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.

[Steve W]

And I don't think we've yet seen an appearance of The Brave & The Bold either! But the gorilla phenomenon even reached the covers of DC's try-out comic.

[Dave Palmer]

This is just weird

[Steve W]

I have a question for Peter, given that Peter seems to enjoy statistics. Pete, we've posted a lot of covers so far this month, because the subject of apes is fairly easy to find covers on. This was also true in August when we were posting beach covers. However it wasn't true in July when we were posting empty costume covers.

My question is - how many covers have we posted so far in September, how does this compare with the whole of August, and also with the whole of July?  I'm guessing that you have access to an algorithm that enables you to access this data quickly.  I certainly wouldn't expect you to count them all.

[Peter Wrexham]

Oh dear, it seems as if I'm getting typecast!

I do have some statistics about the relative popularity of the different subjects we've been posting, though it doesn't go down to an actual count of covers.  I'm afraid that when I was comparing Flash vs Superman empty costumes, I was actually counting the covers manually!  It might be possible for someone with the appropriate expertise to write a program to examine the HTML source of the "Cover a Day" topic, and count the number of images included.  I'm not that person!  Even then, it would be a real pig to strip out duplicate covers, whether caused by two people posting the same image, or someone quoting an earlier post.  I suspect that things like emojis would mess up the statistics too.

What I can tell you is (approximately) the number of pages occupied by each subject.  I've got a spreadsheet which lists all the themes to date, the page on which they started, and a clickable link to the first post on each theme.  From this you can see (approximately) how many pages are occupied by each subject.  Every page appears to contain 12 replies/posts, so if a theme has 10 pages, there will be about 120 posts to the theme (somewhere from 109 to 131, depending upon where on the page the start and end points are).  Unfortunately, there's no direct relationship between the number of replies and the number of covers, as you can include multiple covers in a single reply, or make a reply that includes no images.

So, the best I can do in response to your question is say that July (empty uniforms) had 15 pages; August (beaches) had 25 pages; and September to date has 9 pages.  The most apparently popular earlier subjects were the Letter L (24 pages), and the Letter P (25 pages).  The least apparently popular were the Letters G, Y and Z (13 pages each), and the Letter I (12 pages).

I'll bet you're sorry you asked, now!

For those who are interested, here's the spreadsheet.  I hope I've managed to copy it into my reply successfully.

Date	Page	Theme (and clickable link)	Pages
Oct 2016	1	Letter A	19
Dec 2016	20	Letter B	17
Jan 2017	37	Letter C	18
Feb 2017	55	Letter D	17
Mar 2017	72	Letter E	15
Apr 2017	87	Letter F	15
May 2017	102	Letter G	13
Jun 2017	115	Letter H	16
Jul 2017	131	Letter I	12
Aug 2017	143	Letter J	16
Sep 2017	159	Letter K	19
Oct 2017	178	Letter L	24
Nov 2017	202	Letter M	24
Dec 2017	226	Letter N	19
Jan 2018	245	Letter O	21
Feb 2018	266	Letter P	25
Mar 2018	291	Letters Q & R	20
Apr 2018	311	Letter S	22
May 2018	333	Superman’s 80th anniversary	21
Jun 2018	354	Letter T	21
Jul 2018	375	Letter U	17
Aug 2018	392	Letter V	19
Sep 2018	411	Letter W	20
Oct 2018	431	Letter X	15
Nov 2018	446	Letter Y	13
Dec 2018	459	Letter Z	13
Jan 2019	472	Person being carried	16
Feb 2019	488	Real people	17
Mar 2019	505	Homages/parodies	19
Apr 2019	524	Green-skinned people	17
May 2019	541	Wanted posters	17
Jun 2019	558	Boxing rings	15
Jul 2019	573	Empty uniforms	15
Aug 2019	588	Beaches	25
Sep 2019	613	Apes	9 so far
Oct 2019		Haunted houses/graves
Nov 2019		Motor bikes
Dec 2019		Foreign

[Steve W]

Peter, I have only one word to say - wow!  I'm staggered!

A word of warning - I think you need to get out more.

But seriously - I (and, I imagine the rest of the team) am grateful for your studious attention to detail.

But it proves my point - Beaches was a very popular cover theme- as popular as the letter "P".

Incidentally why was "P" so popular?  

Here's the challenge. It's September 13. We're on 9 pages. Let's see if we can beat the world record of 25 pages.  And if anyone knows why the letter "P" was so popular (was it because we combined it with the letter "Q"?) please let me know.

[Peter Wrexham]

Steve W said:

A word of warning - I think you need to get out more.

Heh - you think I don't know that?  I'm off on holiday from next Tuesday to the end of the month, so perhaps that will do the trick!  I don't know what I'll have in the way of internet while I'm away, so I may be going quiet for a while.  Don't worry (or get your hopes up) - I'll be back early in October if not before!

The first cover this month was posted by JD DeLuzio, and showed a flying gorilla (Strange Adventures #125).  A few replies later, I posted Hawkman #6, in which Hawkman fights a flying gorilla.  I've now found Super-Team Family #3, in which Hawkman becomes a flying gorilla!

[JD DeLuzio]

So many ape covers. Try to understand, try to understand...

Also, those planets are part of the logo, but it makes it look as though Magicman and Ancient Ape exist on some parallel world with multiple satellites.

[Dave Palmer]

If we need more ape covers, then I’ll start emptying the files early.  I don’t think we’ve had these yet from these characters.

[Richard Willis]

If you're The Flash, how does a flying gorilla catch you?

Peter Wrexham said:

 I've now found Super-Team Family #3, in which Hawkman becomes a flying gorilla!

[Peter Wrexham]

Richard Willis said:

If you're The Flash, how does a flying gorilla catch you?

If you're The Flash, how does anyone catch you?  You can run faster than light, you should be able to deal with any threat before anyone even knows that you're there!

Unless, of course, you're dealing with another super-speedster.  As can be seen below, other such super-speedsters may include Max Monkey and Chimpulse, and involve another use of the "Gorilla Warfare" pun.

[Peter Wrexham]

Over almost a quarter of a century, the original run of Strange Adventures used a great many ape covers.  These three covers are, as far as I can tell, for quite unrelated stories, but they follow pleasingly on from each other.

[Richard Willis]

Here's the reprint of the Trial of John (Gorilla) Doe. A little more violent.