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
A beautiful, simple and effective design on this G.I. COMBAT cover from 1961. The color contrast between the red-orange fade of the background perfectly silhouettes the shattered helmet in the foreground, and the frame of the sniper’s bullet hole perfectly focuses your eye on the gunner himself. In an instant, this cover tells a complete … Continue reading Great Covers – G.I. COMBAT #88
TRIBUTE TO LEGENDS The following is the last of a series of columns originally written for a proposed revival of the Comic Reader a couple years ago. But the magazine folded before ever putting an issue to press, and they’ve been languishing on my hard drive ever since. We’re running them here as originally written, … Continue reading Joe Sinnott
MAD HATTER #2 September-October, 1946 Another Holy Grail finally found, thanks to that addictive little monster known as ebay. I first saw a reproduction of this cover in an issue of COMIC BOOK MARKETPLACE (a magazine I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone interested in the history of comic books), and I was immediately taken with the … Continue reading BHOCOS: MAD HATTER #2
The Tom Brevoort Experience 