New Brevoort Formspring

I miss the old Marvel trade dress where they had a box at the upper left corner of the cover that had the issue # and a small picture of the stars of the book. In my opinion, it was just more fun and unique. Two traits Marvel always had.

I’m not saying you should bring it back, I’m just saying I miss it.

A lot of people of a certain age are nostalgic for those corner boxes. But the reason to have them has largely gone away in a world where most shops have full frontal display for new books. The concept of those corner boxes was for the reader to be able to tell what comic it was whether they were racked side-by-side, or with only their top-third showing, the two most regularly found ways it was done on the newsstand. Without that need, while there’s always aesthetics, there isn’t any practical reason to have them, and they eat up space on the cover that could be used for art.