The Next Train to Lidsville

I've admired the work posted on Covered since its inception, and have had a comic set aside for the express purpose of aping it for the blog. This week, I finally squeezed in some time to bring the cover to fruition. Visit the site to see the cover (the original alongside my interpretation) in its full Krofft oddity.

Covers From Beyond!

Via Boing Boing: an amazing collection of old covers (including the masterpiece above) can be perused to your head scratching delight here.

Between that and other comic/book cover archives, it makes me pine for weirder days in publishing.

Cover Me with Force Rays and Aqua-Beasts

I'm obsessed with bizarre comic covers, particularly those sporting declarative speech balloons ("I, the protagonist, cannot believe the obstacle I must overcome in the pages between this and the back cover!"). Often I don't want to actually read the schlocky comic within, as the oddity of the cover is somehow ruined by the unintentionally staid nature of the guts. The amorphous, gurgling story in my head seems to have better potential. And one of the best examples of this is "Challengers of the Unknown," which, though it's a much older title, I only happened upon this summer.

It's not that the comics are awful by any means, but there's a quality to these covers that almost no content could match. And luckily someone's been nice enough to archive them all (issues 17, 21, 22, and 30 were the ones that initially caught my attention on the San Diego Comic Con floor), in addition to tons of other amazing covers. Tease your eyes out.