Top Ten Covers

TOP TEN COVERS

    So, you want to survey the top five favorite covers?!  Good idea.  Knowing that this would be an impossible task anyway, I decided to set up some self-imposed rules and guidelines. Firstly, I will choose ten instead of five, mainly because this would allow coverage to some  covers that I wanted to talk about. Secondly, I will limit myself to only one cover to a particular artist or you would get tired of seeing Lou Fine’s name ten times. Finally, I tried to limit a cover choice to one per G.A. title. So with not much further introduction:

1. Mystery Men 3 A Lou Fine cover shows my bias right out front. I suppose others will opt for Fantastic Comics 3 or Hit Comics 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9 or Wonderworld 7. Great covers all. But there is something about this large portrait cover that typifies to me the lyrical quality of Fine’s covers. Fine’s artistic abilities shine through on all his covers. He has an uncanny ability to bring motion to the drawn page. Or course, by limiting myself to one cover by an artist does not allow me to mention Fine’s cover to Jumbo Comics 10, or to Science 2 or 3, or to National 7 or Jungle 1 or... (Okay, so I cheated a little.)
   
   
2. Silver Streak 6    One look at this golden age cover makes you breathless at the versatility of Jack Cole who would gain his greatest fame from his whimsical rendition of “Plastic Man”.
   
   
3. Target Comics 7    Wolverton rendered only one G.A. cover that I am aware of.  Maybe that’s what draws me to the unique drawing style and content of his famous character “The Spacehawk”.
   
   
4. Amazing Mystery Funnies Vol. 2/2    Bill Everett gained his greatest fame for the creation and rendition on the “Sub-Mariner.” Some of his earliest work was produced for Centaur Publications when he worked for Lloyd Jacquet. This and his cover for issue 3 are some of my personal favorites.
   
   
5. More Fun Comics 54    I suppose I’ll initiate a bunch of hate mail, but generally, considering the number of titles produced and its pre-eminence in the marketplace, DC-National covers don’t do much for me. They are all sort of static and one dimensional. However, I find Bernard Bailey cover for issue 54 of More Fun to be dramatic and spectacular.
   
   
6. Champion Comics 10    An esoteric title at best, a young Jack Kirby created this cover that flows with action.   
   
   
7. Daring Mystery Comics 1    Sometimes Joe Simon gets left in the background of Jack Kirby. Many of the covers in the Guide described as “Kirbyesque” (see, for example, Target 10  or Champ Comics) are vintage Joe Simon.  The cover for Daring Mystery exemplifies the unbridled energy of the early golden age. In close contention are Simon’s covers for Fantastic Comics 6, Wonderworld Comics 15 and Champion Comics 8 and 9 and Speed Comics 17.     
   
   
8. Submariner Comics 11    How does one pick a Schomburg cover? Could anyone get more action going on a page? By picking this cover it precludes trying to choose between the wonderful air brush  covers he did for Wonder Comics, Startling Comics and Thrilling Comics.
   
   
9. Planet Comics 13    Its tough to choose among all those great Planet Comics covers but somehow a  blue skinned monster threatening a damsel as wonderfully drawn by Zolnerowich makes it to my list.
   
   
10. Funny Pages Vol. 4/1    It was tough to decide between this and Detective Picture Stories 5 or Amazing Mystery Funnies 2/10 as my final choice.  But this simple, yet dramatic composition of “The Arrow” firing down on some bad guys does it for me.
    
    

    I realize that I “cheated” pretty badly, but there are so many goodies.  However, by you limiting me to five covers, you allowed me to avoid the difficult choice of picking a cover from Chesler’s Punch, Scoop, or Dynamic Comics  of the mid 1940s ....or choosing a Mac Raboy cover from Captain Marvel, Jr.....or a Flessel “Sandman” cover....., or.......

    Jon Berk   2/26/95

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