Schomburg Top 10 Covers - RESULTS ARE IN

[Vision75]

What are the top 10 Schomburg covers? The Boardies have spoken

 

Last night while most of us were sleeping, GA do-gooder David Merryweather compiled the results. Subsequently I verified, and here you have it:

 

1. Suspense Comics #3 ............... (70 votes)

2. Startling Comics #49 ................ (53 votes)

3. All Select Comics #1 ................ (51 votes)

4. U.S.A. Comics #7 ..................... (44 votes)

5. Captain America Comics #3 ..... (42 votes)

6. Marvel Mystery Comics #40 ..... (41 votes)

7. Captain America Comics #27 ... (39 votes)

8. Marvel Mystery Comics #44 ..... (34 votes)

9. Terrific Comics #5 ..................... (33 votes)

10.Tie: Marvel Mystery Comics #46 & Human Torch #12 ... (32 votes @)

 

Methodology Notes.

 

Each board member could select his/her top 10 covers amongst the 31 semi-finalists. Some boardies chose fewer. There were 888 total votes, which means at least 89 boardies voted and likely somewhere closer to 100. So, given that Suspense Comics 3 received 70 votes, one can assume that approximately 70% of boardies placed Suspense 3 in their top 10.

 

History of Polling Process.

 

Here's the thread that prompted the polls: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7286520&fpart=1

 

Series of Polls: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7344806#Post7344806 (INCLUDES THE MOST INFORMATION ABOUT METHODOLOGY AND PROCESS)

 

Final Poll: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7402264#Post7402264 (SEE RAW RESULTS ON 1ST PAGE OF THIS THREAD)

 

 

Acknowledgements.

 

Thanks to all the Boardies who voted!

 

Special thanks to Cheetah for suggesting this poll and providing so many images!

 

Finally, a big thanks to David Merryweather who helped with both the conceptual and technical aspects of the entire process!

 

[Vision75]

Pics of the Winners (which ironically doesn't include any All Winners)!

 

[Straw-Man]

where'd you find 70 dullards to vote for that vastly overrated book??? oh, wait, i mean where'd you find 69 of them; the 70th is typing on my keyboard RIGHT NOW.

[Straw-Man]

thanks for all the work, boys; this has been a fun exercise indeed.

[pmpknface]

Very cool. Thanks for all your hard work on this!

[Timely]

This was a fun one. Very interesting results! The only one I thought would have gotten more votes was the Real Life #3.

 

It's also interesting USA #7 got 44 votes (4th highest amount of votes) & USA #8 got the least amount of votes of only 8 votes.

[Illustrious]

Isn't there some belief that Schomburg didn't do all of the USA #7 cover? I seem to recall an earlier conversation pointing out indicators that some of it was drawn by another artist.

[cheetah]

It's nice to see one of the airbrush covers come in second with all the Timely fanatics around.

[rjpb]

No real surprises. Suspense #3 has sustained it's position as the ultimate Schomburg cover for nearly a quarter century, and Startling #49 as the one with the broadest appeal to non-superhero book fans. I imagine one reason that Startling #49 finished so high is that Timely fans have never coalesced around a single Timely as the best of the best. After all, there are dozens of great Schomburg Cap and Torch covers, but really nothing else that competes in the airbrushed robot/GGA cover category.

 

The book that I least expected to make the top 10, was Cap 3, but being the first Red Skull cover in combination with only Schomburg Red Skull cover, I can understand it.

[Vision75]

The biggest surprise to me was the absence of Daring Mystery #1 in the top 10. It seemed that Schomburg's early pulp-like covers were over-represented in the 31 semi-finalists but weren't popular enough to break into the top 10.

[Straw-Man]

my big surprise is no daring 1. my personal favorite timely cover.

[Rip]

Interesting how close it was. My favorite two took the top 2 (thumbs u

 

Someone needs to do a LB Cole and Matt Baker poll next

 

[gino2paulus2]

thanks for all the work, boys; this has been a fun exercise indeed.

 

agreed!!!! Thanks fellas this was truly a fantastic poll to put on!! Extremely fun and rewarding to see the body of work...thanks for all of the hard work putting this together!!! (thumbs u

[rob_react]

It's nice to see one of the airbrush covers come in second with all the Timely fanatics around.

 

 

For real. I'm really happy to see that do so well.

[sfcityduck]

Suspense 3 only received 16% of the vote.

 

The vast majority of participants prefer his later style Timely covers to Suspense 3 or the airbrushed Startling 49. This margin that gets even bigger when you consider Terrific 5 is firmly in the Timely cluttered style. I suspect that if this had been a three horse race -- Xela airbrush cover vs. later style Timely vs. Suspense 3 -- that the Timely cover would have won based on the above results.

[rjpb]

Suspense 3 only received 16% of the vote.

The vast majority of participants prefer his later style Timely covers to Suspense 3 or the airbrushed Startling 49. This margin that gets even bigger when you consider Terrific 5 is firmly in the Timely cluttered style. I suspect that if this had been a three horse race -- Xela airbrush cover vs. later style Timely vs. Suspense 3 -- that the Timely cover would have won based on the above results.

 

If every one had used all 10 votes, Suspense #3 could theoretically be on everyone's top 10 list, and still only get 10% of the total votes. Your 16% seems to come from totaling the total number of votes for the top 11, and dividing the number into the 70 for Suspense #3, a calculation that would only be correct if there had been just the eleven choices and everyone was limited to just one vote, which was not the case.

 

In general there does seem to be a preference for Cap and Torch covers over other Timelys and his output for other companies, but there is no way to deduce that the majority prefer Timely books to Suspense #3 or Startling #49. If we had another round where everyone had one vote for their favorite Schomburg cover you might find that in aggregate Timely covers were preferred, but since they dominate the top 10 list,this would be unsurprising.

 

I also don't see much of a difference between the style of Suspense #3 and Schomburg's Timely covers or Terrific #5. Nedor war covers were frequently less cluttered than many Timely's but even there, the style difference is not as dramatic as it is between the war covers and his earlier "pulpy" covers or his later GGA and airbrush covers.

[Ebel 1911]

Thanks, this was fun!

[Vision75]

Suspense 3 only received 16% of the vote.

The vast majority of participants prefer his later style Timely covers to Suspense 3 or the airbrushed Startling 49. This margin that gets even bigger when you consider Terrific 5 is firmly in the Timely cluttered style. I suspect that if this had been a three horse race -- Xela airbrush cover vs. later style Timely vs. Suspense 3 -- that the Timely cover would have won based on the above results.

 

If every one had used all 10 votes, Suspense #3 could theoretically be on everyone's top 10 list, and still only get 10% of the total votes. Your 16% seems to come from totaling the total number of votes for the top 11, and dividing the number into the 70 for Suspense #3, a calculation that would only be correct if there had been just the eleven choices and everyone was limited to just one vote, which was not the case.

 

In general there does seem to be a preference for Cap and Torch covers over other Timelys and his output for other companies, but there is no way to deduce that the majority prefer Timely books to Suspense #3 or Startling #49. If we had another round where everyone had one vote for their favorite Schomburg cover you might find that in aggregate Timely covers were preferred, but since they dominate the top 10 list,this would be unsurprising.

 

I also don't see much of a difference between the style of Suspense #3 and Schomburg's Timely covers or Terrific #5. Nedor war covers were frequently less cluttered than many Timely's but even there, the style difference is not as dramatic as it is between the war covers and his earlier "pulpy" covers or his later GGA and airbrush covers.

 

rjpb is correct. Every participant could pick his/her top 10 covers (i.e., 10 different votes for 10 different covers). Because approximately 100 people voted in total, there were close to 1,000 votes (100 participants x 10 votes apiece). Seventy votes therefore corresponds to roughly 70% of participants putting Suspense Comics #3 in their top 10; ~53% putting Startling 49 in their top 10, etc.

 

Head to head, if everyone could pick only one cover, who knows which would rise to the top but I'd be surprised if the ordering varied dramatically. Nevertheless, we only know that the 10 featured books (11 with the tie) were in more people's top 10 lists than the other books. And, we see that Suspense Comics 3 was, far and away, the most frequently endorsed.

 

 

[Cat-Man_America]

When first looking at these results I was a little bummed that some of the classic Schomburg covers apparently received negligible appreciation,

...but when you break down the numbers other things pop-out (votes cast as a percentage of total):

------------------------------------------

All Select 1

-

51 = 6%

_________________________

All Select 2

-

27 = 3%

_________________________

Captain America Comics 3

-

42 = 5%

_________________________

Captain America Comics 27

-

39 = 4%

_________________________

Captain America Comics 28

-

31 = 3%

_________________________

Captain America Comics 46

-

28 = 3%

_________________________

Daring Mystery Comics 1

-

26 = 3%

_________________________

Daring Mystery Comics 4

-

14 = 2%

_________________________

Exciting Comics 39

-

30 = 3%

_________________________

Exciting Comics 61

-

13 = 1%

_________________________

Exciting Comics 66

-

19 = 2%

_________________________

Human Torch 5

-

15 = 2%

_________________________

Human Torch 8

-

24 = 3%

_________________________

Human Torch 12

-

32 = 4%

_________________________

Human Torch 23

-

26 = 3%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 3

-

11 = 1%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 4

-

17 = 2%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 5

-

20 = 2%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 9

-

23 = 3%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 40

-

41 = 5%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 44

-

34 = 4%

_________________________

Marvel Mystery Comics 46

-

32 = 4%

_________________________

Real Life 3

-

24 = 3%

_________________________

Startling Comics 49

-

53 = 6%

_________________________

Startling Comics 52

-

20 = 2%

_________________________

Sub-mariner 6

-

23 = 3%

_________________________

Sub-mariner 11

-

18 = 2%

_________________________

Suspense Comics 3

-

70 = 8%

_________________________

Terrific Comics 5

-

33 = 4%

_________________________

USA Comics 7

-

44 = 5%

_________________________

USA Comics 8

-

8 = 1%

 

Inside the polling data there can be logical assumptions made from the numbers to which Vision75 alluded, such as 70% of the voters put Suspense Comics #3 among their top ten selection. That arbitrary number presumes 100 folks participated in the poll. It may not tell us exactly where SC #3 placed along that continuum, but it clearly indicates this to be the most popular book by the wide margin. Conversely, it also means that at least 20% of those voting, perhaps as high as 40% or 50% given the irreconcilable number of voters, didn't place this book among the top 10 Schomburg covers.

 

The fact that some folks openly chose to vote a partial roster may or may not skew the results, but it does create an area of uncertainty in drawing conclusions. Hypothetically, if 130 folks voted, the breakdown might be something like this: 50 folks voted ten choices (500 votes cast), 32 folks voted seven choices (224 votes cast), 20 folks voted five choices (100 votes cast), 18 folks voted three choices (54 votes cast) and 10 folks voted for a single book (10 votes cast) ...total 888 votes cast. If that proved to be the case, then the adjusted tallies of those voting would skew the results, not dramatically, but noticeably.

 

I'm not pointing this out to suggest that Suspense Comics #3 isn't among the kewlist Schomburg covers (it would've still come up more often given my adjusted voter break-down criteria), but breaking the poll down into percentages may provide a more accurate indicator of individual Schomburg cover popularity given the unclear number of voters. This then becomes the more relevant data. When looking at the percentages and corresponding numbers of votes what really stands out is the wide-spread popularity of Schomburg art.

 

The bottom line: The results of this poll suggest relatively consistent across-the-board appeal for every style of Schomburg cover (pen/ink or Xela airbrush), but it's no surprise that familiar iconic covers generate the most interest among collectors.

________________________________________________________

 

I think it would be interesting to come back to this poll in about a year (May of next year would be a great target date as it'll be around the late artist's 110th birthday), tweak the polling method a little ...maybe figure a way to allow individual ranking of books while requiring participants to fill out a full ballot... and do a reassessment of Schomburg's work. Any thoughts?

[Primetime]

Isn't there some belief that Schomburg didn't do all of the USA #7 cover? I seem to recall an earlier conversation pointing out indicators that some of it was drawn by another artist.

Correct Travis. I'm convinced Syd Shores and Schomburg collaborated on USA 7 (and perhaps USA 6). Although both are signed as Schomburg on the covers, the body style and head of Cap is clearly different than say, All Select 1/2 and USA 8, which are pure Schomburg. Looks like the background airplanes and war ships are Schomburg (see planes on the All Selects and USA 8) but Cap is certainly not. Alex was drawing so many covers during this time, it's likely Shores took over after Alex did the layouts.

 

Keston/David, thanks for all the work in putting this poll together. It was fun and represents a portion of the GA comic community's opinion on Schomburg's best covers.