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.

Discussion and voting on future monthly themes takes place on the "A Cover A Day: Nominations, Themes and Statistics" thread.  Click here to view the thread, or here to go to its last reply.

[Richard Willis]

When Burt Ward began playing Robin he was 20, almost 21 (younger than most actors who've played teenagers). The look of bare legs for Robin, which began in 1940, required Ward to either shave his legs (presuming he had leg hair that the camera would pick up) or wear tights that matched his skin color. The photograph above without tights may have been retouched before it was printed. In 1966 there were few men who would have agreed to shave their legs. They should have anticipated the later decision to give Robin green leggings. 

[JD DeLuzio]

The monster that time forgot? When did these things ever exist? Or does Tales to Astonish take place in a Lovecraftian universe, and is Titano, then, an Elder God? Also, for a creature that size, Titano must move very fast. The car is still plummeting from the bridge it destroyed but the monster has already reached land and crumpled the top of that building. Its wake, however, has not made it to shore, and the people standing there haven't had time to run from something they should have seen coming at least since it destroyed the bridge. Of course, it doesn't help their case that they've decided to stand around, striking poses and spouting expository dialogue.

This cover has the look of someone drawing while on, perhaps, amphetamines. Cocaine? Never mind. Of all of Sad Sack's associates, only the last one in the list at the side would go on to fame in the twenty-first century. Sarge, meanwhile, seems pretty danged amused that both Sack and General Rockjaw will now almost certainly die.

[Peter Wrexham]

JD DeLuzio said:

I had thought of using that cover on the "Three of a Kind" discussion, if I ever managed to find a third Titano.  Sadly, the best I could come up with was:

Plus the obvious one, of course:

[Doctor Hmmm?]

Kal-El looks less like a guy who's suffering a fatal dose of radiation, and more like a guy who's wishing he'd listened to his buddies when they drew the line at "one last mojito. "

[Richard Willis]

It seems like Sad Sack weighs as much as the Hulk in order to break that wing. Why is Sadie parachuting in high heels? 

Your cover post prompted me learn about his creator. George Baker created Sad Sack after he was drafted into the Army half a year before Pearl Harbor. Prior to that he worked as an illustrator for Disney Studios. He created Sad Sack while working for an Army publication during WWII. After the war he took his character and ran with it as his life's work. According to the Wiki article he drew the character until his death in 1975. This cover looks like the covers he drew just before his death.

George Baker on Wikipedia

His Own Article from 1946

JD DeLuzio said:

This cover has the look of someone drawing while on, perhaps, amphetamines. Cocaine? Never mind. Of all of Sad Sack's associates, only the last one in the list at the side would go on to fame in the twenty-first century. Sarge, meanwhile, seems pretty danged amused that both Sack and General Rockjaw will now almost certainly die.

[Peter Wrexham]

October 2020 - Vampires and Werewolves.

[JD DeLuzio]

Richard Willis said:

George Baker created Sad Sack after he was drafted into the Army half a year before Pearl Harbor. Prior to that he worked as an illustrator for Disney Studios. He created Sad Sack while working for an Army publication during WWII. After the war he took his character and ran with it as his life's work. According to the Wiki article he drew the character until his death in 1975. This cover looks like the covers he drew just before his death.

And during the war, the Sack had an encounter with another soldier of note:

However, October's topic is vampires and werewolves but not as the titular character, so let's continue to turn to Jimmy Olsen, whose encounter with a vampire and a werewolf led him to a pocket world in a tomb:

[Dave Palmer]

The synopsis in the GCD says “Transylvania declares war on the US.”

[Philip Portelli]

What's better than Jimmy Olsen facing a wolf-man? Jimmy Olsen AS a wolf-man!

[Peter Wrexham]

Here's a character whose faced a vampire in the first issue of his comic, and a wolf-man in the second.  I guess there was nowhere for him to go after that, as there was no third issue.