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	26	310
Jun 2022	1394/9	George Perez	19	227
Jul 2022	1413/8	Parents	30	356
Aug 2022	1443/4	Fairgrounds and Carnivals	24	285
Sep 2022	1467/1	Joe Kubert	19	238
Oct 2022	1486/11	First and last issues	27	324
Nov 2022	1513/11	Classrooms and Education	22	264
Dec 2022	1535/11	Robots and Cyborgs	33	392
Jan 2023	1568/7	Trials and Courtrooms	28	330
Feb 2023	1596/1	Doctors, Nurses and Hospitals	24	292
Mar 2023	1620/5	Detectives & Murder Mysteries
Apr 2023		Birds and Winged Creatures
May 2023		Strength in Numbers

[Jeff of Earth-J]

After Marvel Two-In-One came to an end, the Thing was given his own solo, non-team-up, title.

Marvel's other long-running team-up title was...

[Lee Houston, Junior]

As mentioned in my last post, Time Warp was a short lived science fiction anthology. DC published 5 bimonthly issues in their Dollar Comic format between 1979-80, all with covers by Michael Kaluta. It tried taking a more mature Comics Code Approved approach to storytelling as in better than the average Silver Age tale but nowhere near something you'd find in Heavy Metal. When the title was canceled, the unused material was published as the previously mentioned short lived revival of Mystery In Space. I have and loved the original series.

Surprisingly, there was also a Vertigo one shot in published in 2013 which I'm still trying to track down to read. 

Cover images courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.

[Richard Willis]

I had to look this one up. I had never seen this Ms Marvel costume before. marvel.fandom,com tells me that this Ms Marvel is a character called Sharon Ventura, which was also news to me.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

After Marvel Two-In-One came to an end, the Thing was given his own solo, non-team-up, title.

[Dave Palmer]

Drift Marlo was a comic strip from 1961-1971.  Dell published two issues in 1962.

Page 1 from issue #1

[Philip Portelli]

The Gunhawks started as a cross between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Defiant Ones but didn't last long and even ended with writing off Kid Cassidy to focus on the more interesting Reno Jones!

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"I had never seen this Ms Marvel costume before. marvel.fandom,com tells me that this Ms Marvel is a character called Sharon Ventura, which was also news to me."

Yes, Richard, you probably also read that this version of Ms. Marvel joined the FF for a time after Sue and Reed Richards took a leave of absence and Ben Grimm led the team. She eventually mutated into a first-lumpy-then-rocky version of the Thing. She officially kept the moniker Ms. Marvel, but fandom unofficially dubbed her "She-Thing" during this period. For a while, the team consisted of the Thing (Ben Grimm), Ms. Marvel (Sharon Ventura), the Human Torch (Johnny Storm) and Crystal as written by Steve Englehart. Engelhart was enthusiastic about writing this version of the team, until Marvel editorial decided that all Marvel titles should be exactly the same as the were in the sixties. Englehart walked soon after that.

Since we're talking about the Fantastic Four, my submission for today is...

Again, any number higher than #416 you may have seen doesn't count because it wasn't achieved sequentially.  Specifically, you will not find issues numbered #417 through #508, or #612 through #641.

[Steve W]

Adventures into the Unknown (from ACG) started life with issue #1 in Fall 1948, and finished with issue #174 in August 1967. The series started as a horror comic, but following Wertham in 1954, switched to more of a sci-fi genre. 

[Richard Willis]

Thanks, Jeff. I only read the synopsis for The Thing #36 and didn't even realize that Sharon Ventura became part of the FF. I'd heard about several other members that temporarily joined the team, but not this version of Ms Marvel. During my ten years of cold-turkey on comics buying I got all of my info from Comic Buyer's Guide. Obviously, there were things I missed.

[Richard Willis]

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Ooh, that's a good one! Wish I'd've thought of it.

[Lee Houston, Junior]

To conclude my sci-fi trip down memory lane, DC published 25 issues of From Beyond The Unknown between 1969-1973. Unlike Mystery In Space and Strange Adventures, this anthology was a reprint series from the start, although it (presumably) "cherry picked" the best stories of the past that didn't feature a recurring character.

FBTU surprisingly also got a special as part of DC's Walmart 100 page giant exclusives before that project folded.

I'm still hoping to see more good comic book science fiction outside of licensed properties some day.

(Images courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.)

[Peter Wrexham]

Philip Portelli said:

The Gunhawks started as a cross between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Defiant Ones but didn't last long and even ended with writing off Kid Cassidy to focus on the more interesting Reno Jones!

So, exactly like what happened to The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis?  Well, except that it lasted 124 issues (40 with the two of them, 84 after Martin was dropped), rather than 7.  And I'm not quite sure about describing Lewis as "more interesting".