Robot 6 has you covered

January 3, 2009 4:09 PM

The 25 best comics covers of 2008 - from Robot 6, the new home of the old blog@Newsarama team.

More art from:
Dave Johnson
Eddie Campbell
Chris Bachalo
Alex Ross
Joshua Hagler
Jon Foster
Steve Epting
Gabriel Ba
Sean Philips
Brian Wood
James Jean
Lee Bermejo
Tomer Hanuka
Gurihiru
Mike Mayhew
Jock
D'Israeli
Takehiko Inoue
Tim Bradstreet
Massimo Carnevale

posted by Artw (21 comments total)

Tomer Hanuka seems to be everywhere these days... I wasn't aware of his work until I saw his Juxtapoze cover at the end of last year, and since then I've been spotting his work all over the place and it's always really, really good. His UnMen covers have been great - I haven't been reading the actual comic, but I always make a point of checking them out when it's on the stand.
posted by Artw at 4:20 PM on January 3, 2009

Thank you for showing me Eddie Campbell's blog. The rest of this post is the icing on the cake.
posted by not_on_display at 4:29 PM on January 3, 2009

Gabriel Bá’s cover work - as well as interior art - for The Umbrella Academy "Apocalypse Suite" (2008 Eisner for Best Limited Series, plus shared nods for Coloring and Cover Artist) was uniformly fantastic. As was the series. If you haven't bought or at least read it, I can't recommend it highly enough. It' s wonderful.
posted by Auden at 4:51 PM on January 3, 2009

I don't follow many pro blogs, but I do visit Sean Phillips' on a near-daily basis. If you've got a couple minutes, check out what he can do with 20 minutes and Colors for the DS.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 5:11 PM on January 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

here's a 'Showcase Of Brilliant Comic Book Cover Art' fwiw [via rw2]
posted by kliuless at 5:55 PM on January 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

I really must be out of the loop -- I hadn't heard of a ton of these, but I want to read every last one that I haven't already.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:03 PM on January 3, 2009

I'm not on here, so this is crap


postscript: it's not
posted by The Whelk at 7:24 PM on January 3, 2009

also, I have on my desk a signed copy of The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard. It's such a giddy little souffle of a book, playing with conventions and being effortlessly, entertainingly experimental while still warm and pleasant. It's quickly become a household fav.
posted by The Whelk at 7:26 PM on January 3, 2009

fuck, i miss reading comics.

why do things have to cost so much?
posted by saul wright at 7:35 PM on January 3, 2009

Everything that Sean Philips and Ed Brubaker put their name on together is gold, IMHO. His colour work has always been good, but TBHO his B&W stuff back in the day was extremely ropey - then he changed his style completely with his Hellblazer run, and has reminded it since, and now it's amazing. His storytelling and layouts are great too - some of those pages in Sleeper or Criminal have ten or eleven panels, but they totally don't feel crushed in at all - that's really hard to pull off.
posted by Artw at 7:40 PM on January 3, 2009

I've been really impressed with the cover work on 100 Bullets. The story is a bit hard to follow, but I read it for the atmosphere and buy it for the great Dave Johnson covers.
posted by bashos_frog at 7:56 PM on January 3, 2009

Very cool. A few of those I was pretty surprised to see make the list, but none were bad.

The Best American Comics series always has terrific covers. I'd really recommend picking any of these up.
posted by Corduroy at 8:03 PM on January 3, 2009

Kind of surprised the Robot 6 guys didn't point out Wood's equation of that blood-soaked finger on the DMZ Blood in the Game cover with the purple-stained fingers of Iraqis exercising their franchise after the fall of Saddam. That entire DMZ plotline deals with the war-torn New York area's first election in years.

Also, if you're not reading DMZ, you should be, because it's a fucking fantastic comic. Wood and his collaborators knock it out of the park every single issue-- it's densely-packed political worldbuilding at its finest.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 8:08 PM on January 3, 2009

Having read the entire run this year I have to say that the final cover for Y: The last man is my favourite. It says a lot with very little and gets across the emotion, bravery and intelligence of the entire series. I actually gasped when I saw it for the first time wondering what had happened to poor, old Yorrick. Such a wonderful series.

and saul wright- Libraries man - source your local libraries. Graphic novels are appearing in libraries in ever increasing numbers across the globe. Having said that some series (Sandman, Watchmen, The Invisbiles) are worth forking out the dough for because you'll jsut want to read them again and again.
posted by AzzaMcKazza at 8:25 PM on January 3, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh, right on. I didn't know where the Blog@ folks went. Thanks for this.
posted by ten pounds of inedita at 8:34 PM on January 3, 2009

NOOO DAMMIT I haven't read that far in Y yet!
posted by cmoj at 9:19 PM on January 3, 2009

fuck, i miss reading comics.
why do things have to cost so much?

Hey, interlibrary loan is your friend. I read Y The Last Man that way and only had to wait a bit for the last couple of trades to come in. It was pretty damn good, with only a few tired sexist cliches that were easy to overlook as the story barreled along. I've been going through the Hellboy and B.P.R.D. trades the same way and loving them (except the short story collections with a bunch of different artists, which don't get the mood right at all). The library's great about getting them from elsewhere if they don't have them currently in our county.

Besides, everyone knows reading an entire arc at once is far better than slurping up 25-page dribbles once every couple of months.

So, is 100 Bullets worth the time? I like the look of it well enough, but is the story human and interesting enough to bother with?
posted by mediareport at 7:50 AM on January 4, 2009

You know who impressed me this year? Adam Hughes.
posted by redsparkler at 9:27 PM on January 4, 2009 [1 favorite]

You know who impressed me this year? Adam Hughes.

Some nice stuff here.
posted by Artw at 9:58 PM on January 4, 2009

You know, it just seemed like about 5 different times this year I picked up a cover just because it was real purtylike, and it turned out to be Adam Hughes. I don't see it represented in your link, ArtW, but I dug the Ghost Omnibus cover, too.
posted by redsparkler at 11:02 PM on January 4, 2009

Riffing on Mucha there I see.
posted by Artw at 11:04 PM on January 4, 2009