Four Color #231, Eastern Color, June 1949. Artist: Bill Wright.
Four Color #231 is the #231 to own for its cover, high-quality work from Bill Wright. Hey, is this the Bill Wright of the Billy Wright Golden Age collection fame?
It’s that kid Dave Yardin again, this time he comes up with another stunning cover for X-Factor #231.
John Romita Jr. produces a strong Spidey cover for issue #231, this whole era coming up of Amazing Spider-Man has some nice covers.
I love the way Wrightson draws forms in action and his unique way of making the clothes convey so much motion and emotion, House of Mystery #231 shows just how easy it came to Mr. Wrightson.
JOWA goes to World’s Finest #231, what the heck is happening here? Should we be concerned?
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.
I thought the choice today was between Superman #231 and Thor #231, but ultimately decided that Superman #231 was the choice for the full cover image that brings the action right at you – and the robot was cool. The Kane cover to Thor #231 had the feel of an old school Conan cover with the hero in the center between the damsel and the monster, so it was naturally high on my list.
House of Mystery #231 was also eye-catching and had strong appeal, and I also enjoyed Avengers #231 and Captain America #231.
As a rule, if Jimmy Olsen has a shot at the JOWA, he has my vote, so I thought the JOWA should go to the bicycle jousting cover of Action Comics #231.
Wonder Woman #231 made a strong case for the JOWA, as did Batman #231, but Jimmy got my nomination.
Thumbs down on ASM again. The House of Mystery is classic Wrightson but pretty run-of-the-mill for a HoM cover and somehow not impressive – the flat title banner taking up 40% of the cover is a real bummer.
Adams saves us tomorrow with Batman #232, otherwise very thin. Yardin comes through with a cool X-Factor cover as runner-up which I am sure will be to Walt’s liking. Daredevil third in line for its impact, although I think it is too simple to call “great”.
Speaking of “to Walt’s liking”, a preemptive thumbs down to Marvel Tales. Colored circles and stars aren’t enough to counter the weakly rendered and boring figures.
Chris, Thanks for the search tip yesterday. I was doing something in GCD’s “Advanced Search,” which I haven’t used enough to get adept at it. Your solution is simple, and I missed that country parameter until now…duhh. I am going to use that on other searches, I am often buried in hits from all over the world.
Now if we could only get a “gallery” of all the appropriate covers. That makes me appreciate all of you having the patience to click thru so many possible picks, then narrowing it down.
I do that when we choose a catalog cover, and just making up my mind can be very tough. For instance, say we want to promote this year’s Spectrum Fantastic Art…it always has something great, in fact lots of things, but narrowing the entire book down is both fun and difficult. I just did a cover promoting the upcoming Twomorrow’s book, The Art of Mac Mac Raboy…but without the book contents to refer to. So I went into my collection, pulled put my favorite Raboy covers from early Master Comics and Captain Marvel, Jr. Then I ran them by my significant other, Anne, and two people at work. Laurie there has veto power, because she does the final cover layout, which often calls for cropping the art to fit our funny-sized (“slim-jim”) catalog. But the results can be great, like this Raboy, that everyone seems to like.
As you might tell, I get a big kick out of creating the best covers for our catalogs. But I only do it once every two months, not every day. Walter, Chris, Derrick, you guys are working at this!
Thumbs up to the Four Color! I also like HoM. The ASM could have been good… but does the artist really understand lighting?? Those white highlights on the figures would appear to be coming from the moon… too bad the artist didn’t consider that when putting them on the wrong side of the figures… as bad as that fist yesterday… its shoddy craftsmanship! The X-Factor I an simply biased against because I don’t care for digital air brushed color. Seems there were a lot if JOWA covers today… they all win!
Bud, that wasn’t my tip yesterday, but here’s a GCD search string that will get you a gallery. If somebody thinks I am missing something in my parameters, do tell:
https://www.comics.org/search/advanced/process/?ind_pub_notes=&rating=&pages_uncertain=&letters=&characters=&brand_group=&series=&binding=&indicia_frequency=&issue_notes=&synopsis=&colors=&keywords=&first_line=&tracking_notes=&job_number=&issues=232&issue_date=&issue_reprinted=&dimensions=&title=&is_comics=&feature=&indicia_publisher=&pub_name=&is_indexed=&story_editing=&method=icontains&pub_notes=&inks=&issue_title=&end_date=&variant_name=&series_notes=&price=&barcode=&paper_stock=&volume=&brand_emblem=&pages=&isbn=&issue_pages=&order2=date&order3=&color=&order1=series&brand_notes=&pencils=&target=cover&publishing_format=&reprint_notes=&country=ca&country=us¬es=&is_surrogate=&issue_count=&issue_pages_uncertain=&start_date=&script=&updated_since=&issue_editing=&logic=False&is_variant=&series_year_began=&story_reprinted=&page=1
Sorry, Chris. That was C.K. with the search suggestion. Thanks, C.K.
But…Chris, your gallery works perfectly, so even better. I’m impressed again, very cool. Thanks!
Now we need Walter to add said instructions for anyone else who comes aboard the site and hasn’t read this. Its tough to be all things to all people all the time….
I was always a Carl Barks duck fan, but rarely paid attention to Mickey. I like this pick a lot…especially the colours. Superman #231 would have been my second choice. Tomorrow will definitely have to be Batman #232…I will be shocked if it isn’t
Great reference Chris! Always loved your catalogs Bud… won’t ask why they stopped coming…and yes David and Chris to the Batman tomorrow… not just a great cover but an important part if the Batman mythos!
Thank you Mr. Meli for the advanced search that will save a lot of time clicking and backing out! That search is just too easy to not do compared to my previous method! I like that Mickey cover Walt. So rarely do you see a peeved off MM! I thought the HoM was sorta distorted and poorly colored, even though I like Wrightson it’s not his better stuff. That JOWA….just wow. I saw the cover but didn’t blow it up to read the balloons. Speechless. For 232, yes Batman is serious business both in value and cover composition. Runner ups would be Fantastic Four, X-Factor, and Iron Man for me. The JOWA goes to Action comics, Supes is making ‘lemonade’ but there are no lemons to be seen!! GASP! Poor Superman Junior~
WWWP?
OK I’ll try to figure out how. to share the search parameters linked by Chris, which really means I’ll ask Scott to see if he can help.
Come on David, no pressure please.
I thought the Superman cover had too many streaky lines in it. But Chris may be right on the Spidey pick.
Bud I think the best part of the exercise you go through is that there is no wrong answer, many covers would work, it’s just you settling on one.
Walt, the search parameter link Chris put in is a copy/paste and looks way more complicated than it actually is. The process is you choose ‘Advanced Query’on the home page, next from the ‘Query Control’ box choose ‘Covers’, now scroll all the way down to the ‘Issue Fields’ box and input the issue number, then click the ‘Query’ button. BOOM! Done. Not sure you can clean up the link, and it’s preloaded with issue 232 covers when clicked. Maybe it could be a permanent ‘signature’ type thing that appears at the top of the page with worded instructions and a hyper-link to the comics.org site. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. As an aside, that Marvel Tales cover is neat. Something about light flares and Dazzler make me like it, Spidey’s a little weird lurking like that though.
Whoops! I forgot a step unless you want to see all the EU comics too. For USA published books you will also need to go to the ‘Publisher Field’ scroll down to ‘United States’ click then click the little arrow that darkens to send it to the ‘Chosen Countries’ box. I wish the previous post could be edited to prevent multi-posting, but it isn’t a option. My apologies~
Thanks, Chris, for the link to that overwhelming comic site. I played around a while in there, wow! And CK for the followup, I’ll try that.