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]

Peter's statement about comics unsold in the U.S. being shipped to the U.K. doesn't fit with what I know. Unsold comics in the U.S. (when they were still returnable) would be stripped of their covers. The covers were returned to the publisher for credit and the rest of the comics were supposed to be destroyed. Some would be illegally sold as coverless, but if the U.S. comics you were buying seemed brand new and had covers they were probably always intended for the U.K.

After the Army joined me and sent me to Vietnam, we had a PX (post exchange - a small store). Even though we had no plumbing, I bought a self-winding watch there that lasted for 40 years. I also bought comics there every week. Like you describe, they were about three months behind. I suspect that these were also always intended for us. They were just shipped the cheapest way possible - - hence the delay. This wasn't all bad because it made me try other titles from Charlton, etc, that I hadn't been buying already.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"E" is for E-Man. I remember specifically I got this one for being good at the dentist. 

[Dave Palmer]

E-Man, definitely one of my favorites.  At the time I hoped it would lead to an explosion of new superheroes, and some revivals, from Charlton.  Alas, it didn’t necessary come to pass but we did end up with some interesting titles, such as Yang, House of Yang, Vengeance Squad, Doomsday +1, a reinvigorated Phantom and Rog 2000.  I actually subscribed to E-Man so as to not miss an issue—Charlton’s distribution was always hit and miss.  They were mailed flat not folded.

Continuing the doctor/dentist visit theme.  I believe I got this issue of Midnight Tales after a doctor’s visit.  I was hooked.  Nick Cuti stories, Joe Staton, Tom Sutton, and Wayne Howard art.  How could you go wrong?

[Dave Palmer]

As a premium with your Charlton subscription you received this guide—I still have it.

I submitted stories to Charlton.  Nothing was accepted, but I did get a nice postcard signed by Nick Cuti.

[JD DeLuzio]

My comic reading as a kid had as much to do with "EC echo" horror comics. I found Gold Key's painted covers fascinating, and this one works so well that Dark Horse reused it for an archive:

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"F" is for Flash and "G" is for Gordon. I got this beautiful example of Al Williamson artwork in one of King's "three-packs" along with issues of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician. 

[Philip Portelli]

Christmas '72 also had me get my very first Marvel comic which was my introduction to both Spider-Man and Thor!

Also there's a scene in it that still gives me pause!

[Richard Willis]

Continuing the dentist visit theme, the spirit on the cover needs some dental work.

JD DeLuzio said:

My comic reading as a kid had as much to do with "EC echo" horror comics. I found Gold Key's painted covers fascinating, and this one works so well that Dark Horse reused it for an archive:

[Steve W]

I so want this guide - am going to check out ebay right now. Great cover too...

Dave Palmer said:

As a premium with your Charlton subscription you received this guide—I still have it.

I submitted stories to Charlton.  Nothing was accepted, but I did get a nice postcard signed by Nick Cuti.

[Steve W]

Keats E. Petree (21 September 1919 – 26 November 1997) was an American illustrative artist with significant contributions to both pulp magazines and comic strips in the 1940s and 1950s. His works were primarily in color, as inked strips and both oil and watercolor paintings. Petree's most memorable comic book credits were for the later comic versions of Sally the Sleuth, a pulp comic strip heroine created originally by Adolphe Barreaux in 1934 in Spicy Detective Stories, but his greatest recognition was earned by his pulp color work for the Queenie Starr series, also in Spicy Detective Stories. Other notable Petree work included The Lone Ranger (Dell/Western), Girl Friday (Trojan), the Sally the Sleuth pulp installment entitled Blonde Decoy (in this case for Private Detective Stories, August 1950), Wilma West: The Range Runs Red (Leading Western, September, 1950), a daily strip and Sunday strip in the fifties, Nick Haliday, and a wide variety of other pulp and comic issues. He also produced an undetermined number of non-genre oil and watercolor paintings.

He also drew this amazing cover. The perspective is astonishing.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"H" is for Hulk. #167 was not only my first Hulk, but #168 was my first consecutive issue if any title ever (and it has a great cover, too). If you wanna talk about perspective, look at either of these.

I say #167 was my first Hulk, but I bought MSH #38 on the same day (picked 'em both out myself). I don't count it as my "first" because it was a reprint, even if the story had originally appeared years earlier. (That's a nice perspective shot, too, come to think of it.)

[Richard Willis]

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