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.

[Doctor Hmmm?]

That vehicle was unsafe at any speed.

[Dave Palmer]

Robin’s thought balloon: “I’m sure glad that Batman insisted we use the Bat-bubbles, the ones that never break the surface of the water.”

The water is crystal clear, but the crooks don’t look down, and the perspective seems off:  Batman and Robin are about a foot away from the raft, but appear much larger than the crooks.

[Peter Wrexham]

I assume this guy is not Princess Pantha, and the rifle-packing woman with him probably isn't either.  Anyway, whoever they are, you've got to admire the dedication they devote to fetching a pail of water despite a hail of gunfire.  There are two bullet holes in the bucket (though, strangely, there's no sign of water coming out of any corresponding exit holes), but that's not going to stop him!  Unless the holes were already there when he picked the bucket up, his gloves must be very well padded.  If I were in his place, I suspect the shock of two bullets hitting the bucket would have made me drop it!

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Can you spot the inside joke?

[Philip Portelli]

"Great Hera! Why am I the only JLAer that gets chained up all the time! Not even Black Canary and she's a fetish fantasy! Not only that but those rays are making me look like a blow-up doll!"

[Philip Portelli]

Fascinating!

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Can you spot the inside joke?

[Richard Willis]

I understand why they're running, but stopping it would just mean throwing a basketball at the guy riding it, which should tip the whole thing over.

Steve W said:

[Richard Willis]

Firing bullets into water slows them down. Maybe the water in the bucket would be enough to do this, or not.

Peter Wrexham said:

There are two bullet holes in the bucket (though, strangely, there's no sign of water coming out of any corresponding exit holes)

[JD DeLuzio]

Richard Willis said:

Firing bullets into water slows them down. Maybe the water in the bucket would be enough to do this, or not.

Maybe it's filled with that 100% bulletproof water that action heroes dive into when someone is shooting at them with a high-caliber weapon. It becomes soft water, of course, when the same hero has to dive into it from 500 feet.

And speaking of bulletproof, why does Lois suddenly need that idiotic kart once they get married? The comic is called, Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane. Everyone in the Silver Age knows she's Superman's girlfriend. Why is she in any greater danger once they marry? And how is the kart going to help? The only villains she's seriously in danger from are using far more powerful weapons than guns. The average hoods with guns may be stupid enough to continually shoot at Superman when they know the bullets are just going to bounce off, but are they seriously lacking in the intelligence and a sense of self-preservation to go after the wife of an invulnerable super-strong super-fast guy who can shoot lasers from his eyes? Because that takes a very special kind of idiocy and disregard for one's life.

Also, who built this thing? Surely they could have given Lois a bigger bubble.

A bigger complaint might be that their "fine honeymoon" consists of walking around, presumably, Metropolis, where Lana Lang can gloat.

[Peter Wrexham]

Richard Willis said:

This one tells me that the trend to have fake, old-timey photos taken didn't start in the 60s like I thought, but was a thing at least as far back as 1945. 

Batman and Robin were partial to the same sort of fakery at about the same time, as seen on this cover from 1947.

[Dave Palmer]

Richard Willis said:

I read this one in 1961, when I was 13(!), but surprisingly don't remember it. the DC Fandom synopsis tells me that aliens for their own reasons set up a carnival. The distorting mirror actually changes the JLA members as shown on the cover. Why would the aliens change them instead of just avoiding them? Apparently, JLA figures out how to use the mirror to reverse the effect after defeating the aliens while in their altered bodies.

  

[Richard Willis]

I ran out of time yesterday, and today's the last day of the month. I'm dumping the last five I have, which are all Batman issues. I think they all deserve a little mockery.