I tried to do this earlier with the Marvel solicitations for June '07, but of course something happened and I lost the post. But let me assure you, it was pretty damn funny. I will try to re-post it again later on.



...onwards...



DC had surprising number of solicitations that peaked my interest. A lot of it has to do with some genuinely good cover art, in my opinion, but I often wonder how much of that is linked to my personal investment with some of the characters and creators involved...



This cover I liked a lot. I thought Williams does a pretty good job of mimicking the silver-age aesthetic of the old Batman books, without doing so too flamboiantly. The sparse use of color I thought was quite effective as well. Again, I can't help but wonder if I'm being a bit biased here, simply because I have been wanting to see Williams on another Batman book really really really bad.



Similarly, this image also peaked my interest. Tim Drake has probably been one of my favorite characters since I was a young kid, but I have actually not been loving Beechem's run on the book. It's not bad, it's just not great. Still, the book has been doing a fairly decent job on the covers lately. Making the books visually appealing in a way that is obscure enough to entice someone who has not been following the storyline (or even current continuity for that matter), as well as someone who has an idea of what's going to happen next.



Both of these covers show enough to tease out what the story might possibly be about (without having to read the actual text solicitation) to give a person, who may already show some interest in reading the book, a push in that direction. Something like Kurt Busiek's Superman or Judd Winnick's Green Arrow, however,give you all the details you need (assuming you can recognize Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow, Black Canary) to get psyched about the story.



Now, the cover to Marc Guggenheim's Flash works on a level that will most likely appeal to current fans. The impact and weight of the Tony Daniels image, only works on an emotional level, and would therefore require some previous investment in the character. Of course, DC tells us this is merely a teaser image, but for existing fans, this level of mystery (when composed well enough) can work just as well. Both DC Marvel bank on this with their campaigns of secrecy disinformation.



Now, Tony Harris' cover to Ex Machina is a perfect example of this. So good in fact that it could possibly bring in new readers to the series. Too bad that Harris chose to save a cover this powerful to the finale of the story arc. This cover in particular gets me excited simply because, while I consistently love Harris' work on the series, his dazzling cover design has been somewhat lacking in that extra "oomph" he usually delivers. Something like this is just so powerful that I don't have to know what the story inside is like. All I need to know is that the story inside is on the same level as this cover. Being a regular reader of the series, I can safely assume it is, but if I were not, it would have to take a bit more to convince me that this book was worth jumping on at this issue.



Contrastly, this is what you guys get for complaining about Superman crying too much - a cover that does absolutely nothing for me. It doesn't even have Superman punching Robotman's head off. World War Kent.



Another reason I love going through the DC solicitations each month is because they like to offer up a bunch of sweet reprints and collections. While Marvel certainly offers up its fair share of reprint collections, their solicitations generally don't involve awesome cover images (i.e. no cover for the Essential Silver Surfer collection coming out in June). So for your viewing pleasure (and mine, obviously) here are a series of "Bams":

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