Monday, June 15, 2009

Grooviest Covers of All Time: Your Fave Groovy Age Cover Artist for 2009 is...Jim Aparo

The votes are in, and here's your winnah, Groove-ophiles...Jim Aparo! Jim led the pack with 13 votes, followed by Neal Adams with 9, Jack Kirby with 8, Gil Kane and Jim Steranko tied with 7 each, Nick Cardy got 5 votes, Joe Kubert and John Romita Sr. tied with 4 votes, "other" got four votes (tell us who those others are so I can add 'em to the list next time), and Steve Ditko got zilch (what's up with that?). I'm thinking of making this an annual event--what do you think?

Okay, I don't wanna fire all of my guns at once (and ex-plode into spaaace), so I didn't wanna use up all the best Aparo covers in this one post. You wanna see more, and I'll give 'em to ya, but I've gotta keep ya coming back, right? Anyway, I had a lot of fun coming up with the covers I'm gonna share with you in this post (special thanks to all the far-out folks at the Grand Comics Database!). The following covers are covers to comics Ol' Groove purchased right off the spinner rack when they were brand spankin' new. I purchased these comics for no other reason than the magnificent Aparo covers. Yeah, the insides (to most of 'em) were way, way out and cool, but that was just luck on my part. The insides could've been blank for all I cared. I love these covers!! I hope you do, too!

3 comments:

  1. Needless to say, this is a very fine choice. I'm impressed you included the Adventure #446 cover. That was one of my first exposures to Aparo's art.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I voted for Gil Kane, because I'm a huge fan of his Marvel work (and he was their top cover artist, bar none, between 1972 and 1975). But these Aparo covers are really impressive and I can't argue with the choice of the majority. He's very close to Neal Adams in style and approach.....in other words, he's very good!

    Aparo and Adams deserve a lot of credit for helping DC get out of it's goofy doldrums in the 50s and 60s. Having been a Marvel fan growing up, I've only recently become familiar with a lot of Aparo's work. He was one terrific artist...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hm, you've got Mike Middleton's and my approval on this result, big surprise, hunh? I especially like the PS cover you selected; I think that's one of his best, cleverly working on four planes: the viewer's position, the jury, the Stranger, and the shadow. When you analyze how this all adds up, it's an incredibly rich composition!

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin
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.


All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!