It’s a brief forecast today, folks! Between some shuffling that’s moved variants previously scheduled for this week around and a general 5th-week calm before the storm of the new season, it’s relatively quiet on the variant art front to kick off July. But there’s still some bangers this week, and frankly maybe even a higher density of them than normal! Catch your interest? Let’s check it out.
07/01
Winking Studio’s Spotlight Clea
Artist: Winking Studio
Source: General Pool (Spotlight)
It’ll be a twofer from me, and if you want more specific Clea coverage, visit my article on her here! Rest assured, she’s really cool. And this one feels like it hews close to the character’s fantastical roots, with that iconic purple and that signature pattern on her pants to make sure that we know this is unmistakably Clea.
Interestingly, this variant feels done by a different artist, or at least commissioned in a different style—I surmise that Winking had a variant for Clea already ready, while the rest of the bunch this season were commissioned in a batch. Don’t forget, of course: this is going to cost a whopping 2400 Gold, and I suspect we’ll (at some point) see these Spotlight variants return for a Token price at some point.
Ludo Lullabi (and Jelly Pixel)’s Surtur Bundle!
Artist: Ludo Lullabi/Jelly Pixel
Source: Bundle
I’m a fan of Ludo Lullabi’s work, and I really love how much personality oozes out across all the different studios he’s collaborated with as colorists. Something about the way he styles the exaggerated proportions on characters like Surtur here really communicates an imposing physicality! And to Jelly Pixel’s credit, the brighter contrasts and flat colors help the rendering bring out Lullabi’s style in a way that Mooncolony (Lullabi’s other frequent colorist in SNAP) doesn’t quite achieve in the same way.
I’m glad to see more Lullabi, and I’m interested in seeing more artists like him, who clearly submit lineart to be colored and finished by studios; it feels like a middle ground between a studio’s clear ability to meet Second Dinner’s voracious art demand and an individual artist’s individual voice.
Alex Maleev’s Typhoid Mary!
Artist: Alex Maleev
Source: General Pool (Rare)
This is a bona fide Super Rare SNAP original commission, and boy are we fortunate for it to be one! Alex Maleev has done a pretty iconic Typhoid Mary cover in the past, and in this costume, too, that is similar to his Thor. It’s a piece that Maleev has done anew, heavily referencing a similar piece of his own done before. But it was great the first time, and it’s great this second time around.
That iconic face paint and red mane of hair gives her a fun Raggedy-Ann quality that’s offset by how adult and dangerous she looks, and I really love the humanity that we’re getting out of Mary, hefting a sword with a dissonantly pensive look on her face; combined with the excellent rendering bringing features and figure to life, it makes her feel more alive than many of the over-the-top ‘I’m crazy!’ Typhoid Mary pieces we’ve seen plenty before. And for 1200 Gold? I’m a broken record, y’all, but c’mon.
07/02
Creative House Pocket’s Clea
Artist: Creative House Pocket
Source: General Pool (Super Rare)
Clea gets the full anime treatment from Creative House Pocket here, which is an interesting meld that I’m surprised hasn’t happened more often before this. Something about a powerful dark sorcereress with white hair feels prime for adaptation through the anime lens—and I expect we’ll see lots more of it, if Second Dinner’s recent streak with studios continues!
But for now, CHP gets to take advantage of the novelty of it, making an otherwise more straightforward anime-interpretation of an iconic Marvel character that bit more interesting. Like any Clea variant, I give it extra points for featuring that iconic linked-circles pattern on her dress; it feels like the throughline, to me, to the character’s roots in Ditko’s psychedelic work in Doctor Strange. But I digress! Anime fans, you’ll like this one.
PANDART STUDIO’s Devil Dinosaur
Artist: PANDART STUDIO
Source: General Pool (Super Rare)
PANDART is back, suddenly a bit of a surprise to see rather than the dominating force it once was in weekly forecasts! But they’ve brought their A-game here with this Devil Dinosaur, giving everyone’s favorite big red T-Rex a splash of extra dinosaur goodness, grounding the piece in some anatomic-correctness and giving us a really imposing angle to barely meet his eye at.
Similar to the Winking Studios Clea, I wonder if this variant was from an earlier run of commissions from PANDART; something about the extra detail, the lighting, and the style of it all (alongside that fun, concept-art-looking Spider-Man) sets this one apart from many other PANDARTs we’ve seen, and it was a piece that was notably featured in the artbook alongside other presumably early commissions. Verdict, either way? This is a sick PANDART.
PANDART STUDIO’s Swarm Bundle
Artist: PANDART STUDIO
Source: Bundle
Swarm’s landing as a bundle for PANDART as well, and he feels a bit more in line with the traditional vein of PANDART’s we’re used to seeing, at least to me: an extra rendered, stylized version of a character recognizably sourced from their base art. And it’s a bit fun seeing the bees as a mass working here, with the artist opting to texture them beyond a single mass. I’m not sure this one quite lands the same way the Devil Dino above does, but Swarm is also missing a slightly more serious variant at the moment, and this one feels like it captures an intimidating mood that will scratch an itch for some Discard enjoyers out there!
07/03
Viktor Farro’s Quinjet!
Artist: Viktor Farro
Source: Bundle
Of course, if we’re talking Bundles of the week, this Quinjet takes the cake; surprise, surprise, Viktor Farro does it again. And does he! By drawing on classic plane and shuttle designs from life, he really brings the Quinjet to life in a way that feels so much more tangible than the blocky, vaguely technological design we see military soft-sci-fi planes take so often. It’s refreshing, and it gives the piece so much personality for a plane, hearkening back to really lush, dramatic paintings on adventure book covers or travel advertisements. It’s incredible, and certainly makes me really hope I see it in a year’s time, in the vault.
07/04
Cover Alert: Extreme Carnage: Scream (2021) #1 Design Variant Cover!
Artist: David Nakayama
Source: General Pool ( Rare)
This is an exciting one to wrap on. We’ve got another variant cover for Scream, who, perhaps a bit inexplicably, has lots of comic art that’s made it into SNAP—more than plenty of her other Symbiote siblings! (And maybe that’s because, a bit inexplicably, she’s a more featured Symbiote in the comics than her other symbiote siblings.) But Scream’s relative popularity is neither here nor there, because this is the first of David Nakayama’s Design Variant covers for all the Symbiotes!
The original vibe for all of them was a marker-drafted design on lined drafting paper; fortunately, you can still see the draft lines from the original cover on that background, which makes the variant feel less like an incomplete piece and more like the design decision it was. And otherwise, it catches all of that, with Scream’s bright colors rendered in just-as-bright marker tones to contrast with that sterile white! I like these a lot, and I’m hopeful that this is a sign we see more for the likes of Lasher, Agony, and the rest when they get to SNAP.
Wrapping Up
Wowee, short one today, folks! Which, frankly, I’m not complaining about; if you want to hear more of my luxurious and imaginary voice, go check out my card preview for Clea! And until next time, let me hear your own luxurious and imaginary voices in the comments below: how do you feel about this batch? How’d the season wrap up for you? How’s it going? Just in general? I wanna hear it all.