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.

Fairgrounds/Carnivals

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
Aug 2022		Fairgrounds/Carnivals

[Richard Willis]

A rare book-length imaginary tale and one of my favorites

[Jeff of Earth-J]

First appearance of "The Man of Steel."

[Dave Palmer]

I remember seeing this advertised but I don't think I ever had the opportunity to actually read the story.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

You know what, Dave? I actually have that comic and I bought it fairly recently (about a year or so ago). My secondary LCS has boxes of mid-grade Silver Age comics cheap and there was a continued back-up story for a discussion I was leading (imaginary stories, I think). For the discussion this month, I was going to post a whole bunch of Action Comics #1 homage covers, but there are just to many. Click here instead.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"I actually have that comic and I bought it fairly recently (about a year or so ago)."

Found it. Here's what I posted about "Earth-332" on January 9, 2017:

"I used to feel sorry for Supergirl because her cousin treated her so shabbily (in my estimation) during her formative years on Earth, but this story indicates she wouldn’t have been any nicer to Superboy had their situations been reversed. The set-up switches Jor-El’s family with Zor-El’s with one notable exception: in addition to inventing a test rocket to escape Krypton’s destruction, Zor-El also invented an enlarging ray, so that when the crucial time came, he enlarge the rocket and all three escaped to Earth.

"They landed in Smallville, as one might expect, and became farmers. (Oddly, there is no mention of the Kents in this version.) At one point, Zor-El and Allura are exposed to Gold Kryptonite and lose their powers, so there daughter, Carole Zorelle, is the only super-powered being on Earth. This story is the comic book equivalent of a sledgehammer, as every other panels it seems drives home the point that this is an imaginary story. (“Yes, in this story Jimmy Olsen is an assistant private detective and not a cub reporter for the Dailey Planet,” and the like.)

"Anyway, to cut to the chase, when Superboy arrives on Earth, the grown-up Superwoman treats him just as badly as Superman treated Kara in regular continuity, so badly, in fact, that Superboy fakes exposure to Gold K just to get her off his back. What’s he do next? I have no idea because the stoy’s continued. AAARGGH! I don’t know if my LCS has #333 in stock or not because I wasn’t specifically looking for it when I bought #332, but I’ll let you know."

I bought #333 (See "Imaginary Stories on Infinite Earths") but that was continued in #334 which they didn't have.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

[Philip Portelli]

Due to rising paper costs and declining sales, DC decided to combine Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane and Supergirl and create the bi-monthly 100 Pager Superman Family (My'74). They rotated the lead who got a new story so they were getting two adventures a year! This actually worked as they had no time for any silliness and we got some neat comics! It even benefitted the reprints as they cherry-picked the best ones and we got a nice Silver Age bonus as well!

Definitely a great package that took full advantage of the 100 Pager format!

[Dave Palmer]

Jeff of Earth-J

Thanks for the summary.  There was a lot of silliness in those Silver Age Superman "family" titles, but there were also some great stories .  I wish that more of them would be reprinted.

Jeff of Earth-J said:

"I actually have that comic and I bought it fairly recently (about a year or so ago)."

Found it. Here's what I posted about "Earth-332" on January 9, 2017:

"I used to feel sorry for Supergirl because her cousin treated her so shabbily (in my estimation) during her formative years on Earth, but this story indicates she wouldn’t have been any nicer to Superboy had their situations been reversed. The set-up switches Jor-El’s family with Zor-El’s with one notable exception: in addition to inventing a test rocket to escape Krypton’s destruction, Zor-El also invented an enlarging ray, so that when the crucial time came, he enlarge the rocket and all three escaped to Earth.

"They landed in Smallville, as one might expect, and became farmers. (Oddly, there is no mention of the Kents in this version.) At one point, Zor-El and Allura are exposed to Gold Kryptonite and lose their powers, so there daughter, Carole Zorelle, is the only super-powered being on Earth. This story is the comic book equivalent of a sledgehammer, as every other panels it seems drives home the point that this is an imaginary story. (“Yes, in this story Jimmy Olsen is an assistant private detective and not a cub reporter for the Dailey Planet,” and the like.)

"Anyway, to cut to the chase, when Superboy arrives on Earth, the grown-up Superwoman treats him just as badly as Superman treated Kara in regular continuity, so badly, in fact, that Superboy fakes exposure to Gold K just to get her off his back. What’s he do next? I have no idea because the stoy’s continued. AAARGGH! I don’t know if my LCS has #333 in stock or not because I wasn’t specifically looking for it when I bought #332, but I’ll let you know."

I bought #333 (See "Imaginary Stories on Infinite Earths") but that was continued in #334 which they didn't have.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Another nice pairing (featuring a design motiff that never goes out of style).

[Philip Portelli]

Superman's Silver Anniversary to go with his Golden!

[Jeff of Earth-J]

This cover remains one of my favorite post-Crisis covers ever. I was impressed at the time (as I am now) that DC decided to retain the numbering of the original series even though they got a "new number one" out of it as well. Would that DC editors had been far-sighted enough post-Flashpoint to retain the original numbering of Action Comics. Sure, they released #1000 recently, but it still sticks in my craw they skipped a bunch of numbers in sequence so close to the goal.

[Richard Willis]

Odd that they wouldn't just say "Superman's turned into a dragon" and leave out the bit about the red cape.

Dave Palmer said:

I remember seeing this advertised but I don't think I ever had the opportunity to actually read the story.