Cover work and editiorial guidelines

[paintstain]

Adi-
You and I have spoken briefly about this but I hope you don't mind my asking a bit more. You've mentioned before that while creating your earlier Iron Man covers you were submitting sketches for specific issues, but in the end you were never quite sure which issue each image was going to be used for. I noticed on your Son of Asgard covers there seems to be a bit more relationship between the cover image and the story. Now, granted, Marvel likes strong iconic images rather than pertinent narrative images on their covers, how often are you given more strict editorial direction? How precise is your typical editorial direction? How often are you given the script to work from?

In terms of editorial direction, how would you compare your work on GI Joe covers with your Marvel cover work?

[Adi Granov]

I'll get to this a bit later. I am in the middle of a page atm.

[Adi Granov]

It all depends on the book and the editor's approach really. In the case of Iron Man, or Silver Surfer, etc. you always know that that one character has to be on the cover so it's easy to do iconic images more as posters for that particular character. In a few cases, like the Iron Man with the flag cover, I was compelled to do something somewhat story relevant, but it wasn't a requirement. So if I'd do a few covers and then editors would decide that one fits a particular issue better then they'd switch them around.

But in the case of something like Thor: Son of Asgard, there are multiple, equally represented characters. So we decided to go with an opening cover with all three of them in it, then follow with individual covers that all had a theme relevant to that issue's setting (fire, ice and sand/cave) and then to give one cover to Loki (but in that case the one with Thor in it was liked the most so it's not just a single portrait) and then wrap it up with a movie poster kinda thing with all of the important characters in the series. It felt like a nice progressive thing to do. I also got scripts for this series so I could get a sense of the settings, but I wasn't bound by it 100%

In the case of GI Joe it was a logistical nightmare because they had to have everything approved by Hasbro but also they were quite specific as to what they wanted. I felt very restricted because, I think, they were always afraid to push it because of Hasbro so it was all very "by the book". In this case I didn't get any scripts but was given guidelines by the editor.

So you get the picture, it kinda varies completely from project to project all depending on a various set of circumstances. I actually really like doing story relevant covers but iconic covers because they are like movie posters, meant to look super cool but have a vague relation to the story. The ones without any theme get tiring because there is only so many heroic poses one can come up with. I have to say I am not too huge of a fan of very specific, story covers. To me that kinda thing is more for editorial illustration. You don't need the cover to tell you the whole story because you will read about it inside. But that's just me.

I think that Fables covers are the best covers in the industry.

[paintstain]

Thanks Adi. I was hoping you'd be more thorough ;) . (kidding, of course)


I think that Fables covers are the best covers in the industry.
I agree.

[JABSEN]

I think that Fables covers are the best covers in the industry.Indeed.But I think any James Jean cover rules.

Thanks for the info