50 Years of ‘Avengers’ Comic Book Covers Through Color by Jon Keegan.
From the post:
When Marvel’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” opens in theaters next month, a familiar set of iconic colors will be splashed across movie screens world-wide: The gamma ray-induced green of the Hulk, Iron Man’s red and gold armor, and Captain America’s red, white and blue uniform.
How the Avengers look today differs significantly from their appearance in classic comic-book versions, thanks to advancements in technology and a shift to a more cinematic aesthetic. As Marvel’s characters started to appear in big-budget superhero films such as “X-Men” in 2000, the darker, muted colors of the movies began to creep into the look of the comics. Explore this shift in color palettes and browse more than 50 years of “Avengers” cover artwork below. Read more about this shift in color.
The fifty years of palettes are a real treat and should be used alongside your collection of the Avenger comics for the same time period. 😉
From what I could find quickly, you will have to purchase the forty year collection separately from more recent issues.
Of course, if you really want insight into American culture, you would order Absolutely MAD Magazine – 50+ Years.
MAD issues from 1952 to 2005 (17,500 pages in full color). Annotating those issues to include social context would be a massive but highly amusing project. And you would have to find a source for the following issues.
A more accessible collection that is easily as amusing as MAD would be the National Lampoon collection. Unfortunately, only 1970 – 1975 are online. 🙁
One of my personal favorites:
Visualization of covers is a “different” way to view all of these collections and with no promises, could be interesting comparisons to contemporary events when they were published.
Mapping the commentaries you will find in MAD and National Lampoon to current events when they were published, say to articles in New York Time historical archive, would be a great history project for students and an education in social satire as well.
If anyone objects to the lack of a “serious” nature of such a project, be sure to remind them that reading the leading political science journal of the 1960’s, the American Political Science Review would have left the casual reader with few clues that the United States was engaged in a war that would destroy the lives of millions in Vietnam.
In my experience, “serious” usually equates with “supports the current system of privilege and prejudice.”
You can be “serious” or you can choose to shape a new system of privilege and prejudice.
Your call.