‘X-Men Legacy’ And ‘Hawkeye’: The Best Covers In Comics

We're working on part two of our beginner's guide, which should be arriving tomorrow. But to tide you over until then, we want to present a brief sidebar on two artists, both at Marvel, who are going above and beyond with their cover work.

Comic book covers rarely get their due. Occasionally, a book will get a dedicated cover artist, like Glen Fabry on Preacher or Dave McKean on Sandman. But more often than not, especially these days, a cover is intended to be more advertising than art in its own right.

That said, not every artist views it as a billboard.

In particular, we're thinking of Hawkeye, with covers by David Aja, and X-Men Legacy, with covers by Mike Del Mundo. Aja and Matt Hollingsworth, his colorist, tend to focus on spare designs with limited colors, often black and purple, but it makes the art pop and since they also do the interior artwork, helps make the book one artistic piece. Del Mundo, on the other hand, loves turning out variations on a theme; since X-Men Legacy is a book starring a character with multiple personalities and a serious rage problem, Del Mundo has largely riffed on identity ranging from the hilarious to the haunting, but his work always compliments the overall theme of the book as well as Tan Eng Huat's interiors. Both show considerable design and wit.

So, since I didn't give them their due when I was reviewing their books, here's a cover gallery. Hopefully a few of these are made available as posters: With current printing technology, a print on demand poster system would be a relatively simple matter, and some of these are pure art.