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
I don't doubt you're correct, Dave. But I still call it poor design. Note that on the two flags in your example the colors aren't the same, nor are they in the same order. You'd have to memorize the colors and the order, since they don't represent anything in particular. Obviously, the colorists on these stories didn't memorize anything and just made it up each time. An observant child in the '60s might very well notice the inconsistency, and be annoyed.
I only know the very basics of heraldry, but yes, this is poor flag design. Esthetical judgments aside, it is needlessly and unhelpfully demanding of fine color distinction.
The example above has at least two very distinct shades of green (which are only barely separated from each other, no less), a shade of green-yellow, and a another of yellow with a hint of green.
I suppose you can invent all kinds of cultural reasons why Krypton would make such bold and impractical choices for its flag, but neither comic books from before the 1980s or so nor real-world societies which emphasized the use of comparable flags had achieved the technology to reliably mass-produce those subtle color distinctions. Much of real world heraldry exists specifically to avoid that kind of situation.
Maybe the first appearance of the flag in Action Comics #246 was meant to have those as shades of gray, though. Talk about unexpected twists.
Fun with Flags
Tara and Willow from Buffy the Vampire slayer.
A non-Kryptonian rainbow flag.
Brian Falsorth (Mighty Destroyer II/Union Jack II) and Roger Aubrey (Dyna-Mite/Mighty Destroyer III) were British best friends who were always together and then revealed to be gay. Like they infer from every pair of British mates!
btw, though INVADERS put him out of continuity, the first Mighty Destroyer (Keen Marlowe) eventually returned as well!
Detective #184.
I am only familiar with the “reimagined” Firefly, a pyromaniac with wings. A more-threatening villain (same guy) than his earlier appearances.
Firefly (DC Comics) - Wikipedia
The Firefly did reappear in the 70s!
I haven't read any of the series to know why, but the Absolute Martian Manhunter is currently displaying much more than the standard Martian Green. (Image courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.)
-
2836
-
2837
-
2838
-
2839
-
2840
of 2841 Next