Welcome to the Multiversity Year in Review for 2020! While this has been, by many accounts, a terrible year, there were a number of fantastic comics released in 2020, and over the next ten days, we’ll be highlighting our favorites across 25 categories. If you want to give your thoughts on our picks or share your own, feel free to do so in the comments!
Best Cover Artist
There are those who will tell you that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Comic fans know better! Covers are meant to sell books, to draw readers in. Sometimes they tell stories of their own. Sometimes they even lie! Regardless of their intended purpose, we take time every year to pay tribute to our favorite cover artists. Though some of them also may do interior comic art, we are focusing on the cover work by these talented individuals. This year our top three expanded into our top five. Here they are.
3. Jen Bartel
Jen Bartel’s style is one of the most recognizable in the entirety of comics cover art. From her neon palette to her clean lines and mind-boggling skill at drawing beautiful people, she is no longer a bold new voice, but an established, respected figure.
As such, Bartel’s style may not stand out as much as it once did, simply because she has been so consistently excellent since her first covers. This does not stop Bartel’s covers from being some of the most visually pleasing out there.
This year, Bartel also expanded her repertoire into shoe design. Her first pair, a tie-in with the Birds of Prey film, was essentially her usual bright style on a shoe instead of on or in a comic book. Her second design, a take on the gorgon Medusa, was more of an exploration of a different style. It was certainly different from what comics fans are used to seeing from Bartel, but no less gorgeous.
This creative expansion has not led to a drop in quality of her cover work. Bartel consistently delivered stellar variants for a number of popular titles, including the Buffy spinoff series “Willow”. Whenever an issue has a Bartel variant, that variant remains one of the strongest visual representations of that book. This consistency and her singular style more than earns Jen Bartel a spot on this list this year. – Jodi Odgers
2. (tie) Daniel Warren Johnson
No one does the human cost of battle quite so well like Daniel Warren Johnson. Using a modern take on the 1990s hyper-detail art style, his covers make you feel the stress and strain of a fight, whether you’re on the winning or losing side. You can feel every muscle ache, every bead of sweat, every blow ringing in your ears.
His covers for “Wonder Woman: Dead Earth” often placed Diana Prince with her back to the threat of the moment, unsure of the nature of her enemy, but not unaware of it. A fitting stage to set for a story where her present and future end up revealed layer by layer, unknown to both heroine and reader until the right moment in the narrative. Then there’s the cover for “Wolverine” #6, a freeze frame of a knockdown fight with Logan at its core. We don’t know what happened before that moment, nor after – – we just know this moment. And in that moment, we see a literal fight symbolizing Wolvie’s own metaphorical battle for happiness and sense of self. And then there’s Johnson’s variant cover for the debut issue of “Crossover,” where we see the aftermath of a battle . . . but that aftermath being a sense of normalcy, a fleeting moment of “life goes on” in a dystopian landscape. (Talk about a metaphor for 2020!)
In a year where even the most basic of tasks felt like a fight for one’s survival, Daniel Warren Johnson captures all the angles of that sentiment beautifully. – – Kate Kosturski
2. (tie) Becky Cloonan
Becky Cloonan had a busy 2020. Between writing “Dark Agnes” for Marvel and her beautiful art of the occult in pins, prints, and an impressive cart deck with the Mystery School Comics Group, and writing and illustrating for DC’s “Dark Knights: Death Metal Guidebook,” Cloonan was still able to produce some of the best covers of the year.
Continued belowI’m most familiar with her work for Justin Jordan and Niko Henrichon’s “Reaver,” which always helps to set the tone for the dark fantasy world of Madaras. Much like the comic itself, Cloonan takes full advantage of a minimalist color scheme and shadows to create covers that are both striking and haunting. “Reaver” #11 is a prime example of Cloonan’s skills in crafting a cover. The various shades of red catch your eye, both characters look like phoenixes rising triumphantly from the flames, all while it looks like Essen is being treated almost like a puppet. A prophetic image for the story about to be told. A great cover catches the eye and sets the stage for the adventure you’re about to go on, Cloonan’s covers take it to the next level. From her variant work on “The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem” or her own “Dark Agnes,” to her exceptional Judge Dredd in “2000 A.D.” Cloonan did some truly stunning work, worthy of being one the best of 2020. – Joe Skonce
1. (tie) Nick Derington
The 2020 covers of Nick Derington are deceptively simple compositions, but therein lies their power. In the same way that Darwyn Cooke used an economy of linework to get across the epic nature of DC Comics’s heroes, so too does Derington present the Justice League in clean, iconic form. Several of the covers feature the heroes bounding into some unseen battle, a common theme of modern comics’ penchant for covers that tell less of a story than they used to. Scan across the comic rack on a given Wednesday, and you’d be forgiven for not thinking the latest iteration on Jim Lee’s New 52 “Justice League” #1 cover was particularly eye-catching. I don’t feel that way about a single one of Nick Derington’s covers, whether they tell a story or not. They’re bright and bursting with color.
His visual style is unique, while calling to mind the clean line of the aforementioned Cooke or, even more aptly, Mike Allred, though not a copycat of either. His heroes are massive and carry a sense of warmth and gravity in them, even if they’re not always all smiles. The comics pop off the shelf on the strength of Derington’s signature style alone. But when the covers do tell a story, his work engages the viewer in the mystery, and draws them in even closer. On the cover of “Batman/Superman” #8, Superman is brought to his knees in mourning for something that has happened to the bottle city of Kandor. The cover begs the observer to open the book and, just like you were a kid again, find out what happened. It is of a piece with the best kinds of covers from the Silver Age. The ones where something terrible has happened, and you can’t imagine how or why without reading further. Likewise, the cover of “Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds” #7 shows the entire roster of his now-iconic iteration of the Doom Patrol team (the designs of which are all top-notch) standing in horror among the floating rubble of what appears to be a destroyed planet. It marked the end of an era for this version of the “Doom Patrol”, and Derington sent them out in style. -Vince Ostrowski
1. (tie) Russell Dauterman
Russell Dauterman may have only had a couple issues of interior art this year, most likely to give himself a break from the massive event he drew every oversized issue of last year, but that didn’t mean he was slacking. Oh no, he was putting all that restful work into being the cover artist for my fellow Make Mine Multiversity (shameless plug, shameless plug) co-host Jake’s favorite X-title: “Marauders.” Oh, and he also did a couple “Giant Size X-Men” issue covers but his work on “Marauders” is what really put him on top this year.
Dauterman has always been a great cover artist but he really stepped up this year. Hell, he may have had far fewer covers than the indomitable Alex Ross but they left just as big an impact, if not more. Considering Ross did not make the list this year — no slight to him, the field was tight — that’s gotta count for something.
What makes Dauterman’s covers appealing and well-constructed is that 1) they actually make me want to read the issue from the image alone (thinking about “Marauders” #14’s cover with Storm and Anubis(?) dancing the tango) and 2) they reference something that happens in the issue, or create a visual symbol for it, and do without spoiling the events of the issue. Moreover, every cover bristles and crackles with an energy that fits the tone of the book it’s advertising, whether it’s Kate Pryde rocking her massive curls in a gorgeous red pirate captain suit while phasing through the floor with Lockheed on her shoulder or Knife Lady with an Eye Patch (Jake is gonna kill me for forgetting her name,) smirking and wielding said knives against an foe reflected in the golden glint of the knives.
And I would be remiss if I didn’t also praise Matt Wilson for his coloring. These two have been a team for years and know each other’s styles like the back of their hands. Without those colors, the covers would still be great but would not have the same presence and warmth (or coolness, as the mood calls for it.) If Alex Ross is the master of physical painted covers, Wilson & Dauterman are the masters of the digital and “Marauders” is lucky to have an artist pairing as talented as them. – Elias Rosner
