The Realm (1986)

Four normal modern day teenagers are plunged into a world they thought only existed in novels and film. They are whisked away to a magical land where dragons roam the skies, orcs and hobgoblins terrorize travelers, and kingdoms wage war for dominance. It is a world where man is just one race, joining other races such as elves, trolls, dwarves, changelings, and the dreaded night creatures who steal the night. Not a typical “dungeons and dragons” world, for this story follows the adventures of these teens into the unknown as we watch the world unfold with their eyes. It is a world that is foreign to them. We learn as they learn. And what hope do these teens have in this strange Middle Earth world? How can they survive against wizards, dwarves, halflings, dragons, and trolls if they had a hard time making it in high school?

 

Joker V1 – Timely Comics (1941)

Stan Lee makes an appearance in the one-shot digest Joker, on three separate pages. (The only person to sign their text material.) This title would re-start shortly after as a large bedsheet (Life Magazine size) and run 4 more issues as Volume #1-4 on a quarterly basis.  It will also concurrently become a comic book at the same time.

Deadline USA (1992)

You’ve seen him on MTVs Liquid Television–Richard Sala continues his all-new, ultraterrifying 13 O’clock! He’s harder than hard-boiled, he’s Johnny Nemo by the ultrascientific Peter Milligan and Brett Ewins! It’s sex, it’s rock n’ roll, but is it drugs? It’s Doe, the latest graphic vortex from Harvey Award ultranominee Ho Che Anderson! They play the game, God makes the rules! They’re the A-Men by the ultraconservative Shaky Kane! Plus work by Julie Hollings, Philip Bond, Alec Stevens, D’Israeli and never forget GWAR, puny human! And an ultraspecial music feature! And another ultraschizophrenic cover painting from the corkscrewed psyche of Mitch O’Connell!

Night of the Living Dead (2007) Avatar Press

Night of the Living Dead co-creator John Russo brings you a new tale of terror set during the night that changed the world forever. The eastern United States is in chaos as hordes of the undead wage war against the living, and increasingly frantic television transmissions are the only source of information available to a terrified populace. But there is no escape from the living dead and no safe place to hide, not even the WIIC-TV studio where original Night of the Living Dead news anchorman Chuck Blaine has some difficult decisions to make: Should his heroic news crew continue their emergency public broadcasts, or run from the army of ghouls amassing outside the station? More importantly, should he continue to disseminate questionable government recommendations that could be luring viewers into inescapable death traps? This special bonus-sized tale features appearances by some of the original film’s most memorable characters, including the recently deceased Johnny, Barbra, and little Karen Cooper!

Panic (1954)

Panic was a bi-monthly humor comic that was published by Bill Gaines‘ EC Comics line during the mid-1950s as a companion to Harvey Kurtzman‘s Mad, which was being heavily imitated by other comic publishers.

Panic was edited by Al Feldstein (who became the editor of Mad a few years later). Beginning with its first issue (February–March 1954), Panic had a 12-issue run over two years. Feldstein was the primary cover artist, with stories illustrated by Jack Davis, Will Elder, Jack Kamen, Joe Orlando, Basil Wolverton and Wally Wood. Some story ideas were by Nick Meglin, later the co-editor of Mad. Scripts were by Feldstein, Elder and Jack Mendelsohn, later a co-screenwriter of Yellow Submarine (1968) and an Emmy-nominated TV comedy writer.

The Invaders (1967)

Comic book version of the 1960s TV series about one man’s crusade to convince people that an advance guard of alien creatures had infiltrated the world’s population and were preparing to conquer Earth.

Adventures into the Unknown (1960’s)

Adventures Into the Unknown was best known as the medium’s first ongoing horror-comics title. Published by the American Comics Group, initially under the imprint B&I Publishing, it ran 174 issues (cover-dated Fall 1948 – Aug. 1967). The first two issues, which included art by Fred Guardineer and others, featured horror stories of ghosts, werewolves, haunted houses, killer puppets, and other supernatural beings and locales. The premiere included a seven-page abridged adaptation of Horace Walpole‘s seminal gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, by an unknown writer and artist Al Ulmer.

Unlike many American horror comics of the Golden Age, it weathered the public criticism of the early 1950s and survived the aftermath of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings of April and June 1954 when the comics industry attempted self-regulation with a highly restrictive Comics Code.

The Puma Blues (1986)

The Puma Blues was a comic book written by Stephen Murphy and drawn by Michael Zulli. It ran from June 1986 to the beginning of 1989, stretching over 23 regular issues and a single “half-issue” minicomic.

Published first by Aardvark One International and later by Mirage Studios, the story is set around the millennium. and follows Gavia Immer, a governmental fauna agent, as he goes through an existential dilemma while watching videos his father left for him after his death.

The comic book’s detailed artwork by Michael Zulli, which focused primarily on wildlife and nature, was superposed to a loose narrative with a druggy, dreamy, new age apocalyptic atmosphere. This de-structuralizing of the main narrative increased dramatically in later issues, with the second half of the series often taking the form of illustrated prose poetry within an associative narrative.

Caliber Presents (1989)

The original Caliber Presents anthology title was one of Caliber Comic’s inaugural releases in the 1990s and featured predominantly new creators, many of which went onto successful careers in the comics’ industry.

Murder Incorporated (1948)

Murder Incorporated would’ve been an obvious title for a hard-hitting true-crime comic book in 1948.   The real-life Murder Incorporated, the infamous hit squad of New York City organized crime had been shut down by the early 1940s, but their legend lived on in other media.  This Fox Feature Syndicate series was true to its title as it featured true crime tales with a focus on mob killers and other notorious murderers.  Murder Incorporated‘s notoriety was such that the series was mentioned by both Fredric Wertham in Seduction of the Innocent, and Geoffrey Wagner in Parade of Pleasure, and it landed on countless municipal government ban lists around the country in 1948, along with much of the rest of Victor Fox’s comic book line.  An interesting series in the context of both comic book history and from a true-crime perspective.