Those Who Lay In Glass Coffins Shouldn't Throw Stones

Or something like that, right?  Anyway, since I do alot of stuff involving comic book covers, you can imagine all the weird stuff and peculiar trends I've come across in my travels. 

One of those oddities is the surprisingly large number of Superman-related covers featuring glass coffins.  Whether they were in suspended animation or supposedly "dead", members of the Superman Family appeared "under glass" at a frequency unmatched before or since.

Comments

[cinephile]

Is that a wedding couple in twin coffins?? In the words of the immortal Summer Roberts, "Ew!" (: Actually, what's interesting to me-- and I know this is just a funny post, so I don't mean to be tooserious-- is how much the coffins look like little rocket ships, oddly linking superman's death to his birth/arrival/"Birth" as Superman. Or like test tubes-- a nice visual comment on how many changes and revamps the character has undergone in the 60-odd years since his debut.

[Mark Engblom]

Hmmm...interesting take on the rocket ship/coffin idea. That's especially true with Superman covers, now that I think of it...since so many covers featuring people in rockets have these large plexiglass sections showing who's riding inside. Obviously done to better communicate what was going on in the cover scene at a glance...but still very similar to some of those glass coffin shots.

Creepy! Maybe I should have held off on posting this until Halloween Season next month!

[Richard]

DC had a plethora of gorilla covers because they found that they sold better for reasons unknown. I wonder if glass coffin covers were also sales champions.

[Mark Engblom]

Could be...but the really odd thing about them was how they seemed to be confined to only Superman Family titles. I don't recall seeing ANY of those glass "Snow White Specials" on the covers of any other character. For whatever reason, it was the Superman comics (and possibly editor Mort Weisinger) that had a thing about characters lying in state under glass!