The Avengers: dave johnson

-My good friend Phil Jimenez is a supremely talented fellow who excels at drawing pretty much anything, but knowing him as I do, I know there are particular characters he has an attachment to and passion for, and it always shows through in his work. Obviously his favorite character is Wonder Woman and you can see that in the amount of elaborate effort he puts in when crafting art featuring her; ditto for the Teen Titans. However, more often than not, it's the more obscure New Mutants and Legion Academy trainees that really get Phil's juices flowing, and as is evidenced by his work on Alpha Flight #1, Canada's top super team fits the bill, which again, knowing him, makes total sense to me; they're just the sort of visually brilliant oddball gang he'd love.

-Both Avengers: The Children's Crusade and Green Lantern: Emerald Warriors show off an incredibly simple little tic that I nonetheless pop for every time I see it: coveying depth by shadowing a character's eyes. I can't help it, I love it.

-Thank you Captain America variant cover for my 2011 Halloween costume.

-I think Dave Johnson obviously read my proclamations of late that Dustin Nguyen has been becoming the best cover artist in the business, because his efforts on Deadpool and Flashpoint: Batman - Knight of Vengeance clearly shows he has stepped his game up in hopes of reclaiming the top spot. Well done, Mr. Johnson, and I'm glad that I could so clearly inspire you.

-Obviously the weirder and more stylized a Flashpoint cover, the more I like it, hence Deadman and the Flying Graysons and Secret Seven joining Batman here. Just showing a familiar character with a new look is one thing, but really having fun with it is another.

-You know which cover maybe has me most excited to see what's inside? Ruse.

-Derec Donovan's Static Shock cover is stark, simple and striking.

-The new Venom series has inspired great covers every month to date thus far. Artists clearly love drawing that character and the new costume.

-A truly underrated cover artist I should give kudos to more often: X-Factor's David Yardin.

ALPHA FLIGHT #1 by Phil Jimenez

AVENGERS: THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #6 by Jimmy Cheung

BATGIRL #22 by Dustin Nguyen

BATMAN, INCORPORATED #8 by Chris Burnham

CAPTAIN AMERICA #619 variant by Gerard Parel

DEADPOOL #38 by Dave Johnson

DETECTIVE COMICS #878 by Jock

DOCTOR SOLAR, MAN OF THE ATOM #9 by Roger Robinson

FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT #3 by Marko Djurdjevic

FLASHPOINT #2 by Andy Kubert

FLASHPOINT: BATMAN - KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #1 by Dave Johnson

FLASHPOINT: DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #1 by Cliff Chiang

FLASHPOINT: SECRET SEVEN #1 by George Perez

THE GOON #34 by Eric Powell

GREEN LANTERN: EMERALD WARRIORS #11 by Scott Clark

HELLBOY: THE FURY #1 by Francesco Francavilla

HULK #35 by Carlo Pagulayan

iZOMBIE #14 by Mike Allred

RUSE #4 by Butch Guice

STATIC SHOCK SPECIAL #1 by Derec Donovan

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #159 variant by Frank Cho

VENOM #4 by Mike McKone

X-FACTOR #220 by David Yardin

X-MEN #12 by Ed McGuinness

XOMBI #4 by Frazer Irving

Notes on the front end...

-I love Patrick Gleason's Damian.

-Fun fact: Once upon a time I almost got the scales of justice, as depicted on February's Captain America issue (albeit minus Cap and the Winter Soldier), tattooed on my shoulder. But it didn't happen.

-Cinderella has never looked so hot, I daresay. What a sentence to write...

-If he ever gets sick of Dorothy and friends, Skottie Young could draw one heckuva Uatu ongoing series.

-Iron Fist's new white variant costume is really growing on me. It suits him.

-Illuminati mini drawn by Juan Doe, anybody?

-Dustin Nguyen continues to blow my mind. As of February it would seem dude is taking on not one but two ongoing books in addition to continuing to crank out some of the best covers in the business.

-There aren't many characters I feel like Darick Robertson can't rock, but boy does Conan seem right up his alley.

-Holy crap there are Deathlok'ed super heroes in Uncanny X-Force! And Esad Ribic is doing interiors as well as the cover! I didn't realize how much my life was missing a Thing Deathlok until this week!

THE ALL-NEW BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #4 by Rick Burchett