Judging a Book by its Cover Pt.2

With all the hullabaloo surrounding the ‘return’ of Captain America, you’d think they’d take a second look at the way they’re packaging our Soldier of Freedom. (If ya’ll remember my previous rant about how another one of Marvel’s captains was being presented- you know where I’m going with this).

New Cap, Classic logo with a touch of the ol’ red, white and blue to give it a lil’ salsa!

The Alex Ross variant…not so much.

Ok, so it’s obvious that editorial wants CA to have a classic feel to it, with the logo pretty much meshing in with the art and other elements of the cover. But why does it feel like it lacks something? Or is that just me?

Judging a book by its cover

Alright, so I’ve been noticing something lately at the comic shops when it comes to comic covers. Seems to me that the idea that the art of designing a pleasing, eye-catching cover seems to be getting lost. At least, over at Marvel it seems to be. Case in point:

This is the cover to Captain Marvel #1, with some standard phone-it-in convention sketch-type pose by Ed McGuiness and simply the WORST Illustrator job I’ve ever seen on a logo. Sure, they’ve decided to go back to the classic Captain Marvel logo:

But they’ve done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to give the logo some weight, or even a somewhat refined look. (The job they did on #2 is even worse, but I couldn’t find an image of it and it sucked too much to buy at the shop.) And it’s not like they don’t know how to do it right. I guess these days you have to be an Avengers (or X-book) to get first class treatment:

Classic Logo…

Updated for a more contemporary feel. Nice.

Now why can’t Marvel do this with all it’s covers? I’m not saying that you can’t pay homage to the classic logos, but geez, at least liven them up a bit…

Classic Captain America circa WW2, BPS (Before PhotoShop)

And Captain America today…

BOOOORING! Man, and it’s not enough that it looks so bland, but they gotta go and obscure it with a character. It’s almost like they’re saying: “This logo sucks so much we gotta cover it up.’ Think I’m joking?

FREAKIN’ BUCKY’S practically eclipsing the thing with his muthaf***in’ gun!

Take a look at the racks next time you’re in the shop. Compare Marvel’s covers to DC’s. See who’s got the most consistent look and quality to their covers’ graphic design. If you ask me, DC looks like they’ve got one hell of a graphic arts department putting their covers together while Marvel is letting their interns do the job on some of their ‘lesser’ titles.

Tell me I’m wrong.