When Powerless debuted tonight, fans got their first look at the stylish opening credits for the NBC workplace sitcom, which featured the show’s characters drawn into the backgrounds of classic comic book covers.
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Of course, our first thought upon seeing those credits was, “who drew those covers? Are they going to get any kind of credit?” And so we took to tracking down the original, unaltered images so that we could share the cover, the artist, and tell our readers a little bit about the comic’s contents.
Depicted in each of the covers is one of DC’s biggest superheroes, each of whom will appear as a member of the Justice League at some point in the feature films (although Green Lantern hasn’t been cast yet, at least as far as we know).
They’re not all iconic covers, but each one is by one of the most beloved artists ever to draw the characters in question, so the choices may have been more about “how can we get an action-packed Norm Breyfogle cover?” than anything else.
Check it out…!
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Powerless premieres this Thursday, February 2 at 8:30/7:30c on NBC.
ACTION COMICS #1
If you’re reading this website, you probably recognized Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman.
Published in 1938, this is the comic that touched off the superhero comics craze. The cover, as well as the interior Superman story, was drawn by Joe Shuster, who co-created the character with Jerry Siegel.
You’ll notice that the original cover didn’t actually feature a woman at all, so the character added to represent Vanessa Hudgens’s Emily actually stands in place of the man in the brown suit who you can see just under the ripple of Superman’s cape on the original cover.
This story was the first appearance of Superman, Lois Lane, and many of the characters and concepts that would come to define the Man of Steel in the nearly 80 years since his first appearance.
BATMAN #455
The Batman image is the cover to Batman #455, from longtime Bat-artist Norm Breyfogle.
Breyfogle also drew the interiors of the issue, which was written by Alan Grant. The pair were one of the first Batman teams in the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths era, and arguably the first to draw wide acclaim.
An issue that focuses on Tim Drake, a then-new Robin who would get his own miniseries shortly after this, Batman #455 is actually part 1 of “Identity Crisis” (no, not that one, the other one), and the first story collected in Robin: A Hero Reborn.
GREEN LANTERN #25
In Green Lantern #25, writer Gardner Fox and artist Gil Kane told a story where nothing went right for Hal Jordan. While Green Lantern is the guest of honor at the Ferris Aircraft company picnic, Carol Ferris has secretly entered herself in a 3-legged race with Hal. Hilarity predictably ensues.
In the same issue, Hal loses his Green Lantern ring to Sonar and has to use the villain’s sonic gun to disarm his foe and reclaim his ring. The cover, as far as we can tell, was inked by Joe Giella over Kane’s pencils, just like the interiors.
THE FLASH #293
George Perez, the artist of The New Teen Titans and Crisis on Infinite Earths, drew this cover, which features two characters familiar to fans of The CW’s DC Universe: The Flash and Firestorm, the Nuclear Man.
Inside the issue, the story shown is written by Firestorm creator Gerry Conway and drawn by Don Heck. As you can see in the image above, it centers on The Flash becoming irradiated by a confrontation with the Atomic Skull and needing Firestorm’s assistance to keep him from being a deadly threat to everyone around him. Things go haywire, though, when even Firestorm can’t contain all that radiation.
WONDER WOMAN #24
George Perez strikes again! This time as writer and artist, this issue wrapped up the second year of Perez’s critically-acclaimed Wonder Woman run.
The creature you see Wonder Woman battling on the cover is Ixion, a giant creature that was imprisoned in the Great Wheel by Hermes, for eternity to pay for his crimes against humanity.
Interestingly enough, the very next month after this, Perez would co-write the issue with Keith Giffen (co-creator of Crimson Fox, who appears in this episode of Powerless) and J.M. DeMatteis. The story would tie into DC’s 1988 “Invasion!” event, which was adapted into a three-night, four-show crossover earlier this year on The CW.
