Day Seventy-Four: Hughes, Your Daddy

The post the other day about James Jean's remarkable way with a paintbrush and a cover commission might have made you think that there were no other cover artists out there who were capable of doing anything other than yet another picture of Spider-Man brooding on a rooftop or another shot of Batman standing on a gargoyle. Don't worry, though, because there are a few other artists out there who have the requisite good design sense needed to turn in a truly stunning cover.

Rian Hughes is one of those guys. A naturally gifted designer, Hughes' work includes such disparate creations as the rocket-ship logo of Forbidden Planet and ad work for Virgin Atlantic, among others. He's also been involved with the British comics scene for years, working with Paul Gravett on Escape magazine and drawing strips such as Robo-Hunter and Really and Truly (the latter with Grant Morrison on writing duties - he would later go on to draw Morrison's revisionist version of Dan Dare, which is pretty but isn't one of Morrison's stronger efforts story-wise).

Hughes has done a lot of work for DC Comics, creating the look of the strikingly-covered Tangent series and handling cover design for books like The Invisibles, not to mention creating the current Johnny DC logo and lending his self-designed fonts to the covers of many other books. In the early part of this decade, Hughes began working for Wildstorm on the covers for the Wildcats 3.0 series written by Joe Casey. In conjunction with artist Dustin Nguyen, he came up with some excellent designs based on the corporate theme of the comic itself.

Issue 2

Issue 3

Issue 4

Issue 5

As the series progressed, Hughes took more and more risks with the format of the covers - he often made them look like anything other than a comic book, as seen in the romantic novel and notepad designs below.

These were actually issues...

...of a comic about ex-soldiers in an alien war.

Perhaps his finest moment on Wildcats 3.0 was the cover he did for the issue in which lead character Grifter was training his replacement - the "build your own" action figure pack design was nothing short of inspired.

Class in a glass.

Hughes makes most of his money from his design work rather than from his comics work, so it's no surprise that he doesn't currently have a gig as cover artist on a monthly book. Fans needn't despair, though, as there's a book of his work available (entitled Device, which is also the name of his company), which contains loads of his illustration, logo, design and font work.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to look at another cover with a picture of the Hulk smashing up a tank, and then I'm going to go and smack my head against the wall.