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.

Date	Page/Reply	Theme (and clickable link)	Pages	Replies
Oct 2016	1/1	Letter A	19	228
Dec 2016	20/1	Letter B	17	207
Jan 2017	37/4	Letter C	18	214
Feb 2017	55/2	Letter D	17	208
Mar 2017	72/6	Letter E	15	178
Apr 2017	87/4	Letter F	15	184
May 2017	102/8	Letter G	13	157
Jun 2017	115/9	Letter H	16	195
Jul 2017	131/12	Letter I	12	133
Aug 2017	143/1	Letter J	16	194
Sep 2017	159/3	Letter K	19	237
Oct 2017	178/12	Letter L	24	285
Nov 2017	202/9	Letter M	24	280
Dec 2017	226/1	Letter N	19	236
Jan 2018	245/9	Letter O	21	245
Feb 2018	266/7	Letter P	25	295
Mar 2018	291/2	Letters Q & R	20	243
Apr 2018	311/5	Letter S	22	270
May 2018	333/11	Superman’s 80th anniversary	21	250
Jun 2018	354/9	Letter T	21	250
Jul 2018	375/7	Letter U	17	207
Aug 2018	392/10	Letter V	19	228
Sep 2018	411/10	Letter W	20	233
Oct 2018	431/3	Letter X	15	180
Nov 2018	446/3	Letter Y	13	156
Dec 2018	459/3	Letter Z	13	156
Jan 2019	472/3	Person being carried	16	190
Feb 2019	488/1	Real people	17	214
Mar 2019	505/11	Homages/parodies	19	224
Apr 2019	524/7	Green-skinned people	17	207
May 2019	541/10	Wanted posters	17	201
Jun 2019	558/7	Boxing rings	15	180
Jul 2019	573/7	Empty uniforms	15	177
Aug 2019	588/4	Beaches	25	297
Sep 2019	613/1	Apes	28	340
Oct 2019	641/5	Haunted houses/graves	21	250
Nov 2019	662/3	Motor bikes	21	254
Dec 2019	683/5	Foreign language covers	17	209
Jan 2020	700/10	Playing cards/tabletop games	23	275
Feb 2020	723/9	Valentines and Cupids	22	259
Mar 2020	745/4	Statues	21	256
Apr 2020	766/8	Elephants	22	263
May 2020	788/7	Heroes & villains cooperating	17	198
Jun 2020	805/1	The Moon	26	322
Jul 2020	831/11	Flags & patriotic symbols	18	215
Aug 2020	849/10	Foreign locations (non-US)	20	233
Sep 2020	869/3	MST3K (with commentary)	24	292
Oct 2020	893/7	Vampires and Werewolves	20	245
Nov 2020	913/12	Giants	24	286
Dec 2020	937/10	Snow & winter scenes	24	289
Jan 2021	961/11	Doppelgängers	32	377
Feb 2021	993/4	Movies	23	275
Mar 2021	1016/3	Cats/cat-themed adventurers	22	263
Apr 2021	1038/2	Dogs/dog-themed adventurers	25	305
May 2021	1063/7	Big guns/Heavy weaponry	25	302
Jun 2021	1088/9	Dinosaurs/Time Travel	28	338
Jul 2021	1116/11	Big Questions/Question Marks	28	330
Aug 2021	1144/5	Highways, Travel etc	19	232
Sep 2021	1163/9	Favourite Covers/Comics	28	330
Oct 2021	1191/3	Lineups	21	260
Nov 2021	1212/11	JSA 80th Anniversary	23	269
Dec 2021	1235/4	Logos in the action	26	317
Jan 2022	1261/9	Dynamic Duos	29	348
Feb 2022	1290/9	Romantic Scenes	26	313
Mar 2022	1316/10	Bridges	29	339
Apr 2022	1345/1	Unexpected Green	23	286
May 2022	1368/11	Neal Adams
Jun 2022		George Perez
Jul 2022		Parents
Aug 2022		Fairgrounds/Carnivals

[Richard Willis]

I think I saw this cover in a house ad first, and was prompted to buy it as my first Doom Patrol comic. Who could resist a tommy-gun-wielding gorilla taking orders from a disembodied brain?* The first issue is #86, being renamed from My Greatest Adventure and continuing its numbering. The DP debuted in MGA #80 and I soon had 80-85.

*Happily, these guys appear in the season 3 trailer for the Doom Patrol show on HBOmax.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

My first Spider-Man. I had to wait seven years (seemed like forever!) until #74 was reprinted in Marvel Tales #55 and I found out how the story ended.

My clue that it was coming up was seeing Marvel Tales #54 on the spinner rack. I don't know whose idea it was to add bricks and an alleyway to the background, but it made for a far less effective cover. 

[Peter Wrexham]

I had this to say back in 2014, in Detective 445's discussion "The Definitive..........Green Lantern?"

Peter Wrexham said on February 17, 2014 at 9:51pm:

I'd commend the Silver Age tale "The Strange World Named Green Lantern" from GL #24 (October 1963), in which Hal, on a space mission, encounters and makes friends with a sentient planet! It's wonderfully bizarre piece of SF told in about 8 pages. Strangely enough, although it's illustrated on the cover, it takes second place in the issue. The lead story is "The Shark that Hunted Human Prey", which is the first appearance of Hal's foe the Shark.

This tale could also be seen a prefiguring (or being the origin of) Mogo, who is a planet-sized member of the GL Corps introduced in Alan Moore's story "Mogo Doesn't Socialize" from GL #188 (May 1985).

It's also a great cover, by Gil Kane and (again) that man Murphy Anderson!

[JD DeLuzio]

Richard Willis said:

JD DeLuzio said:

This one looks like some strange and nightmarish sex ed film, but the actual story being illustrated* is exactly the sort of thing an imaginative little kid would think about when he was walking home at night:

*˙sɹǝʇsuoɯ ƃuᴉʇɐǝ-ɥsǝlɟ ʎllɐǝɹ ǝɹɐ ʇɐɥʇ sʇɥƃᴉlʇǝǝɹʇS

Standing on my head to read this took a lot out of me!

¡ǝsᴉɔɹǝxǝ ǝɯos ʇoƃ noʎ pɐlפ

[Steve W]

Moving on from Gene to issue 6 from me. This one was also edited by Stan Lee; the cover was drawn by John Buscema, and inked by his brother Sal. The cover is both brilliant and preposterous.  The two poses utterly brilliant but the juxtaposition of one to the other utterly preposterous. How could Thor hope to strike the Surfer with his hammer if he's only just drawn it back, ready to swing it? The Surfer is just one millisecond away from him!  An utterly compelling cover - I just want to stare at it...

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"I just want to stare at it..."

You should buy the statue(s) 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Richard Willis said:

This is the issue that revealed/retconned Brainiac from a flesh-and-blood alien to an extremely advanced humanoid robot.

An homage...

[Dave Palmer]

I’ve been on the road all day so I didn’t post earlier, so I’ll go ahead and follow up Richard’s Doom Patrol cover.  They were one of my favorites during the Silver Age.

l don’t know if I actually had this issue, but I did see it in an ad.  Even without Larry’s helpful exposition I knew Cliff was in real danger, since he was a brain in a robot body.  I didn’t worry too much about the Metal Men, which by the time of this issue I had a subscription to, because I knew if anything happened to them, then Doc Magnus would just whisk them into the Metal Recovery Room and they’d be as good as new.

Also I’m a sucker for schematic diagrams.  I’m sure at that time it would have been very useful for building my own robots.

[Philip Portelli]

I got this one at a yard sale decades ago and read it until it fell apart. This was probably my first exposure to the Doom Patrol and the closest they got to teaming with the Justice League!

But man, does the Flash look weird!

[JD DeLuzio]

One of the earliest Marvels I read. Clearly, this was a different world from Batman and Superman's.

The cover features some impressive hero-fight posing:

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Man and boy by George Perez.

[Dave Palmer]

Wham-O Giant Comics from 1967.  This thing is huge (21 inches by 14 inches).  My copy is a bit ragged since it is hard to store.

It included Radian by Wally Wood.  It is only three pages, but as you can see a lot of story was packed into each page.

As well as Goody Bumpkin