Day Sixty-Eight: Jean Genius
The fact that so many of Marvel and DC's comics have such unmemorable covers is nothing short of "a bit of a shame". It seems that a few years ago, a view was taken at high levels at the Big Two that what they describe as 'iconic' images, and what everyone else would describe as 'generic' or 'interchangeable', were the way forward rather than covers which, gosh, I dunno, actually depict the contents of the issue in some way.
Huzzah and hurrah, then, for James Jean, for being someone who can take the "just draw the characters, okay?" edict and make something brilliant out of it. Jean's a relative newcomer to comics, whose primary income is from magazine work, advertising and so on, but his incredible eye for design has meant that he's been very in demand at both Marvel and DC, where he's done covers for titles as varied as Amazing Fantasy, Green Arrow, Runaways, Fables and Batgirl. He appears to be taking a bit of a sabbatical from comics work recently to work on a larger project of his own, and unfortunately the book of his art (Process Recess, published by AdHouse) is currently out of print, but he keeps popping up in the oddest places, so odds are you'll see him again pretty soon.
There's not really much more I can say about Jean's artwork that these samples represented below can't say better, except to emphasise that you need to click these babies until they're full-size - your eyes will love you forever.
