Friday, December 2, 2016

The Grooviest Covers of All Time: Someone Stole Marvel's Crayons!

Monochrome covers, baby! How cool were they? During the late 60s/early 70s, Mighty Marvel experimented with a few--sometimes to awesome effect! Now all of the following comics aren't purely monochromatic--there are some other colors, but usually only two or three (I drew the line at more than three colors--that's why you don't see Avengers #73). It's like, the colorists only had two or three crayons with which to create these masterpieces. Were stolen crayons really involved? Did the colorists just get lazy? Was publisher Martin Goodman trying to save some moolah? Only Irving Forbush knows for sure--and he ain't tellin'!
Cover art by Gene Colan and Dan Adkins

Cover art by John Buscema

Cover art by Gene Colan and Vinnie Colletta

Cover art by Marie Severin and John Verpoorten

Cover art by Dick Ayers and John Severin

Cover art by Herb Trimpe and John Severin with John Buscema

Cover art by George Tuska with John Romita

Cover art by Jack Kirby and Vinnie Colletta

Cover art by Don Heck and George Tuska

Cover art by Jim Steranko

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8 comments:

  1. Rip JaggerDecember 2, 2016 at 1:44 AM

    Some great ones. When the goal was to catch eyes among a gang of color saturated covers, these monochromes really could pop. There's a lurid weirdness to the Captain Marvel cover which has always attracted me. Sgt. Fury 50 might be my fave, I've always adored that cover, the best image of WWII Fury ever done.

    Rip Off

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jason AtomicDecember 2, 2016 at 10:38 AM

    I love the Colan Capt Marvel one... A rare example of Vinnie C actually doing his job properly?!?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Charlie Horse 47December 2, 2016 at 11:32 AM

    Groove you never cease to amaze! Charlie loves the greenest-ever rendition of Marvel! Is Iron Man fighting a Sentimel on 13? Love that cover too! Never saw before. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Britt ReidDecember 2, 2016 at 2:25 PM

    Nice assortment, though I think you left out the earliest one of all...X-Men #17 http://www.comics.org/issue/19848/cover/4/
    When it was reprinted as X-Men #70 (http://www.comics.org/issue/24309/cover/4/) using a standard color scheme it lost almost all the visual impact!

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  5. The Groovy AgentDecember 2, 2016 at 9:19 PM

    Didn't forget it, Britt, it's pre-Groovy Age. But man, that's one of the best monochrome covers I've seen! Thanks for sharing!

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  6. DougDecember 4, 2016 at 3:16 PM

    Charlie Horse --

    I believe the big nasty on that Iron Man cover is the Controller.

    Nice selection, Groove!

    Doug

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Charlie Horse 47December 5, 2016 at 1:07 PM

      Thanks! The villain does look too agile for a sentinel!

      Delete
  7. William PrestonDecember 5, 2016 at 6:34 PM

    That Avengers cover with the Vision has always looked like a mistake. I prefer the covers that at least leave the corner pic alone; otherwise, it appears to be a mistake by the printer. Hadn't seen some of these. Cool!

    ReplyDelete

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.


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