Famous Funnies #89 – Eastern Color, December 1941 – Artist: Harry G. Peter.
This cover by Harry G. Peter just explodes off the page, it was hard to ignore once I’d seen it. I’ve never seem an actual copy of this comics, would love to though, one with high gloss would be an amazing sight.
Action #89 was the obvious choice and Flash Comics too, in this numbering sequences all the covers of Wings and House of Secrets are in the running.
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.
Glad to see you touch on this run here. I have been recently upgrading mine to better copies, they are bargains even in Fine. Inside you get Peter’s original super hero strips, which are fun, but the highlight of Famous Funnies #76-92 is a sci-fi sequence of Connie on another planet by Frank Godwin, brilliant work, never collected in color to this day.
Tony Raiola/Pacific Comics Club did four small b&w reprints of which I still handle, after many years, they are that good. Bill Everett did an original sci-fi Connie cover for #86, there’s a Buck Rogers robot cover on #82. There’s an Invisible Scarlet O’Neill cover. They rotated many of the characters onto covers. And the other reprint syndicated strips aren’t bad either, Scorchy Smith, Buck Rogers, etc.
You are right, the color just pops on nice copies of these, also the early Heroics #1-11 or so with Bill Everett covers of Hydroman. Some of these are masterpieces, like Heroic #5. The publisher Eastern Color, aka Famous Funnies, really delivered high value comics in those days.
This is the second time in a week that I spent a good bit of time looking at the cover you chose but I didn’t add it to my picks. So definitely on board with this one although I know absolute zero about the title or what’s going on here. Thanks Bud for the exposition, these titles are really on my radar now.
Walt, I can’t agree on some of your other contenders, in particular Action #89. This is a pretty basic cover with only the colors to make it striking. Like my point about nineties covers yesterday, flashy is not enough for a great cover. House of Secrets is unusual, but I don’t think a lot of the art – I think you like it because you like those Charlton romance covers. Flash Comics is okay but Flash just looks too dopey for me to take it seriously.
I am going to try yet again with Mr. Adams for #90, with my pick of House of Secrets. A really extraordinary cover except it doesn’t tell much of a story. The colors are really unusual and striking.
A close second is Mystery in Space, a fairly distant third Star Spangled War Stories.
Thanks for the add on info Bud, you got me wanting to dive into this content.
You got me on the Charlton Romance Chris, but hey – don’t be calling Flash dopey, a little slow but not dopey.
I am a little late to comment, but wanted to say this was a great choice. Again, it is a cover I had not seen before, but it clearly deserves the day. I was expecting Strange Tales, or Superman to be the choice (with a slight possibility of Avengers #89) but this was a much stronger choice. Fantastic art, and an exotic and fearsome image with great color.