Judging Comics By Their Covers

My Twitter "pal" Aaron Meyers  is an aficionado of all things comics. He's always browsing comic shops and flea markets for unique finds in classic comic books.

He likes to post pics of these books he finds on Twitter.

And I like to post snarky comments about the covers. 

So here we go. Here's the cover of a romance comic that Marvel used to publish. 

OK, who the hell is she looking at?
That pensive dude in the foreground
is not in her line of sight.

Well, this is cover by John Romita is fraught with drama and heartbreak. A woman in tears as the man she loves is leaving her as he pensively avoids her gaze.

Assuming he's the one her heart is breaking for. 

She's not looking at him. 

Maybe she's in love with this dude's driver, maybe? 

Ooh! Maybe I figured out this story's secret twist! 

Up next from the mid 1970s, Aaron scored a nice copy of one of DC's mystery titles, House of Secrets.  

"We've got trouble, right here in the House of Secrets!
And that starts with T and that rhymes with P
and that stands for POOL!"

DC's mystery titles like House of Secrets, House of Mystery, Witching Hour and Ghosts usually boasted some wild and eye catching covers by artists like Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta and Nick Cardy. This particular cover is by Luis Dominguez who did a lot of work for DC on its mystery and war books as well DC's western star Jonah Hex. 

The caption is a riff on a song from The Music Man and if yo don't get the reference, well, I'm old, you're probably not and let's just move on from there.  

Man, what a total icehole!

You see, he's in a HOLE in the ICE, you see. 

(He's not going to explain the joke, is he?) 

You know, an ICE HOLE, right?

(Oh, God! He is explaining the joke.) 

And ICE HOLE sounds like ASS HOLE, you know? 

(Well, that was awkward.)  

You may notice none of these covers are from super hero books. Aaron collects those as well. But the ones that are not always interest me the most, from those halcyon days when the comic book industry was not mostly about super heroes and would throw anything at the wall to see what would stick. 

Aaron hasn't been feeling well lately and he's also stuck in pandemic exile like the rest of us which isn't helping. 

Hope things get better soon. Thanks for sharing the fortunes of searches with us on Twitter, Aaron. 

Songs For Saturday coming up tomorrow.

Until next time, remember to be good to one another.