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

[Lee Houston, Junior]

You just can't keep a good moose (or squirrel) down. Bullwinkle and Rocky returned for 9 issues under Marvel's Star Comics imprint between 1987-9 and every issue read like an episode of the old TV series with a moose and squirrel adventure opening and closing the book while other features (Bullwinkle's Corner, Peabody's Improbably History, Dudley Doright, and more) were inbetween.

(Images courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.)

[Richard Willis]

Metamorpho, first and last. Ramona Fradon was one of the artists that led me to accept a variety of art styles.

From the run. Rex's unbelievable girlfriend is apparently not only inside him, but breathing him, too.

[Richard Willis]

House of Secrets, first and last

Covers from the run (with comments)

A guy ahead of his time

This cover may have got one past the CCA

I know I bought this one off the spinner rack

The first full cover appearance of Eclipso, five issues after his introduction

First (sorta) appearance of Swamp Thing

First cover image of Abel, one of my favorites from Sandman

For a title that started after the Code, this was the first truly scary cover

[Jeff of Earth-J]

2016 SERIES:

NOTE: #11 was the actual last issue, but I like this cover better. 

[Peter Wrexham]

Starfire was a series that I enjoyed, but the character was, sadly, a good deal less enduring than her later namesake.  Having four different scriptwriters over the course of eight issues probably didn't help.

First issue, September 1976

Final issue, #8, November 1977.  Not even her increasingly-scanty costume could save her from cancellation!

[Steve W]

The Silver age brought about the revitalisation of a number of Golden-age super heroes; none more eagerly anticipated by me than The Spectre. He first reappeared in Showcase #60 (Feb 1966). After 3 issues, he made some appearances in JLA (#46-47) then switched to his own title, which ended, after a short run, with Spectre #10 (May/June 1969). I for one, was disappointed, not with the abrupt ending (although it was very abrupt) but with the character itself. It failed to live up to (my) expectations. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Has anyone done Spider-Man yet? I don't think so.

In case anyone's wondering how "The Final Chapter" can be "Part 1 of 4"...

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Happier alternate cover to "The Final Chapter" Part 4:

[Dave Palmer]

Last day of the month, let’s see what we still have kicking around.

A series from 1967 that I enjoyed a great deal.  It also introduced me to the whimsy of Otto Binder and C.C. Beck.

And in 1991 

just in time for Halloween we have from John Stanley’s Melvin Monster

this is the first issue from 1965

it ran until 1967 for 9 issues 

there was a tenth issue in 1969 but it reprinted #1, so let’s stick with the penultimate issue cover.

The same holds for my last series, also from Dell and segueing into November’s theme of schools. Room 222 was a tv series I did watch every once and awhile.  There were three new issues in 1970 and #1 was reprinted in 1971.  Here are #1 and #3 (instead of #4).

[Steve W]

Seeing as it's Halloween, I thought I'd go with 'First and Last' for The Spirit. Little did I know what I was taking on! There are so many issues/variants/publishers/comic strips of The Spirit that the whole thing is too complex for one mere mortal to follow.

Anyway the first appearance of the Spirit in a comicbook (as opposed to a comic strip) seems to be issue 1(1940) from Quality comics.

There was a rerun of the series in the 60s/70s when Harvey Comics ran their version of issue 1.

The final issue is lost in a quagmire of 'final issues' but I'll go with the one below, from June 1983.

I dropped another one in, mainly because I liked it so much.  Happy Halloween, everybody!

[Philip Portelli]

Despite having a really boring Marvel Super Special cover, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA lasted a good 23 issues, more than Logan's Run, Man From Atlantis and even Star Trek!

[Peter Wrexham]

Ninja High School started in 1987 as a three-issue limited series from Antarctic Press, but became a continuing series with issue #4, and transferred to Malibu with issue #5.  It later transferred back to Antarctic, and, despite experiencing a number of hiatuses in publication, relaunches and continuity resets over the years, it still seems to be ongoing.  I've picked this title to end the month as a sort of bridge to next month's theme of "Classrooms and Schools" or whatever we end up calling it.  Slightly disappointingly it doesn't really match my original concept for the theme, as there's no actual classroom depicted on these covers, but it's the best I could come up with!

Issue #1 ("of 3"), dated just 1987:

Final issue to date, #181, dated May 2021: