The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1993: Glory #2, January 2002

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Totally forgot to mention in yesterday's post the awesome flashback sequence by Melinda Gebbie. This series was definitely sticking to the format that worked with Supreme, and we get another flashback this issue. These are arranged through comics lying about in Gloria's apartment that are send-ups of the old Wonder Woman comics and the stories they told. Ms. Gebbie's art nicely characterizes the Golden Age tales in yesterday's issue. Today's flashback, by Matt Martin, is a little less apropos. While I love his covers on this series, I'm not sure his style fit what was meant to be a story from the weird superhero era of the 1950s. Instead of EC-style work, we get an Al Rio-esque romp, nicely told and amusing, but definitely not what comics in the 50s looked like. And, holy cats, are there a lot of just full-on panty shots.

And that's it for Glory. The story ends on a cliffhanger, and when we next see the character, she's living on an island, now separated from Gloria, and is discovered by a wandering teenager named Riley. And that series is fucking amazing.

 We'll stick with the remnants of the Awesome Universe for a bit after this, I think.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1992: Glory #1, December 2001

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So finally, finally, we get into the actual story of The Gate of Tears. On a quick art note, I'll say that I enjoy Marat Mychaels' interiors much more than his exteriors. When telling a story, he's a pretty good artist. But those weird pin-up covers don't do much for me. I've written about it elsewhere, most likely in my considerations of the Glory covers, about the different propensities for cover art, which can be broken, very generally into the pin-up shot and the action shot. Unsurprisingly, there's far more pin-up shots for female-led books than there are for male-led ones. Personally, I'd love to see some pin-up covers of Captain America, or Superman.

We've seen the opening of "The Gate of Tears" already, though it definitely looks nicer in colour. Granger Troy is still pretty creepy, though I'm getting the feeling that he's recognizing the goddess in Gloria West and is overcome with a desire to worship her, however he can. And though he continually worries that he's taking advantage of someone with fairly severe mental difficulties, he never takes into account Gloria's own desires or agency, which definitely skew toward her wanting the sex. It seems to me that we're being offered a critique of how neurotypical people see "mental illness" (I don't like that term very much), and of the ways in which we might view those in our world whose mental architecture is a little less Euclidean.

There's always been a link between the neurodiverse and shamanic magic in tribal societies. As with all things, the superhero genre softens and simplifies the metaphor, but it might do us well to listen to the neurodiverse in society. They may not be channeling divinities (though they may!), but they have very important, and different, views on how we might solve some of the problems we see in the world today.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1991: Glory #0, December 2001

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 Perhaps it's appropriate to go over the provenance of this series. The Awesome Preview from 1998 prints, in black and white, the entirety of the prelude story to "Glory and the Gate of Tears." The colourized version is presented in 1999 in the Awesome Entertainment zero issue. It's interesting, as that issue actually takes two of the pages and turns them into double-page spreads, albeit ones that are to be read vertically rather than horizontally. The the Avatar preview issue prints, again in black and white, the first few pages of issue 1. Add to this that today's zero issue includes a history of Glory, unique to the Avatar Press zero issue, which replaces sketchbook material that was included in the Awesome Entertainment zero issue. And it reverts the two double-page spreads to the single pages that were seen in the Awesome Preview. Which, since it's substantially different from today's zero issue, means I'll get around to reading the story again some time. As I've noted before, this is not a series that I'm in any way unhappy to revisit. Aside, of course, from the its truncated nature.

The prelude to "Gate of Tears" is a nice set-up not only for Glory's new situation (a Rick Jones/Captain Mar-Vell-style body sharing situation), but also for the exploration of symbolic nature that comes to its apex in Promethea. I touched briefly upon this in my introduction to the "Faces of Glory" series of posts, and Glory creator Rob Liefeld has often claimed that without Moore's work in the Awesome Universe, there would be no ABC Comics, Promethea, Tom Strong, etc. I find this amusing coming from someone whose biggest claim to fame is a team book that was originally a Teen Titans pitch. Again, however, there are substantial enough differences between both the characters and the universes within which they exist that the exploration begun here and exploration undertaken in Promethea would have been significantly different, even if they arrived at the same places.

Another thing to bear in mind about the Avatar Press series is that it was prepared as a mini-series, consisting of the zero issue and 4 regular issues. Which means, if I'm not mistaken, that there's at the very least bare bones outlines of what happens later in the series kicking about somewhere. And given how the series "concludes" in the second issue, I'd love to get at least a tiny bit more. Pun intended.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I've written a bit about Alan Moore for the blog. Mostly to do with Supreme and Glory.

And for a deep dive into Glory's origins, here's some stuff about Extreme Studios, from whence she originally sprang.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1990: Glory Preview, September 2001

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 This series' title is one of the highest-occurring tags on my blog. And that's not likely to change in the future. Anyone who's read any of my other stuff about this series and the Awesome Universe that spawned it knows how much I love this stuff.

I talked a bit about this cover in my Faces of Glory series. Marat Mychaels takes over the artwork post-Awesome Universe, and I have to be very honest - his art is just not to my liking. Actually, I should clarify. I like his interiors fine. I find them a bit stiff, but they're light-years beyond what I could ever accomplish. But the exteriors, especially on this series, are basically pin-up model shots of superheroes. The cover of a comic is meant to draw the reader in, and give them an idea of what they're going to be paying for. This cover gives us nothing to do with the story within, which is actually a kind of creepy monologue from a man watching Gloria West, Glory's new human host, at the coffee shot she works at.

Though what I take away from it is the ridiculousness of a dude like this thinking that his purpose is to protect someone who is the avatar of a warrior goddess.

Like all women are.

I'll leave it there for a bit. This preview prints a few pages from issue #1, so I'll deal with the rest of the story tomorrow.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Mr. Mychaels has shown up a few times in the collection.

As has his usual publisher, Avatar.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1897: Awesome Adventures, 1999

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With a whimper and a bang. This is how Moore and Skroce's ends.

We get about half a story by Skroce and half by Dietrich Smith and Marat Mychaels. And, actually, half a story. This is the first part of a two-parter, the end of which has the team trapped by old Professor Night villain in a seemingly inescapable situation. They do escape, though, as Joe Casey's excellent run attests - but really, the team never escapes.

And unfortunately, there only being 2.5 issues, there's not a lot more to say. The first two issues are amazing, the last bit slightly less so. We get a little look at the world that surrounds Moore's Supreme, and at some of the characters that were shown in the flashbacks from that series. And then just about all of that disappears. There are a couple of callbacks in Prophet, and in Glory, and then it's done. Though we also get the alternate, remixed version of the universe in America's Best Comics.

Hmmmm.

Been awhile since I read those.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1896: Youngblood #2, August 1998

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Issue number two is everything issue one was and so much more. The return of Sentinel! The introduction of some new old villains. And the team splits into smaller teams and fends off their nemeses.

I honestly think that this is one of the best team superhero books that I've read. Every character is defined and utilized in just about equal amount, though it never feels forced. And the team functions believably - both in their superheroic and social aspects. One of the great things about Roger Stern and Sal Buscema's run on The Avengers is that they understood, perhaps better than any other Avengers creative team, how a team of superhuman heroes would interact. The egos and the romances and the cameraderie, etc., etc. Moore's Youngblood is probably the closest other team book that aspires to that - but, alas, cut short.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1895: Youngblood #1, February 1998

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It's always bittersweet for me when I pick up this comic. I think, given the opportunity, it could have become a favourite (it already is, really), and it could have become one of the best superhero team books out there. If Liefeld's claims are correct, and a huge amount of what would have been the Awesome Universe went into Moore's America's Best Comics, I'm actually not sure where the Youngblood-inspired stuff went. Top 10 is the only team book in the ABC Universe, and it's very, very different from Youngblood. I do think some of the storylines were recycled. There's some similarities between the story in Awesome Adventures and one of Tom Strong's storylines, but aside from that, I don't see that many reminders in the latter of the former.

As I noted yesterday, Joe Casey picks this team up, with a slightly modified line-up about a decade later, and it's very good, but once again cut short by Mr. Liefeld. For now, however, we have the three short stories and 3(ish) issues of the team from Awesome, and they are, honestly, awesome.

A cool first issue adventure - there's a special that came out just after what's referred to as "The Awesome Implosion," which I take to mean that Awesome lost a lot of money and lot of creators, called Alan Moore's Awesome Handbook - this prose publication outlines Moore's plans for the first years of both Youngblood and Glory in the wake of neither of those series having much chance of ever seeing the light of day. The Youngblood series was seen as a series of single issue adventures, with the occasional two-parter, which I'll talk about in a couple of days. The series sounds fun and interesting and, of course, really intelligent.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1894: Youngblood #1+, 1997

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 Yes, the ladies are in "lingerie." I"m not sure why, and Doc Rocket doesn't appear to be sure either. In my head canon, this is part of a publicity photo shoot that the team agreed to, and then the photographer asked all the women to pose in something other than their costumes. Good for business in the late 90s, perhaps, but not for representation, really. Maybe put Shaft front and center in his tighty-whiteys, and then we'll be okay.

The opening to Moore's Youngblood is a short piece about Twilight, Professor Night's protege, and a reprint of the Awesome Holiday Special story. It functions nicely as an intro, actually, offering just enough background on what's happened in the Awesome Universe recently (in Supreme and Judgment Day) that a new reader would be comfortable picking up the new series. Actually, that's kind of a nice part of this revamp of the team - one doesn't really need to know anything about the previous incarnations of the team in order to enjoy it. Shaft talks briefly about the disbanding of the old team, but their existence and adventures don't seem to have too much bearing on the direction of the new series. I'm sure this was by design. Liefeld's Youngblood comes up for a good deal of criticism - separating the new team from the old seems a good idea, especially since that's basically what the stated purpose of Judgment Day actually was.

Looking forward to the 3-ish issues we get - it also occurred to me that there's the excellent Joe Casey Youngblood that follows this series a decade later, and features basically the same line-up for 8 issues until Liefeld made another horrendous decision, kicked that team off the book, and tried to do it himself. Series ended after his first issue. *sigh*

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I really like Joe Casey's work - he's every bit as good as the Waids and Loebs of the world.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1891: Awesome Preview, 1998

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This'll be one of three times that I'll be reading the story "Glory and the Gate of Tears," reprinted one more time from Awesome and then once from Avatar (plus a preview of it from Avatar). As I've noted in my posts on the various covers that this incarnation of Glory commands, it's a bittersweet tale to read because it's got so much promise. I know that much of that promise is fulfilled in Promethea, so that's nice, but I feel that Glory would have brought a very different aesthetic to the exploration of the World Tree and the Sephiroth. Where Promethea exists in a superheroic world, I'm not sure I'd class her as a superhero. But Glory definitely is - she's got the comics to prove it.

I'll talk more about this story tomorrow.

The Fighting American preview is quite cool - it's just Stephen Platt's pencils and I love seeing stuff like this. His work is super-detailed. I can't imagine being the inker for this work. That said, the Dogs of War mini was my least favourite of the Awesome Fighting American stuff. But his pencils are gorgeous.

The Re-Gex preview is Beowulf's story, but without dialogue. I think this story is reprinted in an issue of The Coven, in the Re-Gex zero issue, and potentially in one of the Re:Gex preview issues that I do not have. Maybe this one is reprinted almost as much as the Glory story. As I've said over the last couple of days, Re:Gex is interesting, but ultimately goes nowhere.

First day on a new job today.

More to follow.

And here's the flip cover:

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1880: Judgment Day Aftermath, March 1998

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It's hard to gauge when particular issues from Awesome came out, as the cover dates aren't always the dates upon which, or even near to the dates, they were published. For example, today's comic seems to have come out 8 months after the previous issue in the series, but whether either of them came out when they are purported to have is difficult to answer. The reason I'm ruminating on this is that, aside from this issue, most of the characters represented here never make any other appearances in the Awesome U. Spacehunter has this one story, as do the Allies and the new Conquerors/New Men. Youngblood and Glory get a bit more, but only 2 or 3 issues. And Maximage, whose story is very intriguing, vanishes after this. It's a pity, as this gives us, more than many of the other comic published by Awesome, a clear idea of Moore's vision for the universe. From the bare evidence here, I'd guess that the stories Moore had planned around Glory and Maximage became Promethea. There's just too much evidence otherwise. Everything else? I'd be unsurprised to find that most of those story ideas went into Tom Strong. Except maybe the Spacehunter one. That one kind of stands on its own.

Much as I like the idea of metatextual comics, this one is a bit on the nose. Artist Gil Kane actually appears as "Kane, the Imagineer" in the story, and the characters are referred to as characters by Kane in the comic. Moore establishes here a precursor to the Immateria of Promethea, though rather than that realm of dream and fantasy, this imaginary realm is manipulated to influence the material realm of the Awesome Universe. Given his final Supreme story, I wonder if Moore had plans to expand this concept had the Awesome U not imploded.

That finishes off Judgment Day. Today's Youngblood story takes place directly after the prologue story in the Awesome Holiday Special, and then we dive right into the series proper. Well, sort of. We've got one premium comic with a tiny bit more prologue in it, and then we get to the series. If one can call 2.5 issues a series. (I'll explain when we get there.)

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I've read a bit more Gil Kane for the project. I think I like his older stuff better.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1879: Judgment Day Final Judgment, July 1997

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So we reach the end of Moore's revamp of the Extreme Universe - this series is really a look in minute detail at the process of a Revision Wave, as Moore more obscurely details in his earliest Supreme stories. The Revision Wave is, of course, the unending process of contemporization that happens to comic book superheroes over the course of their existences. The significant bits and pieces are kept from previous continuities and the rest is filled in as the universe settles into its new form. We'll see this moving forward with the short-lived Youngblood series, as well as with Supreme when I get back to reading it.

I've noted my love of the revision wave theory before, and I've even started scripting a Supreme series set after the next one - though given my disparaging comments about Mr. Liefeld on this blog, I can't imagine he'd ever let me work on Supreme - a shame really. In my version, Diana Dane is Supreme. I think it would be pretty good.

I also love about this comic how Moore uses Mercury's Book to explain exactly how the ultra-violence of the last decade had come to overwhelm the Extreme characters, and, by proxy, how that same violence influenced most major superhero publishers of the time. So not only does Moore give the Awesome U it's back story, but it also offers an explanation for the real-world descent into violence that afflicted superheroes in the early 90s. And given that Moore is a magician, and magicians use words to effect change in the world, could we perhaps see Moore's explanation of the early Image violence and grittiness as a retroactive magical spell that explains what happened to comics then?

Or am I just talking to hear my own voice, so to speak?

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1878: Judgment Day Omega, July 1997

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The history that Alan Moore sets up in this series is really quite fantastic, and the reactions of the characters watching the trial are set up to mirror the readers' reactions as well. This is a situation where it's preferable (perhaps the only situation where it's preferable ;D) to have some background knowledge of the various characters and their style of adventures. When Troll's back story is revealed, it is shocking to his teammates. Similar revelations about Diehard have the same affect. Just as when Supreme is discovering his own history, so too are the younger heroes of the Awesome Universe discovering the history that they had no idea stretched out behind them.  But then, I suppose Moore is writing the book for them at this point.

I'm intrigued by the depth of the history that Moore manages to pack into these three issues. I'm trying to suss out whether or not it's a convincing history because it's well-written (which it is), or if it's because the characters are so familiar, in that they're homages to older characters, that that history is inflecting the Awesome U's history. I'm sure it's a little bit of both, and that's the point of some of the characters, I'm sure. As I've noted before, the Awesome characters, for the most part, are pastiches of older heroes anyway. But Moore performs a bit of comic book alchemy here in much the same way that Warren Ellis does in Planetary a decade or so later. He uses familiar kinds of characters to give us a familiar kind of history. It's a lovely little fictional trick to play, and very much in keeping with the spirit of the story of the book that being told to us.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1877: Judgment Day Alpha, June 1997

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The advertising for this series claimed that Judgment Day was the greatest thing Alan Moore had written since Watchmen. That's a pretty big claim to make, and it sadly is not true. Don't get me wrong - Judgment Day is a stellar series. Over the course of 3 issues, not counting the Sourcebook or Aftermath issues, it manages to create a coherent, internally-logical superhero universe out of the tatters of Extreme Studios and Maximum Press. And, honestly, creating something even remotely logical out of that is quite the feat.

This is probably one of the few comics illustrated by Mr. Liefeld that I actually very much enjoy. It's not that I'm a fan of his art, but the whole point of the series is to transition the characters in Youngblood, and those connected to them, into a very different kind of superhero universe. The violence of the preceding decade or so of comics is in fact a major plot point to the series. Perhaps a good way to compare this series to Watchmen is that the metatextual commentary is even more at the fore this time around. Watchmen manages to comment on the superhero genre by placing them in what we might think of as realistic situations. Judgment Day, instead, takes the superhero and uses it to explore not just the genre, but the very act of writing itself, comic or otherwise. It's this aspect that I think draws me into it, and the Awesome Universe, more than anything else.

Plus they get some frickin' fantastic artists to do the flashback sequences, and I'm a sucker for a good flashback.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Another of the characters who undergoes a significant revamp in the Awesome U is Glory. Her eventual series also has a ridiculous amount of variant covers, which I decided to collect and talk about. 

John Prophet, another Liefeldian pastiche, also undergoes a transformation, and series, that revamps this universe again, and it's utterly brilliant.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1876: Judgment Day Sourcebook, 1997

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 Let's jump back into the Awesome Universe for a bit, shall we? I decided that I'd read Moore's take on Youngblood for the next few days, encompassing this series and the sadly unfinished eponymous series. Moore uses Judgment Day to transition the old Extreme Studios characters into the Awesome Universe, as publisher Jeph Loeb mentions in the editorial in today's comic. Indeed, the idea of the hyper-violent early years of many of these characters becomes a salient plot point in the series.

Today's issue, more than most of the Awesome U stuff, links to Moore's later work in Promethea. This "sourcebook," more a preview story really, is narrated by Mercury, a linguistic deity who plays a prominent role in Promethea's origin. My favourite lines from today's issue are his final words, "Spellbound, forget about the laughs and thrills that words may change a world...and language kills." As well as being a Youngblood story, Judgment Day is a stylized look at the way that language and words shape our world in a very real, phenomenological way. I emphasize this when I teach English and Literature, but I think only a very few of my students consider the real ramifications of this. Even the stories we tell ourselves are built of the language that we know, and it is these stories that shape the very way in which we view, and interact with, the world.

Mercury's only half right, though. Language may indeed kill, but it also births and creates. I guess the point of the series is that the two can, sadly, happen at the very same time.

 

Also, I will always, 100%, read a story written by Moore and illustrated by Sprouse and Vey. Utterly, utterly brilliant combination of creators.

More to follow.

The Faces of Glory - Awesome Preview, 1998

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Not exactly a Glory variant, but it's a Glory cover from the Awesome era of the series, and actually reprints, albeit in black and white, the entirety of the zero issue.

As I noted in my previous post on this topic, Brandon Peterson is the perfect artist for Glory. He manages to capture both the fantasy and superheroic aspects of the character in the few bits and pieces that we get from him.

This is the Awesome Comics Awesome Preview, published 1998 with a cover by Brandon Peterson. There's a flip cover of Rob Liefeld's Re: Gex, a series that just never materialized, and that has one of the dodgiest pairs of boots I've ever seen on one of the characters. Have a look. Keeps him from having to draw proper feet, I guess.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1870: Awesome Holiday Special, December 1997

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In much the same way I wrote a series on the minor works of Steve Gerber, I think it would be worthwhile to do the same for Alan Moore. He's had so many series that just never went anywhere, and for the most part they were going to be amazing. There was a recent interview with Leah Moore in which she described her father's deep love for superheroes and the damage that was done to this love by his time in the comics industry. It's actually quite sad that someone who so obviously loves superheroes so much got treated the way he did by virtually every major superhero publisher in North America. No wonder he's so bitter.

The reason I bring this up is that there's a Youngblood story in today's issue that is the prelude to the 2.5 issues we end up getting of his reboot of the team. As I was reading the story, told in the voice of team leader Jeff Terrel, Shaft, I was amazed at how Moore's voice in the story was so different from his voice in any of his other stories. I know this seems like an obvious thing to point out, but a lot of writers have one voice when they write - their own - and they simply layer it over whatever character they're writing. But one of Moore's great gifts is to give each character their own distinctive voice, to the extent that I'd be hard-pressed to point to a comic that is actually written in Moore's own voice. Like Foucault said, the author isn't a person, it's a function, and at the best of times that function includes an erasure, or subsumption, of the author's own voice.

But there's more than just Moore in this issue. I have to say, at the end of the comic, I was left smiling and feeling pretty good, which is exactly what one wants from a holiday comic. I'm actually surprised that I haven't read this one already, but I'm glad that I was able to leave it until I was reading Fighting American. The FA story in this issue is about S.P.I.C.E., written and drawn (almost exclusively in full page panels) by Mr. Liefeld. It's not bad, but not great, but also takes place after the Rules of the Game series I just finished, as FA is in the process of putting the Allies back together.

What else? Both the Coven and Kaboom stories were good enough to make me want to track down their respective series. Honestly, I'm not that far off from having everything that Awesome produced, and, as I've said before, I just love the hell out of this universe. Back to FA's final Awesome outing tomorrow. Then maybe Youngblood?

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Though I missed it this year, I'm usually pretty good about reading holiday-themed comics (though apparently I have two different tags for them?)

And if I'm going to dive into Youngblood, you can find what I've previously said about them here and here.

The Faces of Glory - Glory v.2 #0, March 1999 [Peterson Variant, Awesome Entertainment]

The Glory variants are proving harder to track down than I thought they would. I guess I was under the impression that since there were so many published, they'd be a bit easier to get. But perhaps I'm not taking into account that the series, and the ridiculous amount of covers, were not as popular as they might have been. No big deal. I don't mind the hunt.

The Peterson cover of the Awesome series gives Glory a weapon and armour that I don't think we ever see her using, at least not in these few issues. It reminds me of Armor from Grant Morrison's New X-Men, and is kind of a cool look, though I always feel like those random spikes on armor might actually do more to harm the wearer than protect them.

This is the Brandon Peterson variant of the Awesome Entertainment zero issue. Peterson was the artist for the interior of this issue as well, but was replaced with Marat Mychaels in the Avatar series. For my money, Peterson's the proper artist for this fantasy series.

The Faces of Glory - Alan Moore's Glory #2 [Park Variant, Avatar Press]

The last of my covers from my store, and definitely one of my favourites. This, it seems to me, is Glory the superhero doing something righteous. I know it sounds silly, but given the pose, the speed-line-like background, the slightly out of it look on Glory's face, it's like she's welling up some all mighty punch to deliver to a demon that's about to eat the Earth, or something.

Y'know. Or something.

I really like Andy Park's covers. He's got one more variant that, glancing at the thumbnail, I'm not totally sold on, but I'll wait to see it for real before making any judgment.

This is the Andy Park variant of issue #2, published by Avatar Press. I know that my interpretation of the various themes I see in these covers very much elides the fact that all of the covers really have been of a scantily-clad woman conforming to the societal norms or expectations of feminine beauty. Please know that I know.

The Faces of Glory - Alan Moore's Glory #2 [Haley Variant, Avatar Press]

I think this is my favourite variant thus far. Not gonna lie, this picture is hot. See what I did there?

When I talked about Matt Haley's earlier piece, I mentioned the darkness of the series. I'm not sure how the two characters would have come to understand one another, but this portrait to me is Glory and Gloria in sync. The character of Gloria returns in the Keatinge/Campbell reboot, and she's not unlike this picture - in attitude, at least.

This is the Matt Haley variant of issue #2, published by Avatar Press. As Haley captures the pensiveness of Glory in his #1 variant, here I think he captures her goddess-like cockiness. Just an overall great picture, I think.

The Faces of Glory - Alan Moore's Glory #1 [Mychaels Variant, Avatar Press]

One last look for now at series artist Marat Mychaels. This is probably my favourite of his covers thus far. There's something intriguing about Glory's face in this picture. I wonder what it is she's about to attack?

And, yes, there's the giant boobs. I can't say that they're a major draw for me on the cover. It actually seems a bit lazy. What else from the series would have worked better than that big white space? Maybe Gloria's face?

This is the Marat Mychaels variant of issue #1 of the Avatar series. I don't have any of the Mychaels variants for issue #2, which is odd because I feel like these were the more common covers. I actually have no idea of the distribution numbers of these covers (which I feel like I've mentioned before).