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 "Nominations, Themes and Statistics for A Cover A Day" thread. Click here to view the thread.
Replies
Showcase #8 was the second appearance of the Barry Allen Flash. The cover's a cheat because nothing resembling this scene is in the issue. The second Flash story in the issue introduced Captain Cold, which should have been the cover.
They claim hindsight is 20/20. Maybe the editor (Whitney Ellsworth is the official editor of record, but the Grand Comics Database says Julius Schwartz did the actual work) thought this was a more dramatic moment than whatever happened between Captain Cold and the Flash that issue. Then again, a lot of stories back then were written to the cover, which is how we got the revival of Jay Garrick and eventually the rest of the Justice Society courtesy of a drawing Carmine Infantino submitted for consideration.
In the end, your guess is as good as mine.
Part of the problem was that covers had to be ready for printing some time before the contents. The newsprint printing process was a lot simpler. I'm not even sure if the printing of the slick covers was done in the same city.
In 1971, Wood created Shattuck, a new style of cowboy for the modern age, for Overseas Weekly, but outside of the United States Armed Forces during the Vietnam War, few have seen it... until now. Wood plotted, provided layouts, sometimes scripted, sometimes inked, and generally oversaw his production staff, which included Syd Shores, Nicola Cuti, Howard Chaykin, Dave Cockrum and Jack Abel.
I was in Vietnam in 1969, so never saw this.
The Jack Abel of it all really jumps out at me.
The art style changes dramatically throughout. The Wood influence it heavy early on, then he (apparently) backed off detailed layouts and inked Shores; then Chaykin inked Abel (or Wood), then Cockrum inked by Abel. Except for Shores, all of Wood's assistants were quite young, but it's fun trying to determine who did what. I think the main panel above is Chaykin inked by Abel (probably over Wood's layouts).
Wally Wood with a little border work by Sergio Aragones... ANOTHER artist who deserves attention!
Another of Wally/Wallace Wood's more humourous moments, courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.
(I was going to post this cover tomorrow)
This title was a self-published "underground" started by Wood. It was intended to provide a creative outlet for comics professionals beyond the comics companies. I was a subscriber. This Wikipedia article provides a lot of information about the contributors and their efforts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witzend
-
2514
-
2515
-
2516
-
2517
-
2518
of 2570 Next