This Alex Schomburg cover for EXCITING COMICS is as chock-a-block full of imagery as any of his Timely covers, and yet it’s almost the antithesis of them, in that here it’s the heroes who seem needlessly violent and brutal. Sure, those are enemy Japanese soldiers (caricatured hatefully though they are), but they’re not doing anything … Continue reading Great Covers – EXCITING COMICS #35
This Ron Wilson CAPTAIN AMERICA cover conveys the power of the Hulk in a visceral way–not by focusing on his size or weight, but on the shattering impact of one of his blows on Cap’s shield. It puts the viewer right at the heart of the action, and makes it feel almost as though that … Continue reading Great Covers – CAPTAIN AMERICA #230
The sketch for this Irv Novick BATMAN cover had to have been done by Carmine Infantino, who had been brought on staff by DC in the late 1960s to punch up the graphics of their line, which had grown stale over the years. It’s a masterful cover–that tilted ground line, the extreme close-up on the … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #205
I think that, more than anything, it’s the coloring that makes this THOR cover by Jack Kirby stand out. There’s a lot of interesting modeling being done, in a way that wasn’t typical for the time, and the overall red hue gets across a real feeling of Armageddon. Also impressive is the fact that Mangog … Continue reading Great Covers – THOR #157
This Neal Adams ACTION COMICS cover is perhaps not all that shocking these days, but in the time period when it was published, it was a revelation. This was simply not the sort of cover that you saw on a DC comic. Instead of a sedate and almost picturesque image conveying a high concept in … Continue reading Great Covers – ACTION COMCS #361
It’s hard to know for sure, but I suspect that the first super hero that I followed with any regularity wasn’t Superman or Batman or the Flash–it was Underdog. Produced in 1964 by a portion of the team that worked on Rocky & Bullwinkle as well as a number of cereal commercials, Underdog was a … Continue reading Underdog
comicbookcovers: G.I. Combat #83, September 1960, cover by Jerry Grandenetti and Jack Adler
A terrific Russ Heath G.I. COMBAT cover taking full advantage of halftones to create a painted look to the artwork. DC production maven Jack Adler experimented with adding greytones to covers throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, often to excellent effect. The color here is marvelous as well–that fireball couldn’t seem any more hot … Continue reading Great Covers – G.I. COMBAT #80
A powerful Harvey Kurtzman TWO-FISTED TALES cover, in which Kurtzman employs his expressive and bold rendering style to its utmost. The haunting eyes of this snowbound marine are the perfect focal point, and seem to follow your gaze.
It’s the final comic book format issue of MAD before its transition into one of the most popular magazines of the 20th Century, and artist and editor Harvey Kurtzman eschews any visuals in order to get MAD’s particular philosophy across.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 