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	34	411
Apr 2023	1654/8	Birds and Winged Creatures	35	419
May 2023	1689/7	Strength in Numbers	48	570
Jun 2023	1737/1	Horses, Centaurs & Equines
Jul 2023		Railways

[JD DeLuzio]

Trouble at the pie-eating contest:

I'm guessing this fair is in a seaside town, judging from the sort of phantom that's haunting them. Or maybe that was the only costume left when the villain decided that disguising themselves as a ghost would scare people away, instead of driving up attendance. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Has this one been posted yet?

I'll tell you... I generally avoid duplicates by making an actual list of covers on paper as they occur to me. Ideally, I gather enough to (presumably) get me through the month. As I post them (or someone else does), I cross them off my list.  Most of the time by the time my list is exhausted the month is over, but roller coasters proved so popular that I came up short. At that point, short of reviewing the entire month (which I do do from time to time), I rely on memory (always a shaky proposition). 

[Philip Portelli]

"SPOOOOOOONNNN!"

"Not in the face!"

[Lee Houston, Junior]

What I do is have an Used and Unused file on my PC for each theme. At the moment I have over 130 cover images on standby for Joe Kubert. Whether me or someone else posts it, covers are moved from one to the other. When that month is over, those files go in the trash to save myself some computer memory.

Meanwhile, I'm out of Merry Go Round images, but this is definitely one roller coaster I'll NEVER ride!

(Image courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.)

[Peter Wrexham]

Yes, the Joker definitely seems to enjoy roller coasters!

Fred and Barney, less so!

[Steve W]

I try and avoid duplicating too, although I've just been back through all the posts made this month, and see that I've posted at least three covers that had already been posted by others (one of them was just one day after the original poster!) My apologies to all - it's not too easy to keep track of covers posted when you're on holiday (vacation) and I've been away for most of August. 

I too store my covers to be used in a folder on my laptop, and then transfer them to a folder called "done" once I've posted them - or indeed once someone else does.  However the difference between me and Lee Houston, is that he moves his used files into the trash, whereas I save all mine in a huge folder called "Used Comic Covers". Last time I checked there were over 4,000 cover pictures in there!   

[Peter Wrexham]

Steve W said:

I try and avoid duplicating too, although I've just been back through all the posts made this month, and see that I've posted at least three covers that had already been posted by others (one of them was just one day after the original poster!) My apologies to all - it's not too easy to keep track of covers posted when you're on holiday (vacation) and I've been away for most of August.

Let's hope that the guy whose cover you double-posted on 16th August will accept your apologies, Steve!

I guess you must have really liked that cover. 

Steve W said on August 14, 2022 at 5:22pm:

Steve W said on August 16, 2022 at 6:06pm:

[Richard Willis]

What I do is:

Once a theme is agreed upon, I create a folder for that theme. Right now I have folders labelled  AUG fairs carnivals, SEP joe kubert and OCT first and last.

I gather the covers from GCD, except in the rare occasion when I know about a cover but it’s not on GCD. I save a JPG of the cover to the folder. Before I post a cover I review the ones posted since my last post. When the cover is posted by me or someone else I simply delete it from the folder, having no further use for it.

Using this method, I almost never post a duplicate. Note that I said “almost.”

[Peter Wrexham]

[JD DeLuzio]

Nancy and Sluggo go through a very strange dark ride:

[Philip Portelli]

We've had a lot of Archie but have we had one with BINKY?

And at what point did Binky get "Archie-fied"?

[Richard Willis]