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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Murder Incorporated #1 CGC 4.0 Off-White to White pages $495
Tomine’s style and subject matter are restrained and realistic. Many are set in Northern California. Many of his stories for Optic Nerve feature Asian American characters, including “Hawaiian Getaway,” “Six-Day Cold,” “Layover,” and “Shortcomings.” Adrian Tomine is Asian American and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Many topics of his stories are at least partly autobiographical.
In the initial self-published issues, as well as the first eight Drawn & Quarterly issues (1995-2001), Optic Nerve was typically a collection of short stories. After an extended hiatus, Tomine resumed the comic in fall of 2004 and began his first multi-issue storyline, “Shortcomings,” with #9. The most recent issue, #13, was published in July 2013.
In the modern day, MI5 agent Breen is tasked with breaking into The Village in order to extricate a fellow spy. The information she possesses is too valuable to fall into the hands of the mysterious Village, so Breen must engineer his own defection and capture, reduced to a mere number. Yet nothing can prepare the new Number 6 for the bizarreness that awaits him inside the Village…
Rai (pronounced “rye”) appeared in books published by Valiant Comics. Rai was the first original hero created by Valiant and had its beginning as a flipbook back-up feature in Magnus Robot Fighter issues #5-8. The popularity of the flipbook back-up story later led to an ongoing series. Valiant Entertainment is the current owner of Rai and the rest of the original Valiant Comics characters.
In his original incarnation, Rai is the spirit guardian that protects the nation of Japan in the 41st century. It is a mantle passed down from father to son through the generations. As such, the series chronicled a number of protagonists.
A new Rai ongoing series was launched in April 2014 by the creative team of writer Matt Kindt and artist Clayton Crain, selling out of its initial print run.
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.
Starring Dave Steven’s classic Pulp-inspired character The Rockeeter (later made into a big-budget Hollywood movie). Guest-stars other clasiic Pulp Characters (The Shadow, Doc Savage, etc.) and Bettie Page. Beautiful art & a thrilling storyline. Includes “Brucilla The Muscle: Galactic Girl Guide” by Elaine Lee & Michael Kaluta as a back-up feature.
EHT Comics 