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.

[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.