Joe Madureira Reveals His Justice League: Rebirth #1 Variant Cover

Superstar comics and video game artist Joe Madureira has revealed a first look at his upcoming cover for Justice League: Rebirth #1, due out on July 6 from writer Bryan Hitch.

Hitch recently penned JLA: Justice League of America, which dealt primarily with an attack by Rao, Krypton’s sun god. That storyline fed into “The Final Days of Superman,” which wrapped the pre-Rebirth Superman titles and set up the reintroduction of the pre-Flashpoint Superman. The issue’s art and standard cover is from longtime Batman artist Tony Daniel.

You can see the full image below, along with a couple of process shots Madureira also posted to Twitter.

Madureira made a name for himself in the ’90s, working on Marvel titles before heading to Image to do his creator-owned Battle Chasers. He has been largely out of monthly comics for some time, between the demands on his time that his “day job” as a video game artist make and the fact that he was never particularly timely when working on a deadline. His most recent monthly assignment, Marvel’s Inhuman, got off track before it ever started…although that was in part because of a change of writer rather than Madureira’s doing.

Ordinarily, a piece like this having no background might indicate that it’s unfinished, but in the case of DC’s Rebirth initiative, each Rebirth one-shot has featured a variant cover that has basically no background — generally just the title character on a white background, standing atop the new DC logo.

Madureira’s cover features only Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman — which might seem to make it a better candidate for the Trinity series than for Justice League…but the Green Lanterns variant featured only one of the two main characters, so this is hardly unprecedented.