The best comic book covers of the week – 13 May 2016

Posted on May 13, 2019

2 min read

I’m still coming off a heck of a high from FanCon 2019, thanks in part to the convention giving me a chance to have a quick chat with veteran comic book peeps and get their views on what makes for a great comic book cover. This week, the spotlight belongs to Brian Stelfreeze, a master of the craft and an artist who is never content to dabble in only one medium. Stelfreeze has done a ton of work over the years, but my favourite examples of his art, has to be his selection of Batman: Shadow of the Bat covers. Just take a look at some of these masterpieces!

So given a chance, of course I was going to ask Stelfreeze for his opinion on what makes for a great comic book cover. Here’s what he had to say:

That’s the thing that you have to consider as a comic book artist, the shelves are full with great work. So what makes a great comic book cover, I think it’s two things. A great design that stops you, when you’re looking at just a bunch of covers on a rack, one image that makes you stop and look at that image. If that image can stop you, then that image invites you to get a little closer.
And then when you get closer, to have even more details reveal themselves to you. So I think doing a cover with details alone, doesn’t do it. Doing a cover with design alone, doesn’t do it. You have to plan both of those at the same time, and I think that the best cover artists are able to do that. Even when you see it in previews as a little tiny postage stamp, you automatically go ‘WHOA’ and you want to look at that with even more detail.
I think those are the best covers.

You can catch more of Stelfreeze’s work in Detective Comics and Black Panther. With that being said, here’s a look at what the rest of the industry has been up to this week: