12 Days of Best Covers of 2013: Day #7

The seventh book cover that I pick for the “12 Days of Best Covers of 2013″ list is Gene Mollica’s (again) excellent cover for Jean Johnson’s third Theirs Not To Reason Why novel, Hellfire, published by Ace Books. I discovered Jean earlier this year, that is, I started reading her books earlier this year but actually heard of her work last year through an SF Signal podcast. Jean made a switch from writing romance fantasy novels to writing military space opera with this series and all the three books in this series have been quite excellent. I’m definitely a fan of her work now, and I may even give one of her (many) romance fantasy series a chance, just to see how those books hold up.

The seventh comic cover that I pick is actually a splash art for DC’s (at the time) three Justice League titles. With Justice League #22 (Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis), Justice League of America #6 (Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke), and Justice League Dark #22 (Jeff Lemire, Mikel Janin), DC kicked off its Trinity War crossover that saw all the three different Leagues go up against each other, manipulated by a villain none of them could have been foreseen. The event got me to start reading Justice League Dark and right now under writer J. M. DeMatteis it is currently one of my favourite DC monthlies. All three issues were quite fantastic, and they set a great tone for the crossover as well.

Without further ado, hit the break to see both the covers in all their glory! The full list of all these covers is available here.

*****

Hellfire by Jean Johnson

Cover by Gene Mollica

Why: Gene Mollica did the covers for the first two books in the series as well and those covers are some of the best book covers I’ve seen. His Ia, the protagonist of the Theirs Not To Reason Why is pretty spot-on and just as I imagine her to be from the books. The fact that she is a person of colour is great, as is the fact that that in none of the three covers is Ia displayed in a gratuitous sexualised pose, something that is often quite common in the industry. Major points right there.

Helpful links:

• Review: A Soldier’s Duty
• Review: An Officer’s Duty
• Review: Hellfire
• Guest Post: Jean Johnson on Names

Trinity War (Cover One) by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Doug Mahnke, Jeff Lemire and Mikel Janin

Cover by Ivan Reis, Joe Prado and Rod Reis

Why: I’ve talked about this piece of artwork previously in a post for The Founding Fields and I’ll simply quote that here and I mentioned in there that I loved how the different characters, heroes all of them (well, maybe except for Constantine front-right), are paired off against each other. And how all the action is set around the bubble of calm that is Pandora herself. This artwork was broken up into three parts to grace, in order, the covers of Justice League #22, Justice League of America #6, and Justice League Dark #22. I own all three issues and together they look pretty damn fantastic.

Helpful links:

• Review: Trinity War
• Cover Art: Trinity War Part 1