Artists That Just Do Covers & Not Interiors

[Dr. Poison]

I'm an old school comics fan, been reading since around 1980 and I remember the days when most artist drew the cover along with the interiors. It seems over the decades that practice has fallen more and more to the wayside with some artists only doing covers now(at least for DC). Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of these covers but it makes me a bit irked when we get a gorgeous cover by the likes of Terry Dodson, Alex Garner, Mikel Janin, Frank Cho, Ian Churchill, or others but then we get interior pages from newer artists that I've never heard of before who's art is nothing like that on the cover. A great looking cover can only sell so many copies of a book with a different degree of art internally. I'd really like to see DC stop this practice. Is anyone else with me?

[Johnny]

Some artists are not fast enough to do both covers and interiors, while others just sell better so they give them more cover work. When you see a Jim Lee cover you know you're most likely not going to see him do interiors, but you know it's going to sell so that's what DC does. There was a time when Ivan Reis used to pump out art like a machine. The guy did Green Lantern, Blackest Night, Brightest Day(bi-weekly book) and Aquaman back to back to back to back, all covers and interiors. Today you rarely ever see him do an ongoing gig, maybe he's just no longer able to keep up the pace the way he did then. Jason Fabok is the same way, he destroyed himself on Justice League and Darkseid War and hasn't done an ongoing book since. So I think it's not so much DC needing to stop this practice, it's more that some of the artists doing those great covers are just not able to keep up with the grueling schedule and either do cover work or a short arc/miniseries here and there since it gives them more room to breathe.

[married guy]

Francis Manapul is doing a lot of cover work.
I don't think he's done any interior work for a long while.

[Robanker]

Outside of rare instances (like the Bendis Man of Steel, or the occasional Hellboy one-shot), Adam Hughes mostly just does pinups. It helps he's damn good at it. He used to do interiors with a bit more frequency (you may remember him on JLI).

Francis Manapul is doing a lot of cover work.
I don't think he's done any interior work for a long while.

He did that Crisis one-shot for Death Metal, I think. He was working on Earth One Aquaman, but DC pulled the plug on that. I will die salty over that decision.

[BatmanJones]

A cover artist that can almost always persuade me to buy a comic is Ben Oliver. (I got all of his Jimmy Olsen variants.) He very rarely does interiors. The last one I'm sure I remember was The Just from Multiversity.

[Jim Kelly]

Given I don't like comics story art that is painted--or is coloured to look like it was painted--I'm happy if the painters just stay as cover artists. But I'm not happy that Brian Bolland--a great pencil and ink man--decided long ago that he was only going to do covers. Apparently, he had some bad experiences as a story artist and elected to just do covers from then on. He's such a good visual story teller that we lost out by having him stick to just covers, as good as those were.

It's interesting to me that, in the classic comic book days, Alex Schomburg almost exclusively did cover art for comics. The one exception I know of is the Jerry Siegel creation, JON JUAN (Spring 1950), from Toby Press, where Schomburg did the interior story pages. Otherwise it was all covers for Alex. It's amazing to me that during the 1940s, when artists were not in a position to choose, that Schomburg had the luxury of only doing covers.

[Dr. Poison]

Some artists are not fast enough to do both covers and interiors, while others just sell better so they give them more cover work. When you see a Jim Lee cover you know you're most likely not going to see him do interiors, but you know it's going to sell so that's what DC does. There was a time when Ivan Reis used to pump out art like a machine. The guy did Green Lantern, Blackest Night, Brightest Day(bi-weekly book) and Aquaman back to back to back to back, all covers and interiors. Today you rarely ever see him do an ongoing gig, maybe he's just no longer able to keep up the pace the way he did then. Jason Fabok is the same way, he destroyed himself on Justice League and Darkseid War and hasn't done an ongoing book since. So I think it's not so much DC needing to stop this practice, it's more that some of the artists doing those great covers are just not able to keep up with the grueling schedule and either do cover work or a short arc/miniseries here and there since it gives them more room to breathe.

If this is true why is it a more recent trend then? A few decades ago, Perez used to do both interiors and covers for JLA, New Teen Titans, Crisis On Infinite Earths, and Wonder Woman. Byrne did the same for Legends, Action Comics, and the Atom(Simon run). Mike McKone did the same for JLI and Teen Titans(Johns run). Nicola Scott did covers & interiors for Secret Six, Wonder Woman, and Earth 2. I wouldn't say that the practice is dead, it's just extremely rare. Maybe DC should stop making so many different variant covers for books so that artists have more time to do interiors?

[Jim Kelly]

Is it a recent trend? When artists were the cover artist for the whole line, they usually didn't have a lot of time to do interior art. In the 1970s, Nick Cardy became the cover artist (usually working from Carmine Infantino cover designs) and that was at a time when Cardy didn't have an ongoing series (no Teen Titans, no Bat Lash, no Aquaman). I think Infantino gave him this plumb job, because Cardy was one of his favourite artists. With so many titles to work on, Cardy wouldn't have had time to do interior art (he did supplement his income by doing movie posters).

Curt Swan from time to time was the artist on all the Superman titles and he could still find time to do covers, he was that prolific, but the editor probably realized that having Curt do so many covers limited the amount of stories he could do in a month, so other artists took over on covers.

For awhile Neal Adams was the main cover artist, but that would have also limited how much interior art he could do--and Neal wasn't that prolific (arguably because he put so much care into his art).

Sometimes, it's a case where the interior artist could do the covers, but they prefer to have a different guy doing the covers. On the old "JSA" title, I'm sure Stephen Sadowski could have done the covers, but instead they gave those to Alan Davis--who was a bigger name and probably got paid at a higher rate. As good as Davis was, I always found this frustrating because there was a specific vision to Sad's Justice Society that didn't come through on the covers. But there you have it.

Other cases like this existed, where they gave a big name the covers when the interior artist could likely have done them. Brian Bolland was the cover artist on WONDER WOMAN 63 - 100 (with the exception of 93), when interior artists like Lee Moder and Mike Deodato could have probably done the work. José Luis García-López did covers for WONDER WOMAN 118, 119, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, even though John Byrne was the interior artist and could easily have done those covers.

[Dr. Poison]

Is it a recent trend? When artists were the cover artist for the whole line, they usually didn't have a lot of time to do interior art. In the 1970s, Nick Cardy became the cover artist (usually working from Carmine Infantino cover designs) and that was at a time when Cardy didn't have an ongoing series (no Teen Titans, no Bat Lash, no Aquaman). I think Infantino gave him this plumb job, because Cardy was one of his favourite artists. With so many titles to work on, Cardy wouldn't have had time to do interior art (he did supplement his income by doing movie posters).

Curt Swan from time to time was the artist on all the Superman titles and he could still find time to do covers, he was that prolific, but the editor probably realized that having Curt do so many covers limited the amount of stories he could do in a month, so other artists took over on covers.

For awhile Neal Adams was the main cover artist, but that would have also limited how much interior art he could do--and Neal wasn't that prolific (arguably because he put so much care into his art).

Sometimes, it's a case where the interior artist could do the covers, but they prefer to have a different guy doing the covers. On the old "JSA" title, I'm sure Stephen Sadowski could have done the covers, but instead they gave those to Alan Davis--who was a bigger name and probably got paid at a higher rate. As good as Davis was, I always found this frustrating because there was a specific vision to Sad's Justice Society that didn't come through on the covers. But there you have it.

Other cases like this existed, where they gave a big name the covers when the interior artist could likely have done them. Brian Bolland was the cover artist on WONDER WOMAN 63 - 100 (with the exception of 93), when interior artists like Lee Moder and Mike Deodato could have probably done the work. José Luis García-López did covers for WONDER WOMAN 118, 119, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, even though John Byrne was the interior artist and could easily have done those covers.

Thanks for sharing this information. My point is that I'd like to see more of these current cover-only artists start doing interiors for DC again. I feel like getting all of these cover-only artist on various books as a form of false advertising. Many of the covers look phenomenal but the art inside doesn't match. :/

[Timothy Hunter]

Another factor is that the page rates at DC and Marvel aren't high enough for established comic artists to invest their time working on a monthly. If you're popular artist, you can make more money doing commissions.

[MRP]

If this is true why is it a more recent trend then? A few decades ago, Perez used to do both interiors and covers for JLA, New Teen Titans, Crisis On Infinite Earths, and Wonder Woman. Byrne did the same for Legends, Action Comics, and the Atom(Simon run). Mike McKone did the same for JLI and Teen Titans(Johns run). Nicola Scott did covers & interiors for Secret Six, Wonder Woman, and Earth 2. I wouldn't say that the practice is dead, it's just extremely rare. Maybe DC should stop making so many different variant covers for books so that artists have more time to do interiors?

It's not a recent trend. It was quite common in comics from the Golden Age through the 70s. Gil Kane used to do covers in bunches for Marvel all throughout the 70s and Ernie Chua would do several covers a month for DC in the 70s without doing the interiors n any of those books. It was only in the 80s and 90s that it became more common for the interior artist to also do the interiors and that was in large part because of 2 factors, 1) the growth of the direct market and the need to solicit books using covers, and 2) the original art market began to more fully develop and covers commanded higher prices form collectors than interior pages did so artists who used to focus on interiors to maximize page rates now wanted to do covers to have a better secondary income. So it's not a new trend, but a return to the way things were traditionally done in comics for decades before the things changed in the 80s. But even in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and the last 2 decades, you have had plenty of books with covers by artists who didn't do the interiors-Adam Hughes has long runs as cover artist on books he never did an interior page for, especially at DC (the 2002 Catwoman series comes ot mind) as does Brian Bolland.


-M

(oops, didn't see Jim Kelly had already addressed it, i owe him a Coke)

[Jim Kelly]

The current trend does seem strange in that the cover content is so disconnected from the interior content. And with all the variant covers, the only reason someone would buy them is for the different covers since the inside content remains the same.

It seems to be a scheme to reward comic shops--in times when they're losing business. So some consumers order specific variants from the shops. But this means the value of the comic is in the cover and nothing to do with the story.

However, with so much content going digital, I don't see a future for it. You can get every variant cover for free online--so there's no value in multiple covers for digital copies. It's only a scheme that works for printed comic books--as far as I can understand it. But that's probably why the cover is unrelated to the interior content--the covers are virtually detached from whatever is inside them.

[thwhtGuardian]

The current trend does seem strange in that the cover content is so disconnected from the interior content. And with all the variant covers, the only reason someone would buy them is for the different covers since the inside content remains the same.

It seems to be a scheme to reward comic shops--in times when they're losing business. So some consumers order specific variants from the shops. But this means the value of the comic is in the cover and nothing to do with the story.

However, with so much content going digital, I don't see a future for it. You can get every variant cover for free online--so there's no value in multiple covers for digital copies. It's only a scheme that works for printed comic books--as far as I can understand it. But that's probably why the cover is unrelated to the interior content--the covers are virtually detached from whatever is inside them.

Eh, with how badly Amazon botched Comixology I'm not sure the future is digital anymore.

[Noodle]

Thanks for sharing this information. My point is that I'd like to see more of these current cover-only artists start doing interiors for DC again. I feel like getting all of these cover-only artist on various books as a form of false advertising. Many of the covers look phenomenal but the art inside doesn't match. :/

Not all cover artists are suited for interior art. Jenny Frison has been doing some absolutely breathtaking covers on Catwoman, but I don't think her style suits well for sequential storytelling. Same with Artgerm. They're more suited for cover art.

[Restingvoice]

if those cover artists start making interior none of them would get done.

Except Stepan Sejic because he does 20 minutes of fully painted page or something insane like that.

A lot of them do everything on their own. They can share of course, only doing the pencil and ink, but the result will end up different than the ones people like to collect.

So you only see the likes of Alex Ross on limited series. Yasmine Putri who started doing interior these days has a dip in quality compared to when she's just doing the cover, although not that noticeable, it's mainly on the coloring details. Even Sejic has to cut corners by simplifying the colors, make the finishing rough, or skipping details on appendages.

This is talking about those specialized cover. Dan Mora, whose cover art already looks like interior art, maintain the same quality. (I don't know if he's done interior before, but me and my pals saw him first on Nightwing covers, like it so much we want him to draw Dick Grayson interior, and now it happens in Detective Comics and World's Finest, yay)