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.

[Peter Wrexham]

Steve W's "Planet of the Japes" cover from The Beano reminds me that I have two covers from other British comics to post.

[Dave Palmer]

Richard,

Thanks for the info about Super Gorillas vs. All-American Liberty Legion.

[Dave Palmer]

As originally just a guy in an ape suit, does Ape-Man of the Ani-Men count?

[Peter Wrexham]

If you can get past the legs that fill the foreground, this cover seems to show a gorilla...

...playing baseball...

...with a light-sabre!?

[JD DeLuzio]

Traditional comic-book gorillas walk upright, like they're King Kong or guys in gorilla suits in old movies or Don Martin cartoons. Here are a couple of exceptions:

[Dave Palmer]

Another smattering

[Richard Willis]

Recenty the TV news showed a real gorilla who had figured out how to walk upright at a zoo. The video is from 2008. The best is at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MXWMSXFigM

JD DeLuzio said:

Traditional comic-book gorillas walk upright, like they're King Kong or guys in gorilla suits in old movies or Don Martin cartoons. 

[Peter Wrexham]

"Yarn Man vs Cowboy Gorilla"?  Well, that's just Bizarre!

[JD DeLuzio]

"Quiet Nova!"

"Quiet Nova!"?!?

Gold Key adapted Beneath the Planet of the Apes first; Marvel re-adapted it a couple years later, first in black and white, and then in regular comic reprints:

[Dave Palmer]

Apes go to war

[Dave Palmer]

Back on the 13th Peter Wrexham supplied us with all sorts of stats as to how many pages of covers we've posted for each letter/topic.  Steve W suggested a challenge to set a record (at least 26 pages) with apes.  It is now the 20th.  Two thirds of the month is gone.  We have 13 pages (626-613), although we are actually on our 14th page.  Using 13 pages and 20 days we are on a pace of 0.65 pages per day.  Over 30 days that works out to 19.5 pages (20 with rounding).  We're going to fall a bit short.  

We're talking covers with apes (and I think we've been okay with monkeys and ape-like space monsters), 26 pages should be doable.  

I think it is still possible.  There are still a lot of "ape" covers out there.

Reply by Steve W on September 13, 2019 at 5:06pm

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.

[Richard Willis]

More gun-toting apes