Cheater-pants at DC reveal final cover for Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing #1

Today at DC's Source blog, the publisher revealed the final cover for the first issue of Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing. When the series, was originally announced, prior to the revelation that the Swamp Thing character would be rejoining the DCU portion of their publishing line after years of being "off-limits" outside of their Vertigo mature readers imprint, the book was simply entitled Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search, and they revealed a terrible cover with two of the characters in silhouette only. The new cover has the characters filled in—one was apparently blacked-out to protect the secret that John Constantine would also be appearing in the DCU for the first time since (I want to say) 1996, and the other one was blacked out apparently just to keep things extra mysterious.

Here's the original image, followed by the final one: As you can see, they cheated with the outlines—particularly on the far right—in order to ensure secrecy. They've done this before, to protect the line-up of the Brad Meltzer re-launched Justice League of America before the first few issues came out.

The final Search For... cover's still not a very good piece of work, although I do like the fact that Constantine is facing away from them and smoking a cigarette. It makes it look like the heroes are all reacting to his smoking, and, as you can see, their reactions range from Superman's fury to Zatanna's concern.

There will also be a variant cover to the comic, because how could there not be a variant cover to a comic book in 2011, and it's by artist J.G. Jones: In rendering and overall design, it's superior, although not something that knocks my socks off. The best part though? Look at how cute Jones' bats are:Batman just doesn't spend enough time hanging out with cute bats. He's always in the company of big, scary bats.