Fun Fifty of 2009: #20

Welcome back my friends to the blog that shows the trends! That's right, it's time for another installment of The Fun Fifty of 2009, and today we're going to do a little something different—I'm only going to give you one entry in the list! Why? Oh, why? Well, because it's actually really cool, it's got lots of keen pictures, and if you stick around you just might learn something before we're through! Clear the stage, cue the lights, and raise the curtain for...NUMBER TWENTY!


#20: MARVEL DECADE VARIANT COVERS • Along with Wolverine Art Appreciation (#33 on the Fun Fifty '09), Marvel issued a number of other series of themed covers including parodies of famous and iconic Marvel Comics images using their cute-as-a-button Super Hero Squad, and an anniversary updating of the 1986 25th Anniversary "frame" covers. But by far my favorite, and the theme that actually did for the first time in my little stuffed life have me scouring the shelves for variants, was Marvel's "Decade Variant" covers. When I first heard of these I thought it would be a fairly mundane exercise in making the covers of the 2009 books look as if they had been published in different decades, like a Daredevil cover with the Atlas 1950s monster look, or Spider-Man as he might have been published in the 1940s by Timely Comics. Marvel was a little more offbeat and inventive than that: they produced covers that sent their heroes back in time to experience the great pop culture of those decades, complete with newly designed period logos, which I just loved. As variant covers, these didn't reflect in the least what was goin' on inside, although in many cases I wish they had. I think these are fun in its purest form: they just amuse the stuffin' out of me. And hey, Marvel? Will you please put together a pamphlet collection of these like you did with the Wolvie covers? Pretty please?

Here's just some of the Decade Variant Covers, which take you back to the last century...

...from the disco seventies...





...through the metal nineties...





...an idealized 1950s...





...a patriotic, gung-ho 1940s...





Could 1939 be comics' finest year?





In the 1970s it was hard to tell who was and wasn't a crook.





This would have made Shuri the first black heroine to have her own comic. Ah, if only.





But the following four are my favoritest, and as far as I'm concerned, the funnest of the bunch!

Daken would like to say "Thankyuh, thankyuh verra much."





Whoa! Either Emma's at a drive-in showing 'Yellow Submarine,' or Iceman slipped some of the brown acid into her bubbles.





In the nineteen seventies, everybody loved a disco guy who showed off a little chest hair.





And let's face it: the 80s were quite a thriller!





So, remember, comics are not only your best entertainment value (if you discount their high cost and the short timespan it takes to read them)...they're also a valuable and historically accurate lesson into how we all lived in the twentieth century! Why, I'm sure you all remember doing this:

Kitty Pryde and Ororo
Dazzler and Magneto
Cannonball, Wolverine
On a comics magazine

Beast and Cyke and Grey, Jean
Archangel and the White Queen
Psylocke, Northstar, Stacy X
Mutant powers, mutant sex

Cable, Juggernaut and Sage
Made you want to turn the page
Iceman, Pixie, Gambit, Xorn
Hope Maggott won't be reborn

Mutants trained by Prof C.X.
Hangin' round in tight spandex
Get into that bright costume
Strike a pose in the Danger Room!

Rogue!



See y'all tomorrow for the Fun Fifty #19-11!

Oh, I almost forgot! Click here for the rest of the Decade Variants!