Great Covers – KAMANDI #23

Another Jack Kirby cover, this one for his KAMANDI series from the early 1970s. This piece just screams for attention. The shark-as-monster who dominates the image to the inclusion of virtually everything else is powerful enough, but the fact that he speaks, and his line is at once so obtuse and yet also so provocative, … Continue reading Great Covers – KAMANDI #23 →

Great Covers – WITCHING HOUR #45

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 →

Great Covers – FANTASTIC FOUR #82

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 →

Great Covers – BATMAN #194

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 →

Great Covers – BATMAN #230 follow-up

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 →

Great Covers – BATMAN #72

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 →

DOCTOR WHO

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 →