This DETECTIVE COMICS cover by Carmine Infantino is only good in that it’s so bad. Produced right at the end of the “Batmania” triggered by the television series, this cover compromises its characters for the sake of a cheap gag. There’s something a bit off about Batgirl’s right arm as well. All that said, it’s … Continue reading Great Covers – DETECTIVE COMICS #371
A very nice multi-paneled Neal Adams DETECTIVE COMICS cover. This almost feels like it should be on HOUSE OF MYSTERY or UNEXPLAINED rather than a super hero comic. As usual, Adams’ photo-realistic style heightens the drama of the moment.
There’s some weird anatomy at play on tiger-Batman, but this Irv Novick BATMAN cover packs the sort of impact more typically reserved for DC’s mystery comics of the era. I don’t know what it means either, but I certainly want to crack it open and find out. The only misstep, I think, is in making … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #209
This Carmine Infantino BATMAN cover is almost all copy, and intriguing as hell. Unfortunately, as was often the case, the story inside didn’t and possibly couldn’t live up to the promise of this cover.
This BATMAN cover image with its word balloon is almost funny, until you realize that it’s not. There’s something chilling about that hanging Robin figure, and the way the ground line is tilted in the manner used by the television series whenever focusing on the villains. Artist Neal Adams frames Batman in the oval formed … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #246
The cover to BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS by Frank Miller is a classic, but for all the right reasons. Here, more than in any comic book cover produced before this point, strong design and typography lead the way. This image is designed to feel far more like a book cover than a comic book … Continue reading Great Covers: BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS #1
This Ed Hannigan symbolic BATMAN cover is so ridiculous that it’s excellent! It feels very much in the style of Joe Kubert’s assorted war covers, but isn’t the kind of thing that was often seen on the super hero books. And the fact that Death is literally counting Batman out brings the whole thing to … Continue reading Great Covers – BATMAN #372
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
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
The Tom Brevoort Experience 