I love Art Adams’ work. He was drawing the occasional X-Men story when I started reading comics, and he made quite the impression: the New Mutants in Asgard, Mojo and the X-babies, and a nifty High Evolutionary story were quite entertaining in the age before annuals became a dumping ground for crossovers and sub-par fill-in teams. Unfotunately, Adams isn’t terribly prolific – he makes Frank Quitely and Bryan Hitch look like speed freaks, and I suspect he must do significant work in film or design – so new work always seems like a treat. The last interior work I can recall was a story in Tom Strong, and before that some work on Authority; since then, I’ve only seen covers. That trend continues with DC’s December solicits, which have him doing variant covers for JLA, Manhunter, and Midnighter. Nedless to say, the two that have been previewed are very nice. The also point to an interesting development in DC’s marketing strategy.
JLA isn’t a big deal, though I have to wonder how Michael Turner manages to get any work, let alone the regular cover gig on a flagship title. Midnighter also isn’t terribly surprising, since most of the Wildstorm relaunches are getting variants. But a variant cover for Manhunter is quite interesting: Most of the time, DC and Marvel seem to put out variants for their top sellers: “Buy even more of this book you were going to buy lots of anyway!” they say. But here, they’re really putting their money where their mouth is, using a variant to try to boost orders for a low selling book with a significant fan and critical following. Personally, I didn’t see what the big deal was about Manhunter, but it’s nice to see DC trying to promote a title everyone wasn’t already going to buy anyway.