COVER GALLERY: 1998

Two of my favorite images of Alex Ross' art came out this year. 'Nuff Said!

SUPERMAN: FOREVER #1: This special issue returned Superman to his original costume and powers after the whole Electro-Superman story arc. They don't give any details about how he came back with his original powers and the story is just average, but the cover alone is worth the price. It's a classic image of Clark Kent ripping open his suit to reveal the Superman costume inside, this image was reproduced last year as a statue. Now this cover came in 2 versions, the normal one (pictured left), and another "lenticular" one (pictured right) with 7 images of the entire Clark Kent changing into Superman scenario all crammed into one, which looks like Ross' first attempt at animation with his art. It's brilliant!

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS - Deluxe Hardcover Edition: We all know what the crisis meant for the DC universe in 1985, it was a streamlining of his character's adventures by eliminating all those alternate universes and rebooting as well as starting everything from scratch. This series was originally pencilled by George Perez and written by Perez and Marv Wolfman. So for this deluxe edition, DC Comics decided to do a special cover, so they enlisted Perez to draw and Alex Ross to paint over this drawing of all the characters that appeared in the 12-issue series, that's 563 characters all crammed into one cover! The guys took months but the finished product is worth the wait. This image appeared simultaneously on a huge poster (5 ft. X 2.5 ft. - 155 cm. X 75 cm.) and later reprinted on the softcover edition. I just love it, trust me the image below is nothing but a sample of what it ctually is, you have to see it to believe it, it tells you the whole "Crisis" story in one giant image. If I could scan my poster so you could see the detail, I would, it's amazing!
Special cameo appearance: There are 563 characters plus one, Rev. Norman McCay from Kingdom Come, he wasn't in the original crisis series, but since it's modeled after Alex's dad, he put him in there too ;-)


EMPTY LOVE STORIES #1: This indie comic book published by Funny Valentine Press features a writer and artists that are all friends of Alex Ross and who have been models for his various projects. The writer is Steve Darnall, who wrote Uncle Sam and the pencillers who work on this book's various stories that include 3 tales of stalkers (“My Target”), zombies (“One of the Walking Dead”), and “White Trash Romance” are Paul Fricke, Scott Beaderstadt, Hilary Barta, and Lenin Delsol. The cover is a big departure for Alex because it doesn't feature an extraordinary thing as superheroes, instead it's just this very real scene of 2 people talking and the reality of it suits Alex's style very well.



THE MARRIAGE OF HERCULES & XENA #1: This issue published by, makers of baseball cards, Topps, is one of those comic book tie-ins that try to reap the benefits of a hit TV show. In this case, Alex Ross was hired because his art is so realistic and life-like, yet when he turned in this simple yet nice cover, Xena actress Lucy Lawless, complained about his likeness and made the publisher digitally "retouch" her face up to the point where, in the final art (pictured) her face looks triangular and weird in my opinion. What do you think?


IN MY COLLECTION: Superman Forever (lenticular cover) and the Crisis poster.