Post by driver1980 on Sept 13, 2024 7:34:13 GMT -5
I think we can presume that no-one, when first encountering comics, ever walked into a newsagents and said, “That cover sure looks like a well-written comic!” No, the picture hooked us, whether it was the Hulk fighting a monster in a swamp, or Batman throwing a Batarang at Crazy Quilt.
Good writing keeps us reading, and we may gravitate towards certain writers as we get older, but as far as the spontaneous buys are concerned, it has to be the art that hooks us initially, right?
This comic went on sale 45 years ago today:
Now, if someone had seen that, then or today, I think it might well have hooked people. Who is the arsonist villain battling Batman? How will Batman survive atop a burning building? Can he save those civilians?
This comic also went on sale 45 years ago today:
Great art on both, but I don’t know if a very wordy cover hooks me in the same way. I mean, in their own way, words such as “Batman Battling The League of Assassins” and “Batgirl and Robin in their own fantastic features” sounds mildly intriguing, but those words don’t hook me in the same way; and as the cover is simply Bats, Robin and Batgirl swinging from the rooftops, I’m not sure it’d hook me like the other cover.
If I had seen those two at a car boot sale, and only had money to buy one, the action-packed cover would have appealed more.
I don’t mind speech bubbles on covers, I think it’s a shame we don’t see them as much now. I don’t mind words. But I think 90% of a cover should be art.
On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I wasn’t always a fan of UK comic covers that were more akin to newspapers. I am thinking of covers like this:
If you’re familiar with the Gerry Anderson Universes, that should be a hook on its own, but were I to see a pile of those at a car boot sale, well they don’t tell me much about the stories inside. I’m sure the “newspaper style articles” are interesting, but a better cover would be the kind we saw from later Anderson-universe covers, like this 1992 cover:
Such points are probably moot points in an era of pull lists and the like. But certainly back then, I think a hook has to be a quick one. With the latter two, a “newspaper cover” wouldn’t have grabbed me, but seeing Thunderbird 5 hit by a meteor - and I did buy that issue - was enough for me. How did it survive? What damage was done? What does this mean for International Rescue?
So, certainly in an era before pull lists and Previews, I do believe the concept of action-packed covers, with fewer words, was better, but perhaps others felt differently.
Good writing keeps us reading, and we may gravitate towards certain writers as we get older, but as far as the spontaneous buys are concerned, it has to be the art that hooks us initially, right?
This comic went on sale 45 years ago today:
Now, if someone had seen that, then or today, I think it might well have hooked people. Who is the arsonist villain battling Batman? How will Batman survive atop a burning building? Can he save those civilians?
This comic also went on sale 45 years ago today:
Great art on both, but I don’t know if a very wordy cover hooks me in the same way. I mean, in their own way, words such as “Batman Battling The League of Assassins” and “Batgirl and Robin in their own fantastic features” sounds mildly intriguing, but those words don’t hook me in the same way; and as the cover is simply Bats, Robin and Batgirl swinging from the rooftops, I’m not sure it’d hook me like the other cover.
If I had seen those two at a car boot sale, and only had money to buy one, the action-packed cover would have appealed more.
I don’t mind speech bubbles on covers, I think it’s a shame we don’t see them as much now. I don’t mind words. But I think 90% of a cover should be art.
On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I wasn’t always a fan of UK comic covers that were more akin to newspapers. I am thinking of covers like this:
If you’re familiar with the Gerry Anderson Universes, that should be a hook on its own, but were I to see a pile of those at a car boot sale, well they don’t tell me much about the stories inside. I’m sure the “newspaper style articles” are interesting, but a better cover would be the kind we saw from later Anderson-universe covers, like this 1992 cover:
Such points are probably moot points in an era of pull lists and the like. But certainly back then, I think a hook has to be a quick one. With the latter two, a “newspaper cover” wouldn’t have grabbed me, but seeing Thunderbird 5 hit by a meteor - and I did buy that issue - was enough for me. How did it survive? What damage was done? What does this mean for International Rescue?
So, certainly in an era before pull lists and Previews, I do believe the concept of action-packed covers, with fewer words, was better, but perhaps others felt differently.
