Comic Book Covers
(2013 - TAJ Books)

(by Sandra Forty) What a strange small little book. It measures 6-by-6-inches, with all the displayed covers 'well-presented' one to a page, but the single images are themselves each an unimpressive 3-by-4.5-inches (the size may have been a scheme to present all the images small enough to qualify as 'fair use' and pay nothing at all). A handful of cover images are from pulp magazines, not comic books. No artists are credited whatsoever. On top of all that, some of the images are very poorly reproduced. I'm not sure if the English author, Forty, chose the images for the book or just wrote the 6-page introduction (which again spends a substantial portion on the pulps, rather than just quickly making the case that comics were simply the next step in that entertainment evolution). Her review ends up with the state of comics in the early 1990's milieu, but the presented covers do not extend beyond 1963. Her brief biography has no indication that this area was a passion for her, leaving me to ask "who's passion was it ?" There are 76 of the small featured images with another ten being photographic or sequential art covers. The images are of the covers themselves, with titles, logos and other original text. In the intro, they misspelled Jack Kirby's name . . . Despite my complaints and head-scratching, it is still a fun book to page thru, with so few others making a point to focus on classic comics covers. The artists whose work is exhibited are: Edd Ashe (2), Jack Binder, Charles Biro, Steve Ditko, Joe Doolin, Albert Drake, Lee Elias, Lou Fine (3), Bud Fisher, Gill Fox, F.R. Glass, Edmond Good, George Gross, Irwin Hasen, Russ Heath, Don Heck (2), Jack Kamen (2), Bob Kane (2), Malcolm Kildale, Jack Kirby (5), Arnold Kohn, Howard Larsen, Rocco Mastroserio, Jon Mayes, Jim McLaughlin, Sheldon Moldoff (3), Joe Musial, Lily Renee, George Roussos, Alex Schomberg**, Joe Shuster (2), Joe Simon (3), Curt Swan, John Terrell, George Tuska, Maurice Whitman, Bob Wood, and UNKNOWN (25).