Earth's Mightiest Floating Heads!

 

"I like to goof off now and then, too, you know." - (Mrs.) Young-Ja Kim

Always one to take the sentiments of the redoubtable Mrs. Kim to heart (if I know what's good for me), I've finally gotten around to a little goofing off of my own by exploring a subject we readers of silver- and bronze-age comics are all too familiar with: Those aghast, worried, concerned, taken aback, consternated, and certainly conspicuous floating heads on issue covers which appeared out of nowhere to draw attention to whatever and whoever they were casting their piercing gaze(s) on.

It seemed a rare day when we saw such bodyless faces appear in titles featuring a solo character, since both hero and villain(s) were occupied in full-size poses slugging it out on a given issue's cover--but in group books, they were all the rage, carefully placed on valuable cover space to provoke a reaction in the comics browser that what awaited within was momentous enough to merit spending their hard-earned change on. It also goes without saying that they were also useful in a marketing sense when other characters in the group didn't make it on the cover but rated a head shot in order to let the prospective reader know that whoever they might have been most interested in still showed up in the story.

Both Fantastic Four and The Avengers featured a prodigious amount of floating heads in their first volumes, but it's the latter title which offered more variety when it came to its characters given the sheer amount of different Avengers to choose from. As for the approach we'll take with this, it became more interesting for me to present these "floaters" on their own and out of context rather than blending in with whatever else was on the cover. It turns out that, in just over 400 issues, there were only a mere twenty-five instances where these heads appeared before tapering off around 1990. Nevertheless, they made their mark, and are not to be confused with groupings of other, equally familiar floating heads:

And so let's get to it--though it seems that three of the Avengers have already taken a glance at this collection and are less than pleased with the direction we're headed in. You'll have to take up your grievances with Production, gentlemen!

Artwork by Gil Kane and John Romita (Prior framing art by John Buscema and George Klein)

So what started the ball rolling (this would be the time to declare, "Heads will roll!" eh? Ha ha!) on this new promotional tack for Marvel? Technically, I suppose a finger should be pointed at this late 1963 cover of Strange Tales, where a floating (though from the looks of things it appears more "mounted" than "floating") head of Spider-Man, who admits he isn't present at the Torch's battle, uses his status as a former foe of Sandman to entice the reader into dropping 12¢ at the store counter:

But I'd instead go with an Avengers cover from '64, where nearly all of the original Avengers arguably become the company's first super-floaters.

Artists: Jack Kirby and Chic Stone

As we'll see, the steadying presence of Captain America landed him a spot in nearly all of these groupings through the years, whether he was part of the Big Three or not.

Art (in descending order): John Romita; Jack Kirby, Al Milgrom; Rich Buckler, John Romita, Joe Sinnott

Mr. Kirby (along with Frank Giacoia) also gave us the only instance of floating villain heads being present with those of the Avengers:

Some of our floaters were further distinguished with circles:

Artists: Don Heck/Frank Giacoia, John Romita/Mike Esposito

Yet if we ditch the circles and bring a few other floaters within closer proximity to each other, we end up with our one and only "mug shots" design.

Artist: Gil Kane

Artist John Buscema, who turned in a number of floaters during his time on the book, adapts Kirby's "necklace" design for his own contributions (assisted by George Roussos, George Klein, and Tom Palmer).

While he and Palmer also give us something of an avenging "charm bracelet":

Palmer would bring a painting approach to a later cover (featuring Captain Marvel), which served to almost "normalize" its floating heads and instead make them a part of the overall work rather than a stark selling tool.

As we've seen, inker Joe Sinnott brought his finishing talents to floaters by Jack Kirby and Rich Buckler.  Here he finishes Al Milgrom's stylish grouping:

Buscema and Palmer also bring us a collection of floaters who, when rearranged, should probably feature the same caption for several of them: "What are you lookin' at?" "What are you lookin' at?"

Artist Keith Pollard decides to fold in a few floating heads for a seamless cover design involving a battle taking place inside of a computer network.

(Hey, you on the bottom row! Are you hoping someone will toss you a sardine?)

George Perez and Terry Austin bring us a collection of floaters, while shamelessly including one character who was only present in a grand total of two panels, blending in with everyone else and having no dialog! Gyp! Gyp! (Okay, it's made clear in the story that he's in peril, but still...!)

Bob Hall and Dan Green bring together four of the founding members for us, who bemoan the fate of another founding member who has disgraced himself within their ranks.

Kane and Romita return with another three floaters, which like the previous grouping again features Iron Man's mask affixed with a nose piece (courtesy of writer Mike Friedrich).

And, wrapping things up, artist Paul Ryan (with Palmer) would later bring back the necklace design, which would turn out to be the final collection of floating heads to grace the series.

HONORABLE MENTION:
John Buscema and George Klein bring us an interesting take on the concept: Three floating heads within the wafting smoke of machinery exhaust.

BONUS!
The bandmates of Hep Alien get a lesson in perseverance from Mrs. Kim.