12 Days of Best Covers of 2013: Day #11

The eleventh pick for the “12 Days of Best Covers of 2013″ list is the cover for author Rachel Aaron’s latest release, Fortune’s Pawn, the first in her new Paradox space opera series, written under the pseudonym Rachel Bach to help differentiate from her epic fantasy series Eli Monpress, all of them published by Orbit Books. Sure, I’m a huge fan of Rachel’s books, and the covers for her novels have been quite good, whether the old covers or the new ones. Having read Fortune’s Pawn a few weeks ago, I can say with confidence that it is most definitely one of the best SF novels I’ve read in the last three years, right up there with the best of the best.

The eleventh comic cover that I pick is Andrea Sorrentino and Marcelo Maiolo’s cover for Green Arrow #25, written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Andrea Sorrentino. I credit CW’s Arrow and fellow TFF reviewer Bane of Kings for getting me interested enough in this title to read it. Thanks to Jeff Lemire’s excellent storylines and Andrea Sorrentino’s amazing artwork, Green Arrow has become one of my favourite DC monthly comics and in the weeks that new issues of the series come out, Green Arrow is definitely among my first reads.

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.

Advent Review #23: Illegitimates #1 (Comics Review)

If Marvel’s Painkiller Jane, Image’s Velvet and IDW’s Illegitimates are any indication, then spy/detective stories are on the rise in the comics scene, and I think that its all the better for it. Helps break the monotony of superheroes everywhere, and it helps Image and IDW particularly in continuing to offer a diverse portfolio to readers, to draw them in and do some really fun stuff. Of course, Velvet and Illegitimates are twists on the classic James Bond-style setting.

The former is based on the premise that the secretary is a former agent, quite lethal in fact, whereas the latter is based on the premise that the super secret agent left a string of babies during his escapades all over the world. And the latter is what we are concerned with here. Illegitimates basically runs off with that premise and it sets up a situation where the so-called illegitimates come to the notice of the organisation and are brought in (or will be brought in, I should say). The writing is decent, if a bit bland, and the art is similar.