DC COmics COvers
In 2024, I fulfilled a lifelong dream when I got to design EIGHT covers (front and back) for DC Comics. And for the big guns, too: Superman! Batman! Green Lantern! Teen Titans! To say this was unexpected is an understatement – never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d have my work on actual comics.
These were celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Kenner Super Powers toyline, and I did my best to faithfully recreate the packaging as well as design and sculpt all the figures. Even better: while initially DC asked me to do the character art as well, cooler heads prevailed and we were able to get Alex Saviuk to do all new art…as he did much of the art on the actual 1980s packaging! (I did get to revisit my Kid’s Meal roots and draw the tiny infographics on the back covers.) My editor, Alex Galer, gets huge props as well for taking a chance on me and always backing my crazy choices.
After choosing the characters, my DC editor Alex gave me pretty much free rein in the cover design and sculpts. I wrote all the copy on the front and back, and art-directed Alex Saviuk on the front illustrations, as well as doing clean-up and color for the final print mechanical files.
One of the more challenging aspects of the project was that the dimensions of the original cards and a comic book are quite different. I had less width and more height in the comic, and I had to play around quite a bit with the layout to make sure that it felt like you were looking at the original toy. I will say props to DC for letting me put the price sticker on the front which helped greatly in hiding the extra “white space” around the logo.
I was also allowed to add vehicles and playsets to the back of the card, all of them were my choices. It was challenging to sculpt the two vehicles based on the concept art that Kenner never produced in 1985, but I had free rein on the Fortress of Solitude to do whatever I felt like.
These covers were such a success, that DC decided to do another round of nine covers in 2025! Once again, editor Alex Galer and the DC sales department picked a number of characters for me to do and then I was allowed to execute that pretty much however I wanted to, working with Alex Saviuk on the front cover line art and doing everything else myself.
Like Wave One, I was allowed to pick whatever I wanted to add for the vehicles and playset on the back cover. This time I did my own version of Green Arrow’s ArrowCar, loosely based on a 1940s Tucker Torpedo that appeared in one issue of the Green Arrow comic. The JLA survival suit was another unproduced Kenner concept, and I went all out for the Daily Planet playset based entirely on my own design.
Will there be a Third Wave of covers for 2026?
Stay tuned!