Colin GayTuscaloosa News
Oct. 15, 2026, 4:59 a.m. CT
- University of Alabama student Josh Boyden creates weekly comic book covers depicting Alabama football’s upcoming games.
- Boyden, a mechanical engineering major, learned to paint before he could write and fell in love with Alabama football after a campus visit.
- His art style uses bright colors and thick lines to portray the rivalries as superhero stories.
- Boyden’s work has gained popularity, leading to commissions and plans to sell prints of his designs.
Every Alabama football game is a superhero story.
There are heroes and villains, each of whom has his own backstory in the opening pages of each week’s comic book flutter. Tension rises. The final climactic battle arrives, one that is flashy and colorful. The motive is clear. The stakes mean absolutely everything.
Take the “Third Saturday in October” against Tennessee. The scene of the incoming battle is set. A smoky haze surrounds Neyland Stadium as the hero, at least to the Crimson Tide faithful, arrives. Alabama is not Superman in this story. It’s battered, bloodied and bruised as it stands facing another familiar foe, one that has changed, but one that brings a history of struggle, especially in its own lair.
“You come into this next week, and you’re definitely a little angry,” Alabama linebacker Luke Metz said.
This is the lens through which University of Alabama junior Josh Boyden sees each Alabama football game.
Boyden’s origin story is a simple one.
The Reno, Nevada, native learned to paint before he could write. One of his first memories was messing with watercolors from his grandmother’s basement.
Boyden fell in love with Alabama in 2023, where a campus tour ended in Bryant-Denny Stadium as Alabama beat LSU, 42-28.
“We didn’t know anyone around us,” Boyden told The Tuscaloosa News. “We were completely new to the stadium. We had Bama gear on, so at least people knew what side we were on, but everyone was talking to us. Everyone was connected.”
And by the time Alabama’s Million Dollar Band played “Dixieland Delight” in the fourth quarter, Boyden was hooked.
“It was like nothing I’ve been a part of before,” Boyden said.
When he arrived in Tuscaloosa, Boyden filled his dorm room with art: a scene of downtown Tuscaloosa with an old 1960s car, a recreation of Alabama wide receiver Germie Bernard’s over-the-head catch against Oklahoma in the College Football Playoff. He did artwork for others: a 4-by-5-foot mural of the new Alabama logo with the elephant head for a friend’s backyard, a memento of Lionel Messi breaking the World Cup goal-scoring record for a member of his fraternity.
Heading into the 2026 season, Boyden had an idea: to capture the rivalry essence of Alabama football weekly with vintage-style comic book covers.
For Mississippi State, Boyden pitted a ferocious “Big Al” elephant head-to-head against a Bulldog with a cowbell on its collar.
For Georgia, it was a “battle of the heavyweights” putting a boxing ring at the center of Bryant-Denny Stadium with “Big Al” and “Uga” with fists up, ready for the bell to ring.
And for Tennessee, Boyden drew “Big Al” against “Smokey,” with a Volunteer hunter trying to hold his bluetick coonhound back in the thick of the Great Smoky Mountains.
“He shows me the designs before he makes them, and I give him the full green light,” said Braden Hays, Boryden’s friend who pledged with him in Lambda Chi Alpha. “Like, they’re always insanely sick.”
Boyden said he’s received “a lot more love than expected.” He gets direct messages from students from other schools to do their games. He commissioned a piece for former Alabama defensive lineman Kyle Mann. Boyden plans to sell “knickknack prints” of each comic book cover.
“It’s handcrafted,” Boyden said. “It’s been all done by the hand and work of a human. I think that’s very important. I can support art that’s made today, even done by computer or done by AI, even. But I feel like there’s a certain level of authenticity that comes from it when it is done by hand that people are reverting back to.”
Boyden’s work stops at the comic book cover. He lets Alabama tell its own story each and every week.
Colin Gay covers Alabama football for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network. Reach him atcgay@gannett.comor follow him@_ColinGayon X, formerly known as Twitter or Instagram@colingaytnews.
