Stu West (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} stuwest) wrote,@ 2007-09-08 14:38:00 |
|
brief thought about covers
Found while googling for something else: Wizard Magazine's pick for the all-time top 100 comics covers. Some of these are a bit baffling: ugly; uninspiring; generic fight scenes etc., but it looks to me like the good ones fall into two categories — what you might call 'design' and 'narrative' covers.
'Design' covers are the sort of thing you regularly see on the front of well-presented novels, magazines, music and DVD packages. The image is generally some sort of abstract pose, and the focus is on having the cover be a striking enough unit of composition to make you want to investigate further. Until fairly recently, it was difficult to pull off a design cover in mainstream comics because of all the inflexible cover clutter. Check out #86 on the list. It's a nice idea: small, pale image, sedate type, loads of white space. And then a huge ugly logo and headshots and all that stuff which just ruins the effect.
'Narrative' covers are the ones which focus on providing enough story information to make you want to read the comic to find out what happened/what happens next. They usually feature an actual event from inside the comic. Now that the pulp magazines are more-or-less extinct, these are sort of the exclusive province of comics, and as a result I think it's seen as being trashy to really go for the jugular with a narrative cover. (But I've always been about embracing my own trashiness, personally.)
Alex Ross' cover for UNCLE SAM at #56 is half-way between the two approaches, I think, as are a couple of others...
Found while googling for something else: Wizard Magazine's pick for the all-time top 100 comics covers. Some of these are a bit baffling: ugly; uninspiring; generic fight scenes etc., but it looks to me like the good ones fall into two categories — what you might call 'design' and 'narrative' covers.
'Design' covers are the sort of thing you regularly see on the front of well-presented novels, magazines, music and DVD packages. The image is generally some sort of abstract pose, and the focus is on having the cover be a striking enough unit of composition to make you want to investigate further. Until fairly recently, it was difficult to pull off a design cover in mainstream comics because of all the inflexible cover clutter. Check out #86 on the list. It's a nice idea: small, pale image, sedate type, loads of white space. And then a huge ugly logo and headshots and all that stuff which just ruins the effect.
'Narrative' covers are the ones which focus on providing enough story information to make you want to read the comic to find out what happened/what happens next. They usually feature an actual event from inside the comic. Now that the pulp magazines are more-or-less extinct, these are sort of the exclusive province of comics, and as a result I think it's seen as being trashy to really go for the jugular with a narrative cover. (But I've always been about embracing my own trashiness, personally.)
Alex Ross' cover for UNCLE SAM at #56 is half-way between the two approaches, I think, as are a couple of others...
