Mark Brooks Celebrates ‘X-Men’ And ‘The Avengers’ 60th Anniversaries With Corner Box Variant Covers
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
Corner boxes have always been pretty cool in my opinion. I bought a lot of comics off gas station and grocery store spinner racks when I was younger and it never dawned on me until I was much older and looking at friends’ spinner racks that housed their personal collection how cool they were from a marketing perspective.
For those who may not know, corner boxes are those little images in the upper left corner of comics. They were really prominent in the Marvel and DC books back in the day and normally they had headshots, or a little full-body drawing of a character, and sometimes even a little scene or something. It was this cool little bit of art independent of the cover art of the comic.
I don’t have any pictures of a Spinner Rack I can drop into this article but if you don’t know what I am talking about check out this link.
Looking at the books in the spinner rack in my friend’s office it dawned on me that those lovely little bits of art served a purpose. When all the books are sitting in a spinner rack, you can’t see the cover art of a lot of these books, so the corner art was actually a little bit of enticing art that could catch a buyer’s eye and draw them to the book in the hopes of having them pick it up, then get sold on the cover or content or feel guilty about picking it up* and either way you buy the issue. Corner boxes were such a cool part of comics decades ago and thanks to the work of Mark Brooks, corner boxes are going to be back at Marvel in a meaningful way.
Artist and enthusiastic corner box fan Mark Brooks will be spotlighting this classic Marvel tradition in a new line of variant covers. Just in time for the Avengers and X-Men’s 60th Anniversaries, Brooks’ Corner Box Variant Covers will run throughout the year, depicting lineups and characters from throughout both teams’ histories. Hitting stands in May, the first pair brought fans back to the Avengers and X-Men’s original Silver Age rosters, and now, fans can see the next two debuting in June!
Gracing the covers of Avengers #2, the second issue of Jed MacKay and C.F. Villa’s highly-anticipated new run, and Gerry Duggan and Joshua Cassara’s X-Men #23, June’s corner box covers feature some of the biggest icons of both titles.
On Avengers #2’s Corner Box Cover, Brooks chose to present a full-body depiction of Vision who will be making his return to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in MacKay and Villa’s run. And over on X-Men #23’s Corner Box Cover, Brooks highlights the famous X-Men team that debuted in 1975’s Giant-Size X-Men #1.
“There are many reasons why I was attracted to comics as a kid and the corner box was a big part of it,” Brooks explained. “I knew what issue number and who I could expect to see in the issue. It was a little preview to tantalize the reader. It was always heads, a full figure, or a micro-scene. No matter what, it enticed me to pick the book up. It’s why I started the #LetMarkCornerbox campaign in earnest on Twitter. It was primarily a joke to express my love for the corner box. It ended up taking on a bit of a life of its own. When C.B. told me that they’d like this to become a reality, I couldn’t pass it up. I’ve penciled well over 100 heads so far. I don’t plan on stopping until Marvel says ‘okay, that’s enough’- LOL!”
Until next time, check out corner boxes that are pretty rad.
Feel guilty about picking it up – Regularly I would run into this issue where I would pull a book out of the spinner rack and then not be tall enough or dexterous enough to put it back in the rack without worrying I would bend the comic. I viewed comics as these sacred things and not disposable media I did not want that guilt on my conscious so I would just buy the book.
I got an issue of a Hulk comic once and I swear to you the plot was something about Hulk being smart, walking around some snow-covered place in a brown zip-up jumpsuit with future tech goggles, and that was it. Nothing else happened. I really wanted an issue of Silver Surfer where The Surfer blasted some cosmic thing with the power cosmic and said fancy Shakespear sounding stuff, but noooooo… I was stuck with boy band hair smart Hulk and his snow hike.
