Josh's concept for UNKNOWN SOLDIER #21 is the kind of elegant story idea you don't see enough of these days. It immediately reminded me of how Will Eisner used to zero in on a single unexpected element, like an inanimate object, and turn a Spirit 8-pager into a masterpiece. Josh's "A Gun For Africa" follows a specific Kalashnikov AK-47 machine gun from it's manufacture in a 1970's Eastern bloc factory into Africa and through the many lives and deaths it comes to define. The story puts a forty year sweep of African conflict into historical context without being dry; humanizing its dreadful social impact without being preachy. I hope I did Josh's work here justice.

As many cartoonists will attest, war comics can be difficult to draw. They require lots of detailed reference and need to convey the gritty reality of human beings in wartime. This story was especially challenging, asking that the AK-47 itself not only look like the real thing but have a certain character all its own. Since the story spans three decades and many wars, It also needed to age visually.

When I was a kid, it was the DC war comics artists who set the gold standard for the genre. I like to think I've got a strand or two of their DNA in my veins, having taught myself how to draw by copying panels from Kubert, Heath and Drucker. Later on I studied with Joe himself at the Kubert School and did a number of short war stories under his editorship for SGT. ROCK. Then came ARMY@LOVE, so I haven't been shy about tackling war comics.

Besides being an extraordinary story, this particular job also allowed me to ink my own pencils for the first time in a while. Dave Gibbons famously once said that pencilling is like climbing a mountain and inking is like skiing back down. I think that explains the dynamic perfectly. I know a lot of comic book creation has moved onto the computer, and maybe rightly so since working digitally can save so much time. But for me nothing will ever replace the feel of a loaded brush gliding over a tightly pencilled line or a Hunt 512 laying in a texture. My experience on this issue of Unknown Soldier had me sensing interesting new avenues to be explored so I'm planning on focusing more on inking my own pencils in the future.

Over on THE SOURCE, The DCU is celebrating 75 years of DC Comics by revealing a bunch of amazing variant covers. But these aren’t just any variant covers, they are of some of the most classic and iconic images from DC’s illustrious history re-imagined by some of the biggest names in the industry.

Well, GRAPHIC CONTENT couldn’t just sit back, so, along with THE SOURCE and THE BLEED, we’re all taking a look back today. We’ve asked some of our current writers and artists to pick their favorite DC COMICS cover, be it from the DCU, Vertigo or Wildstorm and tell us what it means to them.

So, without further ado, let’s read what they have to say!

My favorite cover would be ANIMAL MAN #5. Grant Morrison's early Vertigo work blew my mind in a way no comic ever had. And this issue of ANIMAL MAN, and this cover in particular, are perfect examples of the craziness and irreverence that inspired me to wanna write comics of my own. –Jason Aaron, writer SCALPED

Ronin Book One - Frank Miller. The comic shop was small and dark, located in the mall's basement, and this book, high up on the wall in the back, kept calling out to my 10-year-old brain. The color and design promised something strange and new, and when my older brother finally bought it, it didn't disappoint. For me, comics couldn't just be about superheroes any more. --Cliff Chiang, artist NEIL YOUNG’S GREENDALE

My fave is this or any other Basil Wolverton cover for PLOP Magazine from the 1970s (though Sergio Aragones designed the boarder images). I bought every issue of this title JUST for the cover, with no regard to what was inside -- the ONLY time I bought something regularly for the cover alone! --Peter Bagge, OTHER LIVES

I'm going to go for GREEN LANTERN #70, which I think dates from 1968. The cover, which was by Gil Kane, showed a tall, slender, subtly inhuman alien standing over the body of Green Lantern, and lamenting "But I only wanted to make him laugh... not die!!" The cover itself, which I saw long before I ever got to read the story, suggested in itself some terrible cosmic irony, and it preyed on my mind to the point where I must have gone through a couple of dozen scenarios in my head before I got to read the actual issue. That was what reading comics was like for me as a kid: an explosion of ideas vivid enough to derail reality. My mind was psychotically focused to the point where the actual story was sometimes frustrating because it killed a million possible alternatives. And cover artists played shamelessly to my demographic by producing images which were sometimes only tangentially relevant to content... --Mike Carey, co-creator and writer, THE UNWRITTEN

So many covers to choose from. Really impossible to choose a definitive favorite. There are so many contemporaries who light me up today, and so as not to alienate any of them I'll dig into the farthest deepest corners of my little kid memories to the Rose Elementary School carnival where I threw a fishing line over a wall and pulled back a rolled up copy of TEEN TITANS no.17 with a very psychedelic trippy character called the Mad Mod. Like a british and ghostly King Kong he loomed over London with Wonder Girl, Robin, Kid Flash, and Aqualad in his gigantic grip. It blew my mind Daddy-O! And continues to resonate in my fevered brain today. --Mike Allred, co-creator and artist I,ZOMBIE

KAMANDI #28 APRIL 1975 Art by JACK KIRBY
I missed all Jack’s DC comics in the 70's. DC imports were hard to find in the UK and I was only 8 when this came out. However in the late eighties, whilst I was at college and working on small press strips in my spare time, my friend/collaborator Chris Ski gave me a bunch of Kirby's DC comics. KAMANDI #28 was one of them. I fell in love immediately with it's style, dynamics and the vast cast of animal characters. This comic has been a treasured possession ever since. It frequently influences my work, most obviously in FABLES : THE GOOD PRINCE. As I write this it is still sat atop a pile of comics next to my desk. –Mark Buckingham, artist FABLES

SHADE THE CHANGING MAN #1 drawn by Brendan McCarthy. I know it’s terribly self-indulgent, but I’m going to choose a cover of one of my own books, by the inimitable Brendan McCarthy. It’s number one of Shade The Changing man and it brings back so many memories, not least of travelling across America looking for the “madness” of the country. I remember Brendan telling me he was putting in some Twin Peaks style picket-fences, representing the surface normality that the book so feverishly ripped apart. I don’t think he’d even seen the show at the time… --Peter Milligan, writer HELLBLAZER and THE BRONX KILL

ANIMAL MAN #5: The Coyote Gospel
Not just because of the amazing Bolland imagery that launched the most well-known meta-story arc in comics, but also because The Coyote Gospel is one of the most important single issues in my development as a creative person. This comic book still speaks truth directly to my soul. –Josh Dysart, writer UNKNOWN SOLDIER and NEIL YOUNG’S GREENDALE

SUPERMAN RED SON 3. I can’t tell if it’s my favorite DC cover ever, cause, well... I haven’t seen them all, but I saw this one a long long time ago, and it’s still fresh in my mind, even after all those years. Dave Johnson is a complete master on the cover art craft, and the way he uses design, colors, and comic language here, is just too phenomenal. –Rafael Albuquerque, artist AMERICAN VAMPIRE

Favorite cover? It's a tie- Dave Johnson's 100 BULLETS cover for the Once Upon a Crime trade paperback and issue #98 of 100 Bullets! Graphic, incredible and iconic! Dave Johnson is the best cover artist out in comicsland!” –Jill Thompson, DELIRIUM’S PARTY: A Little Endless Storybook

This one--not because it showed the "shocking truth about drugs!" but because when I was a young kid reading comics, Neal Adams was the first artist that really blew me away and made me realize there were actually real artists with names who drew these books. I devoured everything I could find by Adams and my goal of being a comic artist was set! –Peter Gross, co-creator and artist THE UNWRITTEN

My favorite is BATMAN #205. This included everything essential on the cover but completely broke the mold of the covers that came before and after. Totally stands out, even today. –Matt Kindt, REVOLVER

My favorite DC Comics cover was Joe Kubert's first DC Tarzan cover. I'd always been an Edgar Rice Burroughs fan and to see his greatest character realized so wonderfully in the comics format was just a special moment for me. And this issue was contemporary with a terrific DC Renaissance. Neal Adams and Denny O'Neal were doing their run on Green Lantern and Green Arrow. Jack Kirby had just come over to DC to do his Fourth World. It was a magic moment for DC in particular and comics in general. --Bill Willingham, writer FABLES

Moses has a list. Throughout his murder investigation of the IDP camp's doctor, he's been deciding just who will live and who will die. Now, caught in an arms deal near the Sudan border, it's time to start checking names. But this is one battle that's not as simple as it seems.

Check out the preview of this new storyline and pick up a copy on Wednesday!

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THREE OF MY FAVORITE PAGES FROM THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER Vol. 2: EASY KILL (on sale March 17 in comic stores and everywhere books are sold March 23) by writer Josh Dysart

The title of this post isn't totally accurate. It was impossible for me to pick three pages that were my absolute favorites. Both Alberto Ponticelli and Pat Masioni produced so many wonderfully vibrant and dramatic images that it took me all day just to decide on the three I have here. In doing so I turned my back on some truly magical moments in this book. But here's my best shot at it anyway. I can only hope you see them for what they are. Three little pills... gateway drugs to a book that's out there on the shelves now, a book filled with 191 pages of beautiful comic book goodness.

Issue 7, Page 3/Volume 2 Page 9
I know this isn't the most visually stylish page you'll find in our trade, but I love it a lot. Why? Because I miss east Africa. I miss it with all my heart. And once and a while Alberto and I find some space in our racing narrative to take a deep breath and show it. Really show the truth of everyday life there. Here Alberto accurately paints a a picture of modern, urban Africa. The kind of image we rarely get to see in our media. A bustling town on a Friday night. Kids having a glorious time in a raging Kampala discotheque. The text on top explores the differences between the rural ethnic groups and the urban ones, and then that last panel brings it all home. This is not only one of my favorite pages, but Issue seven, titled BETWEEN HERE AND THERE, is one of my favorite single issue comic books I've ever written. This page is wonderfully colored by Oscar Celestini.

Issue 9, Page 17/Volume 2 Page 67
Here it is. This is a muted pallet "dream" panel, as Moses weighs the wight of killing a celebrity to bring attention to the war in Northern Uganda. This page sums up the idea of the entire story arc, but it was a last minute addition and the product of intense and pure collaboration. Pornsak Pichetshote, my fearless and amazing editor, kept saying we needed to sell the idea of the arc more. We weren't quite communicating how Moses could take this idea of killing a celebrity seriously enough. I think we were maybe about three drafts into the script for Issue 9 before we came up with this page. Often it's the simplest answers that elude you the most. Would you, Moses, rather kill an endless sea of children? Or one rich woman. What is a life worth, and who are these celebrities we value so much more than the nameless, faceless victims of tragedy around the world? Again, beautifully colored by Oscar Celestini.

Issue 13, Page 16/Volume 2 Page 160
Pat Masioni (the first African Cartoonist published by a North American Comic book company) did the art chores on the last two issues in the trade and brought something to this book that Alberto or I never could. A distinctive cultural style. When you couple that with Jose Villarrubia's magic colors, which seem to convey the light of equatorial Africa more truly than any attempt at realism ever could, and the reoccurring theme in our book of children using art therapy to overcome Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, you get the start of one of my favorite sequences in the whole book. The story of Paul's abduction by the LRA and subsequent march to the Sudan training camps. This sequence is the closest to reporting the absolute realities of the conflict, free of any artifice, that this series has ever gotten.

The art in this book is wonderful. It's all so visceral and genuine and stylish. I can honestly say that the second Unknown Soldier trade is the work I'm most proud of to date. It's meaty and rich and sprawling and novelistic and I can't help but feel that Alberto and Pat and Oscar and Jose and I have managed to really do something amazing. I hope you give it a shot.

Thanks for reading.