It is time for the best covers from the week that was. A quick reminder: only comics that I personally have purchased qualify for this piece. If a title contains more than one cover, only the one I own is taken into consideration. Now without further ado:
Third Place
Uncanny X-Force #32
The look of rage on the faces of these two hated rivals is perfect. The blood, the violence, Wolverine moving in for the killing blow: all these items equal a truly visceral and striking image.
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Second Place
Avengers Academy #38
A take on the classic showdown image we’ve all seen before but the difference this time is it’s not a fight but a flag football game. Really get a kick out of seeing X-23 holding up the pigskin like it has some world-shattering importance.
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First Place
Amazing Spider-Man #695
And here is the cover of the week. It does something every good cover should do: builds your anticipation. What is causing Spider-Man to have such a massive spider-sense attack? Is that two Hobgoblins? What is Kingpin up to? Does Madame Web ever have good news when she shows up? I also love that all the portraits are framed within the spider-sense lines. I salute you Steve McNiven and award you the first place crown!
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So those are my favourites. Marvel sweeps the category across the board. What’s your personal Top 3? Comment below!
The Speech Bubble 
About Avengers Academy # 38: In the 90s some teen dramas like Beverly Hills 90210 and Dawson’s Creek had an enormous (and deeply deserved) success: this led to the creation of comics about young superheroes who were facing not only this villain or that, but also their youth problems. The best one definitely was Generation X, in my opinion: that marvellous comic book closed in 2001, and since then every similar title didn’t last more than a few years. Avengers Academy was no exception. Unfortunately, it seems that teen-drama-like comics are not a big thing anymore. The only one still surviving is Teen Titans, as far as I know – and, as chance would have it, the writer of Teen Titans is the creator of Generation X, Scott Lobdell. He’s simply born to write this particular genre of comics.
About Amazing Spider Man # 695: I’ve always thought that Batman needs a villain like Kingpin. Yes, of course Gotham has the greatest “wild bunch” of villains we’ve ever seen in comics, but all of them are psychos: what Batman needs is a normal man who decides to be on the wrong track not because he’s mad, but because he rationally prefers to employ his intelligence and to satisfy his ambition in a criminal way. Batman never met a man like this, and it’s a real shame. There are some villains having something in common with Kingpin, like Black Mask or the Penguin, but they don’t have the same appeal, and DC never gave them the deepness and the criminal genius that Kingpin has.
In 1982 Roger Stern wrote for Amazing Spider Man one of the most beautiful story arcs I’ve ever read. It is rather short (it starts in issue # 226 and ends in the following one), but every single panel of it is pure awesomeness.
Spider Man and Black Cat were the leading characters of that arc.
In that period Spidey had started to become more and more similar to Batman: the series passed from a sunny setting to a dark one, Peter started to cooperate with a female version of Commissioner Gordon (Jean De Wolff), and, most of all, he developed a detective approach he never had before. His relationship with Black Cat was a part of this project: Black Cat is Marvel’s Catwoman, so the affair between her and Peter deliberately reminded of the one between Batman and Catwoman.
This magic period ended with the death of Jean De Wolff. She is one of the Spider Man characters who should have been employed more and in a far better way, along with Eddie Brock, Cletus Kasady, Betty Brant and so on.
Wow. Really love your insight. It never occured to me until you just mentioned it but I agree that Batman could benefit from a Kingpin-like villain. Never read any of the Generation X stuff. Will have to track some of it down. Thanks for the recommendation!
Thank you as well for your replies! : )