Thanks for the win, gang!
It's been a lot of fun to take on the extra challenge of trying to play this week's contest
and last week's with the same entry. It could easily have come to an end this week if I hadn't won, since the next contest might have been something like "Favorite All-Star Western Comics cover" or something else so specific that no computer covers exist for!
I started playing by these rules discretely back on the old boards. My biggest challenge there was when the topic was "Favorite Cover Published in the Last Year" (obviously, that board didn't limit the contest to "classic" covers). Well, even my
own "favorites" are pretty fluid, I used the previous week's challenge (I think it was "Beards") to pick a "favorite" that had a man with a beard on it. I wasn't particularly fond of
any of the year's covers, so I didn't feel like I was cheating when I let that influence my decision to declare, as my "favorite", a cover by one of my true favorite artists, Mike Kaluta:
A darned fine cover it was, I'm sure most would agree.
I realized, though, that the next week could easily spell the end of my run. If
this is my "Favorite Cover of the Year", then whatever the following week's topic would be, it would
also have to be my "Favorite Cover of the Year!" You can't have two real favorites, so unless I could reuse this Haunted Tank cover for the next contest, I was going to have to drop out!
Odds of winning with this cover were slim, and I don't think I got a single vote.
But...
Lucky for me, the next week's topics was "Ghosts"!
Thank you, ghost of J.E.B. Stuart! I remember someone commented on the odd strategy of using the same cover twice in a row, but at the time, no one knew the extra challenge I was giving myself. Once again, I didn't get any votes, but I felt relieved by my good fortune, and stayed in the game!
New contest up soon!
