneto only did it so he could capture the Red Skull and try to kill him (though not terribly effectively)

I think it was PAD who suggested that a more successful Acts of Vengeance would have been to have all the villains gang up to stomp Spider-Man, then all gang up to kill Captain America... and then all gang up to crush Daredevil... and so on

[jmacq1]

And about the only lasting legacy of Acts of Vengeance was the introduction of "Ninja" Psylocke. Since the X-Men's portion of Acts of Vengeance was Wolverine vs. the Mandarin (with assist from the Hand).

[icon_uk]

That makes sense, given that it was mentioned that Dick would be fighting the Prankster.... which seems a little odd so soon after a Joker story.

[darkknightjrk]

It would certainly make all those HA!s on the cover make more sense, too. As for the soonness of it, I guess it depends on how they reinterpret Prankster in the DCnU (he hasn't been mentioned yet, to my knowledge), and I could see them playing with that a bit. Like, the memories of whatever happens to Dick in Death of the Family will cause Dick some angst or something.

[littlepunkryo]

FINGERSTRIPES \o/

[aeka]

Not sure how I feel about the modifications made to Nightwing's costume (it looks a bit overkill on the design imo), but I'm interested to see where this goes.

[icon_uk]

An overfussy, overdesigned costume in the Jim-Lee-DCnU? Colour me stunned! ;)

[thanekos]

Nightwing vs. The Kinetic Typographist!

[chrisdv]

Here's hoping they don't alter Dick's costume anymore.

Not too fussed about it being red instead of blue, since red has the benefit of co-ordination with Jason, Tim & Damien.

[icon_uk]

That's mainly why I don't like the red much, when he was Robin he wore red, when he became Nightwing, he chose a different colour scheme because he was his own hero now. Moving him back to Gotham and putting him in red again seems like a major step backwards in terms of his character.

[rordulum]

Isn't almost everything they've done with the character for the DCnU a major step backwards?

I think the costume change just sort of encapsulates it. They chose red because it looks badass, or whatever, but never stopped to think about what the costume meant to the character, and that blue was unique to him, within the Bat-family.

And when there are two other characters called Red Robin and Red Hood, it seems a little lacking on the creative side. Why not just call him Red Wing and be done with it?