What makes the best comic book covers? It’s a great topic for debate. For us as individuals there is no wrong answer, of course. It’s purely subjective. But with a little thought it is frequently possible to explain what it is about a particular image that grabs you. The best ones are the ones that make you stop and check out something you weren’t previously going to purchase – and in some cases, you even end up picking up a title you’ve never even heard of before.

Captain America #275, the November 1982 issue of the series, was released during a healthy run by pencil artist Mike Zeck and one of his longtime partners, inker John Beatty. During their tenure on the series there are a number of terrific covers, most of them with more details than this one, and in fact many of them could be singled out in this column.

The cover features an athletic Captain America, under fire from an unseen foe, bullets cratering the wall behind him and ricocheting off his shield, charging defiantly at the reader.

Zeck and Beatty’s dynamic, fluid, clean line work and positioning of the character demands the reader’s attention, even though they’d already been doing it for numerous issues before and would likewise continue to do subsequently. The expectations they set for fans of the series has rarely been equaled for any protracted period, with the exception of the Steve Epting era.

Writer J.M. DeMatteis, who returned after a two-issue fill-in by David Anthony Kraft, teamed with Zeck and Beatty for this memorable period that influenced many of today’s creators.

– J.C. Vaughn