It’d be reasonable to assume after the train wreck that was Spider-Woman #1, as in you’d have to be crushed under one for it to be biologically possible, that Milo Manara was done at Marvel. And indeed, scheduled Manara variants were suddenly disappearing from the world, leading to the predictable freakout and cries of censorship. Except, uh, the actual story is just that “Milo Manara’s kinda busy, so his covers have been delayed.”
Bleeding Cool contacted Marvel about the covers and found out that Manara is hard at work on his biography of Caravaggio, and understandably, he kind of wants to take his time depicting the life of one of the greatest artists in human history. So the covers have been delayed, which is actually pretty typical in the comics industry.
And as terrible as that cover was, nobody’s denying that Manara is an experienced and talented artist. Part of the reason I found that cover so disappointing is that Manara so rarely does anything outside of, well, porn that I was curious to see what he’d do with, say, action. I’d like to see those variant covers, when they come down the pike. Just maybe somebody at Marvel could remind him they don’t put out porn. Or at least wound his professional pride to make him try harder by telling him Greg Land did a better job the last time around. Because come on, we all know about Greg Land.