COMIC BOOK COVER GALLERY: Applying the covers to coverless comics I purchased in the '60s, '70s, and '80s

Following previous comic cover galleries spotlighting comics I purchased on vacations, '60s, '70s, '80s # 1 issues I accumulated when they were new, Superman-related books, and back issues I scored during that '60s-'80s era of acquisition I've established for these galleries, we turn to a few of the many coverless and/or cover-compromised comic books I snagged within this same time frame. Of course, this being a comic book COVER gallery, we're gonna reunite those poor, mutilated cover-deficient funnybooks with their long-lost public faces.

But before we dive into our coverless coverage, let's review what I've previously written about the subject:

"....A brief history of comic book distribution before the rise of the direct market: For the first several decades of comic book publishing, comics (like other magazines) were sold to vendors on a returnable basis. Unsold comic books could be returned by the vendor, and then by the distributor, for full credit from the publisher. To save time, tumult, and money, distributors were not required to return the entire, intact book for credit; they were allowed to return just the cover, or even just the top part of the cover (i.e., the book's title), and the distributor was then expected to destroy the coverless comic books that remained.

"It was, of course, a system rife with abuse. Were any of these stripped comic books, magazines, or pulp paperbacks ever destroyed? One presumes there must have been some honest soul somewhere in this chain, I guess. But thousands and thousands of coverless and 3/4-coverless publications were re-sold, illegally, at deep discounts. A 12-cent new comic book became, say, a five-cent or eight-cent coverless comic book, a windfall profit of which the publisher received bupkis.

"At six years old (and for a long time thereafter), I had no idea that I was purchasing illegal contraband. I just knew I was getting more comics...."

As always: No, these aren't actual photos of comics in my collection. But I did have each and every one of 'em at some point in time.

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