Marvel has released the cover for Uncanny Avengers #1.

I have to say: I like it a lot. It’s different. It has the feel of a poster, more than a comic book cover. And there’s a reason for that. Over on the Marvel site, editor Joe Quesada talked a bit about the company’s philosophy regarding covers, and that it is past time to change the way covers are designed (with the company logo in the top 2/3 of the cover, for example, which was necessary due to the way comic book shops and newsstands displayed comics. Since more comics buyers are purchasing digitally now, that’s no longer necessary). Here’s what he had to say about cover art, moving forward:

“… I thought about maybe we should give our cover artists the opportunity to design their covers in a way—because now they can do a whole image like a movie poster—so that your reader’s eye is captivated by and they want to buy that book while at the same time letting us know what that book is so that the logo doesn’t have to appear there. So now we’re going to start looking at our covers as design work as a whole, and placing the images in places that are most attractive and that catch the eye in the best way. So if that means that if it’s an Iron Man cover and Iron Man’s head is on the top left side of that cover and the logo is on the bottom right, if that’s the thing that’s going to grab the readership, then that’s what we’re going to do. So it’s a challenge to our cover artists to think more in terms of design.“

(Emphasis mine.)

I am looking forward to see Marvel’s new cover philosophy come to fruition. This is a great example of habit becoming so ingrained that a relatively minor change can really shake things up.  Covers were organized in same way (logo in top 2/3, art below that) for over 70 years, and doing something as simple as moving a logo is cause for serious thought.