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What is your Fav/BEST SA Cover of all time? Here's Mine!
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Started by Dreamtoreal1,

179 posts in this topic

Hepcat

Hepcat

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, marvelmaniac said:

These are the two books that I saw in the 60's that created the "WOW" for me and  turned me into the "marvelmaniac" I am today.

 

Personal nostalgia can definitely influence aesthetic preferences. And there's nothing wrong with that at all.

 

:cool:

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chrisco37

chrisco37

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Posted
19 hours ago, Hepcat said:

Awwwww, come on! That's not even a good cover let alone a candidate for the best.

It's neither colourful nor dynamic. Moreover Jack Kirby was absolutely, positively not the right artist for Spider-Man. In fact, the vast majority of Silver Age Amazing Spider-Man covers are better than that one.

You're crazy!   It think it's a fantastic cover.   And, while I agree that Kirby isn't the right Spidey artist, I think that for the debut, he was the right choice.   The Spidey on AF15 cover looks heroic.   He looks the part.   You see that cover on the stands and you want to see who this Spider-Man is.  

I don't think Ditko did any covers that are even close to this iconic/heroic.   33 is a great cover and 23 is my favorite (Ditko), but neither of them are as good as AF15.  

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Hepcat

Hepcat

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Posted (edited)

Spider-Man always looked awkward and unnatural in that pose to me. And the cover colours are just too grey and not very vibrant overall. Oh well. Different strokes for different folks.

 

(shrug)

 

I'm still working on my own list.

 

:juggle:

Edited by Hepcat
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chrisco37

chrisco37

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Posted
6 hours ago, Hepcat said:

Spider-Man always looked awkward and unnatural in that pose to me. And the cover colours are just too grey and not very vibrant overall. Oh well. Different strokes for different folks.

 

(shrug)

 

I'm still working on my own list.

 

:juggle:

I understand what you're saying.  Kirby's Spidey is a bit stiff.  I interpret it as "heroic".  Ditko was able to capture Spidey's "pliability".  

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adamstrange

adamstrange

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Here's some ancient Board history I wrote in response to a poll we did to pick the #1 cover.

Mega-kudos to Mica and ComicBookGuy and anyone who helped out with this survey!

 

I've taken a few shots a folks, but I'm willing to receive a few so here are my picks.

 

The first 8 were easy and I put the initial list together in maybe 15 minutes. The last two were tough and I let things sit for a week before picking them. I could easily go with other choices in their place.

 

I did think the Steranko was the standout cover artist and was pleasantly surprised to see a number of his covers rank higher than key issues. However, I find it awfully boring looking at the same artist's work over and over again, so I chose 10 books that I'd be happy with if they were the only ones I could look at.

 

If you ask me in a year, I'd probably produce a set of 10 with basically the same artists, but probably with different covers. But this is what I did for this year. For the Marvel zombies out there, please note that I picked 5 Marvels and 5 DCs. I'm very ecumenical.

 

Flame away!

 

AdamTop10.jpg

 

#10 I debated a bit on this one as I wanted to put in a Ditko spidey. But the cover that is probably his best line work, 29, just doesn't have the "pop" on the printed comic. Spidey 33 has the nifty dripping water effects but it wasn't the first time that he did it. For this one I chose my personal favorite of all his per-hero work. This is a genre I love and wanted to represent with at least one book.

 

#9 This is a comic that looks much, much better in person, in extremely high grade. If you haven't seen it that way, this vote won't make any sense. Not all books have to be "spectacular" to keep your attention. If I'd realized that I'd picked 2 different covers by Gil Kane, I would probably have switched to an Infantino cover like Showcase 13. No, it wasn't nominated because most folks haven't seen it in high grade and I tried to limit how many nominations I made.

 

#8 It was October's praise and nomination that caused me to notice this book. The cover image is striking and the use of color is superb. Color was definitely a clear factor in my choice of books. If I were asked to choose covers based solely on the original art then my list would definitely look different.

 

#7 Wally Wood is one of the greats, and while I don't think this compares to his EC work, I do think it's a classic confrontation between Marvel superheros. The story is even better than the cover, and I think that had some influence on my selection. (Hey, this was about "favorite" covers.)

 

#6 Yeah, this is busy with all of the text blurbs, but I love purple covers. yay.gif Actually, I do think that color (orange/green/purple) in addition to the classic Kirby fight image was a big part of my selection. I did a bit of debate internally about this one as there are other Kirby's I like about as much as this one. His JIM/Thor series, IMHO, has his overall best set of covers as they usually had less text and fewer characters. Thor 127 was very tempting but I could not handle the clunky way he drew the arms and hands on Thor. Since I had picked FF25 first, I stuck with it, just like I would go with my first answer when I take a test.

 

#5 This is a personal favorite, though it looks very cool in person because it's purple. yay.gif I had to have a DC greytone and an Adam Strange book in the list (so sue me!) and this cover has always given me goosebumps. As a kid, I wanted to be spaceman like Adam Strange, with a jet pack and ray gun saving damsels in distress from a tyrannous on the planet Rigel. When I got my copy, I was, as buttock has said, giddy like teenage girl high on pixie stix at a slumber party.

 

#4 There has to be one classic superman cover in any SA list, and it should not be 252. If you voted for it, you are not, and I say this with all sincerity, a man! 242 has a classic Curt Swan superman pose, and the colors -- well, did anyone notice that the background is purple.

 

#3 Before anyone was lobbying for SS 4, I had it near the top of my list and saw no reason to change it: two great heros in a classic pose by Buscema. This is not a static, single-color image like Avengers 57 (not a big fan of that one I'm afraid), nor is it one overwhelmed by the Kirby house-style at Marvel. With this cover, Buscema synthesized the dynamism of Kirby with his own ability to capture the dignity and nobility of the soul of a superhero. Always loved it, always will.

 

#2 Joe Kubert always tells a good story, but he's done so much work so quickly, that his isn't consistently at the top of his game. With Enemy Ace, he was clearly inspired by the character and stories from Robert Kanigher and drew a series stories that rank among the best of his career. Having seen some killer original Enemy Ace art, you can tell that the ink just dripped from his pen. I have, btw, see the original art for this cover and it is spectacular. It works perhaps even better on the printed comic, with minimalist application of color.

 

#1 I mentioned that I like Steranko and thought the poster-like images he drew were among the most eye-catching among the nominees. At one time it was my goal to collect one of each of his covers. I never finished that set, but I still have most all of the pre-1970 covers. There are other Steranko covers that are artistically as good and better than this one, but I've just always thought of this a quintessential SA comic cover. Bold, dramatic, and colorful, it promises pulse-pounding superhero action. Before I had really cool 10 cent comics, this was the always the first comic I would show other people to explain to them why I liked comics.

 

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Hepcat

Hepcat

Posted
Posted (edited)
23 hours ago, chrisco37 said:

The Spidey on AF15 cover looks heroic.   He looks the part.   You see that cover on the stands and you want to see who this Spider-Man is.  

 

 

That's precisely how I felt when I first saw this ad in Adventures of the Fly 13 heralding the introduction of the exciting Jaguar character a year earlier in 1961:

 
image

 

The cover of Adventures of the Jaguar 1 too was striking and didn't disappoint when it hit the newsstands a month later:

 

image

 

As a cover I think it's much preferable to that of Amazing Fantasy 15 but it's still nowhere close to being among my favourites.

 

(shrug)

Edited by Hepcat
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pemart1966

pemart1966

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On 2017-06-13 at 6:40 AM, marvelmaniac said:

These are the two books that I saw in the 60's that created the "WOW" for me and  turned me into the "marvelmaniac" I am today.

2zodldz.jpg

 

v6k9z4.jpg

How about the prequel?  Oh the SUSPENSE  :fear:!!!!!   You can feel the tension!  Gotta buy it to see what happens in the next 2 seconds!!!!

 

Cover for Fantastic Four (Marvel, 1961 series) #12 [Regular Edition]

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