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.

[Dave Palmer]

It was great fun.  I'm up for another round someday.

Steve W said:

And btw, as an aside, I've really enjoyed this month. What a grand thing to do - to post covers and have to think about the reason(s) why you're posting it!  What a great concept!  

Maybe we could do something similar in future months - instead of just posting covers following a theme, post covers with a meaning behind them - and have to explain the meaning!

[Richard Willis]

When Burt Ward began playing Robin he was 20, almost 21 (younger than most actors who've played teenagers). The look of bare legs for Robin, which began in 1940, required Ward to either shave his legs (presuming he had leg hair that the camera would pick up) or wear tights that matched his skin color. The photograph above without tights may have been retouched before it was printed. In 1966 there were few men who would have agreed to shave their legs. They should have anticipated the later decision to give Robin green leggings. 

[JD DeLuzio]

The monster that time forgot? When did these things ever exist? Or does Tales to Astonish take place in a Lovecraftian universe, and is Titano, then, an Elder God? Also, for a creature that size, Titano must move very fast. The car is still plummeting from the bridge it destroyed but the monster has already reached land and crumpled the top of that building. Its wake, however, has not made it to shore, and the people standing there haven't had time to run from something they should have seen coming at least since it destroyed the bridge. Of course, it doesn't help their case that they've decided to stand around, striking poses and spouting expository dialogue.

This cover has the look of someone drawing while on, perhaps, amphetamines. Cocaine? Never mind. Of all of Sad Sack's associates, only the last one in the list at the side would go on to fame in the twenty-first century. Sarge, meanwhile, seems pretty danged amused that both Sack and General Rockjaw will now almost certainly die.

[Peter Wrexham]

JD DeLuzio said:

I had thought of using that cover on the "Three of a Kind" discussion, if I ever managed to find a third Titano.  Sadly, the best I could come up with was:

Plus the obvious one, of course:

[Doctor Hmmm?]

Kal-El looks less like a guy who's suffering a fatal dose of radiation, and more like a guy who's wishing he'd listened to his buddies when they drew the line at "one last mojito. "

[Richard Willis]

It seems like Sad Sack weighs as much as the Hulk in order to break that wing. Why is Sadie parachuting in high heels? 

Your cover post prompted me learn about his creator. George Baker created Sad Sack after he was drafted into the Army half a year before Pearl Harbor. Prior to that he worked as an illustrator for Disney Studios. He created Sad Sack while working for an Army publication during WWII. After the war he took his character and ran with it as his life's work. According to the Wiki article he drew the character until his death in 1975. This cover looks like the covers he drew just before his death.

George Baker on Wikipedia

His Own Article from 1946

JD DeLuzio said:

This cover has the look of someone drawing while on, perhaps, amphetamines. Cocaine? Never mind. Of all of Sad Sack's associates, only the last one in the list at the side would go on to fame in the twenty-first century. Sarge, meanwhile, seems pretty danged amused that both Sack and General Rockjaw will now almost certainly die.

[JD DeLuzio]

Richard Willis said:

George Baker created Sad Sack after he was drafted into the Army half a year before Pearl Harbor. Prior to that he worked as an illustrator for Disney Studios. He created Sad Sack while working for an Army publication during WWII. After the war he took his character and ran with it as his life's work. According to the Wiki article he drew the character until his death in 1975. This cover looks like the covers he drew just before his death.

And during the war, the Sack had an encounter with another soldier of note:

However, October's topic is vampires and werewolves but not as the titular character, so let's continue to turn to Jimmy Olsen, whose encounter with a vampire and a werewolf led him to a pocket world in a tomb:

[Dave Palmer]

The synopsis in the GCD says “Transylvania declares war on the US.”

[Philip Portelli]

What's better than Jimmy Olsen facing a wolf-man? Jimmy Olsen AS a wolf-man!

[Peter Wrexham]

Here's a character whose faced a vampire in the first issue of his comic, and a wolf-man in the second.  I guess there was nowhere for him to go after that, as there was no third issue.

[Richard Willis]

[Peter Wrexham]

Here's an updated version of the spreadsheet and index of monthly themes.

Date	Page/Reply	Theme (and clickable link)	Pages	Replies
Oct 2016	1/1	Letter A	19	228
Dec 2016	20/1	Letter B	17	207
Jan 2017	37/4	Letter C	18	214
Feb 2017	55/2	Letter D	17	208
Mar 2017	72/6	Letter E	15	178
Apr 2017	87/4	Letter F	15	184
May 2017	102/8	Letter G	13	157
Jun 2017	115/9	Letter H	16	195
Jul 2017	131/12	Letter I	12	133
Aug 2017	143/1	Letter J	16	194
Sep 2017	159/3	Letter K	19	237
Oct 2017	178/12	Letter L	24	285
Nov 2017	202/9	Letter M	24	280
Dec 2017	226/1	Letter N	19	236
Jan 2018	245/9	Letter O	21	245
Feb 2018	266/7	Letter P	25	295
Mar 2018	291/2	Letters Q & R	20	243
Apr 2018	311/5	Letter S	22	270
May 2018	333/11	Superman’s 80th anniversary	21	250
Jun 2018	354/9	Letter T	21	250
Jul 2018	375/7	Letter U	17	207
Aug 2018	392/10	Letter V	19	228
Sep 2018	411/10	Letter W	20	233
Oct 2018	431/3	Letter X	15	180
Nov 2018	446/3	Letter Y	13	156
Dec 2018	459/3	Letter Z	13	156
Jan 2019	472/3	Person being carried	16	190
Feb 2019	488/1	Real people	17	214
Mar 2019	505/11	Homages/parodies	19	224
Apr 2019	524/7	Green-skinned people	17	207
May 2019	541/10	Wanted posters	17	201
Jun 2019	558/7	Boxing rings	15	180
Jul 2019	573/7	Empty uniforms	15	177
Aug 2019	588/4	Beaches	25	297
Sep 2019	613/1	Apes	28	340
Oct 2019	641/5	Haunted houses/graves	21	250
Nov 2019	662/3	Motor bikes	21	254
Dec 2019	683/5	Foreign language covers	17	209
Jan 2020	700/10	Playing cards/tabletop games	23	275
Feb 2020	723/9	Valentines and Cupids	22	259
Mar 2020	745/4	Statues	21	256
Apr 2020	766/8	Elephants	22	263
May 2020	788/7	Heroes & villains cooperating	17	198
Jun 2020	805/1	The Moon	25	310
Jul 2020	830/11	Flags & patriotic symbols	19	226
Aug 2020	849/9	Foreign locations (non-US)	20	234
Sep 2020	869/3	MST3K (with commentary)	13	160
Oct 2020	882/7	Vampires and Werewolves
Nov 2020		Giants

After that, is everyone okay with the theme of snow & winter scenes for December (but excluding Christmas scenes, and cold-powered characters like Iceman and Captain Cold)?  And Doppelgangers for January (in honour of Janus, for whom the month is named)?

Looking at the index, September's MST3K theme has produced the smallest number of postings for a looong time.  However, that's not a criticism of the theme - I think it produced a particularly high quality of responses.  There were a lot of extremely funny and insightful postings, and I enjoyed it a lot.  Congratulations to JD, whose idea it was!