The Best Comic Book Covers of January 2018

Assembling this gallery of laser-firing, knife-throwing, pink-anthropomorphic-cat-toasting covers is bittersweet. Former Paste Comics editor (now Image Comics brand manager) Sean Edgar curated our monthly Best Comic Book Covers collection for years, and always found fresh ways to contextualize trends in how artists choose to attract eyes on stands (and digital devices). I, on the other hand, just can’t say no to a cover on which a huge, angry gorilla is about to smash the Flash. The covers gathered in the gallery above span from a first-person starfighter shot to a Tintin homage to a variant cover designed to look like the book’s protagonist is desperately clawing his way out of his 2D world and into ours. As always, we here at Paste find ourselves particularly drawn to vast swaths of color, as in Danijel Zezelj and Tom Muller’s oppressively red Days of Hate debut—or the absence thereof, as in Eric Zawadzki and Dee Cunniffe’s Eternal whiteout. We even have the unique pleasure of selecting two covers from the same issue: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1, because we just couldn’t choose between Ben Caldwell’s Golden-Age-of-entertainment grandeur and Evan “Doc” Shaner’s paparazzi-plagued (and oddly attractive) portrait. Feast your eyes on the images in the gallery above and be sure to actually nab these issues to see what wonders these covers contain.

1 of 20 Abbott #1 Cover Art by Taj Tenfold

2 of 20 Adventure Time/ Regular Show #6 Variant Cover Art by Daniel Bayliss

3 of 20 Assassinistas #2 Cover Art by Gilbert Hernandez

4 of 20 Batwoman #11 Variant Cover Art by Michael Cho

5 of 20 Black Magick #10 Cover Art by Nicola Scott

6 of 20 Black Panther #169 Variant Cover Art by Marcos Martin

7 of 20 Captain America #697 Cover Art by Chris Samnee

8 of 20 Days of Hate #1 Cover Art by Danijel Zezelj & Tom Muller

9 of 20 Eternal Cover Art by Eric Zawadzki & Dee Cunniffe

10 of 20 Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 Cover Art by Ben Caldwell