Marvel Comics July 2017 Solicitations Spoilers follow!
X-Men Gold #1 (spoilers here) and X-Men Blue #1 (spoilers here) featured variant covers by current DC Comics Co-Publisher Jim Lee from his time with Marvel over 25 years ago.
The variant covers proved to be quite popular, and lucrative for retailers, that Marvel Comics is re-purposing many of Jim Lee’s X-Men trading cards art from 1992, 25 years ago, for their July 2017 summer variant covers.
The cynic in me can’t help, but link this to recent unfortunate comments by Marvel Comics Editor-In-Chief Axel Alonso who said in a recent interview that:
- “There are fewer artists that impact sales than there are writers and they’re harder to promote. It’s harder to pop artists these days. There is no apparatus out there. There is no Wizard Magazine out there that told you who the hot top 10 were. We don’t have that anymore. We can hype our artists all we want, but I don’t know if we know how many artists, besides maybe [Steve] McNiven and [Olivier] Coipel, absolutely move the needle on anything to be drawn.“
Image Comics co-founder and Savage Dragon creator Erik Larsen, a former Marvel artist who still “moves the needle”, weighed in on Alonso’s statement:
.@ImageComics @ChrisSamnee Marvel has been telling retailers that "artists don't matter" ever since the @ImageComics gang left.
— Erik Larsen (@ErikJLarsen) March 31, 2017
Marvel EIC Axel Alonso’s comments followed other disastrous comments by Marvel Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, David Gabriel indicating that Marvel’s recent sales slump is due to readers not wanting diversity, but Gabriel did clarify the intent of his comments later.
Anyhow, since Marvel Comics believes that they do not have any artists that can “move the needle”, beyond 2 current artists, Marvel is going back 25 years and reusing trading card art from one of the industry’s top artists who in 2017 is DC Comics’ Co-Publisher, Jim Lee.
Hmmm.
Below are the July 2017 comic books that will feature Jim Lee 1992 X-Men trading card art. Marvel Comics has not yet released all the re-purposed variant covers. Where they have not, I have added the original Jim Lee trading card art so you can see what the figure on the variant cover will at least look like.
Here are the 29 Marvel Comics that will have a Jim Lee X-Men variant cover in July 2017!
- ALL-NEW WOLVERINE #22 (Archangel)
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #30 (Bishop)
AVENGERS #9 (Mystique)
BLACK PANTHER #16 (Storm)
CABLE #3 (Cable)
CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #19 (Gambit)
CHAMPIONS #10 (Cyclops)
DAREDEVIL #23 (Domino)
DEADPOOL #33 (Deadpool)
DEFENDERS #3 (Shadow King)
DOCTOR STRANGE #23 (Mr. Sinister)
GENERATION X #4 (Jubilee)
GWENPOOL, THE UNBELIEVABLE #18 (White Queen)
INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #9 (Colossus)
IRON FIST #5 (Sabretooth)
JEAN GREY #4 (Dark Phoenix)
MIGHTY THOR #21 (Sentinels)
MS. MARVEL #20 (Lady Deathstrike)
OLD MAN LOGAN #26 (Professor X)
PETER PARKER: THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN #2 (Psylocke)
THE PUNISHER #14 (Forge)
ROYALS #5 (Magneto)
SPIDER-MAN #18 (Shadowcat)
THANOS #9 (Strong Guy)
UNCANNY AVENGERS #25 (Rogue)
VENOM #152 (Polaris)
WEAPON X #5 (Warpath)
X-MEN BLUE #7 (Jean Grey)
X-MEN GOLD #7 (Mojo)
Nice covers.
