Friday, December 4, 2015

The Grooviest Covers of All Time: December DC Debuts

Dig it, Groove-ophiles! December was always definitely cool for DC comics during the Groovy Age. During most Decembers from 1967-1979, DC introduced new characters, first issues, or even new formats Yuletide Season after Yuletide Season! Of course, most'a those dynamic debuts had some dyn-o-mite covers! Check 'em out, baby!


6 comments:

  1. You can tell it's Ernie Chan just by the black-background/spotlight/weapons-aimed pattern! How I miss him and those days...

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  2. Hi Groove, et al. I see the Shazam cover and wonder aloud... in this day in age, when comic sales aren't what they used to be... is there really any financial harm that would come from allowing DC to refer to "Shazam" as "Captain Marvel" or for Dynamite to refer to "the Red Tailed Devil" as "Daredevil" at least in comic books? I mean Dark Horse (or DC?) just reprinted all of Marvel's Conan, I think DC is reprinting Marvel's Doc Savage.... I understand "copyrights" having done extensive financial valuation for litigation of intellectual property but really... I can't imagine any financial harm coming from allowing the comic world to go back to its original state for us purists. Until then, Make Mine Sad Sack!

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  3. Good set of images.... (more than a few that we remember having seen back then)...
    A Great weekend to you and yours...

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  4. I remember buying those first Dollar Comic issues of Superman Family and House of Mystery back in Dec. of '76 and then the first Dollar Comic issue of World's Finest the following month when I was a kid. Loved those issues and the Adams covers. Recently re-purchased near mint copies of those same issues on E-bay. Comics today can't compare in the slightest to those of the 70's. Those were the best times for comics.

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  5. That will always be the definite Firestorm look for me. To be fair to the TV show the Flash, they did a fairly decent job of recreating the Firestorm look but just without that great costume of the 70s.

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  6. My understanding was that DC could use the name "Captain Marvel" in the strip itself, but not on covers or in merchandising. And they decided that it was too confusing to have the lead character's name different from the title of the comic, so now he is called "Shazam."

    Maybe fans today are dumber than they were in the Groovy Age and earlier. I don't remember any kids back then being confused by Detective Comics starring Batman, Action Comics starring Superman, Marvel Triple Action and Marvel Super Action (reprinting Silver Age Avengers), Marvel Spectacular (reprinting Silver Age Thor), and so on.

    For that matter, I never heard of any TV viewers trying to figure out which character was "Dragnet," "Gunsmoke," or "Star Trek."

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


Note to "The Man": All images are presumed copyright by the respective copyright holders and are presented here as fair use under applicable laws, man! If you hold the copyright to a work I've posted and would like me to remove it, just drop me an e-mail and it's gone, baby, gone.


All other commentary and insanity copyright GroovyAge, Ltd.

As for the rest of ya, the purpose of this blog is to (re)introduce you to the great comics of the 1970s. If you like what you see, do what I do--go to a comics shop, bookstore, e-Bay or whatever and BUY YOUR OWN!