Murphy Anderson Week Concludes! The Grooviest Covers of All Time: Murphy Anderson Made Me Buy These!

Time to wrap up our week-long tribute to Murphy Anderson, Groove-ophiles! Hope you've dug it! Ol' Groove thought we'd wrap things up with a dyn-o-mite dozen of Anderson's awesome artistry on a variety of DC mags. Can you dig it?

The Grooviest Covers of All Time: Marshall Rogers' Batman

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! One of the highlights of the Groovy Age, naturally, was Marshall Rogers' turn as penciler on Batman in Detective Comics (along with his work on the 1978 Batman Summer Spectacular). Along with writers Steve Englehart, Len Wein, and Denny O'Neil and inkers Terry Austin and Dick Giordano, Marshall's version of The Batman stands head and shoulders with the other two "definitive" Groovy Age Batman artists, Neal Adams and Jim Aparo. If you have any doubts, the following covers should quickly banish them to the depths of darkest Apokolips! Ready? Then away we go!

The Grooviest Covers of All Time: Ernie Chan the DC Cover Man

Hey, hey, hey, Groove-ophiles! I've got Filipino artist on my mind today for some reason. Maybe it's because Ernie (originally Chua, but he legally changed his name to Chan we he became an American citizen in 1976) was such a great comicbook artist. He had a cool, very American style that was very sleek and organic. His heroes had Marvel-style power, which DC must have loved 'cause from 1975 into 1977, the powers that were at the House that Superman built gave Ernie tons of covers to draw. Not just superheroes, but mystery, western, and war mags, too! We're just gonna scratch the surface today, giving you a feel for what the man was capable of on his own. Many of his covers (especially those for mags like Superman, Action, Batman Family and others) had other folks ink Ernie's pencils. I dunno why they went for the mixed results when they knew that Ernie inking himself was a sure-fire masterpiece! Just see for yourself, baby!

Than-que, Grand Comics Database for the suh-weet cover scans!

Ol' Groove's Request Line: "Luthor--You're Driving Me Sane!" by Maggin and Novick

What it is, Groove-ophiles! Fellow Groove-ophile Tony O. e-mailed yers trooly with some rally cool requests--the first of which was a request for one of the final three issues of DC's Joker mag! Yeah, there's an If You Blinked You Missed post waiting in the wings on that one, baby, but for now, just know ye that DC gave the Harlequin of Hate his own mag--though it only ran for a scant nine issues (February 1975-June 1976). As I said: more on that later, gator! Meantime, here's "Luthor--You're Driving Me Crazy!" from Joker #7 (February 1976) in which The Batman's greatest foe has a major run-in with Superman's greatest foe, Lex Luthor, courtesy Elliot S! Maggin, Irv Novick, and Frank McLaughlin! Dig it!

Cover art by Ernie Chua (Chan)