Golden Age Superhero Comic Book Covers From 1938 to 1942

The superhero arrived on a newsstand cover in June 1938, and within four years nearly every major hero of the era had followed. This gallery collects the covers from that rush, from Action Comics #1 to Wonder Woman's own first issue in the summer of 1942, one per issue, in roughly the order they reached readers: the debuts of Superman, Batman, Robin, the Human Torch, the Flash, Captain Marvel, Green Lantern, Captain America, Plastic Man and Wonder Woman, plus the first superhero team. Each cover earned its place by recording a first appearance or fixing how a hero would be drawn for decades. Read them as artifacts as well as art: cover dates ran two or three months ahead of the day an issue went on sale, the anthology logos are often bigger than the heroes, and more than one of these characters debuted inside an issue whose cover belonged to someone else. A few photos show graded copies in their cases, because those are the clearest pictures of books this rare.