Comicon’s Best Cover Artists Of 2025
by Erik Amaya
Welcome to Comicon.com’s Best of the Year Awards, gathering the best comics and comics talent of the long-yet-short year that was 2025. This year, we will be awarding in the following categories: Best Comic Series, Best Original Graphic Novels and Collected Editions, Best Single Comic Issues, Best Writers, Best Artists, Best Cover Artists, Best Colorists, Best Digital/Webcomics, and Most Progressive Comics.
Contributors to Comicon’s Best of the Year Awards this year include: Rachel Bellwoar, Richard Bruton, Tito W. James, Olly MacNamee, Tom Smithyman, and Tony Thornley.
The following are Comicon’s 5 Cover Artists of 2025.
Declan Shalvey
It’s not really fair to confine this hyphenate creator to just being a cover artist. After all, he has written Terminator, Alien, and ThunderCats, and has drawn several series, including Mystique: Most Wanted (which he also wrote) and co-created Moon Knight’s Mr. Knight. Yet, he has become the go-to cover artist for virtually every comics publisher in existence. It’s a tribute to Shavely’s talent, perspective, and dedication that, in only the past year, he’s been asked to draw covers for such diverse titles as Gargoyles X Fantastic Four, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ordained, Will of Doom, Absolute Green Lantern, Undeadpool, Ultimate Hawkeye, and Superman Unlimited, to name only a few. By his own count, he has drawn 278 covers for Marvel alone. Clearly, this guy is doing something right!
— Tom Smithyman
Peach Momoko
If Momoko only created covers on Ultimate X-Men, she’d still deserve a spot on this list. Her work on that series always stands out as one of the most distinct and engaging covers each month. But she continues to be remarkably prolific, often doing entire theme months single-handedly, or stepping in with a “B” cover on a new launch that makes you stop and take a breath at the art. She’s cemented her place as one of the greatest cover artists in comics history and we love to see her continue to create for years to come.
— Tony Thornley
Dan Panosian
A comic book cover often allows an artist to take their time and stretch their talents even further than when producing interiors. And Panosian is one cover artist every company seem to want to work with … for obvious reasons. He has produced some of the most eye-grabbing covers this past year, often just depicting one central character, but in the most dramatic and attention-grabbing way. Colouring his own artwork only helps elevate each cover he does with a mastery of digital painting that makes them pop.
— Olly MacNamee
Paul Azaceta
This artist is doing fantastic work when it comes to the creation of covers. He displays a variety of designs that always fits the respective title he is representing. While experience is one aspect of this ability, it also requires talent. Both of these factors Azaceta exhibits with confident line work, wide-ranging hues, and plenty of imagination. Although it is debatable for any artist to have the title of “master”, Azaceta may just qualify for it — at least when it comes to his covers from this year.
— Benjamin Hall
Caspar Wijngaard
Wijngaard is an artist whose influences seem to be far-reaching. A truly modern artist in his design sensibilities, approach to comics, and sense for layout and composition, his artwork is deceptively minimalist, while his colour work is vibrant and contemporary. Through his work on The Power Fantasy, he proves to be a bold experimentalist as well as a traditionalist in many ways when it comes to adapting geometrical patterns and shapes into his backgrounds. Wijngaard has a clean, graphic style that continues to push the boundaries of comic book art and storytelling.
— Olly MacNamee
