ACW #608 – Superman

Action Comics Weekly #608 (Superman)
“Questions and Mysteries”
Writer – Roger Stern
Pencils – Curt Swan
Inks – John Beatty
Letters – Bill Oakley
Colors – Tom Ziuko
Assistant Editor – Renee Witterstaetter
Editor – Mike Carlin

Ya know, we never really have all that much to say during Superman-day.  So, I’ll try and spice this week’s offering up by sharing my “Anatomy of a Cover” with ya.  Not that anybody but me cares… but, whattayagonnado?


One of the things I wanted to do when I started this Action Comics Daily endeavor was make the image I’d be sharing every day on social media look as unique as possible… while, at the same time, not changing the cover completely.  And so, I decided to futz with the logo.

I started by taking the straightest picture I could of the “banner” portion of the cover… and finding a font as close to the one used in order to change “Weekly” to “Daily”… though, in retrospect, I probably should have re-typed “Comics” too for uniformity’s sake.  I also added the Chris is on Infinite Earths “brand” to the top, where it would normally say “48 Pages Every Week”


From here, I individualized the “banners” so each Feature would have its own.

Then, I just slapped it in place of the actual logo… and added the Issue Number, using the Showcard Gothic font, which I usually use for Cosmic Treadmill related stuff

But it doesn’t look quite right, does it?  From here, I popped it into an Image Manipulation site… LunaPic, and added a transparency under the “A”.


And so, this:

Became, this:

Doing it this way gives a more “polished” (relatively speaking) look to the covers… though, it is kind of a pain in the butt to match everything up when applying it.  Here’s a comparison:

I had the idea to also make the “hole” in the “A” transparent… but, matching the entire logo up wound up being much more trouble than it was worth.  Starting with Action Comics Weekly #611, I’ll be filling in the A-hole (hrmm) with the background color of the cover.  Like so:

It almost looks like it’s supposed to be that way!  Well, maybe not… but I like it!


Anyhoo… just thought I’d share.  With the way a lot of social media apps display pictures, plenty of folks may not even have noticed that I’ve put any effort into making the covers “feature-specific”… for all they know, I am just posting the same picture day after day.  Hope anyone reading found this look behind the curtain at least a little bit interesting!


And Now: Superman!


—

We’ve got three rows of panels… and three little story spurs to play with here.


First, Clark Kent inquires about the Culpepper accident in California, which really makes him wonder about the man who blew up in his arms a little earlier on.


Next, we get a little insight as to how Culpepper might be in two places at once.  It’s not quite the doppelganger scenario I assumed last week.  Turns out, that explosion was actually the fella triggering an experimental “mass teleporter”, which is probably why he arrived out the other side all burned up.


Then, Mr. Galt is questioned by Metropolis Police.  They wanna know just who might be out to get him.  He’s certain that it’s non-believers in His Lord Superman.  The Officers have had about enough, and are all but ready to fetch the butterfly net, when… somebody interrupts.


—

Okay… this is more like it.  Some good use of panel “real estate” here.  We get some answers… progress the story a bit… and actually get a cliffhanger that I wanna see play out.


Not much more to say about it… just that it’s far better than all seven of the previous chapters.  Don’t see myself voting for it in the poll, but it might not be the worst thing this time out!  Or… maybe it still will.


Tomorrow: geddout da jug!