A Cover a Day

[Steve W]

Ok, how about this for an idea.  We take it in turns to post a favourite (British spelling) comic cover every day.  This went really well on the comic fan website that I used to frequent.  What we tried to do was find a theme or subject and follow that, until we all got bored with that theme.  I'd like to propose a theme of letters of the alphabet. So, for the remainder of October (only 5 days) and all of November, we post comic cover pictures associated with the letter "A".  Then in December, we post covers pertaining to the letter "B".  The association to the letter can be as tenuous as you want it to be. For example I could post a cover from "Adventure Comics" or "Amazing Spider Man".  However Spider Man covers can also be posted when we're on the letter "S".  Adventure Comic covers could also be posted when we're on the letter "L" if they depict the Legion of Super Heroes.  So, no real hard, fast rules - in fact the cleverer the interpretation of the letter, the better, as far as I'm concerned.

And it's not written in stone that we have to post a cover every day. There may be some days when no cover gets posted. There's nothing wrong with this, it just demonstrates that we all have lives to lead.

If everyone's in agreement I'd like to kick this off with one of my favourite Action Comic covers, from January 1967. Curt Swan really excelled himself here.

[Dave Palmer]

[Peter Wrexham]

Steve W said:

Peter, your ingenuity knows no bounds!  May I suggest a career in programming/computing!  

Thanks, Steve, but it's too late for that - I retired from one about 7 or 8 years ago!

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Here's the Portuguese version of the Legion

That's a seriously off-brand version of Tharok and Validus.  And it looks remarkably as if they're menacing Marvel's (Carol Danvers) Captain Marvel, as well as Superboy, Cosmic Boy and - er - maybe Sun Boy?

My contribution for today is a Lebanese version of Batman.

Here's what the cover originally looked like.

[Richard Willis]

Hal Jordan in trouble again, from Spain

[Steve W]

In Danish, the Legion of Super-Heroes is Rummets Helte. Who knew?

[Dave Palmer]

I think this month’s theme is going to inspire some detective work.  The cover to the issue before the one Steve W posted was from Adventure #353 with the Fatal Five.

 The scene on the cover Steve W posted arguably is from page 21 (panel 3) also from Adventure #353.

The characters with Superboy would appear to be Princess Projectra with her costume and skin colored quite differently, Cosmic Boy, and Sun Boy—the mostly obscured character in the back has a collar like Sun Boy.  Interestingly, the artwork evokes John Forte to me.
  
Steve W said:

@PeterWrexham

Peter, your ingenuity knows no bounds!  May I suggest a career in programming/computing!  

I took your table, pasted it into a spreadsheet and sorted the columns so that we can see which are the most popular letters/themes.  If we assume that the 'replies' column is roughly equivalent of covers posted, then we have a clear winner.

Date	Page/Reply	Theme (and clickable link)	Pages	Replies
Sep-19	613/6	Apes	28	340
Aug-19	588/5	Beaches	25	297
Feb-18	266/7	Letter P	25	295
Oct-17	178/12	Letter L	24	285
Nov-17	202/9	Letter M	24	280
Apr-18	311/5	Letter S	22	270
Jun-18	354/9	Letter T	21	251
May-18	333/11	Superman’s 80th anniversary	21	250
Oct-19	641/4	Haunted houses/graves	21	250
Jan-18	245/9	Letter O	21	245
Mar-18	291/2	Letters Q & R	20	243
Nov-19	662/4	Motor bikes	20	242
Sep-17	159/3	Letter K	19	237
Dec-17	226/1	Letter N	19	236
Sep-18	411/11	Letter W	20	233
Oct-16	01-Jan	Letter A	19	228
Aug-18	392/11	Letter V	19	228
Mar-19	505/12	Homages/parodies	19	224
Jan-17	37/4	Letter C	18	214
Feb-19	488/2	Real people	17	214
Feb-17	55/2	Letter D	17	208
Dec-16	20-Jan	Letter B	17	207
Jul-18	375/8	Letter U	17	207
Apr-19	524/8	Green-skinned people	17	207
May-19	541/11	Wanted posters	17	201
Jun-17	115/9	Letter H	16	195
Aug-17	143/1	Letter J	16	194
Jan-19	472/4	Person being carried	16	190
Apr-17	87/4	Letter F	15	184
Oct-18	431/4	Letter X	15	180
Jun-19	558/8	Boxing rings	15	180
Mar-17	72/6	Letter E	15	178
Jul-19	573/8	Empty uniforms	15	177
May-17	102/8	Letter G	13	157
Nov-18	446/4	Letter Y	13	156
Dec-18	459/4	Letter Z	13	156
Jul-17	131/12	Letter I	12	133
Dec-19	682/6	Foreign language covers
Jan-20		Playing cards etc
Feb-20		Valentines and cupids
Mar-20		Statues?

Interesting to see that the letter 'P' was the top letter out of all the letters of the alphabet. Wonder why?

I would have thought "S" would have been more popular than "P". 

Fairly obvious why the letter "I" was bottom of the pile.

Anyway, onwards and upwards. Here's the Portuguese version of the Legion.

[Luke Blanchard]

My last for November

I don't know if you noticed, but they're both signed by Jack Keller, the long-running Kid Colt artist. He also signed Steve's cover Nov. 18 and your cover Nov. 25. He did a lot of gearhead material for Charlton. Possibly also the Charlton covers in Dave's posts Nov. 13 and 29, but they're not signed and I don't know what the GCD thinks. 

Dave's Nov. 8 choice, Sgt. Fury #47, blurbs the title as "Tea and Sabotage". That's a play on the title of a once-famous play, Tea and Sympathy.

[JD DeLuzio]

This isn't a translation, but an unauthorized French comic. I saw it on the newstands the first time I went there, but I was low on funds and traveling light, so I do not own a copy:

[Dave Palmer]

From Norway

[Peter Wrexham]

Steve W said:

In Danish, the Legion of Super-Heroes is Rummets Helte. Who knew?

According to Google translate, that means "heroes of the room".  I suspect that a more accurate translation might be "space heroes".

Here's another Danish cover, of a team-up between Batman og Grønne Lygte.

I assume that this is the original version (featuring Batman and Green Lantern, of course).

[Steve W]

This is fascinating stuff - I knew it would be.

"Nembo Kid" was one of the first Italian publications that dealt with US superheroes. Yes it is Superman, but they've renamed him 'Nembo Kid'. 'Nembo' is Italian for the cloud they call nimbus. The 'S' on his chest was painstakingly removed in every issue and from the covers. First his breastplate was made red and in later issues it became yellow. Instead of naming everything 'super' the Italians dubbed everything into 'ultra' to describe his powers. In the sixties, publisher Mondadori had Italian creators devise new stories to fill the weekly title. Under pressure from the moral guardians 'Garanzia Morale' (see their logo on some of the later comics) the writers cut back on the fantasy aspects of the comic. Their vision of Superman is weaker, he hardly flies at all and is often seen jogging to the rescue. The issues are small in size, some people complained the writing could hardly be read.

The first 527 issues bore the name Nembo Kid after which it was renamed Superman Nembo Kid which continued the same numbering. (Thanks to Wikipedia for this).

[Steve W]

[Richard Willis]

Even though "super" is a Latin word which means the same thing in English, French, Italian and Spanish, they chose to avoid the word. I once heard the explanation that the word "superman" was associated with the Nazis.