The Four Color Media Monitor

Comic Book Club Live offers some samples of artwork for "street level" fashion on superhero characters:

Marvel, but make it fashion? As previously revealed at San Diego Comic-Con, artist Inhyuk Lee has designed a number of street-level fashion variant covers for November’s comics, all called “Street-Verse.”

“I was honored to create the Street-Verse Variant Covers for Marvel,” Lee said via press release. “I started my career as a character designer at a game company 20 years ago, so I’m familiar with and enjoy designing characters and I’m interested in modern and practical design, so I was always drawn to techwear. Since the winter of 2021, I’ve been working on a personal project redesigning Spider-Man characters’ costumes in a modernized way. I’ve called it ‘Who is next?’ Marvel saw the series and approached me with this cover and mural project.”

In the new covers, the classic superhero costumes are transformed into “techwear,” which includes future aesthetics while emphasizing “functionality.” The 20 covers range from Emma Frost, to Spider-Man, to Doctor Doom, and more.

Of course, seeing they're actually emphasizing the overlord of Latveria for this, maybe it's not entirely accurate to say this makes for an interesting art project, since seriously, do villains belong on a lineup like this? Nope. There's nothing fashionable about what they wear, and a lot more potential to be found with heroes, but regrettably, for too long now, the major publishers are unwilling to consider that.

And what does the artist mean by "modernized"? The early designs aren't good enough? Unfortunately, there's every chance wokeness could've affected a project like this just as much as the real life fashion industry. And lest we forget, variant covers aren't the place to put these, regardless. Wall paintings and calenders are a much better option, yet keep getting obscured for the sake of variant covers.

Labels: good artists, marvel comics, msm propaganda, sales