Cover Story - Top 12 Shazam Comic Covers

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So, there’s a new superhero film at the box office and that means a new dive into the annals of comic book history.  This week has given us a look at the first ever feature film debut of Shazam! the world’s mightiest mortal and one time biggest thing on the planet.  Despite his years worth of lawsuits and problems with using his own name Shazam has done fairly well for himself in comics with a number of popular series and appearances to his name but I’ll be focusing specifically on the ‘90s comic The Power of Shazam, by Jerry Ordway.  

This was the last time Shazam enjoyed an actual ongoing title and it features some truly beautiful cover work from Ordway with these lovely painted covers.  It’s one of those really enjoyable ‘90s comics that’s earnest and fun and is constantly forgotten when bitter comic nerds try to rewrite the decade as nothing but grungy anti-heroes.  But enough bashing at the try-hard vanguard of faux tastemakers, let’s dig into this series and get the cover story on the top 12 Power of Shazam covers. 

Cover Story - Top 10 Iron Fist Covers

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So, let’s talk about Iron Fist.  By now you’ve probably heard at least a little about him from his new Netflix show and the stewing Online controversy over it.  I don’t want to get too bogged down in that particular conversation, largely because we’re here today to talk about comic covers.  

However, I am still looking at artwork revolving around a white savior trope with a lot of it steeped in Orientalism.  In that regard let me just say that Iron Fist as the great white hope has always been a bad character concept, even when it was widely considered okay back in the mid-'70s. 

What’s more, I’d dare argue that Iron Fist has always been brought down by the awkwardness of trying to fit an Asian pulp aesthetic into the superhero world, so much so that I was barely able to fill out this list of covers.  However, there are still good Iron Fist covers out there and some of the best ones actually manage to address this pretty well.  So, let’s dive into the 40 years of Iron Fist history to see the best of the middle ground. 

Cover Story - Top 10 More Christmas Covers

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Happy holidays and good tidings y’all, Lord knows we could all use some better days this year.  Yes, once again it tis the Christmas season and once again I’ll be diving into the deep well of Christmas comics.  I don’t actually celebrate Christmas myself but seeing as there’s a real dearth of Hanukkah comics to delve into I figured it’d be better to stick with Christmas.  

After all, the yuletide season is such an ingrained part of the yearly calendar it ends up forced into nearly every comic book at some point, and that can make for some pretty hilarious and horrible mismatched covers, as we’re about to see.  So let’s all get in the Christmas spirit for a bit with the top 10 MORE Christmas Comic Covers.

Panel Vision - Fighting Fascism in "Black Terror"

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Edited by Robert Beach 

Well, here we are I suppose: thinking the unthinkable. In case you somehow missed it, Donald Trump is now the President-Elect of the United States. I say President-Elect because I, like most Americans, am still hopeful for some kind of pre-inauguration miracle like a devastating comet or the onset of war, but it’s not a high hope. The real question is shaping up to be “Where do we go from here” now that over half the nation gets to spend at least the next 2 years wondering or not they get to have a country tomorrow. 

Obviously, I’ve never shied away from focusing on politics in these reviews; it’s part of the societal texture through which we ingest media and claiming some “objectivity” to the state of the world is, at best, obstinate denial and, at worse, willfully misleading. What’s more, the whole reason we make art is to impose meaning and narrative onto the randomness that is life, to try and wring some measure of realization out of an all too indifferent universe. Art is how we make the world the way we’d like it to be. With that in mind, let’s talk about Black Terror.

Cover Story - Top 15 Doctor Strange Covers

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So, today marks the premiere of the long-awaited Dr. Strange movie.  After months of online dialogue over the whitewashing of the Ancient One and the questionable idea of adapting a character so steeped in Orientalism the day is finally upon us.  As such, I’ve decided to mark this auspicious occasion by dedicating one of my two weekly columns to the good Doctor because that’s the whole reason they exist- thanks, hashtags.  

To be fair, I’ve actually long wanted to devote a Cover Story to Dr. Strange if only to showcase what a unique place he holds in comic book history.  Strange has always been an outlier even within Marvel’s stable of characters, and his covers have actually reflected that along with some of the best oddball art you’re likely to find in a superhero comic.  That’s just what happens when you make a book about weird wizards and inter-dimensional magic.  

1st Look at Arrow Season 5's New Heroes

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As Arrow barrels towards both us and what might well be its final season, the pressure is mounting for CW’s original superhero show to deliver something truly new and dynamic for its fifth season.  That pressure has been there for Arrow pretty much ever since its spin-off The Flash started pulling in a larger audience and revamped the entire superhero television tone in late 2014 but Arrow is really feeling the burn this year.  

After a magic-centric 4^th season didn’t really shake loose any new viewers, this new season features Green Arrow putting together a new team of vigilantes inspired by his deeds to protect Star City.  We’ve been getting the casting news all summer but now, thanks to some behind the scenes pics and a new trailer, we have our first new look at team Arrow 2.0. 

Cover Story - Top 10 NFL Super Pro Covers

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Sports and nerds, two simple concepts that have, for some reason, never really managed to come together.  By now I think we’ve all encountered the somewhat tired argument that nerds and sports have more in common than anyone would like to admit but it really bears repeating.  Sports are one of the only places in real life dominated by colorful costumes and iconography at all in line with the nerd palette and produces the same amount of fandom granularity and sense of defining identity.  

That was the crossover point Marvel comics was hoping to capitalize on in the ‘90s when they forced NFL Super Pro into the world.  NFL Super Pro was exactly what it says on the cover- a collaboration between Marvel Comics and the NFL to produce a football themed superhero, or rather I should say other football hero as their first attempt was called Kickers Inc., which I already covered.  Given that I’m a shameless hack willing to pander to Twitter hashtags, I’ve elected to honor NFL Super Pro with a look back at his top 10 comic covers. 

Panel Vision - Superman vs. Muhammad Ali

Edited by Robert Beach

Muhammad Ali was the greatest athlete of the 20^th century, a towering figure in the world of sports and also a man whose legend and achievements stretched well beyond the boxing ring. He was a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and a major symbol of black excellence as well as a symbol for American Muslims. 

The photographic history of Ali’s athletic achievements and cultural impact are going to be flooding Twitter for the next few days. Suffice to say, he’s one of the few individuals where the story actually lives up to the hype. Again, he really was the greatest of all time, a true legend. And, like any true legend, he met Superman once. 

Cover Story - Top 16 Walking Dead Covers

What can you say about The Walking Dead?  Well, I can say that another season of the hit AMC comic book show has come to a close, which is the entire reason this article is getting written.  More than that, though, I can say that it is pretty impressive how much AMC’s The Walking Dead has managed to elevate the place of independent comics in terms of their marketability.  Previously, indie comics hadn’t really been a major force outside the comic market since the speculator bubble burst in the ‘90s. 

Back then, names like Youngblood, Spawn, and Savage Dragon were all big names and even though we had Hellboy in the mid-2000s the idea of adapting creator owned indie books to the small screen was more or less written off till Walking Dead got big.  So even though I haven’t read the comic in forever and really don’t like it or the show very much I certainly acknowledge that good things came out of this multimedia phenomena.  So, with that said let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 16 Walking Dead covers.

Cover Story - Top 20 Firestorm Covers

So, by now Legends of Tomorrow has managed to get through its pilot storyline and polish off its first major story arc, a sleek cold war spy thriller revolving around attempts to create a Soviet Firestorm.  Given that this show is full to the brim with superheroes pretty much everyone will get their day on Cover Story but the show’s emphasis on Firestorm in this first major story arc means he gets his shot first.  Specifically, I’ll be drawing from across Firestorm’s history rather than limiting myself to any one version like the show does, mainly because there’s not nearly enough of any one Firestorm to make up an entire Cover Story article.   

Cover Story - Top 10 Black Canary Covers

Edited by Robert Beach

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story, diving as little into the world of comics as we can. Legends of Tomorrow is still blowing up our screens, and as such, we’ve got another Cover Story to celebrate their team. This week’s episode had a major emphasis on White Canary. Because that character doesn’t exist in the comic, I’m showcasing Black Canary, which is pretty much the next best thing, especially for Arrow fans.  

While Black Canary has only enjoyed an ongoing comic once in the history of DC, she’s been featured on plenty of Justice League and covers and throughout the Birds of Prey book that helped make her a standout name in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. With that said, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on one of the biggest female heroes of DC comics. 

Cover Story - Top 13 Strangest Sports Story Covers

So, at the time of writing Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 is blowing up theaters with its only major competition the quickly rising star of the boxing film Creed, a spin-off/follow-up to the Rocky franchise.  The fact that November is being essentially dominated by sports films (wasn’t there a James Bond movie this month? Does anyone remember that?) isn’t really a surprise but it does leave me in sort of a rut covers wise.  There are plenty of sports based comics, mainly from the ‘50s when superheroes didn’t dominate the medium, but they’re all pretty generic.  However, in the ‘60s when Marvel comics was born and fundamentally changed the comics landscape forever something strange started happening. 

In an attempt to compete horizontally with Marvel DC started producing stranger iterations of its ’50s comic line.  Now fundamental characters like Flash, Adam Strange, and Martian Manhunter emerged from an attempt to reintegrate superheroes into the weird science books that had been DC’s stock and trade for so long.  DC also applied this idea to the all purpose manly adventures they published like cowboys, war stories, and sports.  So, in 1963 the quasi-brand of Strange Sports Stories was born.  It didn’t last long at the time but DC has always sort of obsessed over it, even resurrecting the brand in the ‘70s and in recent years. 

1st Photos From Wonder Woman

So far, this year has been a pretty great time for female representation in geek media.  Supergirl had massive popular success and is easily the most successful the Superman franchise has been since the 1996 animated series, Mad Max: Fury Road gave us Furiosa, one of the all time most bad ass women ever, Jessica Jones is making major waves on Netflix, Agent Carter found a small but dedicated fan base, Hunger Games’ finished its series run, and in the world of comics we got hit new series like Prez, Paper Girls, Jem & The Holograms, Devil Dinosaur & Moon Girl, Spider-Gwen, and the continuing success of Ms. Marvel.  

In the midst of this expanding openness towards female characters in traditionally male dominated spaces it makes sense that Wonder Woman is on the cusp of returning to live action, first next year in Batman v. Superman and then in her own movie in 2017.  Now, we’ve got the first pictures of Wonder Woman from her upcoming movie and she looks amazing.

Panel Vision - History of Uncle Sam & The Freedom Fighters

Over this last weekend Amazon released an original blockbuster streaming series entitled Man in the High Castle, an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story of the same name about an alternate history in which the Axis powers won World War 2.  I haven’t watched it yet but I’ve heard a lot of good things so far and I’m already a pretty big fan of alternate histories in general.  However, alternate histories are actually pretty rare outside of literature.  There are plenty of historical farces but as far as alternate futures crafted by changes in history that’s actually pretty rare and the ones there are usually come from comic books.  

Which leads us to today’s subject, the most enduring and popular alternate history in comic books, the world of Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters.  The heroes of an alternate timeline entitled Earth-10, Uncle Sam and his Freedom Fighters live in a world where President Roosevelt suffered a fatal heart attack at the height of World War 2 and the resulting instability cost the allies the war.  Now working in the underground Uncle Sam leads a small team of super heroes in a never-ending insurrection against the Axis Empire.  

Panel Vision - Alias

So, Jessica Jones has hit Netflix everywhere and the response has been pretty much overwhelmingly positive.  A lot of critics seem to love it, myself included, and there seems to be enough popular support that I wouldn’t be surprised if a second season got announced over the next couple of weeks.  It’s easy to see why the show has touched such a chord with so many, firstly because it’s just a really well made show.  The writing is excellent, the cinematography solid, the set design and lighting is superb, and the actors are all in top form.  More than that, the show has taken the bold stance of touching on a lot of very controversial and raw subject including, abuse, PTSD, rape, dubious consent, and privilege. 

All of that is relatively in line with the comics that spawned the series, 2001’s groundbreaking comic series by Marvel comics architect Brian Michael Bendis: Alias.  Published through Marvel’s MAX Comics line for adult content Alias pushed the boundaries of modern comics and helped Bendis get his foot in the door to create the Ultimate Universe and eventually take over the reigns of power at Marvel and extend greater relevance to now key characters like Luke Cage and Carol Danvers.  All of which is nice because aside from the book’s importance…it’s really not that great.

Cover Story - Top 15 Wonder Woman Covers

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can.  In case you haven’t heard there’s a Wonder Woman in the works and we just got our first picture from it.  I’ll discuss the picture in more depth later down the line but for now I’ll just that I really like it and it’s actually got me excited for a DC film for a change.  It also got me thinking about Wonder Woman, one of the most underappreciated comic book heroes of all time.  Wonder Woman has an incredibly long and storied history, both in terms of inception and the actual content that informs her comics.  Just like fellow titans Batman and Superman, Wonder Woman’s comic was one of the few superhero books that never stopped running during the decline of superhero popularity.  That means she lasted through 2 whole decades of creativity and craziness, like the fanciful and unrestricted insanity that was the ‘40s or the blend of sci-fi and horror weirdness that was the ‘50s.  With all that in mind I’ll be focusing solely on her volume 1 comics from #1-#105, the issue where her origin was revamped for a new decade.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Wonder Woman covers. 

Cover Story - Top 15 Transformers Covers

Hello, and welcome to Cover Story: digging as little into comic books as we can.  A lot of things happened last week but one of the strangest was an ongoing stream set-up by Shia LeBeouf where he streamed himself watching all of his own films.  This latest act of weirdness by one of the weirdest name actors in the Hollywood community lasted for nearly 72 hours under the hashtag #AllMyMovies and was viewed by pretty much everyone as yet another peculiar stunt from the same man who once attended a premiere with a paper bag on his head.  However, it got a lot of folks talking about LeBouf’s many films, chief among them being the Transformers trilogy, which he was forced to endure in full.  This got me thinking about Transformers and remembering they actually had a quite heroically massive comics run with Marvel back in the ‘80s.  So, let’s dive into the shallow end and get the cover story on the top 15 Marvel Transformers covers. 

Jessica Jones: All Trailers & Photos

So, we are officially one week away from the premiere of Marvel/Netflix second venture of the year as well as this year’s second, solo female led Marvel production: Jessica Jones.  As the premiere rumbles towards us there’s been a steady drip of teasers, trailers, photos and more so I’ve compiled everything we know about the show so far in one easy spot.  This will cover all of the important photos and trailers you might need to watch and break them down to get an overall sense of the tone and content we’re going to be getting from Marvel’s big Thanksgiving release.  So, let’s talk about Jessica Jones. 

Panel Vision - Supergirl (1984)

So, it seems that CBS’ Supergirl has been a pretty major hit, scoring nearly 13 million viewers with its pilot episode making it the most watched superhero premiere of the modern era.  More than that the show has found a major following, gaining almost universally positive reviews from critics and a blossoming online fan base.  None of this is really shocking but it’s certainly a nice precedent to have and flies in the face of all conventional wisdom surrounding the superhero genre, the Superman franchise, and Supergirl in particular.  

For years now we’ve heard from the executives at DC and Marvel that people don’t want female superhero properties but now, we have Supergirl.  WB/DC have been shaking in their boots over Superman being too powerful or light to the point that they let Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan turn him into a drab and joyless husk to get beaten down by Batman in between murdering his enemies, but now we have Supergirl, light, super powered, optimistic, massively popular.  For nearly 30 years the very idea of Supergirl was considered to be a tainted and irredeemable brand, now; bigger than ever.  That last one though is a bit of an earned concern because, now having watched 1984’s Supergirl, I can tell you that it’s the worst superhero film ever made. 

Panel Vision - Top 10 Tales of the Zombie Covers

It’s October, Halloween is happening, I’m talking about zombie movies for literally the whole month, and the Walking Dead is on every Sunday.  Given that, of course I had to dedicate a listicle to the best zombie book covers.  The only thing is that there are as many zombie comics as there are stars in the sky and it’d be nearly impossible for me to cull through all of them so I’m narrowing my list to just one zombie comic.  It was originally meant to be Walking Dead before I remembered Walking Dead’s covers are incredibly bland so instead I fell back on my standard answer to most comic book questions: the ‘70s.  I’ve mentioned before that in the ‘70s an agining audience forced DC and Marvel comics to experiment more with what content they were putting out.  DC started releasing its classic horror anthology comics again and Marvel released a whole ton of horror comics including Tomb of Dracula, Frankenstein, and today’s topic Tales of the Zombie, and the covers by the brilliant artist Boris Vallejo.