Strange Adventures #218, DC Comics, June 1969. Artist: Neal Adams.
I love the Neal Adams cover to Strange Adventures #218, Adams’ take on 217 fell short with too much shading but the almost psychedelic #218 looks great.
Ernie Chan does a great job on Hulk #218, hard to do a bad cover with Hulk and Rhino in my opinion and add in Doc Samson and we have the ingredients to a great cover.
I’m a huge Conan fan and Conan #218 is all about Jim Lee’s rendering of Conan, Conan fans will understand.
Nick Cardy delivers another strong cover with Flash #218.
JOWA goes to Adventure Comics #218, I agree with Chris’ comments in yesterday’s post regarding Adventure #218 and in the words of someone I know quite well “nobody needs to see that”.
A great comic book cover matching each day of the year, 1 through 365. Please chime in with your favourite corresponding cover, from any era.
Strange Adventures #218 shares the same disproportionate figure problem with its predecessor. I have seen this cover many times, including yesterday, and it wasn’t until I studied it some more today that I realized the villain _isn’t_ supposed to be a dwarf. Strange’s torso to leg ratio has improved from #217 but still looks off to me. Other than the figures I find the art confusing, so overall I can’t put it on my short list.
On the other hand, Flash was on the cusp and with your urging I’d add it to the list. I thought about it yesterday but I decided it was too simple and a bit JOWA-ish. Nevertheless it is a very striking composition and hits on my criteria, so thumbs up.
#219 delivers some good candidates and I will slightly go out on a limb and pick X-Factor. By the time this cover came out I was long into my comic hiatus, so I have no idea what the story is, but this is a killer piece of art. My only complaint is that the brightness should have been increased across the image, to maintain the light/shadow effect but enhance the foreground.
My bias was to pick Batman because I love that cover, but I tried to recover a first time viewer’s eye, and with that I decided X-Factor was superior. So I would certainly accept Batman as the pick.
The next great runner up is Tarzan. Yes this has been done before but not by the latter-day Kubert who still had his chops (in contrast to that recent unfortunate Captain America run). You can have your contorted Frazetta explosion gawkers, this is more to my tastes.
Some other good runners-up are Flash (1987) and Strange Adventures (more Kubert).
Blackhawk continues to make the case for rechristening the JOWA to BWA. Ay caramba!
It is always a good cover day when you get a great Conan cover, especially by Jim Lee. And as a bonus for any Conan fan, an Ernie Chan cover is always welcome, and HULK #218 really delivers – great image!
Not sure how I feel about Strange Adventures cover – it is vibrant and has some pop but lacks the appeal of the HULK and Conan covers.
Also enjoyed the contrast between the powerful version of Superman #218 (1987) vs. the version of the man of steel on Superman #218 (1969).
I would have picked the Conan as top choice, it is excellent. The Hulk is a cop out, with the second Rhino literally photo-shopped from the first, exactly the same angle.
And Chris nails the big problem with Strange Adventures, the villain’s proportions are wacky. Its a very original layout, but he doesn’t pull it off,
And from a personal basis, Neal’s Adam Strange with that long face and muscle-bound body…he’s not MY Adam Strange.
Mine is the original Infantino/Anderson version. Nothing that came later captured that magic from Julius Schwartz’s team when they did the Mystery In Space run, #53 to 91. Ok, the Showcase issues by Sekowsky and the first few MIS issues were not Infantino/Anderson, but they still had their charm. Adam was still an everyman who got caught in the brilliant plot device, the Zeta-Beam, that took him to Rann for only a short time, then wore off and returned him back on earth. Brilliant!
Adam was just an ordinary guy with a rocket pack, but with a scientist’s ability to use his HEAD to solve dilemmas, not his brawn.
I agree on the Adams cover. Adam Strange is way too elongated and the villain is awkwardly foreshortened. His arms seem so short he wouldn’t even be able to wash his…cough… well lets simply say his hygiene would be suspicious.what bugs me about the Hulk is the Nick Parks mouth on the Hulk…its silly. Not a Lee fan but I would go for Conan first Flash second. Overall not an inspiring day but those will happen… and I bet more frequently!
Agree 100% with Bud re _my_ Adam Strange. While I don’t think Buck Rogers should be puny (his name is “Buck” for crying out loud), Adam and Stephen are understandably ectomorphs. Perhaps Adams intended to presage Thomas Hugo’s supplying of Alosun to Adam in return for Zeta beam transport from Terra Obscura.
A lot of the covers presented here do have that initial impact to get it off the stands into hands, but yeah, sometimes the details can slide and not hold up to a longer scrutiny. Adam Strange is a good example of the difficulty of drawing foreshortened figures.
It took me a few minutes to comprehend that the Hulk is not coming out of the machine Samson is lifting but is supposed to be “ghosted” with the purple Rhino on a second plane. Likely a photostatic cut and paste back in those days as a time saving short cut.
I love all the covers here, but Bud’s comments make me want to reread my mystery in space run. Where did I put that long box…?