If there is one thing comic books excel at is producing WTF covers. Even by the standards of the medium, however, Batman has provided more than his fair share of utter weirdness, especially during the Silver Age. It’s a part of the Caped Crusader’s history that fascinates me because, even though many of his adventures at the time were pretty crude, at least they captured the notion that Batman and Robin lived in a batshit world. Take a tale like Bill Finger’s and Dick Sprang’s ‘The Lost Legion of Space’ (Batman #67, cover-dated October-November 1951): in just thirteen pages (including a beautiful title splash), the Boy Wonder travels to the 31st century, meets a futuristic Dynamic Duo, flies to a mining colony near the sun, tries to stay undercover while hanging out with a telepathic criminal, breaks from a prison guarded by robots, comes across human-headed dinosaurs, and stars in a climactic action scene straight out of a sci-fi pulp… and takes all this in a stride, because that’s just another day in the life of Batman’s partner!
In contrast to all those later generic covers that revolve around the Dark Knight in a badass pose – suggesting that the selling point of the stories inside is the cool protagonist – here are fifteen examples of covers that practically *scream* a whole other message at potential readers: they make it abundantly clear that, as far they’re concerned, the series’ key appeal is the fact that the Dynamic Duo regularly face all sorts of surreal crimes.
