They badly need to issue an All-Star Squadron omnibus. We're finally getting late Bronze Age stuff like Warlord and apparently it sold like gangbusters.

That is good to hear. I have been considering picking up the Warlord omnibus even though I have tried to swear off buying more omnibuses to sit on my shelf that only get read rarely.

I am not sure I will be able to resist. But picking up the first ones means having to pick up 2 or 3 more to finish the series, depending on how they spread them out. Argh!

Man, we need more All Star Squadron, Infinity Inc., and yes, even Young All-Stars

I always thought this was a cool cover.

Not much to finish out the reading order of this Crisis so here ya go...

Seeing this cover as a kid (many many years after it was published) made me wonder why there were 2 Batman there till I realized it was Wildcat.

Ha! I actually did a double take too and then realized it was Wildcat before I read your comment.

So, I enjoyed doing the reading order covers for Crisis so I found some others I will run through for my own amusement.

Next up reading order story is "Wraith War" in 1983 featuring ROM who always had some cool covers. ROM #40 to #51 acts as a build-up to the event.

Continuing the buildup to "Wraith War".

"Wraith War" BEGINS!

Very cool ROM and HULK covers! The Avengers... eh, not so much.

"Wrath War" continues...

This is a real TPB.

Superman Vs Meshi TP Vol 02 - InStockTrades

Quote:

(W) Satoshi Miyagawa (A/CA) Kai Kitago SUPERMAN'S CULINARY TOUR THROUGH JAPAN CONTINUES! As Superman's heroic life tires him out, he's able to recharge his batteries with good eats and good friends. He loves bringing his Justice League pals out to show them the wonderous world of Japanese chain restaurants. He'll even relax with a bite after a harrowing battle with Lex Luthor. But can the Man of Steel overcome his biggest fear...and ask intrepid reporter Lois Lane out to lunch?!

Had this bad boy when I was a kid. Not sure how I came by it, though. Might have been a gift or from a garage sale. I had the accessories, but didn't have the cable.

Kind of an oddity. A one-off toy that wasn't in scale with other contemporary lines like Star Wars, Micronauts, and Shogun Warriors.

I can't seem to remember if I had one or it was a friend that had one but I just remember it only had one of the guns and didn't light up but we still thought it looked cool. I only had a couple of ROM comics as a kid and they just were too outlandish for my tastes at the time. I plan to go and read through this Wraith War that I am posting. And speaking of...

"Wraith War" continues...

Finishing off "Wraith War"!!!




ZECK!

Earliest comic reading multiple issue crossover story I could find - 1964 - Zatanna's Search - 6 issues













BONUS COVER - TPB release of this story:

Next Reading Event: Jack Kirby's Fourth World (DC) - 57 issues total

RIP Sal Buscema

He wasn't known as a cover artist. Just a very reliable, fast interior artist. Probably his most famous cover:

Mini-comic series that came packed in with various games and system. Possibly giveaways too. I can't remember. I just remember the covers. It later became a full-fledged real comic book that ran for 20 issues from 1984 through 1985.






I always liked the above cover.







I remember the regular series feeling more like the early years of the Marvel Star Wars series, after they finished the movie adaptations and then went their own way with the characters before Empire came out.

The most amazing thing about this Parker Bros toy is that it spawned a comic that lasted 7 years and that despite Marvel fleshing out several other space knights there was never any continuation of the toy line or adaptation or anything. I don't think I've ever met anyone who has nostalgia over this toy (at least not without an attachment because of the comic)

BTW there's a recent Marvel Legends that came out of it. That and Crystar were two I thought I'd never see toys of again.

Ah, Atari Force and that Jose Luis Garcia Lopez art...

I wasn’t much of a gamer as a kid, despite their increasing ubiquity in the late 1970’s. A spoiled friend of mine got lots of consoles as they came out, though: Atari 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision. We’d play fairly often at his place, but I’d usually get bored after an hour or so and eventually head home to draw (which ultimately did lead to a decades-long career, so there’s that). I did get a console myself, circa ‘79 or so, but one that nobody remembers: the Magnavox Odyssey 2. It didn’t mark me as a cool kid, but I liked it. It’s still here, actually.

As a budding “artist” though, I loved the designs that adorned the game boxes and insert brochures for all of the systems more than virtually any of the games one could play on them, which by default paled in comparison, visually. Somehow, a ‘character’ made up of, what, six gigantic pixel-square thingies just didn't ‘pop’ like the one on the box.

Those Atari Force comics remind me of the only time I bought video game cartidges for a system I didn’t own: Atari’s SWORDQUEST.

I wasn’t a ‘proper’ comics collector at the time, more of an off-the-rack-if-I-liked-the-art kid, but by 1982 when those games first appeared, I was very aware of George Pérez and was actively improving my drawing skills by copying him and John Byrne almost exclusively until my own ‘style’ started to emerge later on. I remember reading somewhere that Pérez drew a comic included with the then-new SWORDQUEST game. I couldn’t afford it, and couldn’t even play it, but I really wanted to get that comic! I knew it would go on sale or get clearanced eventually, as games often did, so I kept biding my time. And then the second game came out. So I bided some more.

Eventually, probably some time long after the big video game crash, I did get them cheap. I recall fishing though a couple of department store bargain bins of games hunting for the SWORDQUEST titles, which had turned up in them. The problem was, other people were apparently hunting too, and they were opening the boxes and stealing the comics! I had to dig deep over several visits to finally find sealed boxes. Even at bargain prices, I still grossly overpaid for just a couple of tiny comics, but I was too chickenshit to steal like everybody else was.

Pérez put the nearly same level of quality and detail into them that he put into the New Teen Titans comics I was semi-regularly buying at the time. There was a third game in 1984 that also had a comic but I had to get that one decades later on eBay just to have some closure. Still got ‘em all here.

Reportedly there was a fourth game that was never released (again due to the crash? Or maybe just poor sales for that series in general?). I don’t think the comic was even produced for that one.

These comics also contained clues you needed to win the games. Totally lost on me; I probably wouldn’t have spotted them even if they had ‘Big Clue’ drawn right on them.

I remember getting this cartridge (I believe I may still have it) because of the artwork and I think only trying to play it once because it was hard and confusing as shit, as many of those games were back then.



Do you have a website where you post your artwork?

Continuing the reading order for Jack Kirby's Fourth World!











These Jimmy Olsen covers. I mean...what the fuck?