Murdered by his sadistic parents, Obadiah Archer returns from the dead with uncanny physical abilities and a mission: to punish all evil-doers like his parents; Learning martial arts in the Orient, Archer soon becomes the world’s greatest fighter!; He soon encounters Armstrong, a free-spirited immortal with the strength of ten men!; They have just met when they are attacked by Armstrong’s foes, the Sect.; Can they survive their crazy friendship?
The English language version of the Dragon Ball manga is licensed for North America by Viz Media. Viz originally published the first 194 chapters as Dragon Ball and chapters over 195 as Dragon Ball Z to mimic the names of the anime series, feeling it would reduce the potential for confusion by its readers. They initially released both series simultaneously, chapter by chapter in a monthly comic book format starting in 1998, before stopping in 2000 to switch to a graphic novel format similar to the Japanese tankōbon.
Vampirella is a vampire superheroine created by Forrest J Ackerman and costume designer Trina Robbins in Warren Publishing‘s black-and-white horror comics magazine Vampirella #1 (Sept. 1969). Writer-editor Archie Goodwin later developed the character from horror-story hostess, in which capacity she remained through issue #8 (Nov. 1970), to a horror-drama leading character. Vampirella was ranked 35th in Comics Buyer’s Guide‘s “100 Sexiest Women in Comics” list.
The series is set between 2006–2008 in a world where superheroes exist. However, most of the superheroes in the series’ universe are corrupted by their celebrity status and often engage in reckless behavior, compromising the safety of the world. For this reason, a superpowered CIA squad, known informally as “The Boys”, is charged with monitoring the superhero community; the name is Butcher’s contribution, a reference from his neighborhood that those in power would send “the boys” to handle anyone causing trouble.
Ennis has said that the series would “out-Preacher Preacher“, presumably referring to the extreme violence and sexuality that were that series’ hallmark, and that the series would end with its seventy-second issue.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was first published by Mirage Studios in 1984 in Dover, New Hampshire. The concept arose from a humorous drawing sketched out by Kevin Eastman during a casual evening of brainstorming and bad television with Peter Laird. Using money from a tax refund, together with a loan from Eastman’s uncle, the young artists self-published a single-issue comic intended to parody four of the most popular comics of the early 1980s: Marvel Comics’ Daredevil and New Mutants, Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and Frank Miller’s Ronin. The TMNT comic series has been published in various incarnations by various comic book companies since 1984.
The Tick was created by cartoonist Ben Edlund in 1986 as a newsletter mascot for the New England Comics chain of Boston area comic stores. He is an absurdist spoof of comic book superheroes. After its creation, the character spun off into an independent comic book series in 1988, and gained mainstream popularity through an animated TV series on Fox in 1994. A short-lived live-action TV series, video game, and various merchandise have also been based on the character. IGN‘s list of the Top 100 Comic Book Heroes of All Time ranked The Tick as #57.
Moore created a new, teenaged Youngblood group that was financed independently by millionaire Waxey Doyle, formerly the WWII superhero Waxman. The team was led by Shaft and was augmented by new members Big Brother, Doc Rocket, Twilight, Suprema, and Johnny Panic. Moore said he wanted Youngblood to be a “less sprawling, more dynamic team” and that “if you have more characters than [six], the action gets cluttered and it becomes increasingly difficult to establish each character as a real and solid person in their own right”. All of the new team members and most of the villains featured in this series, including Jack-A-Dandy, were Moore’s creations.
The Hernandez brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981, but since 1982 it has been published by Fantagraphics Books. The magazine temporarily ceased publication in 1996 after the release of issue #50, while Gilbert and Jaime went on to do separate series involving many of the same characters. However, in 2001 Los Bros revived the series as Love and Rockets Volume 2.
Love and Rockets contains several ongoing serial narratives, the most prominent being Gilbert’s Palomar stories and Jaime’s Hoppers 13(aka Locas) stories. It also contains one-offs, shorter stories, surrealist jokes, and more.
Palomar tells the story of a fictional village in Latin America and its inhabitants. Its vibrant characters and sometimes-fantastic events are sometimes compared to the magical realism literary style of authors such as Gabriel García Márquez. The series is also sometimes referred to as Heartbreak Soup, after the first story set in Palomar.
Hoppers 13 follows the tangled lives of a group of primarily chicano characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day. (Hoppers, or Huerta, is a fictional city based on the Hernandezes’s home town of Oxnard, California.) The series is also often called Locas (Spanish for “crazy women”) because of the many quirky female characters depicted.
Following his introduction as Dr. M. T. Graves in Charlton Comics‘ Ghostly Tales #55 (cover-dated May 1966) in the three-page story “The Ghost Fighter” by writer-artist Ernie Bache, the character went on to host his own anthology title, The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves. The series ran 72 issues (May 1967 – May 1982), generally published bimonthly. Following issue #60 (Jan. 1977), the title went on hiatus for seven months until issue #61 (Aug. 1977) before being canceled with #65 (May 1978). Charlton revived the title three years later with #66 (May 1981) before canceling it once more six issues later.
Among the artists whose work appeared were Steve Ditko, following his falling-out with Marvel Comics; newcomer Jim Aparo, later to be one of Batman‘s signature artists; regular Charlton talents including Vince Alascia, Pat Boyette, Pete Morisi, Rocke Mastroserio, and Charles Nicholas; and such others as Rich Larson, Don Newton and Tom Sutton. The cover of issue #54 (Dec. 1975) marks one of the earliest professional works of John Byrne.
Writers on the title included Ditko, Steve Skeates, Mike Pellowski, and the prolific, generally uncredited staff writer Joe Gill.
In August 1985, Eclipse began reprinting the Marvelman stories from Warrior, colored, and re-sized. They were renamed and re-lettered throughout as Miracleman to avoid further problems with Marvel Comics. Issues 1-6 reprinted all the Warrior content, after which Eclipse began publishing new Miracleman stories from Alan Moore and new artist Chuck Beckum (now better known as Chuck Austen), soon replaced by Rick Veitch and then John Totleben. Eclipse split the rights to the character, with 2/3 going to Eclipse and 1/3 split between the current writer and artist of the series. Moore wrote the series until issue 16.
Writer Neil Gaiman picked up the series at #17 and developed it further in the 1990s, working with artist Mark Buckingham. He planned three books, consisting of six issues each; they would be titled “The Golden Age”, “The Silver Age” and “The Dark Age”.
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