I still like chromium covers the best.

It was a fold-out unmasking, if I'm not mistaken.

That's pretty harsh, especially with Flash (that was the "Waid is going to kill off Wally!" swerve that introduced the Speed Force - not exactly unimaginative, and in fact probably Waid's biggest addition to the Flash mythos.) GA was pretty good (although the important stuff happened the NEXT issue, which always makes me think someone lost count of how many issues they needed to wrap up Ollie's storylines before the move to Connor), and Wonder Woman was the last issue of the pre-Byrne era (although from looking it up on Mile High, I like the "regular" cover a lot more) which wrapped up a ton of storylines. Some good stuff amongst them, even if Justice League was stagnant by then and it was increasingly obvious the decks needed to be swept.

Action Comics 695 was foil-embossed to mark the historic first appearance of the now-classic Superman villian...the mighty Cauldron! We all remember him right? It featured Lobo too IIRC which seemed like reason enough to make a cover enhancement in the 90s!

Lobo was in MOS #30 too, it was a World's Collide crossover with Milestone and had the acetate clingy stickers so that you could make your own cover.

Flash 100 had foil-etched writing. I think Superman, Green Arrow, JLA and Wonder Woman#100 all had it too but I cant remember the story in Flash 100. I think the covers were probably better then the dreck contained within anyway, far more imaginitive!

Ah the nineties!

Next idea for one of those "examine a DC cover theme" pieces, Brian: the "words" covers, such as Flash #100. I know there were probably a dozen out there, but I can't be bothered to track them down on Mile High. I know one was the Superman "The Death of Clark Kent" storyline, but I can't find it.

In fact, the Wolverine one just flat out annoyed me, not merely because of the cost breaking lame holo-cover, but because according to the nature of adamantium (when Magneto has left the room and as there's no mention of a molecular re-arranger in the X-comics), ol' Logan should still be in a tank somewhere, with spools of unbreakable, unmalleable material jutting out of random points in his body. I dunno, I bring this up every now and then, and it still bothers me- one second Logan has tendrils of the stuff exploding out of him (which if you look, is how Magneto left him) and then next, Logan is in bad shape, but all the adamantium is separate from him, and not only that, its conveniently collected, in liquid form no less, in glass cylanders in the X-jet.

Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, the covers, irritating and wallet-raping though they were, were not even the most objectionable problems of the content.

Ah, Forget it Jake, its 1990's 616. I mean, this is the era that gave us Capwolf. And a Logan-wolf whose unbreakable adamantium actually morphed with the rest of his body into a wolfen skeleton. And I actually know this information. Ok, I'm offically a sad panda now.

I do agree with you though.. I think the gimmicks were used to cover up bad storylines... I too cut back heavily in the early 90s... Think I stuck to Hellblazer, Sandman and Cerebus with the occasional Flash...

Spider-Man got put down after I actually got so used to the Recycled-Villian-of-the-Month pattern that I predicted the next two villians correctly... I thought that Spectacular Spider-man was telling a much better story that was seemingly being ignored... So anyway - I quit before the Scarlet Spider thing...

weird though... Most early-mid 90s comics (particularly Marvel) are almost screaming "PLEASE!! PICK ME OFF THE SHELF!! TAKE ME HOME!" In a very pathetic way... THe art all looks samey, adn crass... Almost desperate.. Was that the same sort of time as the Chapter 11 filing?? Did they really need the cash that badly??

Damn but I was such a dumb ass in the 90's. Fortunately, the quality began to suffer across the board so badly that even I noticed (cough-- clones--cough), and quickly terminated subscriptions to everything save for Doom 2099- and they even had to fuck that up eventually as well with the final issues and story arc being nigh unintelligible, and certainly not enjoyable either in art or writing- not even John Francis Moore's return to write the final issue amounted to anything more than an obligatory closing of the circle to one of Marvel's most imaginative, addictive titles to come from that period.

Sales probably increased for the special-cover issues, so in a way I guess we did want it. But a regular-length Guardians of the Galaxy isn't worth $3.50.

The Hologram covers I always thought looked cr@p honestly... I had one for (I *think*) Web of SpiderMan #50... looked awful...

Some gimmicks were just pointless...

Though I did like the really subtle Glow-in-the-dark inking on Wraithspawn #1(?) recently (last year?)

I don't mind gimmicks if they are original or well-done...

It's the unoriginal and/or badly-done ones that suck...