For your Wednesday reading enjoyment, let’s get into a little Xzibit-style trend that I have come to enjoy: “Yo dawg, I heard you like comic action figures, so I put action figures on your comics so your comics look like action figures!”
Ahh poor guy. From prominent West Coast artist and TV personality to meme in under a decade. Anyway, I’m sure you good folks have seen these before, especially if you have read Marvel books in the last couple years. Retail-incentive covers are certainly not new to comics, as variants, foils, holograms, black and white, etc. have been around now for longer than a good portion of you readers. And as you would expect, the novelty wore off pretty quickly.
But recently, around the time Marvel got back into making Star Wars comics, we began to see these clever covers depicting the book’s characters on action figure cardbacks and packaging. It’s sort of a no-brainer, with some of these (such as in Star Wars books) basically recreating a Kenner-era card. The Marvel books somewhat emulate the Marvel Legends modern era packaging, but with some fun character and costume choices that may not exist in figure form, at least not yet.
Interestingly, I recall the first time I saw one of these covers, and it did actually influence a purchase. But it was loooooong before the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars conglomerate. This might have been the first instance of an action figure cover, actually:
This would be the cover to Batman: Gotham Adventures #3 from 1998. It’s not a variant cover, to my knowledge, but there is no denying how charming that cover art is. In fact, I remember musing what a damn shame it was that there wasn’t an action figure pack just like this on the shelf next to the book. I even remember where I was when I saw it for the first time — in a little shop called “Comics & Cards” just outside Hill AFB in Utah. I don’t remember what brought me there, other than it was after I could drive. It might have been some JROTC thing, though. I’m not sure why we’d go to an Air Force facility … sorry, nostalgic overload there. But yeah, I’ve remembered this cover for almost 20 years.
For whatever reason, this little one-off has now been joined by dozens of covers, and even better, covers from other companies. My favorite that I’ve seen so far though has to be these Big Trouble in Little China covers.
Some of you old dogs might think these look a little familiar, and that’s because they lovingly homage the Kenner Dark Knight Collection card art of the 1990s. Oh, if only they had these figures back in those days. I never realized how badly I needed Jack Burton to team up with my Keaton Batman.
Sure, we exist in this amazing golden era where almost every one of these figure covers could really BE a figure, given enough time. But I also really like the ones that serve as a callback to those earlier glory days in my collecting. I’m starting to think some of these would look really awesome framed in my toy room, since nearly all my figures and sets are opened.
See any other examples I’ve missed, or know of any other, even earlier examples? Please share in the comments!
