Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

My pal Thomas D. wrote in to ask, "Could you describe the importance of the comic cover to comic sales, particularly in the era before direct sales?"

Sure, in the days before the direct market, comic book covers were naturally the best way that a comic book could get a potential reader to pick that comic book out from all the other ones on the market. The newsstand system had an entirely different sales model than the direct market, although there naturally were some overlap (covers drawn by great artists like Neal Adams and Gil Kane and Jack Kirby appeal to everyone, ya know?). In the pre-direct market day, you were specifically targeting impulse purchases, while later on, you were appealing to established comic book fans (as a direct market reader already made the trip to the local comic book store, so their interest in picking up a comic book was already a given).

Irwin Donenfeld, son of DC Comics founder Harry Donenfeld, and an executive at DC during the 1950s and 1960s (right up until the company was sold to the company that later bought Warner Bros. and named the new company Warner Bros.) explained the impact of comic book covers to Jon B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #5 from TwoMorrows, "Everybody knows that the cover sells the product. I made a book that had photos of the covers of every magazine that we published and when I got the sales reports, I put the numbers underneath the cover. So I followed every single magazine that we produced and I was able to see how certain themes would sell. For example, I discovered that gorillas sell."

" We had gorilla covers on Star-Spangled War Stories or Wonder Woman. You name a magazine, we had a gorilla on it."

"You know what happened? Sales exceeded our expectations. I found dinosaurs before any one else in the world did! We had dinosaurs on covers you can't believe! Even in Tomahawk! Sales shot up."

Another common cover trope was the Earth being in danger, like being cut in half...

The importance of the comic book cover was also demonstrated in how DC Comics editors would often come up with the cover first, before the story inside the comic book was written. Superman editor Mort Weisinger would talk to his young readers and get cover ideas from them, find out what kind of weird things that THEY wanted to see, like a shrunken Superman accosted by a team-up of Lex Luthor and Brainiac!

That cover was technically suggested by a teenage Cary Bates, but the same thing applies. Weisinger would take cover ideas from young people and then have his writers try to come up with stories to match the striking covers.

Julius Schwartz would do the same thing, although I don't believe he went to his audience for ideas like Weisinger did. Schwartz would have the artists draw an outlandish, eye-catching cover and then the writer would have to come up with a story to match the cover...

How comic books were displayed also tied into the way that comic book covers were designed. Often, comic books were placed on spinner racks, so you could only see the top of the cover.

That's why Carmine Infantino's brilliant cover for Batman #194 was such a rarity for the era...

(Note, of course, that Infantino made sure to still have a prominent Batman figure at the top of the cover).

Neal Adams, for instance, was forced to alter this X-Men cover...

because he did the cardinal sin of covering up the logo. Here's how the cover was published...

(I don't believe Adams ever quite got over being forced to change his original cover)

That was why Marvel first had stuff like "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" at the top of their Fantastic Four covers...

DC briefly countered in 1966 with checkered boxes on the tops of their covers...

Marvel later used a more prominent Marvel Comics Group logo...

So there ya go, Thomas, hope that's helpful!

If anyone else has a question about comic books, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!