On a related note: can anyone point me to, or post images of, 10 classic stand-alone post-80s superhero covers? How about 10 covers that played an important role in keeping you interested in a comic's continuity?
I always loved the Mark Texeira covers for BLACK PANTHER, which did not have crass things like the Panther about to marry an ameoba...but all the same they really set you up for the pulpy atmosphere of the book inside: views of the Panther stalking New York at night. Then again, Texeira could draw an exciting still-life, he's that dynamic.
Then you have the covers for Tom Peyer's HOURMAN (which incidentally, is the first DC comic I ever regularly read). My favorite was the one where Hourman was breaking through a wall while a mad scientist was turning a woman into a bird creature.
Here's a big example: the Busiek or Niceza THUNDERBOLTS. All their covers were great. They get the award for the most honest cover in history, which promised "A Guest Appearance by...the Hulk! (Or a reasonable facsimile thereof!)" There was also the image of Jolt, the T-Bolts' least powerful member, facing down by herself the superpowerful villain Graviton. Another great Bagley cover was the T-Bolts in a SHIELD crosshairs after their return from the Kosmos dimension.
I for one, am a big fan of the letterhead for Astro City. Or, as they write it, more like
KURT BUSIEK'S Astro City.
Many of these "classic" 80s covers were what we would call "F--- you, fans"-style covers, meant to challenge, baffle, or enrage the readership, at the same making them intensely curious/hopeful. The covers also established a rhythm to reading and collecting the comics.
I have never liked "deceitful" covers, whose value was in shocking the reader by promising a really unbelievable event was inside.
A good example of that would be the issue of the Englehart AMAZING ADVENTURES, which had the Beast's arms wrapped around the neck of Tony Stark's limp body, and Hank McCoy was shouting something like "Oh my God, I've KILLED Iron Man!"
It's a dirty trick to promise something in the comic that isn't delivered.
That's a source of extreme aggrivation to me with a lot of Silver Age comics which promise something like, say, Superman's wedding.
With the exception of a few serialized manga series and one or two alt comics that come out 2 or 3 times a year, I no longer read any continuity-style comics on a monthly basis.
"...but I've STILL got an opinion on it, just the same!" 
because the readership has been shrinking since 1945 and not enough writers, artists, and editors of a certain level are/were attracted to the business of kids comics.
Actually, I would argue the opposite: more than ever before, there are all these great writers flocking TO comics now that guys like Neil Gaiman have made it a campy fad.
The obvious example would be bestselling novelist Brad Meltzer. The guy has the world at his feet, and instead of snorting lines of cocaine off Cameron Diaz's hoo-ha, he wrote GREEN ARROW. Go figure.
There's that other novelist that was going to do a remake of OMEGA THE UNKNOWN. The greatest fantasy novelist of all time, Michael Moorcock, did an Elric series with Walt Simonson and fill-in issues of TOM STRONG with Jerry Ordway that were the only issues of that wheezy, un-fun book that were ever truly cool. Then you've got Paul Dini, who is currently writing the Bat-Books; Richard Donner, who did an arc with Geoff Johns on Superman.
And then you've got that Babylon 5 guy, who's name I
defy you to spell. Peter David has been writing comics, but he's also created TV shows and Star Trek tie-in novels. PAD's always been amphibious that way, so maybe he doesn't count.
There also have been persistent rumors for decades now that Steven King was interested in writing a funnybook. More recently, there's been a lot of buzz around Phil Pullman writing one; the guy, after all, does say that he was a regular reader of Superman and Batman.
For a far less talented example that I am loathe to bring up, take the human disaster area, Chuck Austen, who came back to comics from a period worknig on animation. He did TRIPPING THE RIFT, which I have never seen, but as it has Chuck Austen, it isn't the biggest jump to conclusions in the world to assume it's a heaping helping of elephant crap.
In some ways, the level of craft brought to bear on modern adventure comics is higher than it has been in decades --unfortunate that I can't get as worked up over what modern writers and artists create.
"After all, not one of those modern-day hacks have the talent to create a character as beloved by the world as Kite-Man, H.E.R.B.I.E., or Bat-Mite."And the fans pretend like these are comics that they should take seriously because they use the same story-telling tropes and characters that have been used successfully in previous titles but really, from a continuity point of view, just clutter up the universe with crappy story arcs, villains, and supporting characters who only end up existing for 6-12 issues, if that. Not to mention the event titles and spin-offs/special issues.
It occurs to me I've been a little hard on Superman's early Silver Age in this thread. But as godawful as a story that has Lois Lane temporarily transformed into a centaur, it's really no different from the un-read, un-loved characters in the DC or Marvel Universes. If characters like the Lab Rats, or minor Young Justice villains, are never seen or used again, it's like they never existed or the stories they were in never happened.
At least with SUPERMAN'S GIRL FRIEND LOIS LANE, you're
supposed to say I'M NOT LISTENING LALALALALALA!
If you don't see the Nuclear Family in decades, they might as WELL be out of continuity. It's like that Zen proverb Martial Arts masters use: "If a character is created and nobody else cares, do they really exist?"
And it isn't just characters or concepts. It's mindblowing ideas that are introduced and ignored. One issue of SUB-MARINER from the 1970s (this was, I believe, the very same story arc that brought Venus into the "modern" MU) dropped an unbelievable bombshell:
Ares, the Greek god of War, is responsible for the Vietnam War.
I also always wanted a kind of "Legion Worlds" comic where I could read stories of the planets of the 30th century - not stories that had to correlate with some arcane fact from Adventure or some isolated issue of "Rip Hunter, Time Master" but stories that fleshed out a bigger universe.
Wow, that would be bona-fide
awesome.
Of course, part of the appeal was that the content and image were not plastered all over the net back then --at most, you would see a scan of the cover in Amazing Heroes or some other fanzine a few weeks early. At worst, you only had the cliffhanger tease line at the end of last month's comic (ie, "Next: There Shall Come a Reckoning!").
Oh, no, comics fandom was at least as up on the content of future books in the past as today. The internet just makes it easier. That's the striking thing about fandom: it really is no different now than it was in the fifties, and I defy anyone to show me something that exists today that didn't exist in some form in previous comics ages.
Let me tell you a story: a friend of mine, who has been reading Avengers since the sixties, told me that around the time of Jim Shooter's run on Avengers, he heard a rumor that Jimmy was going to be making one of the Avengers into a villain.
A year later, Jimmy did the "Trial of an Avenger" stuff with Hank Pym, where he builds a robot to attack his buddies.
HMMMM....!
