I'm not sure what their criteria are. This is more a collection of iconic pinups (or would-be iconic pinups) than a colelction of 25 great covers, i.e. 25 covers that make you want to grab the book and start reading. For my money, a list of 25 great covers points more toward covers like Amazing Spider-Man #50 (I don't know about you, but I just HAD to know what could drive Spider-Man to quit) or Fanastic Four #42 (the Thing fights Mr. Fantastic while the other half of the team has to battle the Frightful Four).

Anyway, given the theme they appeared to be shooting for, I can't imagine how they left off Superman #233 (that great Swan shot of Superman bursting out of the chains), Avengers #4 (Cap leading the Avengers into battle -- straight at the reader!), or Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spider-Man carrying the burglar, of course).

And, of course, if I had dug around the website a little further, I would have seen that their criteria are Impact, Readability, Uniqueness, and Drawing. Most of their covers feature Yet Another Posing Character, and seem to lack in Uniqueness and (in about half of the cases) Impact.

Yeah, my reaction was similar to yours, Jason. A couple of their choices I thought failed miserably even by their stated criteria. Oh well.

(And I can't believe that none of the awesome Byrne covers from the original Dark Phoenix storyline made it...)

I think this is just another example of the powerful nostalgia that the Golden Age exerts upon a certain slice of fandom, namely serious collectors (I'm guessing of a certain age).

I have the same befuddled reaction whenever I'm reading a book like Comics Between the Panels by Steve Duin and Mike Richardson, and all of their choices for great covers are pin-ups from the 1950s or earlier. (I won't even get into all the tabulations of "Jungle Gals" or "Headlights.") Richardson runs Dark Horse - he's published better covers. Nor do I understand the impulse that leads these guys to fetishize Golden Age artists like Lou Fine, prized for his anatomy, who draws bodies with all the contorted disproportions of your high school doodles.

I think it's all about the Golden Age cover as fetish object. Whether they fetishize it for its monetary value or the warm glow of nostalgia or the gal on the cover who's been tied to the airplane so tightly that you see just a little hint of nipple... take your pick.

Well, I did say that all of us could pick another 125 or so covers to go along with...

Jason: Superman #233 is an Adams cover.

I was also fairly stunned to not see Superman #233 on the list.

And only slightly less suprised at the absence of the Flash "Turning into a Puppet" cover.

And am generally dismayed by the suggestion that there are only three covers from my entire lifetime that achieve greatness on that level. It paints a picture of an art and craft in constant decline, which is nearly the opposite of the reality. (Where is Ross? Where is Totleben? Hell, Where's Perez and Crisis #7?)

What about Uncanny X-Men #141? That has got to be one of the best covers ever: a grizzled Wolverine, claws out, backed against a wanted poster showing the rest of the X-Men.

I'd second Crisis on Infinite Earths #7, and also suggest the "Flash of Two Worlds" cover.

First the mea culpa: I'm not sure why I thought Superman #233 was a Swan cover. Perhaps because my mind automatically converts any drawing of Superman from the late-Wesinger or Schwartz era into a Swan drawing. In my mind's eye, that's always been a Swan Superman. Actually looking at it, it's clearly Adams.

So what does make a good cover? The first thing a cover has to do is draw the reader to the book. Stands are crowded, particularly these days, so it has to be something that catches the eye and makes you want to go in for a closer look.

The second thing it has to do is make you pick up the book. It has to be something intriguing, something that makes you think "I have to find out the story behind this image."

That's really all a good cover HAS to do, but a great cover should do a third thing -- stay with you. It should be an image that brings you back to the story when you think about it; an image that pops into your head because it's so overpowering.

With those criteria in mind, what, then, are the greatest covers of all time?

Most of the covers of the subjective Golden Age.

Greg: You mean the _majority_ of all covers published when you were 12? (Or is the Golden Age of comics different from that of SF?)

Hm. With the new criteria, I'll stand by my additions. (For Totleben, Swamp Thing #34 (Rite of Spring), for Ross, I guess Marvels #0, although I could be persuaded otherwise.)

The "Brainy's Lucky Day" cover from Legion v.3.

For that matter, my first Legion issue ever has to qualify, since I had had no interest in the legion before then and it got me to pick up the book. Made me ask "Who is this tiny woman, and why is she sitting on a piece of glass in Jor-El's lab?"

Probably I meant more like "Most of one's greatest covers will be from one's subjective Golden Age". My list would probably include not-especially-great bookslike Flash #268.

...Your first LSH issue was #255, just like mine? What a coincidence!

Coincidence?...or really good cover?
[Well, particularly good for pitching the legion to Superman fans who happened to particularly like tales of Krypton, at least.]

Makes me go back and rack my brain for other books I bought based solely on the cover. Problem is, I never did much of that. First comic ever was a late 400-s Action, with Superman throwing the top of a skyscraper at a firey meteor. But from there on, I was basically using DCCP as the gateway to other books I might have been interested in, not covers. I can vaguely recall a couple that got me to try out a book that I didn't wind up following (a World's Finest with Amalgamax posing sold the issue, but I never tried WF again. And a 'Herbie going berserk' Fantastic Four cover had me picking up that book for a few months.)

Forward a decade, where the covers of the Donning-Starblaze collections of Mage (v.s 1 and 2) sold them to me. I think that I picked up Watchmen #1 based on the cover, devouring the Moore catalog soon afterward.

A few weeks ago, I posted here to the effect that the overall failures of JLA/Avengers were perfectly encapsulated by its failure to deliver on the promise of the cover of issue 4. The cover to Uncanny X-Men #141 is very much like the cover to J/A #4--that one image contains an entire world of story. How can you not want to find out what lies within?

I'm not sure I've seen a cover since then that did that particualr job any better than that one did. There have been prettier covers, more clever covers, covers which were integrated into the comic in brilliant ways, but if the fundamental job of a comic book cover is to make you want to buy the comic book to find out what's inside, that one was really hard to top.