Marvel Tales #226, Marvel Comics, August 1989. Artist: Todd McFarlane.
It came down to Batman #226 and Marvel Tales #226, Neal Adams versus Todd McFarlane. The beef I have with both covers is that the secondary characters suck but Spidey and Bats get standout renderings. It was honestly a toss-up but I gave it to Todd for effort, you know how long he must have spent on those webs.
This kid David Yardin has earned a new fan, he brings great use of colour and light to each new cover of X-Factor I’m seeing.
OK the JOWA has to go to the Flaming Fist!
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.
Wonder Woman 226 has to be drawn by Don Heck and not the great Ernie Chan ? Please tell me it isnt so?
Marvel Tales #226 is the right choice, and literally saved the day. The only other contenders I saw as I scrolled through were Conan #226 and Batman #226. I had a copy of each issue so I pulled them from the boxes and laid them out, and McFarlane’s Marvel Tales was easily dominated the other 2 covers. The image fills the cover and shoves the title to the background, and would have made a great cover to the main ASM title.
Unfortunately, today had more covers worthy of a JOWA , than worthy to be selected as cover of the day.
In addition the “flaming fist” WW cover,:
• Thor #226: Chris nailed Thor 226 in yesterday’s comments for perhaps the worst depiction of Galactus in comic history – Does that look like the most powerful being in the universe? And Thor seems like a wall sticker which a 5 year old added to the wrong spot on the page.
• Superman #226: King Kong Superman.
• Strange Adventure #226: The cover gets a failing grade in Geography class for naming “Africa” as a country. And a failing grade in geo-politics for trying that cover, and not knowing (or attempting to learn) the countries who possess an atomic weapon.
• HULK #226: Just an awkward and poorly rendered depiction of the HULK. How does that image become the cover for a main title at Marvel Comics?
What does JOWA mean??
JOWA: I interpret as “Jimmy Olsen Weird Award”, given to the most bizarre or awkward cover of the day. No question that The Flaming Fist beats Galactus’s knees for the JOWA. That cover looked so lame that I didn’t bother to enlarge it to comprehend its glory. Maybe Ernie had just been through an unsatisfying contract negotiation with DC.
Re Derrick’s comments on other JOWAs:
– King Kong Superman is on the cusp, but doesn’t hold a flaming fist to The Flaming Fist.
– Strange Adventures is a tale of the future (1986 written in 1970), so no problem with the country of Africa in that sense
– Incredible Hulk is not a JOWA but just really bad. Maybe Ernie had just been through an unsatisfying contract negotiation with Marvel.
The more I look at that Marvel Tales cover the more I like it, so I’m not going to say toss-up. I don’t think the secondary character (prop) sucks, he is just a generic baddie. Spider-Man’s pose great, especially compared to some of the weird contorted poses McFarlane turned out for ASM covers.
X-Factor is cool but a hanging around cover.
For #227 we finally get a standout choice: March of Comics’s “Letters to Santa”. Epic composition as Santa broods over the mountain of letters, with the stories within these a mystery to us, as are Santa’s thoughts, with his visage hidden behind his glasses and copious facial hair. All of the action is in the foreground, with the cat moving across the bottom of the image, drawing our attention and raising our expectation of Santa’s reaction. I have seen many covers by ? in the course of this exercise, but this one is a standout even by ? standards.
I like Incredible Hulk and will call this a Rubenstein cover, as this is the poster child for how Rubenstein could elevate just about anything. Still the Trimpe pencils come through in the weird contortion of Hulk’s arm. Kid Colt is John Buscema showing Kane that he can also deliver a fantastic Colt cover, although I think the coloring underserved the pencils/inks. Similarly I think X-Factor is cool but the coloring really hurt this one. I want to give a shout-out to Kubert’s rework of Moreira’s Strange Adventures #68 cover for Strange Adventures #227 – I remember loving this one as a wee lad, and just recently discovered that it was a cover version of a cover (!). Batman is also pretty good.
A hanging around cover is it Chris? Nice
When did Spidey’s webbing become spaghetti?