Royal City, a current title by the awesome people from Image Comics (Hi Corey!!!), will be giving future covers of the series the variant treatment featuring some of the most iconic 90s alternative rock albums beginning with issue #6. Weezer's Blue Album, Hole's "Live Through This," and Sonic Youth's "Goo," are the first three covers to be featured with samples of the artwork below. It has been rumored that the Smashing Pumpkins, Portishead and even Nirvana will be included in future variant covers.
Some backstory here, I am a comic book lover!!! I am a fan of the folks at Image who have consumed a lot of my reading time with titles such as Alex + Ada, Thief of Thieves and Velvet to name just a few. They are also responsible for The Walking Dead and Saga.
Taken from the Image website, Royal City "charts the lives, loves, and losses of a troubled family and a vanishing town across three decades." Based on the characters created by Jeff Lemire, the variant covers will give homage to some awesome 90s alternative album covers.
Some more backstory, variant covers are those covers which are different than those found on the shelves for purchase at your local comic shop. These covers generally have multiple versions featuring unique artwork. The walls of my man cave are adorned with variants from Marvel and Image titles and are considered some of my most prized possessions.
Issue #6 will be out on October 11th 2017. Now get out there and support your local comic shops and read some amazing stories!!!
Below are some of the samples of what has been shared along with what the original album cover is in a side by side comparison.
The variant for Royal City #6 will be a remix of Sonic Youth's "Goo," with cover done by Jeffrey Brown.
This is the side by side of the artwork for #7 by Emi Lenox
The variant for #8 looks a little something like this done by Nate Howell
Gotta give some love to crew at Pitchfork who gave me the heads up about this.