Earlier, Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato discussed the ins and outs of their new run on Detective Comics, which starts tomorrow. But the cover’s Italian roots is a story in itself.
I love — and I mean LOVE — this cover. I always like it when artists use a solid, bright-color background for their Batman covers. It’s such a great contrast. So I asked Manapul about it — and his answer was more than I expected.
Dan Greenfield: From what I’ve seen, the covers are absolutely striking. I particularly like the bright yellow of #30. I always enjoy when Batman books use brighter colors to offset the darker imagery. What goes into your thinking when you approach covers?
Francis Manapul: A writer friend of mine by the name of Anthony Falcone told me about the “giallo” genre in Italian fiction. It literally means yellow in English. Back in the ’30s, Mondadori translated British and American mystery novels in Italian and donned yellow covers. Their popularity soared and imitators followed suit with the subject matter along with the yellow covers. The genre of mystery and crime fiction eventually became known as “giallo.”
After hearing that, it was a no-brainer to me what I had to do. I’m also taking a more cinematic and graphic approach to my covers. Being able to color my covers has allowed me to plan for the finished product and not think about each element of the art process as a separate entity. It’s resulted in more graphically simple but much more readable covers.
Unfortunately it wasn’t something I was able to implement on the Flash, but with the encouragement and backing from my editor, Mark Doyle, I’m able to pursue this route with Detective Comics.
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Here are some great examples, culled from il Internet:
