Trevor

Thought this might be a fun game, another that I’ve shamelessly stolen from another venue.

Anyone own, or have any memories/thoughts on these titles?

Bronkster

Nope.

Trevor

Yeah, these are all a bit old and very non Big Two. I’ll try to pick a broader spectrum next week (if I remember my plan to start a new thread every Sunday).

davidh777

Not only do I not know the titles, I don’t even recognize the publishers.

Trevor

You whippersnapper you!

PhantomStranger

I never bought them new but I'm familiar with Eclipse Comics only because I'd come across them in my store's quarter bins back in the day. I wonder when quarter bins stopped being a thing.

Trevor

I guess I’m older than I thought compared to you all. Eclipse was the bomb back in the late 70s and early 80s, kinda like today’s Image as in producing the best stuff. Miracleman, Zot, Airboy, a lot of the first manga seen in the states, Groo, Mr Monster, Hembeck, Rocketeer, and classic strip reprints.

Quarter bins still exist I hear, but I haven’t seen them often for years.

PhantomStranger

I never got into indie comics very much before the Image era.

Kurt D

I feel like I read a lot of PC and Eclipse comics back in the day. Back when they were the new wave of publishers. AKA ancient times.

Have never read any of those, however.

Josh-da-man

I've always had a sort of curiosity about and fascination with independent comics from the 1980s.

Managed to find all of these comics and gave them a cursory run-through.

EDGE OF CHAOS #1 - Some occasionally nice artwork by Gray Morrow, but this thing is mostly terrible. It wants to be some kind of multi-genre epic, but it just comes off like a hot mess of ideas that never coalesce into an actual story. And, lord, it's so wordy that I think Chris Claremont co-wrote it. (Scratch that. Claremont's at least readable when he's wordy.)

P. J. WARLOCK #1 - Pretty unabashed rip-off of Vaughn Bode's Cheech Wizard. Not sure what it is about Cheech Wizard that makes other creators drawn to co-opting it, but Ralph Bakshi did with his movie Wizards, too.

EMPIRE LANES #1 - Speaking of rip-offs, this is a pretty standard mash-up of 80s fantasy tropes, like what would happen if you tried to explain Lord of the Rings and Dungeons & Dragons to somebody, and they tried to write a story out of it and set it in a bowling alley for some reason. Peter Hogan would go on to bigger and better things with Vertigo a few years later.

SUN RUNNERS #1 - Oooh! Somebody's a fan of Adam Warlock! Some nice color in this; I've always been a fan of that high quality (for the time) coloring on old 80s independent comics. Pat Broderick art; thought the style looked familiar, but couldn't place it with him until I looked for the credits.

SCORPIO ROSE #1 - This really feels like something that would have come out from Marvel's Epic imprint back in the day... probably because it's by Englehart, Rogers, Palmer, and Orzechowski. Okay, but very dated. Random mohawk guys with switchblades!

And is that an early appearance by Warren Ellis on page six?

MICRA #1 - Again, another very dated book. I can really feel a Sorayama and Patrick Nagle influence here, as well as some good old-fashioned cyberpunk. Seems like an okay story, but the art could use a bit more polish for what they were going for.

Josh-da-man

Back in the late 90s, when eBay first came out, I ended up buying up a shitload of full runs of old 80s independent comics. When these came out I didn't have regular access to a comic book store, so I couldn't buy them.

Ended up getting full runs of American Flagg (First Comics), Whisper (First Comics), Grimjack (First Comics), Dreadstar (First Comics), Shatter (First Comics), Scout (Eclipse Comics), and Miracleman* (Eclipse Comics) for dirt cheap. *Actually, I think I picked up Miracleman from usenet marketplace, and managed to get the full run (including the infamous #15) and the three Moore TPBs, for about cover price. This was right before #15, #23, and #24 exploded in price.

I had already pieced together a full run of Grendel (Comico) before that; started reading that with Dark Horse's "War Child" series, and then went back and put together a full run. Really, really liked that title, and decided to track down some of its contemporaries.

The rest of these titles, outside of Miracleman and early issues of American Flagg, were competently crafted, but rather bland. Probably would have seemed better in the 80s when they competing against Marvel and pre-Vertigo DC, but by '99-'01, they felt kind of dated and old-fashioned.

Kurt D

I have often thought of revisiting Flagg! I still think of Raul fairly often.

Paul_SD

I may have picked up Scorpio Rose when it came out because I would have been familiar with Englehart and Rogers from their Batman run five or six years earlier.
And it looks like something that would have caught my eye at the time. Anything with a female lead character, like Ms. Tree, at least invited a quick flip through in the LCS.

In fact, wasn't Scorpio Rose the book that was repurposed from Madame Xanadu after DC axed the project? I could have sworn I read something about that at the time which would have also piqued my interest.

cultshock

I bought a bunch of PC and Eclipse comics back in the day, but none of the pictured ones.

Me too, I loved reading it when I was a teenager, not sure if it would still hold up for me?

davidh777

I read Dreadstar but only when it was published by Epic. I read Starslayer from Pacific but not when it moved to First (thanks, Wikipedia).

I only discovered Miracleman and Ms Tree in the digital era.

cultshock

Oh yeah, I really liked Grendel, I even managed to track down one of the original three B&W issues. I don't know about now, but those ones were really hard to find back in the pre-internet 80's.

Kurt D

This is why I haven't made it past the 'I often think about it phase!'

Trevor

I almost bought Scorpio Rose a couple times, both new and later in the bins. I’m definitely finding it if it was repurposed Xanadu ideas. She’s a favorite character of mine.

Loved Ms. Tree and have been passively trying to complete her runs for decades now.

ytrez

I have all of them except for PJ Warlock. I'm a huge fan of independent comics and bought all of these way back in the day. I haven't read them in years and imagine they're all pretty dated but I'm still a fan.

fujishig

I had Sun Runners but for the most part a lot of independent comics were just too pricey (at the time) for me to collect regularly as a kid. I remember saving up to get those TMNT comics where they allegedly showed you how to use the weapons because those were fairly expensive cover price.

Trevor

I’ve seen this one in bins, and was always curious since I generally like Gray Morrow’s work. Hermes Press, usually high quality stuff iirc, put out a collection of his book Orion along with this Edge of Chaos stuff. But sounds like I can skip this one.
I loved much of the other ‘funny animal’ books around this era, especially Fusion and Weasel Patrol from Eclipse, and the anthology Critters from Fantagraphics.
​​​​​​​
I think you mean Peter Gross. I remember loving Empire Lanes, but don’t remember any details. I’ll check it out next time I’m in that particular long box.
I was a big fan of Broderick’s art thanks to Micronauts and then Captain Atom, but never checked this out.
I was a big fan of Comics Interview, and think I bought most of their actual comic output too.
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Trevor

Those are still pretty pricey, up to a couple hundred bucks slabbed.

Fairly low print runs probably, but mainly first appearances of one of the best characters in comic history!

Pretty sure I found those. Only real expensive items on my want list are the first Usagi appearances iirc.

cultshock

Wish I had hung on to my copy. I first became aware of Grendel, and Comico in the below ad I saw in some comic or magazine I was reading. I remember all the characters intriguing me, but the only one of those I ever ended up reading was Grendel (I'm sure by far the best of the bunch).

Josh-da-man

Yeah, those first three Grendel comics are still pricey -- first appearance combined with low print runs from a new publisher and an untested creator.

Those issues are in a kind of odd place since Wagner abandoned the title with the third issue, then re-worked the concept into Devil by the Deed, and presented it as a back-up in Mage. At which point the Grendel concept was rebooted and the b&w stories are no longer canon to the current iteration. Dark Horse reprinted the b&w comics in an inexpensive hardcover a while back.

Grendel still holds up well for me. I would put Devil by the Deed, Grendel #1-40, and War Child #1-10 in the same league as Sandman, and Moore and Morrison's various 80s and early 90s works.

cultshock

I remember reading Wagner saying that they would never be reprinted due to them no longer being canon, I didn't know about the hardcover, I need to look for that. I agree that it was a fantastic series, one of the best of the 80's.