As someone who has always struggling with drawing the female figure, I have huge admiration for Adam Hughes. He manages to capture the essence of the female form while injecting the personality of the individual character into all of his images. That is why for this week’s Cover of The Week we take a look at some of his best work.

In his lengthy career Adam Hughes has carved out his own style and has become a notable cover artist. Combining a realistic style and a distinct preference for female characters he has developed a style that is very much his, a style that is very easy to notice and pick out because of this.

Selecting one of his covers to talk about is a tough task. However I narrowed it down to his amazing run on Catwoman as I feel he has more of an understanding and connection to this character than his other work.

Hughes’ 40+ appearances on Catwoman showcases his great range of work, from the dramatic lighting to his ability to find the balance between sexy and slutty. Catwoman wears quite the provocative outfit but her portrayal in these covers doesn’t go into “it might as well be porn” There is a sophistication to the sexiness.

For these reasons I have picked Catwoman #80 as my Cover of The Week.

I chose this cover for several reasons. Firstly it depicts Catwoman in a very stereotypical scene for Catwoman. She is crawling up a wall after performing a jewel heist and is escaping with the police on the ground beneath her. This is important as the Cover of any comic book should stay true to the character it is portraying, and having Catwoman perform an act she is closely associated with is almost the first building block of displaying her character on the page.

Catwoman’s pose in this scene has a lot of character to it. The way she is climbing the wall is very cat like and unorthodox. This pose is great because of the perspective, we see the ground below her with police cars littering the area, and the jewels Catwoman has stole along with her whip hanging down below her. It tells a very clear and dramatic story without saying a word.

One of Adam Hughes’ strengths is his portrayal of women, he draws strong, athletic women who can handle themselves but with an underlying level of sexuality. His drawings are multi-faceted not simply sex objects or brutish women they are true to life characters, and this is what Adam Hughes has that puts him above some of his contemporaries.

Take for example his promotional poster DC gave away at conventions. The Women of DC poster is a perfect example of Adam drawing multiple women and being able to draw them with their own character and personality. They are drawn in an attractive manner but in a very respectable form.

Adam Hughes has a long career in the industry starting out by penciling stories in the first issue of Death Hawk and would soon go onto work for DC’s Justice League of America, where he did both cover and interior art. Other remarkable pieces of Adam Hughes’ work include his five year run on Wonder Woman,the cover of Wonder Woman #195 in particular showcases Hughes’ talent for perspective.

So there we have it Adam Hughes is a stand out artist in an industry with so many talented people. So here’s to you Adam I salute you.

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