Variations on this WITCHING HOUR cover by Nick Cardy were common on the weird/mystery titles published by DC in the early 1970s. But on this one, the stark red face of the demon as well as the expression on the boy’s face and the white of his turtleneck really help to sell it. The red … Continue reading Great Covers – WITCHING HOUR #45
A very basic but very dramatic FANTASTIC FOUR cover by Jack Kirby, emphasizing the scope of the cast and implying the energy and excitement of the story within. In rare restraint, this cover features no copy whatsoever, allowing the image itself to do the work of selling it. A white background here was almost a … Continue reading Great Covers – FANTASTIC FOUR #82
Carmine Infantino experimented a bit in the 1960s with covers that incorporated the series logo, in the manner of Will Eisner’s SPIRIT sections. This BATMAN cover was one of the first, if not the first. At the time, DC was beginning to lose sales traction to newcomer Marvel, and was looking for a way to … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #194
comicbookcovers: Strange Adventures #51, December 1954, cover by Murphy Anderson
kurtbusiek: A Tumblr post yesterday suggested that a “person of color” didn’t appear on a Batman cover until 1970. I checked pre-1970 BATMAN, DETECTIVE and WORLD’S FINEST covers, to see. If you take “person of color” to mean a non-Caucasian, the claim wasn’t remotely true. There were Asians, Egyptians, South Americans, American Indians, Latinos, etc. Often … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #230 follow-up
kurtbusiek: Even when Batman played Tarzan in “The Jungle Batman” in 1952, it was set on a Pacific jungle island and while it looked like a generic Tarzan setting and the villains were multi-ethnic, that meant a bunch of white guys, a Chinese gangster and a tough Sikh. No black faces in the story at … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #72
kurtbusiek: The closest thing to black folks on a pre-1970 Batman cover, or at least the closest I could find.
It’s Christmas Eve as I write this, and for the last near-decade, at least in my household, my children have learned about the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas, you see, is when Dad watches Doctor Who. Since the show came back in 2005, viewing each year’s Christmas Special has been something of a ritual, a … Continue reading DOCTOR WHO
Okay, so I’ve been thinking about writing a little bit about a wide variety of subjects that influenced me while growing up, beyond just individual comics (although including them as well). And this wold seem to be the appropriate place for such recollections. So moving forward, this will be the place where I’ll be waxing … Continue reading New Mission Statement
A pretty brilliant cover from Steve Ditko that reduces the iconic silhouette of Spider-Man down about as far as is possible while still keeping it identifiable. The fact that the caption boxes are also done in Spidey’s colors isn’t an accident, either. I suspect the decision was made to color Spidey’s eyepiece red rather than … Continue reading Great Covers – AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #28
