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How Alex Ross subverts the expectations you have for Marvel Dimensions using his iconic JLA: Secret Origins cover
Call this Marvel: Secret Origins… and then Alex Ross will surprise you.
NewsbyAshley V. Robinson, Popverse video producer
Additional contributions byChris Arrant
Published on Tue Sep 08 2026
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You know an Alex Ross painting when you see it, whether it’s in the pages of a comic in your hands or on a billboard across the way. But in his new graphic novel Marvel Dimensions, he is using your expectations of what an Alex Ross comic would be to surprise you once you open it up. And as he tells us, the cover to Marvel Dimensions is using the iconic cover to a DC comic of his to catch you off-guard.
“I was looking for a word that could be read as both personal dimensions as well as larger, extraworldly dimensions. The allusion of the cover is to lead you to believe I’m giving you the same product as I gave you years ago with a book for DC of their secret origins,” Ross tells us, referring to his JLA: Secret Origins series. “And so I didn’t want to use that wording again. So dimensions became the de facto word.”
“And, of course, if you read the book, you’ll see that it very much speaks to the whole of everything I previewed within it,” he continues. “And what should be going out about the book more and more now is its deliberately misleading. You don’t know from the cover what kind of story you’re getting. It won’t actually star those characters that are on the cover. They’re close, though.”
That being said, Alex Ross is retelling the origin stories of the major Marvel heroes in the first bit of Marvel Dimensions; he makes it a point of saying he’s going back to the original origin stories presented by each character’s creators. Then, with that established, “that becomes my jumping-off point.”
You can watch Alex Ross’s full conversation with Ashley V. Robinson in her interview series Popversations here:
Interested? Here’s where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here’s a guide to how (and where) to read comics online. If you’re looking for the best comics in recent memory, check out the Eisner Awards winners and the Harvey Awards nominees. And if you like free comics, here’s everything we know about Free Comic Book Day 2027.
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Ashley V. Robinson: Ashley Victoria Robinson is a Canadian hobbit now living in the United States. She is a Popverse Video Producer. You may know her as the host of the Geek History Lesson podcast (alongside Jason Inman), and was even the face of Twitter marketing for podcasters.
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