This spinner made my day when I saw it and I hope you're liking it also. All hats off to
Kerry Callen for the time and effort it took to animate this gif. If you go visit
his blog, you get to see three other equally excellent chestnuts: one of
Batman and one of
Spider-Man and one of
Iron Man.
I can't take my eyes off that
Wheel. It's so much fun and just perfectly executed. Thank you, Kerry! And thanks also to
Mark Evanier for sharing the link in
his blog or I would never have known about this great phenomenon.
It got me thinking about which other comic book covers might lend themselves to a similar animating. I was surprised at what a very small number of covers I found that I felt this would work well for. I did find three, and I'll tell you how I would animate them. The three below do not have motion like the
JLA above (yet), but you can (for now) use your imagination.
This specimen from
Superman #14 (1942) is one of my favorite Superman covers of all time. Other people like it also, considering the fact that a
statue or
two was made from that design. Do you realize that the cover was drawn by
Fred Ray who was also the artist of
Tomahawk for the first fifteen or twenty years of that venerable strip? By the way, I found out just recently that the original artwork to this cover was for many years in the possession of great artist
Jerry Robinson (and you can watch a video of
Mr. Robinson talking about the artwork over
here ).
Anyway, I would animate that cover by having the eagle slowly flap his wings and by having
Superman turn his head to look straight out at us and then back at the eagle.
I am also very fond of the cover to
The Big All-American Comic Book #1 (1944). I would animate it by having the boy pan his head from left to right looking at all the characters, with the dog wagging his tail all the while. Oh, and two more things. Each time the boy's head carriage-returns to the left side of its panning, I would have the letters of his
"WOW!" exclamation do a full 360-degree rotation AND I would have
Wildcat wink.
The
Neal Adams cover to
Superman #233 (1971) is another great one. I would animate it by showing
Superman breaking the chains.
If you feel inspired to try your own hand at animating a cover, please send me your masterpiece and I will be delighted to share it with the world.