Okay, I thought about it! Perhaps longer and harder than I even had the time for today, but in THIS POST I named BATMAN #244 (DC Comics, Cover Date: September, 1972) as one of my TOP THREE FAVORITE COVERS!
...But, I began to wonder today, WHAT WOULD THE OTHER TWO COVERS BE? (See, this series has me THINKING, in addition to going stark raving DAFFY!)
...And, ironically, it was BEING PESTERED BY DAFFY yesterday, which led me to tonight's answer!
Oh, Daffy, sometimes you can be your own worst enemy, because it was thinking of YOU that brought me to... ("Oh-no!" says Daffy plaintively, as a pit begins forming in his stomach!)...BUGS BUNNY!
And, as always, BUGS BUNNY delivers the goods... with a pair of covers that DO INDEED rival BATMAN # 244 for sheer awesomeness!
Just look at these Rabbit-Rific covers for FOUR COLOR #123 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: October, 1946)...
...And FOUR COLOR #142 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: April, 1947)...
...Both by the great Tom McKimson, and tell me they don't run with Neal Adams' BATMAN # 244!
Of course they do! And so, the honors for Cover Number Nine are shared by FOUR COLOR #123 and FOUR COLOR #142!
Can't say when, but I'll probably round out my TOP THREE FAVORITE COVERS sometime before this series is over...
...Or, maybe I'll just pick something at RANDOM, like this! When it gets to be this late at night, there's just no telling what I might do!
5 comments:
I like the way you jokingly ragged on Daffy to introduce Bugs.
It reminds me of one of Cartoon Network's 20th-anniversary bumpers. At a party, Bugs takes a group photo of the attendees: many of the Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network characters to have graced the network's airwaves in the preceding two decades. Bugs tries to get the group to smile by thinking of their favorite Daffy Duck cartoon. He has no luck.
He then asks them to think of his own cartoons and, of course, this produces the smiles.
The only thing I don't like about this bumper is the fact that Bugs and Daffy are drawn in the style of the then-current "Looney Tunes Show", as opposed to the syle of their classic theatrical shorts.
You can view this bumper here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1XIeQ48c3Y
And you can view other bumpers that ran during CN's 20th anniversary here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U6hIZXkp_8
Even more so, I like your choices of Bugs Bunny covers. The covers of "Haunted Mountains" and "Dangerous Ventures" are certainly worthy of inclusion in any top three list.
Since DC seems to have no interest in reprinting the classic Dell/Gold Key Looney Tunes, I wish Fantagraphics would do so.
I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I'm going to go out on a limb and so: "Bugs Bunny and the Haunted Mountains" and "Bugs Bunny's Dangerous Venture" are particularly deserving of being reprinted.
It's a crying shame these gems are being left to fade away into obscurity.
As for myself, I've never really considered having a top three covers list before.
Even though a comic book's cover can be enjoyed independently from its contents, I feel that any such list would have to include only the covers of books I've actually read.
With that stipulation, my top three covers would be the following, in no particular order:
1. "Cigars of the Pharaoh," the fourth volume of "The Adventures of Tintin." What makes this cover particularly fun is the fact that one of the mummified Egyptologists (who died while trying to find the tomb of the Pharaoh Kih-Oskh) is E. P. Jacobini — a reference to Hergé's friend and collaborator Edgar-Pierre Jacobs, who would go on to create a notable series of his own, "Blake and Mortimer."
You can view this cover here: https://www.comics.org/issue/566418/cover/4/
2. "Explorers on the Moon," the seventeenth volume of "The Adventures of Tintin." There's something awesome — in the literal sense of the word — about Hergé's bleak moonscape, as well as the view of Earth in the distance. And you've got to love Snowy's space suit!
You can view this cover here: https://www.comics.org/issue/566407/cover/4/
3. "The Golden Helmet." Another awesome cover. It's impossible not to look at the cover and share the duck's — "all together now" — awe at their find!
Sergio (you write):
“I like the way you jokingly ragged on Daffy to introduce Bugs.”
Don’t thank me, Sergio… Thank Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Michael Maltese, and Warren Foster, for years of great cartoons that set up that particular dynamic for Bugs and Daffy! I just ran with what they gave me – and gave ALL of us!
By it’s 20th anniversary, Cartoon Network was “no longer Cartoon Network”… at least the near-perfect Cartoon Network that existed in the ‘90s (much of its legacy since shunted over to Boomerang), and one of the many things that made it great was its use of wonderfully satirical (but almost always “true to the characters”) bumpers! By the 20th anniversary, I was long gone, but glad to see that the spirit of those bumpers (as well as those of ‘90s “Kids’ WB”) was still alive.
Of course, I have the more modern incarnation of “Cartoon Network” to thank for RICK AND MORTY, proving that there’s always SOME good in everything!
That 20th anniversary, Cartoon Network bumper was GREAT! You can see it HERE!
Better than I thought in terms of character design! Yeah, it was the “Looney Tunes Show” version of Bugs and Daffy – but that’s not as bad as some of the stuff that followed! And the other classic WB and H-B characters looked just fine! Especially glad to see Huckleberry Hound in there! EVERYONE, GO WATCH IT!
And, courtesy of Sergio, watch some additional 20th anniversary bumpers HERE!
What DC does with their LOONEY TUNES comics, they do well and with a greater accuracy to the source material. Dell and Gold Key did some of that too, but mixed it in with adventure and domestic stuff that made for better actual STORIES, while DC better recreates the gags and situations of the cartoons. My own opinion, a steady diet of that latter approach soon becomes repetitive and (at least with me) became a lower-priority read until I finally stopped some time ago.
When not buoyed by the sounds of Mel Blanc and Carl Stalling, the gags (most often GOOD GAGS) just become “gags”! The book becoming more or less “half-reprints” only hastened its removal from my pull list!
But, Joe… you might be asking, didn’t Gold Key do almost nothing but reprints for years with the LOONEY TUNES character titles? You kept on buying them, didn’t you?
Why, yes, I did because of one important difference… In those days of “once-a-newsstand-comic-was-gone, it-was-GONE” I did not have any of the 1940s-1950s originals – and there was no way then-known to kid-me to get them! So, it was “ALL-NEW” to me! Nothing I already had!
Since my collection of DC’s LOONEY TUNES began with its first issue in 1994, and I continued with it well into the 21st century, I *HAD* all those reprints and didn’t need to buy a new book half-filled with them!
But, Joe… you might ALSO be asking, why do you still buy DC’s SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU? title, which is similarly configured with a new cover and lead story, followed by a reprint?
Well, ya got me there on a personal preference technicality! I guess that, it’s a case of “there’s-only-room-for-ONE-half-reprint-DC-ongoing-series” and I chose Scooby-Doo due to the comedy/mystery/adventure bent of its stories… something which has served the property well for over 50 YEARS!
But, Joe… you might AGAIN-ALSO be asking, Isn’t the very nature of SCOOBY-DOO repetitive?
Well, yes… but you’ve just answered your own question! The repetitiveness of Scooby-Doo is baked into its overall gag structure, and has become an integral part of the storytelling… especially when in the hands of a talented writer like Sholly Fisch! “Unmasking”, “ascot”, and “meddling kids” repeating gags ARE what make these stories fun!
GOTTA BREAK THE COMENT HERE...
RESUMING THE PREVIOUS COMMENT!
And, since DC has no interest in the older LOONEY TUNES character reprints, I would certainly like to see Fantagraphics take a shot at it – or, perhaps even more appropriately, “New Gold Key”! But multiple sources (no, we don’t name names around here) have told me how difficult it is to deal with Warner on licensing… and has, presumably, become still worse with all the self-inflicted internal turmoil brought on by its merger and streaming related-problems!
Yet, Dynamite managed to do it with their new SPACE GHOST and JONNY QUEST titles (which ARE great), so who really knows…
Here are the links for Sergio’s favorite TINTIN covers… ”Cigars of the Pharoh” and ”Explorers on the Moon”! They ARE great… especially the “Moon” cover!
And who could argue with Carl Barks’ “Golden Helmet” cover, seen HERE!
Expect the rounding-out of my “Top Three Covers” sometime soon. …After all, we’ve only got FOUR posts left to do! (Whew!)
Sadly, by the 20th anniversary, the spirit of Cartoon Network's '90s bumpers was long gone, along with all of the network's original programming aside from "Tom and Jerry," which I'm pretty sure they've also since stopped airing.
Those 20th-anniversary bumpers were a brief exception, but boy was I delighted to see them when they originally aired!
I understand that the network needs to produce and show new cartoons if it's to stay relevant.
But I feel that the most iconic cartoons in the Warner Bros./Turner library — such as "Looney Tunes," "Tom & Jerry," "Droopy," "Huckleberry Hound," "Yogi Bear," "The Flintstones," "The Jetsons," "Jonny Quest," "Scooby-Doo," and "The Smurfs" — deserve to be aired on Cartoon Network on a semi-regular basis as well. As does an anthology series like ToonHeads.
On the plus side, I'm glad to hear that MeTV is now playing the role of the classic Cartoon Network, and doing a pretty good job of it.
Sergio:
I think that EVERY series you mention deserves a place of honor among any media entity aspiring to be a place for classic cartoons! …Okay, maybe not The Smurfs! Kindly substitute Top Cat, Woody Woodpecker, or Popeye and we have a deal!
“ToonHeads” was an amazing little documentary series, the likes of which we’ll never see again! Put together by people who (like us) actually cared about this stuff!
But, that just shows how revolutionary the original (and BEST) version of Cartoon Network was – and how something like that can completely lose its way when guided by indifferent executives and amidst today’s uber-proliferation of media!
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