Friday, October 22, 2010

ESPN the Magazine Finally Leverages Synergy For Good

I just found the best ESPN the Magazine issue of all time in my mailbox, and surprisingly enough it didn't even have anything to do with baseball.

Finally taking advantage of the Walt Disney Company's purchase of Marvel, ESPN (which is also owned by Disney) put together Marvel artists to design Marvel Comics covers for each team as their NBA preview pages. Not only did they get some of the best artists in the business--Joe Quesada (who did the cover), Greg Horn, Greg Land, Salvador LaRocca (who did the Lakers cover), Olivier Coipel, Brian Stelfreeze, Simone Bianchi, Terry and Rachel Dodson, Kaare Andrews, Leinil Francis Yu, Alex Maleev, and Jason Pearson, among others--the covers evoke not only the fonts of the great Marvel comics, but also some of the hallmark issues themselves.

Check out this Nuggets cover from the great J. Scott Campbell, which is an homage to John Byrne's Uncanny X-Men #138:

Or how about John Romita Jr.'s cover for the Cavaliers, which pays homage (in font and image!) to his father's classic Amazing Spider-Man 50 cover (and specifically, the interior panel):

Unbelievable job, ESPN the Mag. I'm re-upping for another year.

4 comments:

Fred's Brim said...

They had to tone down LeBron's real muscles to make it more comic-book like

Josh S. said...

DO WANT.

Kyle Baker said...

DO NEED.

MR.F said...

AHHHH awesome!