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 assumed when I read this in 1966 that it was inspired by Stalag 17, which I had seen on TV, even at that tender age. Looking back on it now, I see that Stalag 17 was released in 1953. Maybe Super-Stalag was inspired by Hogan's Heroes? That started in 1965. Then again, World War II was all over the place in pop culture in the mid-1960s, as it was still a seminal event thing in living memory. Oddly, writer Ed Hamilton was 37 on Dec. 7, 1941, and probably didn't serve.
Being a writer, Edmund Hamilton probably read some of the books and articles about the POW camps.
The bombing of Britain known as The Blitz was from September 1940 to May 1941. My 37-year-old father was performing his British National Service as a firefighter dealing with that horror. His oldest brother died in a German POW camp in World War One at the age of 19.
My God. To call them heroes seems facile. But I salute them, and thank you in their absence.
My grandfather was in combat in WWI. My father saw combat in WWII. I know next to nothing about their service, because neither would talk about it.
Or maybe Stalag 17 was on TV more often because of the popularity of Hogan's Heroes, and it was a direct inspiration, but a late one.
Could be! That might explain why I saw it so young.
While two minor league villains are mentioned on the main cover and its variant, only Roddy McDowell as The Bookworm is pictured, appropriate since today is Book Lovers' Day. (Images courtesy of the Grand Comics Database.)
Showcase #20. The first try-out for Rip Hunter. Bob Brown did the cover. Unfortunately, he didn't do the inside.
I can't be sure but I doubt this Night-crawler made many return appearances.
I know that the Ten-Eyed Man has appeared already once this month, but it is the tenth, and he's facing a different opponent here:
The two issues of the 70s Man-Bat series also included Baron Tyme, hardly a heavy-hitter in the villain world, but I can find no cover appearances of that Baron.
Again, there have been two or three Skyrockets... but this one didn't appear much.
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