#18
X-Men #50
Ah…Steranko again. This cover was so far ahead of it’s time, but it still didn’t help the sales of this title. Even when Neal Adams came along around eight or nine issues later, the book still went into reprints and eventually was cancelled. Steranko was constantly trying to raise the bar on Marvel comics cover art, this cover being no exception. It’s hard to describe seeing this book on the stands as a kid. I didn’t really care for the X-Men all that much, and I guess a lot of other kids didn’t either, since it’s sales at the time were so poor. But covers like this were a radical departure of what came before it, including all the lame Don Heck and Frankenstein looking monster covers, and it was indeed a head turner. It seems like comics were finally trying to grow up, and break the mold of just being fodder for children. I bought the comic for the cover alone, and I’m sure at the time 95% of the sales of this comic were due to the cover. A classic.
