Dynamite Entertainment has enlisted Adam Gorham and Michael Garland to provide six variant covers for select titles in April that pay tribute to artist Todd McFarlane.
Dynamite's official press release, as well as the cover art, are below:
January 23, Mt. Laurel, NJ: For a set of special variants on releases for April, Dynamite and Adam Gorham are tributing the endlessly influential Todd McFarlane.
Adam Gorham (New Mutants, The Violent) is joined by colorist Michael Garland on six covers using Dynamite characters to homage classics from McFarlane's career. Releases featuring these covers honoring the Toddfather will include Dejah Thoris #5, Red Sonja #15, Vampirella #10, Vampirella/Red Sonja #8, Death to the Army of Darkness #3, and Killing Red Sonja #2. Each issue is respectively paying homage to Amazing Spider-Man #328, Spider-Man #1, 7, 12, 16 and Spawn/Batman. The Spider-Man inspired issues even include neat corner box sketches, something that McFarlane innovated.
For Adam Gorham, it's a somewhat personal project. "Growing up in Canada in the '90s, comics were huge and Todd McFarlane was a Canadian icon of the medium. His work was some of the first comic art I was exposed to. I'm thinking of his Amazing Spider-Man anti-drug special covers. They were practically government issued to Canadian children," said Gorham.
Colorist Garland shared, “Todd McFarlane broke my brain at a very early age. To return to that work - and the work of some legendary colorists like Steve Oliff - and build off of it was a childhood dream come true. I tried to incorporate the spirit of the original color palettes and compositions into my reinterpretation wherever I could."
Each of these variants homaging McFarlane will be solicited in Diamond Comic Distributors' February Previews for April on-sale. Comic fans are encouraged to preorder copies with their Local Comic Shops.
"It was a really fun series of covers to draw, and challenging! Todd's style and compositions are so bold and energetic. His Spider-Man stuff has it's own visual language. The poses and anatomy really only make sense for that character, so making different characters fit those cover compositions and giving them a new context on top of having some connect was no easy feat," added Adam Gorham.
