Covered Beyond 365 – #396

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

While it is pedestrian for this run, Detective is again the pick:

I warned you that these days were coming. I’m going to still try to be objective, but that works both ways – I am not going to mix it up for the sake of variety. While the story here is very confusing, and a defeated hero lying around is not high on my list of subject matter, I still think it’s the best of the day. The motorcycle guy adds the action and is more demonstrative of Adams’s mastery than Batman.

Thor is mostly a poster, but the back-to-back with The Black Knight gives this one a kick:

No story evident but lots ‘o action. Unlike that Batman from a few days ago, there is lots of motion in these knives and spears, just look at the debris flying.

Incredible Hulk comes in third with another cover that will probably rub you one way or another based on your opinion of Keown:

The Punisher’s face is the obvious low point, but Keown’s cartoony style works for me, and I love his detail – look at the folds in The Punisher’s jacket and pants, and how he uses light and dark to conjure the iciness of Mr. Frost’s hand.

As usual DC’s Superman franchise brings us the JOWA:

Why oh why so many of these that I had to experience in my formative years? This could have been one of the first hero comics that I would have bought – but of course I never would have bought this. Superman should be going toe to toe with Luthor, Brainiac, or some other supervillain. As we know fifty years on, that never gets old (that is, if the writers put their mind to it). Instead DC’s editors used the “been there done that” argument as justification for countless issues of the Superman franchise wasted on this kind of thing. Um, your brand in the upper left is “DC Superman”!

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Covered Beyond 365 – #395

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

Today we arrive at a nice oasis in the post-365 desert. While not every cover pick over the next few weeks will be by Neal Adams, perhaps the majority will be. Prior Adams Detectives were precursors, with the official start being today’s:

What an important book, and what an amazing cover! While the Undervalued Spotlight is no more (I like to think on an indefinite hiatus), this book sits near the top of the undervalued mountain. It is fairly rare in high grade for a number of understandable reasons, and currently adjusted for scarcity it sells for about a fifteenth of what Green Lantern #76 sells for.

Again we have the slant, and we see the very strong influence of the House of Mystery covers. The work on Batman and the setting of the tomb are off the charts.

The runner up is another beautiful Sam Savitt Four Color:

I could have gone for a bit more excitement, but the artistry is undeniable.

I think about a tie for the distant third place finish. As today is Batman’s, he gets to go first:

Batman says “No guns!” We know how this is going to go.

The Punisher says “Guns!” on Incredible Hulk:

I think we at least know how this should go if the Hulk can take a bullet to the eyeball without flinching.

Not only did we get some good covers, but we round out the day with an unusual Captain America JOWA:

Covered Beyond 365 – #394

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

Not “great”, but as typical for this time period, extremely nice Adams art on this Detective:

Covered 365 and this follow-on exercise has been educational in many ways, one of which coming through now especially is a sensitivity to the development of Adams’s style. Here we see the slanted perspective again – even more slanted than the earlier Adventure covers. This cover also shares a lot of characteristics with Adams’s House of Mystery covers from around this time.

Very well done, but what is the story? “Batman, you knocked over my trash can, so I am going to kill you for this incursion”? “Batman, I am going to trade you my dead eye for your live one after decapitating you”? Too unclear. Also why should we believe Tomahawk V can beat Batman when a host of supervillains (and even the Foot Fighters) couldn’t.

(Apropos of little, wondering if the Foo Fighters somehow got their name from the Foot Fighters – maybe a rare misprint copy.)

Thor gives us a nice poster, but absolutely nothing else:

That’s it for the day, oh well.

Adventure continues its strong JOWA tradition:

Okay, this is “Heartbreak Prison” – so is this some kind of dream sequence? Maybe “food!” stands for “food for my destitute soul”? Clearly all that Supergirl has are man troubles – no time for crimefighting – great empowerment from all of those women editors and writers at DC, huh? Oh, wait. Anyway, how can the bug-eyed purple guys punish her more than that long string of boyfriends and horsefriends already has?

 

Covered Beyond 365 – #393

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

Better than yesterday by the slimmest of margins. Batman rules the day:

This is by Paul Gulacy, who I remember getting a lot of fan press in the seventies. To me the big failing is the lack of motion. Originally I thought there were a lot of guys in the dark holding knives. Then I realized the knives are supposed to have been thrown at Batman. There is no indication that they are moving. With motion this one might have been a contender for “great”.

Detective is both the runner-up and the JOWA:

This is a really striking cover. The logo takes up a lot of room, but it is a great logo. Robin’s image is big and bold, and the contrast of his bright colors against the very dark background makes this an instantly recognizable wall book. Novick delivers a pretty solid Batman. But – those pouty tears. Maybe verklempt Robin was an attempt to pull in the Bobby Sherman fans from those days, but not working now. If instead, no tears and a grimacing Robin saying the same thing, this would be a real man’s Detective cover.

Keown’s anniversary Incredible Hulk homage is worth a look:

With its foil background this was clearly a money grab, but the Hulk remains cool.

I rarely find Archie title covers funny, but I liked this one, maybe because it has some depth:

 

Covered Beyond 365 – #392

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

I deserve some combat pay for today. I think I will just pick a nice horsie:

This is a solid Sam Savitt painting on Four Color, and I am sure Silver was very heroic as horses go, but if this is my pick of the day we have to be in trouble.

There is literally nothing else I want to hold up for honour. Incredible Hulk and Thor are acceptable but fairly pedestrian. Detective is probably next in line, but Neal pretty much dropped the ball with that confusing and somehow lifeless panel cover.

Instead I’ll first present the JOWA runner-up:

I can tell you that as a kid I always looked forward to walking into the drugstore to find on the spinner rack the newest imaginary stories of Superman’s loser son. Not. It’s like DC had a death wish.

The JOWA continues this death wish:

At least Superman’s loser son could be the object of some schadenfreude. Here we have the true puzzler – who would want to buy this book? DC already had lost the kids like me with Supergirl (or any heroine – sorry, just being honest), they lost anybody wanting a good beat ’em up with this boring setup, they lost the oglers with this frumpy Linda, and there is no romance angle. So they were left with the – um – interesting folks who liked to dream about cosplay in school??? Or dream about the embarrassment of not participating in required cosplay in school???  I am baffled.

The icing on the cake is, of course, that aside from those considerations, it wasn’t even an original concept:

I guess this one had sold so well that DC decided a reboot was in order. At least the original really spun that embarrassment of not participating in the cosplay into some serious S&M with that ice queen right on top of the red-faced Clark. Not much of that coming through in the Adventure – I think a Tom of Finland outfit on the teacher might have helped carry the message.

Covered Beyond 365 – #391

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

A stinker of a day but I’ll put up the best of a bad lot.

Detective is the winner:

Yeah real boring, okay, let’s get that grousing out of the way. Otherwise:

• Neal Adams (including a tiny bit of Batman)
• Good execution of the concept
• Draws you in to the story

Add the bonus of a JOWA nomination for Batman getting married in his costume. “Batman” isn’t even his name, so I’m afraid that the marriage is invalid – maybe Ginny is really naive and this way Wayne didn’t need a pre-nup – joke’s on you Ginny – hence the outcome of “Batman’s Widow”. I guess if Ginny was dumb enough to marry “Batman”, everybody would let her off the hook for being a really bad cook.

This book is hard to find in high grade, I think because nobody bought it in the first place.

The only other one I will offer up is Incredible Hulk:

I really dig this but it is a jumble. Probably the most positive way to look at this is as a latter-day Schomburg. Nice colors.

Nothing else rates, but I will put Adventure up for the Hall of Shame:

Exactly how many times did DC reuse this “everybody is looking at SuperX in their secret identity while they fall to their ‘death'” concept? Snore. Also JOWA candidate for Linda Danvers dressing up as Supergirl and still nobody makes the connection.

Covered Beyond 365 – #390

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

A tough one as usual. I have no idea what is going on here, but the best of the lot is Doctor Strange:

Well illustrated and amusing – most of us have been in this situation – but that’s about it.

Just because I have the space I will show you my second and third place picks, Detective and Superman, but they are so average that they dishonour the legacy of Covered 365:

It will get better in the near future, but I have to tell you that the next couple days will also be rough.

At least we can enjoy a solid JOWA in Adventure:

Maybe this was originally on some other cover, but – Supergirl is involved with Super-Horse??? Um, ah – what exactly was with those DC editors? This was a Code book? And what did Dick Malverne think of all this?

Covered Beyond 365 – #389

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

A photo finish today so I’m not going to hold any of these up as clearly the winner. I hemmed and hawed and finally I had to go with Incredible Hulk:

This is a very cool concept beautifully executed. I think the colors are what really make it – the fluorescent title offsets the Atom Age coloring of the cover proper. No action but we can see it is about to happen. I want one.

I think I might get the most grief for picking Amazing Spider-Man as runner-up:

Spidey’s anatomy is pretty weird, but this is a comic book, okay? Otherwise just what I want – action, perspective, art (note the skill shown by reducing the detail of the mausoleums), great colors.

Third place to the very different Batman:

This was not trivial to pull off and I think it came together well, but it is just too static for me. If Batman had been fighting the villain (turns out it’s Nocturna) in the rain, this might have been my clear winner.

The Adams Detective #389 was fourth in line, but this is one of my least favorites from this run, and I promise there will be plenty from Mr. Adams showing up in the next month.

JOWA to Adventure. After ejecting Superboy from the title with what appeared to be a very forward-looking approach, DC rapidly fell back into its old ways and apparently tried to make the title into a weird superhero/romance crossover. This probably didn’t appeal to anyone. For this issue the editors presumably decided to give the female readers a nice ex-boyfriend revenge fantasy:

Covered Beyond 365 – #388

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

I’m in defensive mode going in today. I think you either love or hate Action #388 – I love it:

This is another one of those covers that I saw in a reprint book as a wee lad, and for some reason it touched a nerve. You obviously have to be a long-time DC reader to get the jokes, and that is half the fun. Otherwise we have great Swan composition and art, and fabulous colors. If you take your comics very seriously then I guess not for you.

If you want to be serious, you can have the very profound runner-up, Thor:

A Celestial hand has got to be the biggest giant hand you can get. This is another cover that is more a poster, but a high quality one. I love the stars showing within the Celestial’s body. I have never followed Thor very closely – was there ever a linkage dreamed up for The Destroyer with the Celestials?

I think the third place finisher, Detective, is well behind the first two:

I think the chief advantage of this cover is that it’s striking. The other cool quality is how firmly linked it is to its time – obviously anticipating the first moon landing. The art is admittedly basic, but no real complaints.

JOWA to Archie who seems to have spent the eighties into the early nineties working on his creepiness:

Covered Beyond 365 – #387

A possibly great comic book cover matching each day of the second year, 366 until the pickings get too slim. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.

Nothing really grabbing me so let’s go with a theme today: luminescence. The most original gets the pick, which is the “legacy numbering” Doctor Strange:

This continues the theme of yesterday’s Doctor Strange pick. No way I would pick it as “great”, simply because it is a standing around cover, but it is really striking and the depiction of the fluorescent signage is very well done. It certainly would get me to take a look inside to see what the story is.

Next is Superman, which will certainly appeal to Walt given the concentric colored circles:

Gil Kane’s work at this point is not what it was twenty or thirty years before, but it still has a great style going for it, and the vibrant colors made this run of covers even more distinctive. These are going on my list for long box diving.

Third place to a very luminescent Thor:

I think it could be a JOWA, what with the Celestial thumbs-down, but nicely rendered.

The real JOWA has to be this very disturbing Mr. Weatherbee: