Covered Beyond 365 – #1001 to #1004

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

It seems to me that Detective was reinvigorated by #1000, and there are a number of covers after that I like – this is a hopeful sign. #1003 is one:

I love Walker’s style and I love this composition and colors.

Brooks’s #1003 and #1004 Detective variants work as a pair:

Yet another poster, but top notch.

(Yes that counts as three for the day.)

 

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Covered Beyond 365 – #1000 continued

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

Today it’s all Detective #1000 – I found three that I deemed worthy, starting with the “standard” Lee cover:

I don’t like this one as much as the Hush finale wrap-around from years before, but it still has plenty of goodies rendered in great Lee style.

I love Timm’s homage to one of the greatest Joker covers:

I probably wouldn’t have picked this if it wasn’t by Timm, but I think he did great things for Batman, and this is the perfect showcase for his style.

I saved my favorite for last, which is Cho’s most intentional of JOWAs, with Batman as Jimmy:

We all make fun of the dopey pre-#327 Batman, but the Olsen-before-he-was-Olsen is really driven home by this cover. If today’s pre-Robin vengeful Batman had been around at the inception of the Code, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t have him today. I think we owe the mummy Batman and the zebra Batman a great debt.

Covered Beyond 365 – #943 to #1000

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

I’ll repeat my complaint – this run of Actions and Detectives yielded very few choices. I thought the quality would pick up towards the present day, and while these covers are surely far better than those of the late nineties and early ’00s, they mostly don’t compare to the covers of the good ‘ol days.

So up to #1000, the only one I have for you is Detective #985:

I’m not 100% on board with Batman’s face, but otherwise this variant by Brooks is a very cool poster. These days hanging out with these perfectly-rendered bats is doubly scary. I also appreciate DC minimizing the UPC.

I have enough #1000 choices from the gazillion Detective and Marvel Comics #1000 variants to fill the rest of today and tomorrow.  The sad thing is that I didn’t find one of the Action #1000 variants worth choosing. If you disagree, let me know.

Since we already have one Detective cover and I have three Detectives for tomorrow, let’s go with the Marvel Comics #1000s. I really dig Allred’s retro panoply:

The gang’s all here and this poster cover really channels the late sixties Marvel flair.

Well I’ll be, Brooks makes a second appearance today:

I’ll take this one over the Detective, fantastic mix of modern art style and wartime feel and composition. I think I will have to have a look for other Brooks covers now.

Covered Beyond 365 – #928 to #942

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

I don’t think my standards have changed, I think this final stretch of the survivors just has very few great covers, so this exercise is going to wrap up in a few days, even with the recap of the legacy Marvels. I was really surprised to see how weak the recent Action and Detective covers were.

Nevertheless I still have a few choices up my sleeve. We start off today with the fairly rare pick that is also a JOWA, Four Color #932:

Smokey the Bear was an action hero? Who woulda thunk it? This would have been a pick even if it were Sergeant Preston with this quality of action and art, and that buff shirtless Smokey doubles the ante.

I debated and debated about Detective #936, but I just have to show it:

Really scary and pristine art. I know not for everyone.

Four Color #942 yields one of the last good painted covers:

Another chance for Savitt to show us some of his great horses, with a lovely background.

 

 

Covered Beyond 365 – #899 to #927

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

As we reach the ionosphere even DC is playing numbering games. Both Action and Detective were renumbered for a time, starting with #1, so I’m assuming these got picked up in Covered, 365. Then later these returned to “legacy numbering”. I caught these, but aside from the earlier legacy-numbered Marvels, if anybody knows of other books that magically returned with issue numbers above #800, do tell. Meanwhile for a portion of today’s issue numbers, the only candidate was Four Color.

The last of the Finch Action covers that I’m picking is #899:

I generally love Finch’s style, the colors are superb, and who can resist a cool punch-out in space?

You would think #900 would deliver a worthy anniversary cover, but no such luck. The next worthy specimen is instead Four Color #916:

I don’t know who this is by but I think they did a great job.

Similarly I don’t have a credit for Four Color #927:

I wish I had had the red shirt concession in the Old West.

 

 

Covered Beyond 365 – #880 to #898

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

Well it looks like I missed a few Detectives so we’ll have some overlap. As Walt pointed out yesterday, we can’t miss Detective #880:

A modern classic, even if you are “so over” The Joker.

Back to this run of Finch Action covers that I really dig for #893:

Grodd is a bit cartoony, but I think it works here – getting his beady eyes right was key.

Four Color #898 is not quite up to my standards, but I can feel the painted Four Colors ebbing away, so I can’t not choose it:

The only real complaint I have is that the colors seem washed out – this is no Mandrake.

Covered Beyond 365 – #865 to #892

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

A split number with yesterday because I had reached my number of allotted covers, the spooky Detective #865:

This is a Code book? Skulls and a hypo?

Action #890 is a month later with more skulls:

I debated about this one as it is a poster, but I just really like it.

Coming two months later is Action #892:

Now that’s more like it! Well-executed beat ’em ups always grab me.

The message of today’s picks is that after a dismal two decades, DC finally started producing strong covers, so I’m hopeful for the 900s.

Covered Beyond 365 – #851 to #865

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

So. I am working my way through the Actions, Detectives, and Four Colors, when it dawns on me I should really determine what to make of the disappearance of ASM. This led me down the rabbit hole of Marvel’s “legacy numbering”.

This idea is terribly confusing, but I am willing to take this Comicchron post’s word on how this worked/works. I don’t know whether these covers were reviewed by Walter Durajlija in the original Covered, 365 due to the parallel non-legacy numbering, but I know that I generally missed them here. I first thought to do another set like the earlier Missed Marvels, but I think at this point it would break up the flow. Instead, I think I will treat these as an epilogue after we reach the Four Color end of the line, because I don’t want to leave any stone unturned.

So we will follow our triumvirate until their exhaustion from here, starting with Ross’s Detective #860:

A poster as quite usual with these contemporary issues, but I dig it for Ross’s work on her hair and her vampiric visage. Scarier than Batman I think.

Detective #862 is more like a JOWA, but it isn’t really:

An even scarier cover, and gets my vote for being super-arresting, full of story, and very creative. You could even call this an Incredible Hulk #340 homage:

Action #865 is probably not everybody’s cup of tea:

Nevertheless I am calling it as great. The art is so clean and pristine, the work put into the Superman toys is incredible, and the colors are perfect. As a bonus, it is really creepy.

A JOWA to the very fun Action #857:

Covered Beyond 365 – #801 to #850

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

We are now hurtling towards our final destination. No more weird Marvel renumberings or mysterious DC anniversary issues. Only three titles survive: Action, Detective, and Four Color. To make matters worse, Action and Detective turned in scores of at best meh covers during this run of issue numbers. I wasn’t buying comics during this period (the mid 2000s for both titles), and I can see why.

There is one other title, but it has proven impossible to track: Dell Movie Classics. The problem is, this isn’t treated as an actual title, as each issue was published under the title of the movie depicted, so while the numbers go up above one thousand, the databases treat these as one-shots. The good news is that almost all of these covers are bad, mostly photo covers. However as a completist I would like to say I reviewed them, especially now with little else to choose from.

Again I think I have dropped the bar for today’s post, but I had to look at a lot of covers just to come up with these. If anybody thinks any of the Actions or Detectives from this range are worth a mention, do tell. Otherwise we head off to the Wild West.

Four Color #839 is a beautifully-colored Savitt:

It’s a bit static, with little story evident, but I’ll let it pass.

I like Four Color #848 better:

The colors aren’t as pleasant, but otherwise superior for the lighting, the tension, and more sense of a story.

Spaulding covers Buck Jones again for Four Color #850:

I think this one is the weakest of the three, and for a clear reason – Buck got tired of sharing the stage with scene-stealers, so we don’t get one. I think we have to face it, Buck is a stiff. Nevertheless a more believable cowboy than Johnny Mack Brown.

Four Color also turns in a JOWA in this range, #823:

Just. Really. Disturbing.

Covered Beyond 365 – #733 to #800

Three great comic book covers a day until we run out of covers or I run out of gas. Please chime in if I miss a great one, and if I concur (!), I’ll recap.

A very tough period. Action and Detective for this issue range are from around the turn of the century, so you can understand the problem there. Somehow both Flash #750 and Wonder Woman #750 came out this year, both with ten variants, and I didn’t see any that I would pick. Etcetera.

I can’t tell you how many Four Color photo covers I had to look at for today’s post. I did find a couple of decent painted covers. #739 is a pretty good signature Savitt horse cover:

I like #752 more:

Beautiful colors, and Mandrake! I think he has the Eye of Agamotto in that treasure chest.

ASM #800 beat all with four thousand, three hundred and elebendy-seven cover variants. Maybe none was great, but I just had to pick one, so I picked Land’s:

A good ol’ floating head cover, but really well done, and a great Spidey except for his smoky webs.

Only one solid JOWA from this long range, Action #735: