Ironheart steps up for Marvel Black History Month covers

Iron Man #17 variant cover
Iron Man #17 variant cover (Image credit: Marvel Comics)

Marvel Comics will celebrate Black History Month in 2022 with a series of six variant covers across its main comic book titles in February. Like its 2021 Black History Month variant covers, Marvel's 2022 Black History Month variant covers are all illustrated by one person - Joshua 'Sway' Swaby.

Joshua 'Sway' Swaby

Joshua 'Sway' Swaby (Image credit: Joshua 'Sway' Swaby)

Swaby is a Brooklyn-based artist who has illustrated covers for Marvel, DC, Image Comics, Z2 Comics, and Vault Comics. Keeping the superhero tip going, he also illustrated a Falcon and Winter Soldier piece for Entertainment Weekly's coverage of the Disney Plus streaming series, as well as worked as a concept artist for Marvel Studios on What If...? and several other unannounced projects. 

Here is a list of the six Black History Month variant covers Swaby is illustrating for Marvel, along with their announced 2022 release dates:

  • February 9: Devil's Reign #4 (of 6) featuring Luke Cage
  • February 9: Avengers #53 features Miles Morales/Spider-Man
  • February 16: X-Men #8 featuring Storm
  • February 16: Dark Ages #5 (of 6) featuring Monica Rambeau/Spectrum
  • February 23: Iron Man #17 featuring Ironheart
  • February 23: Captain America/Iron Man #4 (of 5) featuring Captain America (Sam Wilson)

Here are the covers released so far:

Marvel will also be publishing a new edition of Marvel's Voices: Legacy in February 2022, spotlighting its Black characters in stores created by Black creators.

Marvel is well-represented with our list of the Black superheroes who changed the face of comic books. 

Chris Arrant

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)