Dark Reign: Elektra #4 is supposed to ship on Wednesday. I found the cover during my meandering through the internet. I was appalled at how bad it was. Sure, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a poorly laid out cover before, but I thought this might make good post fodder.
Let’s look at the cover…
original
I see several things wrong with this layout. What is the UPC code doing in the upper third of the cover? The top third of the cover is important for display purposes. Some retailers put their books in wall racks, where each row overlaps the one before it. This covers up a good chunk of your cover, so all the important information (issue number, title, publisher) should be in that upper third. This one gets it partially right.
notated
I’ve resized the image to roughly simulate a comic book’s trim size, and divided it into thirds using blue lines. The title actually does appear in the upper third, but just barely. The issue number and the publisher are exactly where you’d want them to be. I still don’t understand why “Limited serieS” is displayed the way it is, but whatever. Let’s move on.
1. The UPC box. What the hell is it doing here? And why is it so big? That’s just ugly.
2. The title. Part of the title (Elektra) looks like it’s secondary in nature, and is barely larger than the UPC box.
3. The creators. This element is actually in an okay spot, but I’m including it here because it’ll come into play on the next image.
moving stuff around
In this image, I started moving some of the elements around in what I think would make a better composition. It’s probably still not perfect, but it’s definitely an improvement.
1. The UPC box. I shrank this obscene beast and lined it up with Marvel’s logo so that they are the same width.
2. The title. I felt this really needed to be more attached to the Dark Reign masthead, so I centered it underneath. This covered up quite a bit of Elektra, so I moved the artwork down enough so that she only slightly covers part of her logo. Ultimately, this is on the artist and the editor. The cover layout should’ve been constructed with these elements in mind, and the editor probably should’ve asked for some changes.
3. The creators. Since I moved the UPC box, I had to move the list of creators. This was easy to fix. All I did was position them above the UPC box (3a). It could also be moved underneath the Marvel logo (3b), which would probably be the better choice since potential readers would be able to see the names attached to the book in the upper third, while browsing the racks.
Hopefully, this doesn’t ruffle anyone’s feathers. My intent was to dissect a cover without the usual gushing praise that I would normally heap upon a piece of art. For some reason, it’s easier for me to articulate what I don’t like about something than it is to articulate what I do like.
This is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
