Well, I didn’t get the DK splash. It was so close.
Actually, not really. But, I watched the action really closely. Does that count?
But, I did pick up something that I was looking for! I don’t know about you, but anyone who read comics in the 60’s and 70’s read Superman – even if you were a “Marvel guy”. Superman was, well, comfortable. I didn’t need to remember anything. I knew the villains and it seemed like the stories very rarely carried over between issues - unlike Marvel - and so I could pick up an issue from the pile at the barber shop (where I did most of my reading) and dive right in. Superman wasn’t as cool as Spiderman. But, it was kind of a guilty pleasure. It also seemed that no matter what comic you picked up with Superman, he was always drawn the same way. In fact, the few times it looked different, it was somehow jarring to my senses. I eventually figured out that was because the same artist drew Superman for over 20 years, Curt Swan.
Swan began penciling Superman in the very late 40’s, and was known as “the” Superman artist in the 60’s, 70’s, and early 80’s. He was (by all accounts) unceremoniously dumped from the Superman books in the mid-80’s. “Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow”, written by Alan Moore from 1986 was his final major Superman story. Incidentally, I just reread that story and it still holds up very well.
In any event, his style was clean, and it always seemed to me that he put more effort into faces and emotions than most of the other artists at the time. I always thought a lot of artists had anger down. But, Swan’s characters portrayed sadness, happiness, embarrassment, and despair. In some ways, reading the comic was much like watching the show with George Reeves (which I loved!). It was like comfort food to kid that owned a cape (which I most certainly did!).
Anyway, when I saw the cover to Action Comics #393 from 1970 pop up in the last Heritage Auction, I trained my sights on picking it up. The cover from “Superman meets Super- Houdini” (is that a great title or what??!!) was inked by Murphy Anderson and, to me, is a great example of Swan’s style and the type of Superman stories I loved back then.
