COVER STORIES for 01/28/2007
COVER STORIES INSTALLMENT #90
Welcome, faithful readers (and those of you joining us for the first time) to the 88th installment of Cover Stories, the weekly column in which I, Jon B. Knutson, present a group of covers with a common theme!
This week's theme is called "Out of the Comic," featuring four covers in which the characters are coming out of the comic in some way... you'll see what I mean as we go!
Here's Action Comics 437, one of those great 100-page super-spectaculars DC used to do in the 1970s, featuring (clockwise, starting from the Man of Steel) Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, Doll Man, Green Arrow, and Adam Strange bursting out of the cover! Of course, the text below also mentions the Sea Devils and Matt Savage, but they didn't make the cut for the front cover, apparently.
The GCD credits Nick Cardy with pencils and inks on this cover, which looks right to me! Inside, there was a table of contents page featuring Pat Broderick art, then Superman in "Magic is Bustin' Out All Over!" by Elliot S! Maggin, Curt Swan, and Kurt Schaffenberger, which also featured fellow JLA members Green Arrow, Batman, Flash and Green Lantern. This story was a sequel to World's Finest #210, in case you were wondering.
This is also the only appearance of cover-featured characters Flash, Green Lantern, and Green Arrow! They didn't even get a story reprinted from their own careers!
Also in this book were "The First Frogman!," a two-page story reprinted from somewhere the GCD doesn't have identified yet; "The Sea Devils Vs. the Octopus Man!" by Bob Kanigher and Russ Heath, reprinted from Sea Devils #1; a cover gallery featuring the covers from stories reprinted in this issue, Adam Strange in "Riddle of the Runaway Rockets!" by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino, and Murphy Anderson, reprinted from Mystery in Space #85; Matt Savage in "The Barbed Wire Barricade!", by Fox, Gil Kane and Joe Giella, reprinted from Western Comics 77; a Chief Hot Foot filler (credits not indexed); "I Was King of the Daredevils" by Dick Wood and John Prentice, reprinted from My Greatest Adventure #3; and Doll Man in "The Man Who Returned From the Dead!" by William Woolfolk and Reed Crandall, reprinted from Doll Man #13!
And you can always count on the American Comics Group to provide an interesting variation on a cover theme... here's Adventures Into the Unknown #39, featuring a creature coming right off the drawing board! Sheesh, he couldn't even wait until the book was published?
This cover was by Ken Bald. Inside, the features were "Tale of Terror" with art by Lin Streeter, "Apollo's Fatal Gloves" with art by Al Camy and George Wilhelms, "Flag Raising" with art by Pete Riss, "The Hungry Horde" with art by Jon Blummer, "The Skeleton's Secret" with art by Charles Nicholas, and "The Evil Eye" with art by King Ward.
I have no idea which, if any, of those stories could be considered the cover feature.
Here's a different twist on the theme, from Strange Adventures 170, which also features a very cool infinity cover by Dick Dillin and Sheldon Moldoff!
Inside, the lead feature was "The Creature from Strange Adventures," and according to the GCD, the best reader-submitted explanation for this story would win the original art... unfortunately, it doesn't say who wrote the story or did the art!
Also in this issue was "The Total War of Private Adkins," with art by Lee Elias.
And to wrap up this week's column, how's about a more standard "ripping through the cover" pose?
Check this out... what a paste-up job this was! The Captain America figure was by Jack Kirby, while the Iron Man figure was by John Romita!
You know, this was one of Marvel's shorter-lived reprint titles (compared to, say Marvel's Greatest Comics or Marvel Tales, anyway), and one thing about it has always kind of bugged me... Iron Man and Captain America, the cover-featured characters, had originally shared Tales of Suspense, back in the Silver Age... and yet, the Iron Man story in this issue ("The Other Iron Man," by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, and Frank Giacoia) was reprinted from Tales of Suspense #84 (albeit with one page removed), while the Captain America story ("If a Hostage Should Die," by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, John Romita and Frank Giacoia) was reprinted from Tales of Suspense #77!
I guess unlike in "Tales to Astonish" with the Hulk and Sub-Mariner, there weren't that many crossover stories from one feature to the next. Oh, and those Iron Man and Captain America tales were reprinted in the appropriate Essential volumes, in case you hadn't guessed!
Join me next time for another installment of "Cover Stories," in which I'll present another installment of "Comics They Never Made", and in the meantime, you can check out my blog at http://waffyjon.blogspot.com for other musings and ramblings by me, or email me with comments about this column at !
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