Beautiful: Runaways #18

Beautiful is a feature that focuses on those gorgeous and colorful ways to tell a comic book: its cover. (I think y'all know how crazy I am for comic book covers.) Each installment will spotlight an especially good-lookin' comic book cover that I think is cool, interesting, unique, unusually well-designed...or, in fact, beautiful.

Aieeeeee! One of these people will die in this very issue!



Who could it be? Who could it be?



Oh. That's who it be.

It stunned us in 1973, but these days you'd have to be a fairly green comic book fan to be too shocked by any of the drama or angst promised by comic book covers which promise the death of a major character. It's just been done too often, too many times. Yes, so-and-so will die; get on with it. Shuffle off this mortal coil, awready!



It's gotten to the point where even comics itself makes fun of this trope.



I was too young to catch Amazing Spider-Man #121, and its successors in the death pool sweepstakes have intrigued but never emotionally affected me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which one of the Fantastic Four is going to die this time...oh, hey, it's H.E.R.B.I.E. You got me, comic book story!

So it's been that I've been moved by such a cover exactly one time in my comic readin' life. And that's Runaways #18. It is...for lack of a better word...beautiful.


Runaways v.2 #18 (September 2006), cover art by Marcos Martin

Whoa, I said, when I first picked up this issue. Wow, I thought. I'd not seen...certainly never in superhero comics...a more gorgeous, poignant, affecting contrast of reading line and cover image. The jubilant figures of the Runaways (even dinosaur Old Lace is laughing away); the large blissful and quiet blue negative space; the small, subtle quiet copy that doesn't even end in an exclamation point. It's a cover that wouldn't have been imaginable in the superhero market in the pre-2000s. No anguish or torment, no screaming heroes, no boldly stoic poses, just happy figures and a simple statement. One of these kids is gonna die. Which one? And you can't not read the comic after that.

Runaways has been one of my favorite comics over the past few years. Certainly part of that has been the concept and the plots: super-powered kids discover their parents are villains, and they take off on the run, from the law, from their pasts. They make a brief go at costumes and code names, but that doesn't last long; this is not Avengers or even X-Men. It's more about the soap opera (and I mean that as a complimentary description) that it is about the heroics, and to me the adventures, clever and unique as they are, take a back seat to the personalities and interpersonal relations of the Runaways. For the first time, including the original X-Men, New Mutants, and Teen Titans, these seem like real adolescents (with admittedly cleverer dialogue). I've often felt that the themes and characters of Runaways lends itself to being the best gateway entry into Marvel Comics for fans of manga and young adults novels. Setting the series in the Marvel Universe wasn't necessary, and in fact I remember being annoyed when Cloak and Dagger first made guest appearances. But series creator Brian K. Vaughan and successive writers have kept the crossovers unobtrusive, and when they do happen, they're often good for a giggle.


Panels from Runaways v.2 #12 (April 2004), script by Brian K. Vaughan, pencils by Takeshi Miyazawa, inks by David Newbold, colors by Brian Reber, letters by Randy Gentile

Yes, it's absolutely a wonderful series, but hey! This post is about cover art. My favorite of the Runaways covers is v.2 #18 above, but the entire run of the title has had some amazingly gorgeous design from several different artists. Here's another one of my favorites from Marcos Martin:



David Lafuente contributes several intriguing designs in the series' third volume, including my favorite of all "Wolverine on a cycle" covers from throughout Marvel history:





With his manga-style bigfoot cartooning approach, Humberto Ramos is a natural for the covers, and here's three striking, pensive, and...dare I say it? sassyfemale portraits:





Here's another portrait of Karolina Dean, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," by one of my favorite comic book artists, Chris Bachalo:



Jo Chen has done painted covers for much of the series. The cover of v.2 #21 is probably my second-favorite of the whole comic. It's got nothing to do with the story content inside—very few Runaways covers do—and yet it captures the gleeful and quirky humor and tone of the book. (This cover's also got the infamous stray arrow, and here's one of my own earlier admirations for this cover.)



I've always loved this Jo Chen cover from the storyline where the Runaways go back to the turn of the century. But I'd never noticed, before tonight, the lovely detail that dinosaur Old Lace is blurry in the photograph. Of course she would be...she can't stand still long enough to have her photo taken in those days. Lovely.



Finally, Takeshi Miyazawa's variant cover for the 70th anniversary of Marvel issue of Runaways is one of my favorite portraits of Molly Hayes ever done. Who else in the Marvel U. would wear a tokidoki Wolverine tee? All those other little characters around the border are just plain jealous. And that includes Wolverine himself.



Runaways: a wonderful series with beautiful covers. It strikes me that almost all of the series' cover art is purely portraiture, rather than depicting specific events in the comic. I usually complain about that kind of cover: they can seem monotonous and unmemorable (I'm lookin' at you, Ultimate Comics). But I've never minded a Runaways cover that didn't feature a story plot. I guess that only goes to show: if you're just going to have a portrait of the character(s) on the cover, at least make it beautiful.

That said...whither Runaways? Except for a couple crossover event series teaming up with the Young Avengers, the Runaways haven't appeared in the Marvel Universe for quite some time. Their parents, The Pride, did recently feature in the "Industrial Revolution" storyline of Iron Man: Legacy, a series which also had some pretty gorgeous covers:



Marvel EIC Joe Quesada promised that the book was "being retooled and will be back in some fashion very soon, so stay tuned." I've practically glued myself to my radio comic book dial and we haven't seen a relaunch of the series. C'mon, Marvel, bring the Runaways back. Instead of another Wolverine or Deadpool or Avengers series, how about relaunching one of the most innovative and touching series of the last decade with new stories? How about it? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? (I can do this all night, y'know.) Huh? Huh?

At least Marvel keeps its Runaways digests and trade in print, so if you've never read the series, I highly recommend it. Not only are the kids all right, but their covers are absolutely beautiful.

Beautiful: New Mutants #19

This post has lots of image jpegs that will flame your brain and send your temperature rising, so if you're reading this via your AOL '95 dial-in modem, you may wish to go and put the kettle on. Or, indeed, drive to another state and buy a kettle. One of these days I really must learn how to put the bulk of a post "behind the break."

Everybody put your hooves and paws together to welcome my all-new occasional-sometimes-once-in-a-while feature, Beautiful!



Get the heck outta here, James Blunt! Nobody invited you to this party. Sheesh.

Beautiful is actually a feature that focuses on those gorgeous and colorful ways to tell a comic book: its cover. (I think y'all know how crazy I am for comic book covers.) Each installment will spotlight an especially good-lookin' comic book cover that I think is cool, interesting, unique, unusually well-designed...or, in fact, beautiful.

These spotlights won't be authoritative art lessons or teachings on design—I wish I had more of the chops to write about comic book art that way, like Benjamin Birdie has done in his fab Storytelling Sundays series. (Click on over there and tell him to do more of those 'coz they're great!) No, this is jus' one little stuffed bull's look at a comic book cover and saying "Oh, this is niiiiiiice." In other words, supremely subjective. Or is that "objective"? I never can keep those two straight. It's like flammable and inflammable. I know both of them mean the same thing. But what word do we use for something that won't burn? Those are the kind of things that keep me awake at night. Also: packs of roving under-bed tigers.

To start the series: the cover of New Mutants #19 (September 1984) by Bill Sienkivitch. I mean Sinkeivicz. Or is that Sinkevich? Hmmm. (Googling for a while.) Oh, yeah! You know who I mean: Bill Sienkiewicz.



Bill S.'s cover for NM #19 was a quantum leap forward—not only for the series itself but for the entire mutant franchise, Chris Claremont's scripting, and an entire expressionistic art style perfectly suited for the soon-coming improved comic book paper and printing processes. In fact, I'd go so far as to say Sienkiewicz's cover and interior art is what saved New Mutants from being dropped by me. It was the first-ever X-Men spin-off series (remember those days? When the was only one X-Men book? No? Of course you don't...nobody does) and a lot was riding on it: the expansion of the X-Men into a franchise moneymaker and creative center for Marvel, a test to see if Chris Claremont could juggle two interlocking series with simultaneously occurring cause-and-effect plots, snd a chance to return to the core concept of the original X-Men: mutant students learning how to use their powers while living in a world sworn to hate and destroy them™. The original graphic novel and the beginning of the series was promising enough: a more cheerful, optimistic, playful version of the X-Men, featuring an international cast of teenagers gathered from across the galaxy around the world. I bought and read New Mutants #1 eagerly.



But as the series went on, I thought Claremont's scripts were increasingly pedestrian and overlong. The Nova Roma story lasted what, seventeen, eighteen issues? I have always held that against Magma, my least favorite New New Mutant. Dangling plotlines continued a-dangling a la Claremont per usual (why weren't Xavier and the New Mutants scouring the globe to find Karma?) Then the team fought the Evil New Mutants—the Hellions, in quite possible the worst superhero team costumes of all time. Really, Emma Frost? Pink and purple? Pink and freakin' purple?

And then...Bill Sienkiewicz.

He actually poked his big toe in the X-Mansion pool on the cover of New Mutants #17, inking June Brigham's pencils, but by the next issue he was creating the gorgeous covers for the series as well as penciling and inking the interiors. And by ish #19, that demon bear reared its spectral fur and raked its ghost claws, and nothing would ever be the same again for the NMs.

I think...and this is jus' my opinion...that Bill S.'s art took Chris C.'s themes and plots and turned New Mutants into Mr. Xavier's Wild Ride (With Kids in the Back Seat). This is the New Mutants of the Demon Bear, the rise of Magik and hallucinogenic trips to Limbo, New Economy-Sized Karma, and (especially) Warlock and his daddy Magus (I don't think any other artist has ever done justice to Sienkiewicz's Phalanx Technarcy wild designs), and (double especially) the nightmare splintered world of Xavier's autistic illegitimate son Legion, whose Christoopher "Kid" Reid coiffure more than made up for Chuck's billiard ball skull.

Just as all right-minded comics fans consider the great Thor runs to be Lee/Kirby and Walt Simonson's books, or the great X-Men runs to be Claremont/Cockrum/Byrne and Morrison/Quitely, or the great Millie the Model extended storyline written and drawn by Jack Kirby (which gave us the spectacle of Millie as Herald of Galactus and the secret that the birth of the universe was sparked by Chili Storm)...New Mutants top years are, at least for me, #18-31, and, if you're feeling benevolent, the next year or so after that during which Sienkiewicz inked the pencils of Steve Leialoha, Mary Wilshire, and Rick Leonardi. The Jackson Guice/Kyle Baker run had some promise artwise, but the merry-go-round of artists in the issues post-#50 never quite did justice to Louise Simonson's scripts once she took over the series from Claremont, thus proving you could pry a mutant character out of his hands without killing him.

I love New Mutants #19, especially for its gorgeous cover. Here's another ten Bill Sienkiewicz comic book covers I think are beautiful:





















Here's another pair of my fave Sienkiewicz cover images, one of which you may never have seen. Didja know that Bill S. did two completely different painted covers for New Mutants #28? Now ya do, and you can amaze and be-baffle your pals and new aquaintances at parties with your deep and incisive Sienkiewicz schooling? You'll hardly be able to hold off the leggy supermodels! But let's let a clipping from Marvel Age #28 explain it all, a la Clarissa, for you:



(Here's the second, printed cover:)



I think alongside New Mutants and Moon Knight, my favorite Bill S. work is his Marvel Graphic Novel Daredevil: Love and War (1986), written (natch!) by Frank Miller.

Even following Miller's scripting and artistic re-invention of the Man with Only a Little Bit of Fear (And That's Really Just For Rats), Sienkiewicz's painted, expressionistic, chimerical Daredevil upped the ante higher than DD's usual rooftop stomping grounds:





Sienkiewicz creates lovely effects with swiftly blurred motion, physically-assaulting sound effects, (apt, for a blind hero) and a vertigo of caption boxes to simulate Daredevil's plummet towards the streets below:



I love this page/panel of Sienkiewicz's massive, hulking Kingpin, turned into a tiny tragic figure in Bill's art:



But $6.95 (its original price) for $6.95, the most stunning, heartbreaking, and visually haunting images in the book are this pair of pages: the deranged and yet literally romantic obsession of thug Victor for his blind kidnap victim Cheryl:





What's that? You wanna see more Bill S? How about ten more of my favorite Sienkiewicz covers? Huh? That work for you? Yes? Acceptable? Do you want me to...oh, okay.





















So, there ya go. Bill Sienkiewicz: the guy who turned the New Mutants on their mutated little heads and turned the nineteenth cover of their comic into something beautiful.

There's a few more for you. Beautiful, huh? That's all I've got for tonight. You don't have to go home, but you can't sleep here.

(Thanks for all the gorgeousosity, Bill!)

First commenter who mentions the mistake in this post's URL gets a poke in the snoot.