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
Jun 2022		George Perez
Jul 2022		Parents
Aug 2022		Fairgrounds/Carnivals

[Richard Willis]

John Stewart debuted in issue 87, paired with Hal Jordan. In issue 165 John was paired with Oliver Queen.

[Peter Wrexham]

Here's another dynamic duo involving an archer (spread over two covers).

[Peter Wrexham]

Subjects for future months.

February will be some form of "Romantic Scenes" theme.  It looks as though various contributors will add their own additional qualifications to the theme.  Steve is planning on attempting to post covers where the woman's name begins with the appropriate letter for the day of the month (A on the 1st, B on the 2nd, etc, with some fiddling to deal with difficult letters and extra days).  Lee wants to avoid "expected" romantic encounters (Lois and Superman okay in Action, less so in Lois Lane).  Richard advises that scenes should be explicitly romantic, at least those from non-romance titles (e.g. Green Arrow and Black Canary on a date, not fighting a crook).  Personally, I'm happy to go with both Lee's and Richard's qualifications, and I may try to follow Steve's idea, at least when I can find ones involving right-letter names.

For March, Lee suggested:

...what about GREEN where you'd least expect it?  This would naturally rule out regular issues of The Hulk, She-Hulk, Green Arrow(s), Swamp Thing, Jade and the Green Lanterns along with Superman versus Green Kryptonite.  Yet that would still leave green background colored covers, things like The Weather Wizard's guest appearance in Detective Comics or any other green clad character appearing outside their regular haunt(s).  Like Swamp Thing or Poison Ivy stuck in the middle of a desert for example.

This seems sufficiently different from "Green-skinned people" (April 2019) to fly.  Call the theme "Spring Green" or "Unexpected Green"?

After that, we've no more themes agreed.  For the consideration of the assembled company, here is a list of some of the topics that have been suggested in the past, but not yet taken up.

• Bridges
• Mothers & Fathers
• Falling down
• Robots
• Planes
• "I Quit"
• "He's Dead, Jim"
• Monocrome or limited palette
• Parties and Crowds
• Babies/Small Children
• Classrooms/Schools
• Brother/Sister (but it has to be mentioned on the cover)
• First time on the cover (but NOT the character's first appearance)

Personally, I'd welcome the excuse to look for "Bridges" or "Classrooms" covers.  And "Robots" and "Planes" would be very easy!

[Steve W]

Hocus and Pocus

[Lee Houston, Junior]

This may be stating the obvious, but Mother's Day and Father's Day could be a May/June combo. Then another June could be Grads.

Just sharing a thought or two.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

We may want to save these until December 2022 and January 2023, but how about last issues and first issues (respectively)? Of course, we wouldn't necessarily have to save them. (I'm not a big proponent of trying to match the theme with the month.) 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Has anyone posted Sugar & Spike yet?

This is the only individual issue (apart from the archive) I have.

Personally, I think it's way over-rated. 

[JD DeLuzio]

A Dynamic Duo and unlikely foes::

[Jeff of Earth-J]

[Dave Palmer]

[Philip Portelli]

More cartoon pairs!

[Peter Wrexham]

Lee Houston, Junior said:

This may be stating the obvious, but Mother's Day and Father's Day could be a May/June combo.

It's an obvious idea for the US, less so elsewhere in the world.  For example, in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, Mother's Day (aka Mothering Sunday) is in March, and in Australia and New Zealand, Father's Day is in July.  However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't go with dates appropriate to the US.  Or just pick "Parents" as the theme for a single month (when I predict a lot of covers featuring Jor-El and Lara).

Now, back to the "dynamic duos" theme of this month.  Here's Blue Devil and Zatanna (also Superman and Elongated Man, but for some reason they don't rate a cover appearance).