Mahnke

For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Doug Mahnke & Christian Alamy), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Greg Horn).

DC Comics for February 2010 | Major Spoilers - Comic Book Reviews and News 2009

But just because Reis didn't have as many opportunities doesn't mean he lacked for them, and yet he shows almost none of the expressive flair Mahnke does in depicting the visual manifestation of ring powers.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

What this comes down to, I think, is that for Mahnke much more than for Reis, the rings manifest their power not only functionally, but expressively, as well.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

What's clear to me from these images is that although Reis and Mahnke are both working at the high end of mainstream superhero art, they're still quite distinct from each other.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

That one example notwithstanding, as I took a closer look back over each artist's work for the crossover, I was surprised to find that almost all the ring-slinging images that stood out in my mind as particularly vivid and memorable were done by Mahnke in the pages of GL.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

I went back and looked at his art in Sinestro Corps War, and was surprised to find pretty much the same as in Blackest Night--plenty of colored light all over the place, and boy does it look snazzy, but he almost never gives it interesting form there the way Mahnke does in the GL Blackest Night tie-in issues.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

But I do want to praise Mahnke for going above and beyond, and giving just that much more thought to how the ring effects could and should look in each specific context.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

Ultimately, Reis and Mahnke deliver exactly the visual experience I was hoping for.

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

While a giant hammer isn't the most inventive power ring effect, Mahnke gets a lot of mileage out of it with an intensely graphic depiction of the damage it does to Black Lantern Specter's lower jaw:

Archive 2010-04-25 2010

Of course, it also recalls another striking image for which Mahnke is known--the Green Lantern staking of that stupid random non-Darkseid Big Bad that Grant Morrison pulled out of his ass in Final Crisis:

Archive 2010-04-25 2010