For all of their crudity, there’s something very elegant about the covers to many of the earliest comics. Those big, bold, brash title mastheads, the clean design aesthetic. Moves all copied from the pulp magazines, but adapted and copied with more simplicity, as the artists creating them just weren’t as accomplished. This cover to DETECTIVE … Continue reading Great Covers – DETECTIVE COMICS #31
For clean simplicity, it’d be difficult to find somebody more skilled than Carmine Infantino. His open lines, expansive vistas and idiosyncratic figures often combined for concept pieces that were immediately readable from a distance, and which drew a prospective buyer in to purchase the magazine. This cover to FLASH #153 is a case in point. … Continue reading Great Covers – FLASH #153
This X-MEN cover by Jack Kirby is a nice piece of art, but it’s really the coloring that kicks it into the stratosphere as a great cover. That strong monochromatic red will stand out like a beacon among other covers on the racks and gives the impression of danger, of heat. There are just enough … Continue reading Great Covers – X-MEN #17
A very simple cover by Ross Andru for FLASH #184, this image simply demands that you buy the comic and read the story. It’s primarily a triumph of typography, as the image is more than ¾ lettering. But that Flash figure, with his face hidden in his hand and his defeated stance, makes an impact … Continue reading Great Covers – FLASH #184
This is a fanzine cover, rather than an actual comic book cover, but it’s just too good to pass up. Here, Alex Toth, the master of minimalism, creates a fully-realized depiction of an alien fighter attack on an unwary ship, using design and the stark contrast between black and white to convey the information. It … Continue reading Great Covers – CONTEMPORARY PICTORIAL LITERATURE #11
Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nick Cardy was virtually DC’s go-to cover artist, and he produced dozens of memorable, well-designed covers. Often he’d work off of sketches by cover editor and eventual publisher and president Carmine Infantino. This cover to BAT-LASH #2 is a great example. The white border perfectly frames the action, … Continue reading Great Covers – BAT LASH #2
Quite often, it’s the coloring that will take an ordinary cover image and make it into something extraordinary. This Jack Kirby SGT FURY AND HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS cover was in all likelihood colored by the late Stan Goldberg. The fact that every element on this cover is rendered in the same color scheme (including the … Continue reading Great Covers – SGT FURY #16
Here’s a nice SUPERMAN FAMILY cover by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. This one owes much of its success to the color choices. While the overall design is nice, it does become a bit cluttered. But by knocking out the background to a black and white monochrome and only using full color on the key figures, the … Continue reading Great Covers – SUPERMAN FAMILY #189
Decades ago now, back in Mark Gruenwald’s assistant editor classes, we did one focused on covers, where everybody was asked to bring in a current cover that they thought was good. I volunteered this cover, to ZOT! #30, March 1990. I can recall saying that, in contrast to the explodo of colors and blurbs and … Continue reading Great Covers – ZOT! #30
This is a pretty great cover to AIRBOY v6 #6, 1949(the AIRBOY series ran in volumes, restarting every year, rather than continuous numbers.) It’s a story cover, and it does a pretty good job of making the viewer curious as to what the deal is with that flower that one man will give anything to … Continue reading Great Covers – AIRBOY v6 #6
The Tom Brevoort Experience 