1987: Overload Magazine

Overload Magazine (1987) #1 edited by Evan Mills.

I wasn’t sure whether this anthology was part of the bust part of the black and white boom (BAWBAB, for short) or whether it was from Eclipse’s next phase.

This very nice opening piece by Dennis Wolf doesn’t have any mutant rodents, but seems more like a humorous Heavy Metal page, so perhaps not?

Mike Dringenberg is a veteran artist, so that’s not very BAWBAB. But on the other hand, the writer is Donald Chin, who wrote patient zero in that debacle…

And then we get to The Original Turtles Patrol. Ding ding ding! We have BAWBAB!

And it’s the only piece in this book that hints at a continuation: All the other strips are shorter sf things, usually with a bad joke at the end.

Like this one with very nice artwork by Dennis Wolf and a groan-worthy joke by Donald Chin.

And Parsonavich drops by with a Hamster story, written by himself. It’s more chaotic and dense than these stories usually are, but, of course, it also has a lame twist ending. I’m kinda taken with his Moebius-in-a-woodchipper artwork.

And finally, two short pieces by Sam Wray, drawn in an incongruous European style.

It’s not a bad little anthology. Some of the artwork is great, and even if there are some parts where the humour makes your eyeball roll, it’s so unpretentious that is has a kind of endearing charm.

So of course it didn’t last more than a single issue.

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