In Retroactive I’ll take you on a visual comic cover tour of the past covering all the covers for a particular series. Each entry will cover an entire year and I’ll always have one comic from DC and one comic from Marvel. At the end of each edition of Retroactive I’ll select my overall favourite cover for that year for each series. Last time on Retroactive we covered Nightwing 2002 and Fantastic Four 1963. If you need a refresher, just click HERE. Below you’ll find the two series that I’m currently covering. Click on that specific logo to be instantly taken directly to that series. The last section is reserved for my Top Picks from each year. Click the logo or travel to the fourth page to view them.
________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________
The Speech Bubble 
I lime Nightwing 79 and ff 33
I really like Nightwing Vol. 2 # 86.
First of all, it shows one of my favourite clichés: the leading character riding a motorcycle.
Secondly, I really dig the scene as a whole. Dick could have made his presence felt by throwing his sticks among those crooks, as he usually does, but he decided to be more aggressive than usual, and to run over them with a motorcycle. As you know, I love when a politically correct superhero goes nasty and acts like an antihero, so this is another reason why this image instantly won me over.
Thirdly, I love the fact that Nightwing is doing something extremely dangerous and violent with a perfectly calm facial expression. The contrast between the calmness he conveys and the brutality of his behavior is a huge plus of this cover.
Of course the orange sky is another detail I deeply appreciated, and it definitely is the icing on the cake.
The other gold medal goes to Fantastic Four # 29.
First of all, it shows a character I have a soft spot for: the Watcher. I’m a big fan of What if? stories, so my eyes shine each time I see him.
Secondly, the background all around him is extremely beautiful and accurated: the efforts the cover artist made to draw all those windows deserve the gold medal alone.
Thirdly, I love the tagline: It started on Yancy Street. What is this tagline referring to? How is the Watcher involved in it? Is this an origin story or a What if? story? You have to open the book to find the answers… and when a cover makes you want to do that, you know you’ve found the winner of the 1st prize.
Nightwing vol 2 #78 is a hauntingly macabre cover, with Nightwing depicted with a skull face and hands, very creepy. Wow, loving these Fantastic Four covers, spoilt for choice here. I settled on Fantastic Four #25 Hulk vs the Thing, what a classic cover!