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.

[JD DeLuzio]

A repeat from when we did haunted houses and cemeteries: I hadn't known there was an Ellery Queen comic until I found this Dell at a dealer's room of a convention. When non-comic characters wanders into a comic, they usually have far stranger adventures than usual. The comic itself is mediocre, but I love that lurid cover art:

Spoilers: ˙ƃuᴉpuǝ oop-ʎqooɔS ɐ ɟo ʇᴉq ɐ puɐ ƃuᴉɹɹǝɥ pǝɹ ɐ ɟo ʇᴉq ɐ sᴉ uǝʌoɔ ǝɥ┴

[Dave Palmer]

Another cover by Steranko

[Peter Wrexham]

The advertisements for this issue of Showcase really piqued my interest.  I was already aware of Steve Ditko's art from Spider-Man, even though, as previously mentioned, I read very few Marvels.  However, this is the first comic to make me really appreciate his unique style.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I never owned this comic (until it was reprinted in an HC collection), but I did see it advertised in a comic I did own. In my mind, it looked like a yellow guy caught in someone's wild, red mustache. 

[Steve W]

After being introduced to the Legion (courtesy of issue #334) I quickly grew to love the series and the characters, especially Mon-El. His origin story was particularly interesting.  Sadly, Mon-El didn't make it on to the covers of Adventure very often, so whenever he did, that quickly became a favourite. This one in particular really grabbed me.

[Philip Portelli]

Despite the cover not matching the story, I really thought that the Creeper was going to join the Justice League!

[Richard Willis]

DCfandom.com tells me that the Legion foe Beast Boy could disguise himself as any animal. He dies in the story. Mike's Amazing World/Newsstand tells me that Doom Patrol #99(NOV65) introducing the Doom Patrol/Teen Titans hero Beast Boy, went on sale on September 2, 1965. Adventure Comics #339(DEC65 ) featuring the doomed Beast Boy went on sale on October 28, 1965. A case of great-minds-think-alike, not copying.

Adventure #339 is also remarkable for Jerry Siegel's wonderful Superman story "The Night of March 31st," cover blurbed as "The Great Boo-Boo Contest." GCD tells me that this was the first reprinting of the famous April Fool's Day story from Superman #145(MAY61) in which every panel has at least one crazy thing.

Steve W said:

After being introduced to the Legion (courtesy of issue #334) I quickly grew to love the series and the characters, especially Mon-El. His origin story was particularly interesting.  Sadly, Mon-El didn't make it on to the covers of Adventure very often, so whenever he did, that quickly became a favourite. This one in particular really grabbed me.

[Richard Willis]

I was thinking this was a TV show tie-in, but the Ellery Queen TV show* (1975-76) was much later than this comic. The most recent movie had been in 1958, so I guess this was truly inspired by the novels.

* starring Jim Hutton as the son and David Wayne as his Dad. David Wayne will always be the Mad Hatter to me.

JD DeLuzio said:

A repeat from when we did haunted houses and cemeteries: I hadn't known there was an Ellery Queen comic until I found this Dell at a dealer's room of a convention. When non-comic characters wanders into a comic, they usually have far stranger adventures than usual. The comic itself is mediocre, but I love that lurid cover art:

Spoilers: ˙ƃuᴉpuǝ oop-ʎqooɔS ɐ ɟo ʇᴉq ɐ puɐ ƃuᴉɹɹǝɥ pǝɹ ɐ ɟo ʇᴉq ɐ sᴉ uǝʌoɔ ǝɥ┴

[Richard Willis]

Flash #114 was Captain Cold's second appearance and first cover. His original costume was really striking. Also notable was his beard stubble on the cover (hard to see here), which was a rare sight in a villain and a non-sight in the hero at that time. His original shtick was falling in love with the latest woman celebrity and then wooing/kidnapping her. He did this at least a few times.

 

[JD DeLuzio]

Ok...

This is not a real comic cover.

The one below, however, is, though perhaps it communicates something different than what was intended at the time:

[Dave Palmer]

The Fatman series was my introduction to the whimsy of Otto Binder and C. C. Beck

[Peter Wrexham]

Yesterday, I picked the first appearance of Steve Ditko's Creeper as a favourite cover.  I mentioned another comic illustrated by Ditko way back in 2013, when I had this to say in the discussion "The Baron Re-Reads the Justice Society".

Peter Wrexham said on September 20, 2013 at 9:39am:

The Baron said:

they call up The Stalker, who sounds like he should be pestering people's girlfriends but instead is an ancient warrior who's decided to eliminate war by killing everyone, reasoning that without people there can be no war.

This isn't the first appearance of Stalker, though you wouldn't know it from this issue.  He starred as the hero of his own magazine, which ran to four issues in 1975 and 1976.  It was a sword-and-sorcery series, written by Paul Levitz and beautifully (of course!) illustrated by Steve Ditko and Wally Wood.

In the original magazine, Stalker was a slave who sold his soul to Dgrth, the demon lord of war, in return for the skills of an unbeatable warrior.  He intended to use these skills to get revenge on those who had betrayed and enslaved him, but was tricked.  Dgrth took his soul immediately, leaving him unable to gain satisfaction in his revenge.

At the point where the magazine was cancelled, Stalker had discovered that the only way to regain his soul was to destroy Dgrth.  Because the demon was lord of war, he would only die when no-one believed in him - in war - any more. The book ended with Stalker vowing "I shall do the impossible and banish evil from this world -- my soul shall yet be mine!"

It looks as though his project took a bit longer than he'd hoped.  Just possibly he took a wrong turning on the way!

Here's the first issue of that sadly short-lived series (and my first pick that isn't from the 1960's!).