Book Review: The Art of Marvel SNAP
March 24th 2025
Marvel Snap has now received the artbook treatment from Dark Horse after its release on mobile and Windows in 2022. For those unaware, it is a digital card game from Second Dinner that has players facing off against bots and each other, using Marvel characters from across the multi-verse. It remains very popular and more cards are still being added.
The Art of Marvel SNAP was released on March 18th 2025 and showcases the art for over 100 of the characters and locations featured in the game, with more than 300 illustrations shown across its 224 pages.
I’ll go through my thoughts on the book based on the usual 5 points for a book review; build quality, content, credits, use of space and value. You can find photos and a video preview below as well.
Build Quality
This is another book from Dark Horse, publisher of many video game artbooks, so it’s no surprise that this is another solid release. It comes in at their standard size of 9 x 12 inches (23.52 x 31.29 cm) and with a hardcover as expected. The pages are of good quality and the binding is strong as always too.
What's more unique with this book is the reflective cover art, which is reminiscent of a shiny card, commonly found in many collectible card games. Marvel SNAP has its own version of this with ‘Infinity Splits’, making it a nice touch.
Content
This book does exactly what it says on the tin and nothing more. It’s described as featuring over 300 pieces of art with insights from Second Dinner. Book descriptions don’t always include everything inside as artbooks can contain a big mix of content, but that is not the case here. Think of this as ‘The Art in Marvel SNAP’, rather than the concepts and developmental art found in most ‘Art of’ books.
The Art of Marvel SNAP is split into 3 chapters; Heroes, Villains and Locations. In the hero and villain chapters you get one spread per character, with one large piece of art and 4 - 7 smaller variants. It highlights the card art from different artists for each one, with a nice mix of styles that makes for a fun look at some well-known heroes and villains.
I really like the art they chose for the characters, the diversity is appreciated and it makes for a more interesting book. The pieces found here can go from pixel art to much more realistic styles, with everything in between. A lot of the art would fit right at home in a modern comic book, but Second Dinner also reaches outside of this aesthetic, so it offers fans an introduction to very different artists, as well as new takes on familiar faces in the Marvel universe.
The chapter with locations is lacking though, as it only provides a single illustration for each one. It would have been nice to see some more here, even if it was a couple of images. It’s the last chapter which is a disappointing way to end the book, because while I do like the art they included, it just isn’t anywhere near as engaging as the previous chapters.
If you are after early art, concepts, breakdowns or sketches, you won’t find that here. This is an illustration showcase, giving fans a printed gallery of artwork from the talented people involved. While it would have been compelling to see early iterations for select pieces, Second Dinner has opted to go the route of creating an illustration book, worth pointing out for those wanting something different.
The text is unfortunately lacklustre and doesn’t provide the deep insights I was hoping for, despite being well written. It is used for a brief description of the character or location and sometimes references art seen on the page. It includes a quote every now and again as well, but overall, it's all too brief. I would have liked to have read more about the behind-the-scenes of working with the artists, or thoughts and ideas from the artists themselves. There isn’t a huge amount of space for the text though, so it would have been difficult to get a deep dive regardless of how it was approached.
Credits
The Art of Marvel SNAP does a great job at crediting the artists as you would expect in a book like this. Fans of comic books and art in general may recognise names featured here too. Some artists are featured heavily throughout, such as Ryan Kinnaird, Dan Hipp, Eduardo Mello and Pandart Studio. Others less so, but it is good that they are not only featured, but credited at the bottom of each image, which is the best way to do it.
Use of Space
This book does a great job of filling the space on each page, while also allowing the art to breathe. The image sizes are also very good, allowing readers to see all the details, helped with the high print quality you expect from an artbook. As mentioned before, it would have been nice to get more art for the locations, perhaps a change in design could have allowed this.
I do think they should have used multiple layouts as the pages are all set up in the same way. Even if it was a simple as moving featured character art to either of the edges and having the smaller variants moved to the centre, then rotating the layouts throughout. The images for the characters are all in portrait, as seen on the cards in the game, which makes big changes hard, but when every spread is the same it becomes less interesting than it potentially could be.
Value
Like previous artbooks from Dark Horse, the full retail price is $50/ £45. For an artbook, this is a standard price so there is no sticker shock here. I use Amazon for price checking to stay consistent and, at the time of writing this, the book is already over 30% off in the UK and 6% off in the US. I recommend checking Amazon for discounts or looking elsewhere to find the best deal.
For this book specifically, the RRP is too high for me, so I would definitely recommend finding it on offer. The current UK price at just over £30 is something I would be more comfortable recommending, even to a big fan of the game, based on the content you are getting here.
Verdict
The Art of Marvel SNAP is a great book for showcasing some of the artists involved with the game, with over 300 pieces of art displayed superbly in a quality hardcover. This book is ideal for players that want to sit and enjoy some developer-selected card art, Marvel art collectors or people that would like some varied references. The book has also given me more artists to look up and follow online, which is never a bad thing!
However, if you are wanting more than just the finished pieces or looking for deeper insights into the game and the art itself, you’ll be left disappointed. There isn't a lot of behind-the-scenes commentary, the layouts are repetitive and the location pages feel lacking compared to those for heroes and villains. As much as I like the art, I feel like they could have done a little more here. Though it delivers on what it said it would, there are things they can do within that scope to offer more and create an improved time with the book.
For those that would like to add this to their shelf, you can order The Art of Marvel SNAP here;
Tags;
Based On: #MarvelSNAP Series: #Marvel Publisher: #DarkHorse Studio: #SecondDinner #Nuverse
Comments