Cyberspace Comics market report, reviews and more

July 5, 2016

Comic Book Cover Swipes Exposed #177 normalman

Filed under: Swiped: Comic Book Cover Swipes Exposed! — Doorman @ 8:00 am

After looking at hundreds of comic book covers, it becomes quickly apparent that not every cover is 100% original. Whether done intentionally or even underhandedly, there’s something about uncovering these “swipes” that adds a new element of fun to reading and collecting comics.

In a twist on the Superman mythos, the title character in Jim Valentino’s normalman (stylized in all lower-case letters) is shipped off into space by his father when he concludes that the planet they inhabit will explode. The child arrives on a planet inhabited completely by super-powered beings – they dub him normalman, because he’s the only one there without powers.

The character debuted in Cerebus the Aardvark #56 and was soon given his own ongoing series. That title served as a vehicle for creator, Jim Valentino, to spoof and parody other comics, a perfect opportunity (if ever there was one) to introduce cover swipes that parody the source material.

Famous Funnies began in 1934 and collected classic strips including Mutt & Jeff, Tailspin Tommy, Joe Palooka, and many other popular comic strips of yesteryear. One of the more notable characters featured in Famous Funnies was Buck Rogers and, as Famous Funnies was closing out its publishing history, they hired Frank Frazetta to draw Buck Rogers covers for the series from issues #209-217 (#218 was the last issue).

Famous Funnies #214
Famous Funnies #214
November 1954
Frank Frazetta
normalman #8
normalman #8
April 1985
Jim Valentino

On Ebay: normalman | Famous Funnies
On Amazon: normalman | Famous Funnies
On AtomicAvenue: normalman | Famous Funnies






No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment

Powered by WordPress