Another week, another forecast! How are y’all liking the new Snap Packs lifestyle? I haven’t found myself using them too much yet, but what I’ve found myself incredibly aware of is this post-Spotlight variant world! We now know if the missing Spotlights will simply drop in the shop (they won’t), and we know when the batch of Spotlights for this season’s cards is dropping specifically (read on to see!) With those mysteries dispelled, there’s only one question left to see: what the heck is coming out this week?
05/13
Remaining Missing Spotlight Variants?
Artists (in order): Meghan Hetrick, Eduardo Mello/Luigi Aimè
Source: Unknown
It looks like the recent OTA patches have stealthily modified some of the release dates for variants, including all of the New X-Men’s former Spotlight variants— the Creative House Pocket variants are now all scheduled to drop down the line on May 27th, as an early bird forecast preview! (All you Surge fans can breathe easy. Whew!) But not every Spotlight has been relocated— we’ve got good precedent that Meghan Hetrick’s Frigga and Eduardo Mello and Luigi Aimè Silver Sable will likely not release, just like last week’s missing Spotlights. Which is a bummer!
Hetrick’s Frigga is a fun highlight here, with those more mellow painted colors bringing a more traditional flair befitting Frigga’s more traditional look here. (And I love her expression.) Mello and Aimè are working in the same vein as the duo’s other Spiderverse-esque work, mimicking that comicky, chromatic aberration-laden style that the Spiderverse movies popularized. It’s a respectable stylization attempt, though it’s less successful than the existing Spider-Man we’ve got, or the Ghost-Spider that we saw ages ago that’s literally been removed from subsequent datamines. Is it possible we see this Sable variant repackaged in some Spiderverse season down the line? Quite possible, I think.
Eduardo Mello and PANDART’s Beast
Artist: Eduardo Mello/PANDART STUDIO
Source: General Pool (Rare)
Mello’s quite the chameleon nowadays, which is big step up from his previous near-exclusive status as one-half of every house-style variant in the game. The secret sauce of being a flexible line artist that can work in multiple styles really pays off when you start seeing multiple colorists really add different dimensions to your work; Mello’s work slots seamlessly into PANDART’s much more high-definition rendering, and Mello’s decision to make a more feral-looking Beast in the vein of Morrison’s New X-Men looks terrific. Who will we see teamed up next with Eduardo Mello? Who knows! But it seems like it may be sooner than later.
05/14
Cover Alert: New X-Men (2004) #10!
Artist: Michael Ryan/Pete Pantazis
Source: General Pool (Rare)
You like that? I’m trying some new templating, because I love highlighting existing covers. Michael Ryan and Pete Pantazis are the artists behind this one, and it’s fun because you can tell on some level that this is a throwback all the way to the 2000s. Something about the rendering, the colors, and shadows all scream an era where that was by far the dominant look— or maybe I’m projecting what comics I always saw on the shelves!
Either way, it’s great to see the new cards all get these cuts from the comics, and it’s deceptively cool to see a composition that lets Prodigy do smart-people math on a glass board while facing the viewer square-on. It intuitively makes sense, and it’s a really understated sort of cleverness that I appreciate in a character-focused cover.
05/15
Rian Gonzales’ Chibi Takeover and Album!!
Artist: Rian Gonzales
Source: General Pool (Super Rare)/Album Reward
Rian Gonzales is getting another takeover and album, which really goes to show just how foundational she’s become as a defining artist for SNAP! This time, we’re focusing on her Chibi work, which is going to be a home run hit for lots of fans— her penchant for beautiful watercolor work is on full display like normal, but these also all capture Gonzales’ sensibility for cute and amusing expressions via the Chibi style.
My favorites of the bunch? Red Hulk and Fenris Wolf are both really charming, and I’m not even a big Chibi fan to begin with. And bonus goes to the sassy Cassandra Nova you can get as a reward for the album, flashing a smile as she runs her fingers through a victim’s head. It’s hard to dislike how much personality these all have, and it may just win some folks over into chasing the album. Worth noting? All the Chibis from the Brave New World season are also filling out this album, including Redwing, Ross, and SamCap. Collectors from that season are gonna have a head start!
05/16
ADIA’s Fantasy Diamondback Bundle
Artist: ADIA
Source: Bundle
ADIA’s latest entry into their nebulous Fantasy theme are going to be interested in this Gold bundle featuring none other than Diamondback— a character who both needs plenty of commissioned pieces and who (I suspect) will get plenty. Faithful readers may remember that my big gripe with some of these Fantasy variants is how little some of them lean into translating these characters into a Fantasy context, but this one at least does the work of putting Diamondback in plenty of belts, pointy armored bits, and truly egregious jumpsuit cleavage.
Which, yeah— that sounds like a costume out of World of Warcraft if I’ve ever seen one! It’s a bit funny seeing her hot pink color palette placed wholesale onto the otherwise edgy armor, and it’s a bit funnier seeing a hotter-pink color put on a nondescript pointy sword-stinger thing. Does it add up to anything that makes sense? Not quite, but at least it’s swinging for those Fantasy-version fences.
Ludo Lullabi and Studio Grafit’s Agamotto
Artist: Ludo Lullabi/Studio Grafit
Source: General Pool (Super Rare)
Ludo Lullabi and Studio Grafit are working together again for this one, with Lullabi’s stylized, dramatic line work providing much of the thrust of the piece and Grafit’s perfectly fine colors supporting it. I like the grandiosity of a shirtless Agamotto just doing his Sorcerer Supreme thing in a really up-close, in your face shot like this; it captures the excess that led to Agamotto being characterized as a Caveman Doctor Strange teaming up with Prehistoric Avengers in the first place. (And that’s not a negative!) I like the transparent pink and green glow that’s making the piece pop, too— opportunities to work with different flares, backgrounds, and borders, may-haps.
05/17
He Tianyou’s Cassandra Nova!
Artist: He Tianyou
Source: General Pool (Rare)
Cassandra Nova is leading the charge for all of the ‘Reward S4s’ getting variants (we’re waiting, Second Dinner), and that finally seeing artists like He Tianyou and Rian Gonzales above tackle Cass hopefully signals more interesting takes on all those starving S4 cards like Agony or Laufey down the line. I really like Tianyou’s approach here! The more graphic power signature in that bright pink/purple is right up Tianyou’s stylized alley, and the smug, smoother likeness clearly inspired by the recent film looks great.
The lighting off of her hand and the background continues to cement Tianyou as an expert in interesting lighting, and it all adds up to a great variant entering for… 700 gold! Art pricing, arbitrary, yadda yadda. Go get it and enjoy for cheap!
05/18
Cover Alert: X-Men (2024) #6!
Artist: Derrick Chew
Source: General Pool (Super Rare)
(x-men (2024) #6)
Someone’s a current X-Men fan, and a huge Derrick Chew fan—this variant cover from the current X-Men run is the latest in variant covers from Chew hitting the game. And whoever’s the fan, they’ve got a good eye— it’s some his strongest work I’ve seen! Chew captures a lot of the power in a classic Magneto pose, with hand outstretched and l’il metal bits floating around everywhere.
I also love the lightning raying out from behind him, and the general imposing atmosphere the extreme angle we’re looking up at him from generates. I might be a broken record, but whenever Chew gets out of the ‘attractive pinup’ rut, he really shines; I hope whoever is chasing his work on all the current X-Men books stays on the lookout for quality work like this.
05/19
Max Grecke’s Hawkeye!
Artist: Max Grecke
Source: General Pool (Rare)
We’re wrapping with another OG: Max Grecke is a man of the people, bringing oodles of quality and personality to a humble 700 gold price tag, and he’s an OG right up there with the likes of Rian Gonzales. It’s fitting that he’s back with an OG look for Hawkeye, giving Clint a stalwart archer look to accompany his comic-accurate original outfit. It’s simple, it’s straightforward, but it’s still just oozing personality, even when Grecke isn’t depicting a more outrageously expressive character.
Seeing his work makes me nostalgic for launch-era SNAP, where Grecke stood out as one of the most daring, different artists in the game. We’ve had plenty of artists in the same vein join since, but Grecke continues to just hit different.
Wrapping Up
And that’s a forecast! There’s some great work coming up here, and I’ve found myself having to make some tough decisions on what to save for ever since I stopped buying the Gold Pass. (Samsung Galaxy coupon, I miss you so). But for now, that’s it enough from me; what did you think, what did you like, what didn’t you like, how’s it going? I wanna hear from you! So let me know down below, and I’ll be seeing you… next time!