a bridge? Plus it has a nice yellow background. Hey look, it's Jimmy Olsen, only he's been turned into a giant turtle monster that seems to be. I doubt Kubert was influenced by Smith, but it's interesting to think about what kind of shared influences might have been floating around at that time. In that respect it's actually very reminiscent of this infamous Barry Windsor Smith cover from Conan #24, which appeared on my Marvel top cover list. The main thing that's cool about this cover is the way he uses color - in this case skin tone - to make both Tarzan and the priestess pop out of the cluttered mass of characters. This cover is interesting for a couple reasons beyond just the usual Kubert excellence. This cover still seems modern even today for example, here's a very similar design from 2005 that was lauded as one of the best covers of the year when it came out. I can only imagine how much this cover jumped out off the newsstand compared to the rest of the regular stuff from April of 1968. In this issue, he finally finds his killer, but in order to preserve the mystery, Adams (or someone in art editorial) decided to completely blank out the details of the killer on the cover, instead simply depicting him as an expanse of negative space. The central mystery of the original Deadman series in Strange Adventures revolved around Boston Brand's search for his own killer. I really like the tiny figure of the gangster blasting uselessly with his Tommy gun, but the real key to this cover is the big yellow circle behind Spectre, which really helps his frightening form pop from the background. Here's another symbolic (?) image of a giant Spectre looming over some hapless sinners, this one from the character's early days. Together their worried gazes form the intersection where realism and surrealism meet - which is exactly where most of the best comics from the Silver Age resided. Two soldiers and, of course, their dog Pooch. But as atmospheric and interesting as those two covers are, this one really takes the cake, due to two tweaks first, the addition of some color to the jungle canopy gives the image an interesting three dimensionality and second, unlike the other covers, this one features two soldiers instead of one. Combat #69 and #83 are two other examples. This unusual cover was actually part of a mini-trend that Grandenetti and Adler put together during their years working on DC's war books G.I. October, 1962 - Jerry Grandenetti and Jack Adler Here's the next soul-crunching batch of awesomeness: And as always, I strongly recommend clicking on the covers to see larger, better and more detailed versions of these classic covers. For a complete listing of selections, check out the Top 150 DC Covers Master List. If you have any questions about what criteria was used to select the covers, you can read the ground rules here in the countdown Prologue. Welcome back to the Top 150 DC Covers of All Time countdown.
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