Back in 1986, Marvel celebrated its 25th Anniversary, as calculated from the first appearance of the Fantastic Four. This is unlike subsequent anniversaries they’ve celebrated where they go all the way back to their Golden Age roots, but it’s not surprising that they would celebrate both. This is the company that made “having their cake and eating it too” a thing by starting their titles over with a new number one and then going back to the original numbering to celebrate an anniversary issue.

I’m not suggesting that doing such a thing is bad. Just that they do it.

Anyway, in addition to starting a whole New Universe and getting a segment on ABC’s news magazine 20/20 the company did a neat thing with their covers for the bulk of the books they published with the cover date of November 1986. With the exception of their New Universe line, the Epic line, some (but not all) of their licensed comics and their adaptations all of the covers features a cool border chock full of Marvel characters with a headshot of either the star of the book or a member of the team that was featured in the comic in the middle.

You can see all of the covers by clicking on this link.

The Hulk cover is one of my favorites. Not just because he’s my favorite Marvel character but also it’s just a great piece of Hulk art.

The border is also a neat time capsule of that time period. Spider-Man is in his black costume, She-Hulk is a member of the Fantastic Four, X-Factor just formed, Storm has a mohawk, Iron Man is in his Silver Centurion armor…it all screams Marvel in 1986.

Oddly enough, the Hulk is green on the cover, which is a tad misleading because this was the issue after he went grey again. I’m curious if the cover design was done way before the interior stories were finalized or did they think a grey Hulk might confuse people. Or it could be something else.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter.

Cool cover, though.

If you are curious about the 20/20 segment, you can watch it below thanks to the miracle of YouTube.

More to follow…