13 COVERS: Great 80-PAGE GIANTS

Before there were 100-Page Super Spectaculars

Last week, DC got fans whipped into a frenzy over the announcement that they were going to produce a new line of books under the banner 100-Page Giant that echoed the 100-Page Super Spectaculars of the ’70s. (That was actually one small element of the move. Click here to read all about it.)

Well, that prompted a 13 COVERS retrospective of the classic 100-Page Super Spectacular that was even better received than I anticipated. (Click here to check it out. You’ll dig it.)

But then I saw 13th Dimension reader Anthony Durso — he of the awesome webstores Retropolis Tees and The Toy Room — note on Twitter that, of course, those fantastic 100-pagers were preceded by the venerable 80-Page Giant, which was not only the title of a standalone series of reprint books but a designation used for various popular titles in the ’60s.

And here we are. I picked these 13 COVERS, but you can thank Anthony for giving me the idea.

Neal Adams, with Secrets of the Batcave image by Frank Springer

Curt Swan (inker unknown). Technically not an 80-Page Giant, but close enough.

Murphy Anderson (though that JLA image really looks like Mike Sekowsky

Carmine Infantino pencils, Murphy Anderson inks

Adams

Joe Kubert

Swan pencils, George Klein inks

Sekowsky pencils, Anderson inks

Swan and Klein

Infantino or Anderson pencilled the main image. Anderson inked it.

Ross Andru pencils, Mike Esposito inks

Swan and Esposito

Main image by Adams

Cover images and credits from the giant Grand Comics Database.

Author: Dan Greenfield

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7 Comments

  1. Back when comics were fun. Affordable.

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    • I so agree, Buck72! Call me an old timer, but nothing compares to the Silver Age and its exceptional artists…both Marvel and DC.

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  2. Jimmy Olsen 80 pg Giant #13 was the first superhero comic book I ever purchased, as a six year old in the summer of ’65. The drug store I got it from is still open.

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  3. Dan, love that you posted these; SO many of them have special childhood significance for me, and i’m sure so many others in my Silver Age Facebook group. The Superman “silver statue” cover (pencilled by Swan with Jack Adler painting the grey wash tones) is not only one of the greatest, most iconic superman figures ever, but was the FIRST comic book cover i remember seeing, when i was 5 years old in summer camp! What an issue to come in on!!!

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  4. The Batman annual pictured, with that weird “negative” page he’s holding, got me so interested that I immediately started reading it after I took it off the spinner rack in Woolworth’s (yet another forgotten remnant of the 20th century), and was walking while reading up to the cashiers at the front of the store to pay for the book with the quarter in my pocket. But I was so engrossed in reading the opening story (rare for DC to reprint a key ’40s Golden Age story about Batman’s origin, when all their previous annuals of the era only went back to the early ’50s…i think it had something to do with Infantino taking over, and beginning the process to get DC to reprint more from its golden age, resulting in the dollar books and other things of the early ’70s), that i walked right past the cashiers without paying, and right out of the store! To this day, it’s the only time I ever “stole” a comic book!

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