Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 13, 2024 | 7 comments

BRONZE AGE BONANZA: Big month for Nick Cardy! PLUS: Kirby! Kane! Mingo! MORE!

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Welcome to BRONZE AGE BONANZA — our monthly series that looks at the greatest covers of the Bronze Age — exactly 50 years later. For more info on this feature, click here.

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Hey, this month’s No. 1 is a publication that’s never been there before! Plus: A big month for Nick Cardy!

Dig the TOP 13 COVERS OF OCTOBER 1974 — RANKED:

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13. Action Comics #443, DC. Sometimes a cover makes it just because it’s fun.

Nick Cardy

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12. Betty and Me #62, Archie. Respect to sex-positive Betty Cooper.

Unknown

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11. Daffy Duck #91, Gold Key. Daffy’s going the wrong way. Daffy don’t care. That grass Daffy ate was some seriously good shit.

Possibly John Brady

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10. World’s Finest #227, DC. Probably my favorite issue of WF when I was a kid because it reprinted that groovy story with Anti-Superman and Anti-Batman, who wore cool outfits and — DECADES-OLD SPOILER ALERT — were really Perry White and Commissioner Gordon. But the cover is more than that: It also has Superman smashing the Statue of Liberty, which was unsettling to Young Dan. Just a good, basic 100-Pager cover, with well-done trade dress. The white background really works here.

Cardy

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9. Kamandi #25, DC. Jack Kirby predicts Jawsmania with FLYING SHARKS! Farewell and adieu, to you fair Spanish mutants…

Jack Kirby pencils. D. Bruce Berry inks

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8. Adventure Comics #437, DC. Also with the nasty, big, pointy teeth. Damn, the Spectre had no mercy and Jim Aparo may have been the best ever at showing it.

Jim Aparo

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7. The Witching Hour #50, DC. Boy, doesn’t it suck when this happens? Also when your eyes are two different colors it’s called heterochromia.

Cardy

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6. The Amazing Spider-Man #140, Marvel. Grading on a curve here. The multi-vignette Spidey cover was already a well-worn trope by this time. This one’s a little too loose, there’s a bit too much white space, and there’s not really enough variety among the images themselves. But it works because the schtick always works.

Gil Kane pencils, Mike Esposito inks

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5. Savage Sword of Conan #3, Marvel. Grading on a curve here, too. Taken on its own terms, a painted Mike Kaluta cover is almost certainly going to be better than any other cover on the stands. But A) Kaluta could (and did) do better, and B) he had the advantage of a longer lead time and higher production values. With that added context, No. 5 it is.

John Buscema

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4. Batman #260, DC. One of the best of the Batman 100-Pagers, and maybe the best. Dig the orange background, set off by the purple lettering. It very much says the Joker — and that lead illustration with the Clown Prince of Crime is one of the groovier Bat-images of the era. Plus, bonus points for the Riddler appearance — aping the cover of Detective Comics #377 (which swiped from the 1966 Riddler pin-up by Carmine Infantino and Murphy Anderson) — and a Catwoman floating head!

Cardy

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3. Daredevil #117, Marvel. The Daredevil-jumping–all-over-the-place image is as much a Man Without Fear trope as the Spidey vignette cover. Here, the “speed image” section is just OK; what makes the cover is that final, bold, fully colored image of DD ready to take down the Owl. Classic Kane sense of perspective — and Daredevil is pissed. The comic book equivalent of saving it on the warning track.

Kane pencils, John Romita inks

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2. Power Records #PR-19: Escape From the Planet of the Apes, Power Records. Of all the Planet of the Apes covers of the ’70s — color comic book or black-and-white magazine — this just might be the grimmest, moodiest of them all. And no wonder: The ending of Escape From the Planet of the Apes is, in its own way, the most brutal of the classic original cycle because it’s so personal. Ernie Chan does a masterful job of capturing the climactic scene’s panicky sense of terror, resignation and doom. And this book-and-record set is kids’ entertainment.

Ernie Chan

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1. Mad #171, EC. One of the most memorable Mad covers of my childhood — and one of the absolute best of the 1970s. Norman Mingo flips the script on The Sting movie poster, on which handsome-as-hell Paul Newman and Robert Redford gleefully congratulate themselves for their clever, hustling spirit. Here, just two months after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace (and about a year after Spiro Agnew did the same), the usual Gang of Idiots rub their corrupt noses in it. This isn’t just a magazine cover, it’s a savage political cartoon targeting two men who deserved every ounce of contempt hurled their way.

Norman Mingo

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MORE

— The TOP 13 COVERS of SEPTEMBER 1974 — RANKED. Click here.

— BRONZE AGE BONANZA: The 1974 INDEX. Click here.

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Comics sources: Mike’s Amazing World of Comics and the Grand Comics Database.