Happy New Year, I hope you’re having a good 2023 so far:

After a particularly fraught year, the Young Avengers celebrated the start of a new one (2014, for those keeping score) in Young Avengers 14 and 15. This two-part coda to the series took place at a New Year’s Eve party featuring a who’s-who of the era’s young Marvel heroes. It is notable for a) being incredibly bittersweet, b) featuring an assortment of art teams, each of whom handled one character’s section of the narrative, and c) having these two great connecting covers.

Main series artist Jamie McKelvie and colorist Matthew Wilson illustrated this two-covers-wide club queue, featuring the main series cast of America Chavez, Hulkling, Wiccan, Marvel Boy, Hawkeye (the good one), and Prodigy, with a reference to Loki if you look hard enough. Random partygoers Power Man, Rockslide, Broo, Gravity, Spider-Girl, Pixie, Troll, Lightspeed, Surge, Karolina Dean, and heck-if-I-know file out the rest of the queue.

I own very few sets of connecting covers, despite the fact that I think they’re a great gimmick. They work especially well in situations like this, where an ongoing series is taking a break from longer story arcs to tell a two-to-three-issue story. Using a connecting cover for the story sends a message that the story is short and (usually) self-contained.

And of course, connecting covers are also just cool. They form a piece of art that is twice to three times as big as a normal cover, making them two to three times as rad. Connecting covers and other monthly-comics-only gimmicks are one of the reasons I still buy physical, single-issue comics, and why I think I’ll never fully convert to digital and/or trades.

(Want to check out more posts in the Cool Comic Covers series? If so, click here.)