(click for larger image) Once upon a time in comics, writers and editors created alluring covers to entice readers into buying each comic book. The covers typically depicted a scene within the book - a scene that was usually outrageous, shocking, or unbelievable. Sometimes it appeared the heroes faced an impossible doom. Sometimes it even implied that a hero would die! The potential reader couldn't help but think "I need to see how this turns out!" In fact, it was common knowledge that some of these outlandish covers were created first, and the writer was simply told to write a story around it. This system resulted in a lot of interesting and unbelievable ideas. But it was also a lot of fun. Unless of course the scene depicted on the cover never actually happened in the book, which was sometimes the case. Or, it was tweaked slightly within the story giving the heroes an out. In those cases, the reader faced bitter disappointment.
This system lasted for decades, but began to decline in the early 1990's. The new trend was to have covers that were more vague, and more iconic. The covers rarely had anything to do with the actual story and one felt that the covers became interchangeable - any Superman cover could be swapped with any other Superman cover and it wouldn't affect the story a bit. This new method is what we have today; long gone are the days of those eye catching covers with their impossible dilemma's. Instead we have depictions of our heroes looking strong, brave, iconic.
When I first started reading comics, the old system was in place. It was always fun to see how these stories would resolve themselves. Well, not always fun - some stories were pretty terrible. But I read them anyway to satisfy my curiosity. Another disappointing aspect, which is still with us today, is the fact that the cover artists were not always the artists hired to draw the interiors. So even if you had a beautifully drawn cover, you might not have a beautifully drawn comic book. That actually happened a lot. So these covers were really special to me because they showcased the better artists working at the time. For DC, that meant people like Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, Ross Andru, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, and George Perez. More often than not, these artists works were greatly improved by the inking of one of DC's all time greats, Dick Giordano.
Even though the stories were not always the greatest, I still have quite a bit of nostalgia for many of the covers from those days. I was lucky to find a couple of my favorites. One is the cover to Word's Finest 260 by Rich Buckler and Dick Giordano (seen here). The second is this one, World's Finest 263 by Ross Andru and Dick Giordano. Did you know Batman and Superman had sons? Neither did I until I picked up this comic! Too bad their existence meant the world would be doomed! (see, now you'll have to buy the comic to find out what happens!). Or if you want to cheat, click HERE (pencils by Ross Andru, inks by Dick Giordano)
