Superman is a dick

[khaosworks]

In case mrdankelly hasn't seen this.

A collection of wacky Silver-Age covers. Work-safe.

Comments

[braider.livejournal.com]

I saw this link on the Gaiman feed. Please tell me the dialogs were photoshopped in?

My favorite commentary:

List of more pratical uses Superboy can make of a machine that can see through time:

Betting on the outcomes of sporting events.
Forseeing natural diasters and catastrophhe.
Letting Bruce Wayne know that his parents are going to be gunned down in front of his very eyes in a filthy alley, you dick.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Wish I could tell you otherwise, but... no. Those are actual covers. I've seen them.

[madfilkentist]

In those days, the covers were drawn before the stories were written. I'm sure the DC artists came up with covers like those because they loved to make the writers squirm.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

Many of the covers are from the 1950s and the Mort Weiseinger era - the kind-of Limbo between the end of the Golden Age around 1947 and the kind-of start of the Silver around 1955.

I may be misremembering, but the cover-as-story-idea wasn't implemented until Julie Schwartz started his sci-fi revolution at DC in the late 1950s - that practice being common in the SF pulp magazine industry, which Julie had come from.

Me, I think they were just being goofy and trying to attract attention by creating covers that would get readers to buy the comic just to find out what the heck was going on.

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

(to add, though, that there are just as many covers from the 1960s too - the Neal Adams artwork kind of gives it away)

[madfilkentist]

Not to mention the length of Lois's skirt.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

I think most of them were from the '60s. I have way too many of them.

Alas, my favorite example of the "Wow, there must have been some really interesting drugs in the DC water cooler" actual stories doesn't have a cool cover associated with it. But how can you top a story that features Jimmy Olsen in drag, proof the Comics Code thought beastiality was less objectionable than homosexuality, and Jimmy casually dismissing the murder of a mobster who'd tried to come onto "her" with a thought something like "Well, he'd escaped from jail anyway and was due for the death penalty, so it just saved the state money!". Oh, and he eats dog food as well. All in just eight pages, as shown here; third story "Miss Jimmy Olsen".

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

It's times like this I really miss Unca Cheeks. I'd recreate his pages if I could contact him for the permissions.

By the way, I'll be flying into San Jose on Thursday March 3 and leaving Tuesday March 8. Any chance I can bum crash space and/or a ride to the airport on Tuesday morning?

[mrdankelly.livejournal.com]

Superman is a dick. He's hogging space in the public consciousness and cheating all the other superheroes out of showing off their fugged-up covers. Now that I've recovered my collection from my parents, I may have to start running a few on my site.

Till then... NOT AGAIN!!! Robin, you asshole!