COVER GALLERY: 2003

This was a very heavy year for Alex Ross, he was simultaneously overseeing and painting the covers on Paradise X and the Battle of the Planets project PLUS painting his treasury-sized JLA: Liberty and Justice along with his Astro City covers, so he was only able to do these 3 covers:

CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 & 3: Although this series' first issue came out with the cover date of December, 2002, I've included it this year. This is, I think the 5th series from Marvel to have this title. It tells the story of Genis-Vell the genetically-created son of the original kree captain Mar-Vell. The cover to issue 1 (left) features a sketch with Alex's redesign of the title character, which looks cooler than it ever has and kinda like the Earth X version but still it's just a sketch they've put on the cover, no big effort on behalf of Marvel on that one. Issue 3 (center) however, features a more active and in-your-face cover which I think is better and less half-assed than the first one, this one screams action. HIDDEN VARIANT ALERT! This issue was later re-published with the exact same cover but with a sketchbook section, kinda like a "Director's Cut" version on a DVD. I suggest you get this version, instead of the other one, you can recognize it by a thin black strip on the top part of the cover that states "Special Alex Ross Sketchbook Edition"
HULK - NIGHTMERICA #1 (WIZARD WORLD EAST VARIANT COVER): This was a 6-issue fully-painted mini-series by Brian Ashmore and written by Robin D. Laws, it was released to coincide with the release of Ang Lee's Hulk Movie. The story on this issue resembles the old Hulk TV show, he gets angry, smashes a bunch of stuff and befriends a college girl. This issue's exclusive cover was only found on the Wizard World East convention and it was limited to 1000 issues (I believe). It features one of Alex's trademark images, a raging, furious Hulk that looks very real and very scary too.

IN MY COLLECTION: Hulk Nightmerica #1. Yeah baby, I got one of those!