Bootlog

I do love comic books, and from time to time even a bit too much. I’d been even playing Arkham Asylum recently. My iPhone is filled with nothing else but comic books at the moment. I know this passion won’t last long, still got too many books in a queue.

Anyway I have just stumbled upon this list: The 50 Best Comic Book Covers of 2009. What a nice bunch of pretty images. Some are plain some are copy-cats some are pretty cheap. But hey! among 50 there must be something good, well let’s leave it for now because I had to double and triple check that these are 2009 covers. Some of them could have been pretty cool in 60’s or 70’s but now they just look like someone’s messed up with inspiration. Covers are actually posters in fact. They announce what comes from within the book as they do in film poster industry (you decide). They should be the content’s metaphor. I know some target audiences need nothing more but simple old “flesh and guns” but those shouldn’t be among top 50.

So, those made me think of good old Polish posters which were actually in the same style. The reason was that authors wouldn’t have access to any assets, sometimes they weren’t able to watch the movie. I know it sounds silly but in communistic Poland all sort of shit was common. So they would have pen and paper and thy would create some of the best posters ever. No I do not mean that socialistic crap, I mean some serious film posters for example, which would convey the story in a most dramatic and deep metaphorical way. I’ll compare 2 posters: Polish and American here to give you an idea what I mean:

Rocky (the original one)
Polish Version

USA version

So that “top 50” list reminded me about this particular struggle with so many doors to be opened and with trying to avoid the obvious ones. Some comic book authors should have commissioned others to design their covers and maybe not to get on that list and please me. Seriously, one does judge book by the cover. The comic book. And it does not have to be comic.