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.

[Philip Portelli]

"Well at least he's not frozen this time!"

[JD DeLuzio]

About 50 still live there, tarnished by a sex scandal  from earlier this century. Don't look it up if you're uncomfortable with seeing what happens when the descendants of a handful of sailors and their teenage girlfriends live in isolation for over 200 years.

I understand land there is cheap.

Richard Willis said:

A fight on the beach on Pitcairn's Island. This was the third book in the fictionalized trilogy that began with Mutiny on the Bounty. Pitcairn's Island was where the mutineers settled. Their descendants are still there.

[Steve W]

Gosh, Pitcairn's Island makes an interesting read on wikipedia. Although in their defence, they did give the vote to women in 1838, almost 100 years before women were given the vote in mainland Britain.

Perhaps this cover is based on a beach in the Pitcairn Islands.

[Peter Wrexham]

Some unlikely characters model the latest male beach fashions.

[JD DeLuzio]

Is that the young Stan Lee doing a cameo on that Summer Love cover?

Also, I'm amazed we made it this far into the month without someone posting this notorious beach cover:

Steve W said:

Perhaps this cover is based on a beach in the Pitcairn Islands.

[Richard Willis]

[Dave Palmer]

A couple of covers where the “beach” isn’t really that critical to the image

[Philip Portelli]

Why are all comic book lighthouses a magnet for mystery and menace?

[Richard Willis]

Because they featured the first movie appearances of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, I recently watched My Friend Irma (1949) and My Friend Irma Goes West (1950). They were cute, enjoyable movies spun off from the My Friend Irma radio show. I had never heard of this show before watching these movies. After spinning off the two movies there was a TV series that lasted two years. The corner photo on the Atlas comic book depicts Marie Wilson as Irma, a dingbat blonde. The comic was a collaboration of Stan Lee and Dan DeCarlo.

Richard Willis said:

[Steve W]

[JD DeLuzio]

We're just supposed to assume that Bluto/Brutus did something to deserve being buried alive. And where did those two Village of the Damned-spawn come from, just behind Popeye. Also-- what's up with the polka-dot-wearing character in the water? Are they falling out of the boat? Did the boat hit them? Are they performing a dramatic role mid-air? Falling from a passing plane?

Sometimes you start looking at one of these covers, and it just bugs you:

Steve W said:

[Peter Wrexham]

Surfing?  Oh, the horror!