Great Covers: METAL MEN #37

By the late 1960s, DC’s sales were in a bit of trouble. The approach that they had been using for decades had suddenly begun to falter, and nobody then in a position of authority seemed to know how to reverse that situation. Accordingly, new blood was needed–and that came in the form of Carmine Infantino first being given the job as cover designer for the company, then editorial director, and then finally Publisher. Carmine immediately began to start doing sketches for many of the other artists, pushing the dynamics and dramatics of the images DC was selling. Additionally, he brought in other artists to be editors, a job previously held mostly by people with a writing background. All of which brings us to METAL MEN #37. The Metal Men had been one of the most successful launches that DC had in the Silver Age–the early SHOWCASE appearance as issues of the self-titled comic sold incredibly well. But thereafter, the wagon began to slow down, and thirty issues in, the title was on life support. In an attempt to save it, new editor Mike Sekowsky changed up the strip dramatically, replacing the entire creative team, separating the heroic robots from their mentor Will Magnus and making them hunted and hated by the world in the manner of the Marvel heroes of the day. That storyline led events to this issue, in which the Metal Men all assume new human identities in order to remain undercover. That’s a striking cover, with its limited palate and the sensitive Gray tone work really being used to good effect. (Those are the Metal Men in their new human personas in the background, for anybody who didn’t figure that out.) It was penciled by Mike Sekowsky and inked by Dick Giordano. It’s possible that carmine did the sketch for it–it feels a bit like on of his compositions–but I don’t know that for sure. Anyway, this issue must have leapt off of the spinner racks–but it didn’t do any real good. The new approach to the Metal Men didn’t catch on, and the series was discontinued a few issues later.