comic fan

Steve Morris talks about his cover for Buffy # 24

Buffy the Vampire Slayer-comic cover s10 issue 24 by StevenJamesMorris on DeviantArt



RedSatinDoll5390 Dec 9, 2015
Gorgeous cover art! I'm curious as to what the "concept" was - I assume that you're given a concept that you have to interpret visually, or how does the assignment work?

StevenJamesMorris Dec 10, 2015
Thanks! I think they told me to show discord between Buffy and Spike and have The Mistress in the picture. So with that basic set-up I decided on the metaphor of being at sea and struggling over a life preserver while This Mistress sings. Since I had already done a Buffy/Spike discord cover on #12 that was more direct, I felt I needed to rely more on metaphoric imagery, so the covers don't get repetitious.

RedSatinDoll5390 Dec 21, 2015
That's meant to be discord? I read it more as Buffy (the Hero) coming to save the day, determined to get Spike away from the Mistress and Spike trusting her to do just that even when his will is being weakened by the Mistress. (they've sort of been in this place before - Buffy saving Spike from the First, etc.)

Or maybe I'm an eternal optimist/ Buffy fan, I believe that she will always come through in the end. (And I'm a sucker for Buffy being the Hero and taking the lead while others follow or trust in her. Heck, that's what keeps me coming back to the Buffyverse.)

But that's the neat thing about art like this, it's open to interpretation. At least, I hope different interpretations are ok! It's interesting how little information you're given, and how you have to make something of very little - and then seeing how much fans read meaning into the covers and try to determine the storyline from that. i think we need to remember that the covers may have little or nothing to do with what's inside.

Thank you so much for doing such splendid work this season!

StevenJamesMorris Dec 22, 2015
Ha, yeah they were supposed to be vying for the life preserver like a tug-of-war and grimacing at one another. But in my effort to use metaphor and building a scene around it, I can see that the reading of it can get muddled…but like you said, many of the covers can be interpreted freely and the multiple readings of the image probably exist within the content of the story itself.

It can definitely be dangerous reading storyline into my covers, partly bc I'm not always showing literal events, but rather encapsulating feelings (like this cover for 24)…and then there's moments where I think the story changes some, and my cover becomes less relevant, it's one of the dangers of working so far ahead of the final story.

RedSatinDoll5390 Dec 23, 2015
From what I recall as a kid with my brother's comics in the 1970's and '80's, covers usually had little or nothing to do with the events on the pages, they were simply a way to draw people to the comic, like movie posters.

I'm not sure when folks started using the covers as a method of "divination", like reading tea leaves, to try to suss out where the story might be headed. Maybe that started with the internet, and people being able to see previews? In any case I've seen some fairly detailed analysis of cover art and trying to determine story direction based on those images.

And a certain amount of flexibility in interpretation is not a bad thing. (Buffy and Spike in particular are such complicated characters to begin with.)

StevenJamesMorris Jan 9, 2016
I think 70s and 80s covers sometimes exaggerated the peril that the characters were in, some were specific to story lines and some were just meant to look good and to be later used by the publisher as posters and merchandise…the more generic the cover is, the more widely it can used for other purposes…like Spiderman or Storm in a cool pose.

I wonder if people speculate specifically bc this comic was originally a tv show and they were used to speculating on previews of episodes…although the most shows at some point started giving false impressions in previews, by cleverly editing them to make you think certain things were happening that weren't. I don't notice the level of speculation with other comics, but I may be missing it. I think you're right that the internet also creates environment for speculation.

For myself, I'll totally tell white lies on covers if I think it will make a more interesting image.

RedSatinDoll5390 Jan 21, 2016
*lol* It's amusing to see folks on fan forums try to predict the trajectory of the comics based on the covers.

You're probably right that people are used to speculating - Buffy has a rich history and fans are still discussing every imaginable nuance.

Will you be doing covers for season 11, do you suppose?

StevenJamesMorris 6 days ago
I don't know about season 11, I haven't heard anything yet…curious myself