Are the covers better now?

[SuperMage]

I actually think the Punk Mambo cover looks amazing. It's stylized with a strong color scheme, and a unique layout. The mixture of hard edges, and soft shading is also a nice touch. I'll admit, it doesn't look like a traditional comic book cover due to the vector based art style on parts of the image. It's still a damn good drawing with a ton of personality. Better than the generic covers of the main character angrily posing against a generic background.

Fallen World on the other hand... It's the main character posing angrily against a generic background. The only thing that seems off to me are the feet. I might be wrong, but it almost looks like the artist forgot to hide the sketch layer. You can see grey between the toes on Rai's left foot. It's kind of random because the rest of his body isn't casting shadows anywhere so it's unclear what the grey area is meant to represent or if it was a mistake that made it past editorial. The feet themselves are a little funky looking.

I do not know what's happening in that second Psi-Lords cover. Beacon, and Artisan are completely off model. Not only that, but they're off race. Artisan just looks like a generic white guy in this cover. There's nothing about how his face is drawn to suggest he's a South Asian male. He looks white, like really white, and Beacon looks white too. The skin color is right, but the facial structure looks nothing like an African American female. In fact, Beacon doesn't even look like a woman in this cover. Beacon just looks like an androgynous Jewish man wearing blackface.

The other Psi-Lords cover looks fine, but the Guardians of the Galaxy parallel isn't likely to work in Valiant's favor when it comes to attracting new readers. No one is going to want to waste their money on an inferior version of a Marvel property.

[Shadowman99]

I love that we can see two 'lines only' pictures of Acclaim Comic's Mike LeRoi shadowman on that Mambo cover, I've been waiting to see when we'll see that character again

I quite like the background in the top Bloodshot cover, but the character work is horrible. Then again, I think that it's hard to determine 'good' and 'bad' covers. I remember there was some cover for Harbinger #1 that was literally like a biro doodle on blue-lined writing paper that I still hate to this day, but some folks love it. And I hate the first Psi-lords cover but like the second one which is contrary to some of the above opinions, so I don't think it's really possible to answer the main question of the thread and say at the heart of it that cover art has improved or declined between 2012 and now.

[DirtbagSailor]

[DirtbagSailor]