Falling in Love #99, DC Comics, May 1968 – Artist: Ric Estrada.
This cover is amazing, I’ve been looking for a high grade one for years and have never been able to track one down. Please note this is not a Charlton comic and it got here on its own merits.
I thought Jungle Comics #99 was great too and I had a good look at Wings #99.
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 have to admit this cover is pretty spectacular. The art and coloring are outstanding, but the layout and design of the cover makes it mesmerizing. Another great cover I had not seen previously, and likely would not have been able to enjoy but for your column.
While Falling in Love #99 had no real competition, even with competition it would have done quite well relative to my criteria. While it makes a great poster, it follows pretty standard comic book art approaches, the foreground characters are clearly viable mainstream comic book characters, and the unobtrusive thought bubble brings every bit of the image (aside from the quasi-subliminal “Palisades Park”) into context.
Looking forward to #100, I found it interesting that at least until fairly late in the twentieth century it appears to have been a random choice whether or not to celebrate the anniversary. My expectation was that issue numbers were mostly not seen as particularly relevant until collecting took hold in the sixties, but as early as 1942 we have a celebratory cover (Famous Funnies). On the other hand what would now be huge multi-cover events (Action #100) were completely overlooked.
So we have the gamut – complete disregard for the issue number, some recognition, a big “100” on the cover, or complete dominance of the event (e.g. Marvel Comics Presents). I therefore decided to be completely agnostic about the event, and continue to just focus on the cover quality, rather than add some requirement that the event be recognized.
I had trouble deciding amongst the red foil Avengers West Coast, the silver foil Punisher, the chrome foil Web of Spider-Man, the blue foil Wolverine, and the (again) red foil X-Factor. Then I recalled that these were all crass money grabs designed to be bought in bulk and warehoused at high cost until the sun dies, and I moved on.
I didn’t find any one standout, but I am going to go with Ultimate Spider-Man #100, because the art is great and it does tie in with the story line. I am about as ignorant as they come with respect to the Spider-Man continuity, so I suspect that some fans will be against my pick because they don’t like the plot line that it represents. Similar to earlier arguments in this topic, I think we should lay aside that kind of consideration.
As Marvel was wont to do, it made a big deal of its anniversary issues, and this paid off with a number of great runner-up covers:
Amazing Spider-Man
Avengers
Captain America
Iron Man
X-Men
The only non-anniversary runner-ups I would pick are Archie and House of Secrets. Archie is from April 1959 while Laugh #98 which also earned a mention was from May 1959. What exactly was up at that time? Poor choice of words – I mean what _else_…
The anniversary cover to Spider-Girl #100 from 2006 made me feel particularly ancient as I still have no idea what the title is about, and the title managed to put a hundred issues under its belt well within a time period during which I barely set foot in a comic store.
Finally we return to the Superman Hall of Shame for Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, as Superman continues to badger Lois into falsely confessing the murder of Lana Lang, disrupting her polygraph test, while a creepy Nurse Ratched-esque guard revels, “She’ll be executed!”
Cool discoveries are always fun Derrick, thanks for participating in this exercise.
I’m with you Chris, I’m looking at the 100s with an eye on a great cover and if it happens to trumpet the 100th Issue thing then all the better. I never really too note of that guard on the LL #100 cover, now I can’t get her off my mind.
I’ve always liked the late 60s early 70s colorful psychedelic covers. Good choice.
On Chris’s recommendation I took a look at the Lois Lane covers. Although I was never a fan of Lois (perhaps turned off by the Margot Kidder movie version), all I could think was “Poor Lois. She actually ends up marrying this guy.”