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.
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I need to point out right now that the Archie family of comics produced a whole lot of snowman covers.
Whoever this Shultz guy is, he does a much better Dan DeCarlo than Dan Parent does.
Apparently that is Jeff Shultz, working with Archie since 1991 and also in Tom & Jerry's newspaper strips, Boom!'s "Peanuts", and currently in Sitcomics "Super Suckers".
Clearly a talented penciler with a lot of ability to emulate Dan DeCarlo's style.
A lot of pastiche artists aren't very good when they aren't copying something directly. But Schultz's cover above is well designed, with a lot going on but with figures and action placed so it's clear at a glance. There isn't any drop-off away from the main action -- it's all rendered well in a consistent world.
I wonder how many times I've seen a Schultz piece and thought it was DeCarlo.
From 1936, two and a half years before Superman!
From Captain Comics' Guide for comics shipping week of Dec. 2, 2024:
Strange Adventures #12
I first met Captain Comet in 1970s Super-Team Family #13. By that time he had been recently reintroduced after last having been seen in the 1950s, and his costume that settled into something more similar to Superman's. It is easy to forget how much his appearance had changed by then. He looked a lot like Adam Strange at first, except for using a differently styled helmet and having several thick blue rings of fabric at various places. And wearing white suspenders. Yes, he did wear suspenders.
But this cover picture seems off-model to me. Probably a colorist mistake; it is such a pulp-like, red-blooded hero cover that the colorist may have assumed that we were supposed to show a little bare male skin besides all the female skin.
People say superheroes were dead in the '50s, but the JSA lasted until 1951; Marvel revived its Big Three in 1953-55; Marvel Boy, the original Robotman and Captain Comet had the entirety of their original run in the '50s; Martian Manhunter launched in 1955; Barry Allen in 1956; Congorilla in 1957; Hal Jordan in 1959; and five superheroes -- Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Green Arrow -- continued uninterrupted. The Super-titles alone included Superman, Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Superboy, World's Finest Comics, Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. Other genres come and go, but supeheroes have been the spine of the industry since 1938.
In my head canon, Captain Comet and Marvel Boy teamed up in an adventure drawn by Bill Everett.
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