Author: larsmagne23

Phantom of Fear City (1993) #1-6 by Steve Englehart et al.

This is the second of the four Claypool comics Eclipse distributed in 1993/94, and it’s the first of the three interconnected “Fear City” comics.

The first Claypool book, Elvira, surprised me by being such a nice and breezy read, so I had some hopes that the rest of the comics might also be good entertainment. And the artwork by Matt Haley/John Nyberg looks great!

Very stylish… even if that style is ten years out of date in 1993.

But the story… oh where to start. Ok, perhaps I’ll just keep it short: It’s about a Dutch pirate ghost who needs to win the love of a living woman to become a real boy. Or something. And then there’s a lot of evil people running around that makes that difficult.

Hm, that didn’t really sound that bad, did it? But Englehart’s execution is just so heavy handed and verbose and plodding.

Editor Richard Howell explains how the Phantom came to be, and hints at it starting as the outline for a different, licensed character. Well, he says that, but he sorta hints at who that character was, but I’m not taking the hint.

The three “Fear City” books are interconnected, but were supposed to be readable separately, too. So I wondered how they were going to handle that. So here we learn about somebody called Soulseachers & Co…

… and are told that we can read about that in issue two. And that’s about it. Hopefully there’ll be more to this when reading the other two books, because just having crossrefs like that is kinda lame.

And speaking of lame, Englehart apparently believes that he’s got droves of new readers ever issue, or his readers are amnesiacs, because he spends a page or two in every fucking issue having the characters restate the basic premise of the plot to the general world.

The primary villain is called D’arc. Such a clever villain name. She has a company called D’arcst’ar.

D’arcst’ar.

I’m not making this up. Just read that panel above. It’s says “D’arcst’ar”. It’s not a typo.

D’arcst’ar.

Well, the nice artwork couldn’t last because nothing nice ever does (or perhaps that’s just the zeitgeist of 2018), Matt Haley diesn’t do the artwork in the third issue. Mark Miraglia/Bill Anderson does instead, and there’s nothing wrong with it. I mean, it has a nice sheen. But it’s slightly wonky.

And Englehart changes the rules constantly on how the ghost business works, as if he can’t quite make up his mind. Or perhaps care that much.

But he apparently said that he hopes it’ll end up being his favourite series of all time, so there’s that. And it’s planned as a twelve issue series, which I didn’t think was mentioned before…

In the fourth issue, Matt Haley is back, which is nice, and Englehart brings back three of his “mystic” comics characters from previous series, like Coyote and Scorpio Rose.

*sniff* They survived cancellation.

And a backup series called Tiberius Fox, written by Kurt Busiek, starts. It’s more intentionally funny than the main story.

And then Haley goes missing for good, and Nick Scholes steps in. And brings us my favourite scene from the series. As our hero explains, when he becomes corporeal every seventh years, his nails and hair gets a seven year growth spurt, which means that he should have take off his boots first.

Cue toe nail clipping scene.

If only the entire series had been nothing but toe nail clipping scenes.

But it’s mostly characters shouting at nobody, explaining to the readers what they read in the previous issue. It’s like Englehart had heard that captions and thought balloons were totally out, dude, so he… made do.

And… then the editor starts putting in a recap page, too.

Perhaps it was the editor who insisted on the in-story recaps, too? It’s just too bizarre.

And here, with the sixth issue, I bid the series a sleepy adieu, because reading it almost put me to sleep. And Eclipse stopped distributing it, because they were in the process of considering whether to go bankrupt or not (which they did some months later).

Claypool did publish the full planned twelve issues, though.

A collected editions is being published this year. I wonder what the reviews are going to say…

I was unable to find any contemporary ones, though.

Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1993) #1-11 by Richard Howell and a whole lot of et al.

What’s this then? Another initiative from Eclipse after the (I’m guessing) failed line of FX books?

Nope. Or rather… I don’t think so? Eclipse were in huge financial difficulties by the middle of 1993 (with stories starting to pop up in the trade press about writers and artists not being paid), so one could perhaps suspect that they may have found it convenient to set up a separate company to get some unencumbered cash flowing again. But I can find nothing that points to that being the case, really. Instead it seems like Eclipse Comics were just distributing the Claypool comics, and were otherwise not that involved. (“Distributing” here most likely means “putting the books on the Eclipse solicitation forms the comics shops order from”, while the real distribution happens through Diamond and its competitors.)

So the four Claypool comics I’m covering here (that I didn’t know existed until a couple of weeks ago), are somewhat out of the remit of this blog article series, but I thought it might be of some interest. There’s a pretty big overlap of creators working on these comics and Eclipse, too.

Oh, yeah, we were going to talk about the actual comic book, too, not just about Eclipse Comics.

This is a comic book about Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and is based on… a TV show? Or something? I’m sorry, I’ve never seen it, but based on what’s in this comic, she was a hostess that shows horror movies on late night cable TV shows in the US in the 80s? And then made snide comments about it when it was time to throw to commercials? So it’s kinda like Mystery Science Theatre 3000, only less so?

But while MST3K keeps the sexual innuendo to a minimum (amazingly so, with some to the movies they do), Elvira is the opposite: The sexual innuendo (and impressive boobs) are apparently the point.

But the comic book keeps the number of shower shots (and the equivalent) to bare minimum (so to speak), and concentrates on telling one bad joke after another, and getting hi-jinx rolling and then reeling them in again.

Editor Richard Howell (I’m assuming he writes these pages) does an introduction of Elvira (and the line of Claypool comics) that reads less like a creative statement and more like a business plan.

Perhaps the oddest decision is to concentrate on shorter stories: Each issue has a 15 page lead story and an 8 page backup feature. Since comics creators haven’t really been into shorter stories since, well, the 50s, and often struggle when trying to squeeze an entire story into a short space, that sounds like something that’ll lead to a lot of “to be continue” endings…

And it does. Especially with the backup features, like this one by Jo Duffy and Dan Spiegle.

There’s a bewildering array of creators on these eleven issues. Neither artists nor writers make a lot of repeat appearances, but Duffy/Spiegle does a six part serial (that’s fun) and Kurt Busiek writes some really amusing stories, too.

Over half the ads in these books are for Eclipse books, like this never-published issue of True Crime Special. Perhaps that’s how Claypool paid Eclipse for the distribution?

I had no hopes whatsoever that I was going to enjoy reading these comics. It’s a licensed property, the books look kinda cheap, and… well… You know. But I was utterly wrong.

While there’s a lot of different people working on these stories, editor Howell manages to keep it pretty cohesive, while still having variety. These stories are just so… amiable. There’s no pretension. There’s no satire. It’s just a group of people having lighthearted fun and telling odd, slightly nonsensical stories.

I spent an evening reading these comics, and that was a very pleasant evening. There’s virtually nothing annoying about the experience. It’s… nice! There’s the word. Nice! But in a good way!

I’ll cover the other three Claypool comics over the next few days, but apparently they form a shared universe of some kind? With a new comic published every two weeks? I hope I don’t have to read them in that order..

Elvira isn’t part of that scheme, though.

So many Eclipse trading cards!

While the comics mostly use square layouts, some artists wig out a bit. That’s… Neil Vokes and Louis Lachance (?), with writing by Kurt Busiek.

And we get previews from all the other Claypool comics.

Elvira herself isn’t directly involved with creating the book, but she contributed parts of the storyline to one.

Hm… cat ⊕ yronwode, the editor-in-chief of Eclipse, steps in as the production supervisor after a few issues, and Letitia Glozer (her sister and an editor at Eclipse) also gets involved. I’m not sure what that means, exactly, but perhaps Eclipse were taking over more of the practical work of putting the book together in addition to distributing it?

And also, that’s a lot of… companies. Claypool, Eastern Productions, Eclipse, Boffin.

The artwork is a bit hit and miss. Jim Mooney is a veteran, but his Elvira faces just look bizarre.

Colleen Doran was originally scheduled to do the artwork, so perhaps it was a rush job.

We get one short story (written by Buzz Lovko) which is… there.

I can’t make up my mind whether Dave Cockrum and Ricardo Villagran (who are both pretty good artists on their own) are a bizarre mismatch, or whether it makes sense. I kinda varies from panel to panel…

Kurt Busiek and David Wenzel had done a commercially successful adaptation of The Hobbit for Eclipse, and they were in the process of doing another three-part series? Eclipse were taking orders for it, anyway. Googling for a couple minutes reveals that it was published by Image Comics four years later, so I guess the people who bought it from Eclipse went unsatisfied.

The letters pages are mostly enthusiastic, but there’s some erudite criticism, too.

Hm… Desperado-Eastern? Ah, that’s Richard Howell’s company that published Portia Prinz of the Glamazons in the 70s. *phew* I thought I was going to have to get buying even more comics for this blog series…

Everything is kinda perfect until the tenth issue, when Howell takes over as solo writer. He’d previously co-written several stories (mostly with Busiek), but his solo stuff is… less funny, wordier and oddly preachy. He devotes one story to basically telling us that old, bad movies are the best.

And another to telling us that daytime prime soaps are the best thing ever!

It’s bizarre. And not funny.

I have to assume that it snapped back to being amusing again, because it lasted for 166 (!) issues before Claypool stopped publishing.

And then it’s over. The last issue distributed by Eclipse was published in March 1994, which is while the lawsuit against Eclipse was running, but still hadn’t been settled. They’d get a verdict of $120K against them for withholding money from Toren Smith (apparently), but that was months off. So I don’t know what Claypool’s reasoning was… Hm… I should buy the next issue just to see whether there’s anything of interest there. Yup. I’ll do so and update this blog post.

But here’s the news item from The Comics Journal #167:

Claypool Comics is marking its second year of publication by announcing a change in its distribution system. Previously solicited and distributed by Eclipse Comics, beginning in May, Claypool will handle their own distribution system. Editor Richard Howell told the Journal, “Eclipse is undergoing a reorganization (see “Newswatch” TCI #165 and 1661, and we felt that this was the optimal time to step out on our own.” Howell said that Claypool’s four titles will continue on their present schedules, with Elvira, Mistress of the Dark #13 and Deadbeats #7 representing the first Claypool titles to be distributed through its own solicitation system.

“Reorganisation”. Sure.

(time passes)

OK, I got Elvira nos 12 and 13 in the mail, and let’s have a look…

In #12, they’ve forgotten to remove the “distributed by Eclipse Comics” think from the inside front cover, and cat ⊕ yronwode is still listed as the production supervisor. I don’t know whether they forgot that, too?

The comics themselves are don’t seem very affected by the changeover, either. There’s still an abundance of hoary, bad jokes and odd artwork, here by editor/writer Howell and artist Louis Lachance.

But if you pile up enough of those bad jokes, the results are still pretty amusing.

Howell just can’t help himself with the over-writing, though. Many of the pages he writes are more dialogue than artwork, which gets a bit tiresome after a while.

On the letters pages, Howell notes that that back issue phone number was down for a week, but is now up again after they moved the warehouse. The phone number is the phone number to Eclipse, though, so, uhm… I’m a bit confused by the time line here, too. Eclipse didn’t go bankrupt until eight months after this issue was published, but they’d already divested themselves of their back issue business? And ported the phone number over to the people they’d sold that to?

Howell tries to clear up some confusing by “reminding them, once again, that Claypool never was an imprint or offshoot of Eclipse; that they were not our “parent company,” and that the two companies had different management, editorial goals, and funding”. So I guess I wasn’t the only person slightly suspicious about the set up.

Heh. The post office box of the “new” back issue sales department is the same as Eclipse’s post office box. Here’s how it looked in the previous issue:

So Eclipse spun off its back issue sales into a separate company called “Comics Warehouse”? Presumably to protect it from the looming bankruptcy, and that looks like a successful strategy, since cat ⊕ yronwode continued to sell comics under that name until early this millennium.

Anyway, in #13, they’ve removed the “distributed by Eclipse” thing from the inside front cover, but yronwode is still the production supervisor.

And things otherwise continue as before, with Kurt Busiek writing a pretty funny take on Ren & Stimpy (as Renfield & Stimpfield, Dracula’s minions) with artwork by Neil Vokes.

OK, now I’m done with Elvira for real. I mean, I could continue to read these comics indefinitely, because they are fun, enjoyable and easy on the brain, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Jiggs is Back (1986) #1 by George McManus et al.

This collection of Bringing Up Father newspapers strips wasn’t published by Eclipse Comics, but instead by something called the Celtic Book Company. They’ve published nothing else, so I’m going to venture a guess that it’s not a “real” publishing house, but somebody who put up some money, and got Eclipse Comics to do the leg work.

Eclipse is listed as the distributor to the comics speciality stores.

Heh. It’s the first volume in the Library of Irish American Literature and Culture… and also the last one.

Obvious joke is obvious.

Note that the sole copyright claim here is for Celtic, which, I guess, means that the comics themselves were in the public domain when Celtic published them. Or at least that’s perhaps what they believed? In which case it would make sense to create a shell company so that any copyright holders wouldn’t know who to sue.

Not that I would for a second believe that somebody would do something as unscrupulous! The very idea!

We get an introduction by William Kennedy, who seems to think that the Bringing Up Father strip was cancelled in 1954, when McManus died. It wasn’t, but continued for decades…

Unfortunately. A Norwegian weekly magazine carried the strip throughout my childhood, and I loathed it. The sheer repetition of Jiggs sneaking out and having fun and then his battle-axe wife Maggie throwing a vase at his head was stultifying.

And there’s still an annual being published each Xmas, but that one’s apparently now reprinting a chunk of the McManus 40s stuff, so it’s probably not as bad.

I think! Because this is a very frustrating book that doesn’t give the reader a feel, at all, for how this trip read at the time. I’ll get back to that in a moment…

Have you ever noticed that when somebody says “in fact” they’re going to come with an unsupported claim?

Anyway, another puzzling thing about this collection is that the words “Bringing”, “Up” and “Father” are never mentioned in that sequence. Which is weird for a Bringing Up Father reprint project. It’s not unusual to eschew the name of the series on the cover when doing reprints, because the syndicate has trademarked the name. (So we get “Krazy + Ignatz” for the Krazy Kat reprints and “Walt & Skeezix” for the Gasoline Alley reprints, and so on.) But to not mention the name at all? That’s some high-grade shadiness.

There are three sections of strips published in this book, and all of them are atypical. First we get a sequence from the 20s when the family is dirt poor (which is something that only lasted a few months, so it’s a break from the normal continuity). But these are very sweet strips, so I can see how the editors would gravitate towards them.

If you look at how these pages originally looked, you’ll see that they edited out the “Bringing Up Father” logo (and replaced it with a blue horizontal line), and on later pages they’ve also edited out “Snookums” logo for the strip that runs above the main bit, and replaced it with a red square.

Shady.

The artwork is reproduced crisply and very pleasantly. The pure-black and white lettering is almost supernaturally clear, and the colours are extremely nice for something that’s reprinted off of printed newspapers.

The second bulk of strips is a sequence from early 1940, where the family is going on a trip of the US. So it’s another untypical sequence where we don’t get to experience the nuts and bolts daily domestic strip that I believe that this really was.

McManus has his own style of storytelling that’s… er… well, I fell asleep while reading this book. Every page is a mini movie of sorts. After reading each one, you feel (if you’re me) that you’ve just digested an entire play or something. The pacing and dialogue are just so… dense.

All I remember from the later, non-McManus Bringing Up Father is the extreme amount of violence meted out by Maggie towards Jiggs, but in this book there’s only a single instance domestic abuse. Either that’s because McManus didn’t do that as much, or it’s because the editors picked some really non-representative strips.

Oh, I love this sequence above. The way Maggie’s shout bursts into that bar, causing havoc, with the letters behind the characters. It’s so stylish.

And, yes, McManus’ artwork is something to behold. His mixture of ultra-detailed objects and characters with plenty of negative space is very appealing.

The third and final selection of strips are all about Maggie and Jiggs reminiscing about their past, and these were published at a rate of a couple per year, apparently. But the editors collected them because of reasons. So, once again, not from the normal weekly grind of the strip.

Which makes this collection a frustrating read. As an introduction to McManus, it’s just plain weird. The editors have gone out or their ways to select strips that don’t show us the typical examples of the strip, and those are, after all, what made the strip popular. Instead we get, like, “holiday specials”, that would probably make sense if you had the context… which we don’t.

It reminds me of other reprint projects that start off with, say, collection all the Xmas sequences from a comic book. It just doesn’t work. While an Xmas sequence may work as a special event, if you’re not familiar with the milieu already, a special event just isn’t special.

But what did the critics think? Here’s RC Harvey from The Comics Journal #112:

Curiously, the brilliance displayed in this book’s technological achievement is not matched in the selection of strips it reproduces. Indeed, the book seems to suffer from a confusion Of purpose—or, perhaps, a pollution of purpose.

My guess is that when Bob Callahan, who conceived and edited the book, went to Blackbeard’s San Francisco Academy of Comic Art for help in selecting strips and for reproducible Sunday pages, he allowed the Academy’s curator to sway him from his purpose with an overweening enthusiasm for McManus as artist. As a result, McManus the humorist got lost. The humorist overlooked, the central theme of Father was neglected. And with that, Callahan’s purpose miscarried altogether.

This, it says in the fine print, is the first volume in the new Library of Irish American Literature and Culture. And Kennedy’s introduction picks up on this ostensible purpose, pointing to Father as representative of the almost universal immigrant experience in America—the ascent Out of the poverty of the old world into the relative prosperity of the new world. Indeed, as we shall see, Father virtually epitomized the consequences of this transformation. Blackbeard’s essay dwells somewhat on the same matters, but the content of the book does comparatively little to illustrate the prose exegesis of either Kennedy or Blackbeard.

And that is passing strange: one would have to work hard to avoid selecting Father strips that were not animated by the thematic formula that pervaded McManus’s 41-year stewardship of the strip. Callahan and company did not, of course, avoid that theme deliberately, so they have not failed altogether in presenting remnants of it. But the majority of the strips reprinted here have very little to do either with the immigrant experience or with Father as exemplar of life among the Irish nouveau riche.

Hey! I agree with something R. C. Harvey wrote! Has that ever happened before? I don’t think so!

To this day, Bringing Up Father hasn’t been given a substantial reprinting in the US, I think. IDW gave it a go almost a decade ago, but gave up after two volumes, apparently.

Directory to a Non-Existent Universe (1987) #1 by Kerry Callen et al.

I wasn’t going to cover the comics released by Eclipse Comics off-shoot Independent Comics Group, but I bought this one by mistake, so let’s just have a look…

Independent Comics Group published a number of “index” comics, and the grand plan was to cover all comics published by DC Comics. They didn’t get very far, but did take a whack at some of the more popular characters, like Teen Titans. Those “real” indices were written by Murray R. Ward (and friends), and here we have a parody of those created by Kerry Callen (and friends).

So we get one newly made-up character per page, and a brief retelling of their origin stories (and whatever super-powers they may have).

It’s not really that funny, is it? The origin stories are only slightly more weird than what’s being parodied, I guess. And the character designs are also kinda realistic, instead of being outrageous.

The issue wraps up with a short story featuring (almost) all the characters we’ve just been introduced to, and I guess it’s amusing. But not exactly earth-shattering.

Eclipse ceased publishing things under the Independent Comics Group banner shortly afterwards.

Spaced (1986) #10-13 by Tom Stazer and John Williams.

What’s this then?

Spaced was originally self-published by Stazer (under the name Unbridled Ambition) and was moderately successful, I think. I think it was part of that self-publishing wave post Dave Sim’s Cerebus, and like virtually all of them, Stazer took his comic to a larger company after a while.

So Eclipse started “distributing” the book with issue ten, which I take to mean that they included it in their solicitations to the comic book stores, and handled the money flow.

(I was going to do this book in-sequence when I wrote about all the other Eclipse books published in 1986, but then I decided to not cover the Eclipse-distributed books because I was going I”M DROWNING IN COMICS. But now that I’m winding down the blog, I find myself unable to resist the temptation to do a more “complete” Eclipse coverage. Which is why this blog post about a 1986 comic is among the 1993 comics.)

AAANYWAY. The first Eclipse issue starts with a summary of what’s gone of before, and I think it can best be summed up this way: “Eh?”

I did have a couple of the Unbridled Ambition Spaced issues back in the 80s, and I liked them, but it was impossible to find all the issues, so I was never quite sure what was going on exactly.

And the first Eclipse issue starts off in a particularly boring way that I’m sure didn’t attract many new readers (which I must assume was part of the reason to band up with Eclipse, anyway). (And Eclipse probably got in on the action because this was smack dab in the middle of the black-and-white boom, where you could publish anything black and white and collectors would snap up all the copies while screaming MINE PRECIOUSES.)

But this issue is mostly characters standing around talking about feelings and stuff, mostly in very vague surroundings consisting of little more than tone.

And the storytelling is rather choppy, but traditional, with “meanwhile…” drop ins with some absurdity or whatever.

See? Most of the issues were sold out! No wonder I couldn’t buy them in the 80s…

The mania for cartoon-looking male characters being attractive to attractive realistic-looking female characters is a thing, I guess, but it doesn’t make it any more attractive.

Things do pick up during the final three issues. We get more action and more jokes and less incessant deep(ly boring) dialogue. The plot is satisfyingly insane, so it’s got that going for it.

Wow! That’s a really Sam Kieth-looking Isz! (Or is is Izs? Ess before zed?)

Oh, Kieth drew it himself…

I remember reading earlier issues in the 80s and wondering why one of the characters looked like William Messner-Loebs’ Wolverine McAlistaire, but I guess that Spaced is rather a hodge-podge of a bunch of indie comics at the time…

That’s some jukebox.

Stazer teases the possibility of Spaced ending at some point in #12…

… and then it ends in #13. It was a quite satisfying end, even if apparently the bad guy (a teddy bear) killed off everybody who lived on a planet. Or something.

Spaced is, perhaps, the kind of comic that you don’t want to examine too closely.

Stazer explains that the reason Spaced was cancelled was due to a serious dip in sales: #12 was down 50% from the previous issue, which sounds more or less typical for the black and white bust.

Spaced has never been reprinted. You can buy a complete set on ebay right now for $249.99, which is cheap compared to $250.

Mile High Comics doesn’t have all the issues in stock, but sells many of them for $30.

So while the demand for these comics is probably not huge, it’s weird that nobody had collected them. It’s a complete 300-ish page story, and it definitely has its charms.

Here’s what Dale Luciano has to say about it in The Comics Journal #94:

Spaced could be a tiresome business, but co-writers John Williams and Stazer, to some extent inspired by Dave Sim’s facility with verbal wit, pull this one off. The• book’s primary appeal resides in the funny, droll dialogue which sustains a quirky nonsense logic that often doubles back on itself in weird quips and lopsided throwaways, (l must note that Stazer’s cartoony drawing is only now and then better than promising, though the clunkiness of the images in its own way complements the jokey, debunking proceedings.)

[…]

The humor is sophomoric, but I found the situations, the characters, and the vaudeville patter irresistible. It’s crudely done by professional standards, but there’s wit and invention at work here. Spaced is funny stuff, and I’ll take my laughs where I can find them.

Stazer still seems to be active and has a nice Youtube channel.

The Official Teen Titans Index (1985) #1-5 by Murray R. Ward et al.

What’s this then? Those don’t look like Eclipse comics, and this is a blog about Eclipse.

And Eclipse isn’t mentioned anywhere, but it’s not exactly a well-kept secret that the generically named Independent Comics Group is just Eclipse under a different name.

I wasn’t going to cover any of these books in this blog series, but since I sort of had to do Naive Inter-Dimensional Commando Koalas (which is the only comic book Eclipse published under the Independent Comics Group name), it might be fun to have a look at at least one of the other things Independent Comics Group published.

And all those other series are overviews of various DC Comics super-hero series. This is the first one, and is about a team called The Teen Titans/The New Teen Titans.

And it’s official; it’s approved by The Staff of DC Comics.

So first we get the histories of the characters that were part of that team.

Strangely enough, the newer members get a synopsis that’s a lot shorter than the ones from the 60s.

And after that, we get to the meat of the series: Every singled goddamned Teen Titans issue, replete with a synopsis, a list of minor characters and villains, a list of the creators involved, and a cover. I was surprised that this book was printed in colour, but I guess the covers wouldn’t have been as nice otherwise.

I love the nerdiness of this. If I were twelve and a fan of this series, I would have been all agog, reading about the issues I would have had and the ones I didn’t have, but would have lusted after.

Perhaps I haven’t changed that much, eh?

There’s not much to the comments, though, which is mostly about various… goofs.

On the inside back cover, we get the rationale for the series…

… and we’re told that Ward already has similar series dealing with the Justice League, The Flash, Green Lantern, Doom Patrol and Metal men virtually completed.

Ward hopes to do everything DC ever published in this manner.

I wonder whether he has a blog… Nope, can’t find anything. But I did a search for phrases from this book, and I found this, so somebody seems to have repurposed the text.

Anyway, since I have no interest in these characters, I didn’t really read much in these issues. I did find some of the older covers pretty neat.

*gasp* Not his glove! It cannot be!

In the final issue, we get a huge list of errors and additions, which is kinda odd, since the series was published on a monthly basis, and there can’t have been much time to get feedback. But I guess it’s the normal phenomenon of not spotting errors before you have the printed artefact in your hands…

Ward hoped to continue the series as DC published new issues, but it didn’t happen.

Eclipse published 22 of these indices before calling it quits. Most of them in 1985 and 86. Wikipedia says

Due to poor sales, some series were cancelled before completion (the All-Star and Legion indices), and a planned Legends index[1] was never released.

I got these five Teen Titans issues very cheaply from ebay, so I guess they haven’t become more sought-after in later years, either.

Drug Wars (1991) by Jonathan Marshall.

What’s this then?

There’s no mention of Eclipse Comics in this book, so you may well be wondering whether I’m covering it in this blog dedicated to Eclipse… but Eclipse listed it in one of their “on the stands” columns, if I remember correctly. Or was there an ad for it in one of their comics?

And if you have a peek at the indicia here, the publishers are the very respectable-sounding (but somewhat generic) “Cohen & Cohen Publishers”… but post office box they list (1099) is the same that Eclipse Comics had in Forestville.

If you Google for “cohen & cohen publishers”, you’ll find that this is the only book they ever published, so I think it’s a safe bet that that company never had any existence outside of doing this book, which leads to the question: Why didn’t Eclipse just publish it under their own name instead of being semi-stealthy about it? They’d published a number of trading card sets that dealt with the same subjects (the US and the CIAs illegal drug wars), so it seems unlikely that it had anything to do with being afraid of getting sued.

But I have no idea, really. I’m just guessing here based on very little data, because I can’t find anybody talking about this on the web. It could be as simple as Eclipse believing that they’d get greater distribution under a more respectable name, or it could be that Cohen & Cohen actually existed and financed the book, and Eclipse just handled the practicalities of printing and distribution.

Apparently, Jonathan Marshall’s only previous association with Eclipse Comics was writing the introduction to the Brought to Light graphic novel.

This is a short book; the main text is a bit more than 60 pages, and then there’s a dozen pages of references and an index.

The subject under investigation is the American doctrine of stopping drugs from entering the US by “encouraging” other governments to crack down on narcotics production.

But other things often take priority. Whenever there’s a communist guerrilla or government somewhere, the US will support whoever is fighting them, even if they’re drug runners (which they usually are, according to this book).

So it’s all kinda a mess, even if the CIA were competent at what they’re doing, which they aren’t.

I didn’t fully read this book, because so many of the points being made are very familiar. This seems like a well-researched book, and it’s well-written, but it’s not exactly compelling book. Marshall doesn’t really build up a narrative as much as relate anecdotes, and that’s fine. The world isn’t a story but just one damn thing after another.

Oddly enough, we get a several pages long gallery towards the end that doesn’t seem very… er… apposite.

But we also get so many references. It’s not an excessive amount for an academic book, but there’s an unusual amount for a book outside that sphere.

It doesn’t seem to have made much of a splash. I could find only one other reference to it on Google Books. It is available on Kindle, though, and has the following review on Amazon:

In this brief but finely detailed volume, investigative journalist Jonathan Marshall marshals his hard evidence demonstrating the counterproductive and corrupting nature of the U. S. War on Drugs.

Amazon also has a large number of brand-new hardback editions of the book for sale.

Marshall doesn’t seem to have published anything after 1995.

Lil’ Grusome (1988) by Gene Iossa and Matt Hollingsworth.

What’s this then?

cat ⊕ yronwode’s web site says that they published “Lil’ Grusome, a cute green monster, learns how volunteering to help those in need can be fun in this comic produced for the United Way” in 1990. I thought that that’s what I bought from somebody on ebay, but instead I’ve gotten a book published in 1988.

Hm… I’ve now searched and searched, and I can’t find any mention anywhere of Gene Iossa publishing a Lil’ Grusome comic book, or United Way doing it, or Eclipse.

Iossa’s bio has this to say:

He won the award for the county’s “best” artist ,The Dupont award for art excellence.

Gene then went on to cartooning school developing LIL’ GRUSOME and THE NUTSHELL GANG which was published in 1988. The characters were again published in a comic in 1990 winning the “gold” award for United way of morris county for best new idea and character.

So both Iossa and yronwode says that a comic book has been published, but Google won’t deliver the goods. I won’t go on that whole Google rant now, but during the past year or so, they’ve really made it difficult to find obscure things. Behind the scenes, perhaps they’re translating the “Grusome” to “Gruesome”, even if I quote it? Because this image search gives me zero results.

Google! Why do you suck now!

But I found it! By going directly to the Mile High Comics site, and there’s a picture of the cover and everything, so it exists.

But they have no copies.

I’ll include a copy of the cover here from Mile High Comics, since that shot seems to be so scarce:

OK, let’s just have a look at this book instead, and if I ever find a copy of Lil’ Grusome (published by Eclipse Comics or United Way), I’ll update this blog post. I mean, I don’t want to cheat! That’s be bad!

My copy is signed by Iossa and has a sketch by him.

Published by Carlton Press.

This is a very short story about a little troll who grows up in an orphanage which is rife with racism.

But humanism prevails, and everybody gets along in the end.

There’s really not much plot here. I mean, I’m guessing this is directed at, say, four year olds? But even so, there’s not a lot there there. On the other hand, is Teletubbies? I mean, does? Er, whatever.

The artwork is serviceable.

At least it teases a sequel.

And the inside back cover has a sketch from somebody who was probably in the intended age group, from the looks of it.

If I managed to find the Eclipse comic, I’ll edit this blog article and talk about it after the colon:

Edit December 9th, 2020:

Today I got an Ebay Alert saying that the book is available! Whoho! So I followed the link and:

…

I don’t think so? No. I don’t think so.

The wait continues. If I do find a sanely priced copy of the comic, I’ll talk about it after the colon:

Edit February 13th, 2022:

Look!

I scored a copy of this comic! It only took me… er… four years? It’s a weird phenomenon: There’s comics that gets traded so seldom that people think they’re worth a lot of money, so… they get sold even less often. That $500 copy of this book that’s been on ebay since 2020? It’s still there. I’ve also seen people put up $300 copies of this, and they stay unsold for half a year, and then are withdrawn.

For all I know, it’s because of this blog post that people think this is a coveted item or something?

But a couple weeks ago somebody put up a copy that wasn’t totally ridiculous, so I bought it.

So now we’re going to have a look at it.

Besides the logo on the cover, the only place Eclipse Comics is mentioned is in the indicia: “Production”. The book is published by United Way of Morris County, so perhaps it was only distributed in New Jersey, and that explains why nobody has this?

In any case, it’s a quite attractively drawn book.

The plot is that Lil’ Grusome going to a party, but he runs into these other kids on the way, and very tiny adventures ensue.

After each encounter we get a page like this that explain how you can make the world a better place.

Matt Hollingsworth did the colours (and the inking), and I think that’s a great part of the charm.

But I mean, a gig like this can’t have been easy for Iossa, either — how do you make something as didactic as this readable? But he carries it off.

The schtick is that Lil’ Grusome’s pet spider is running away, because he doesn’t want to take a bath before the party. Sure, why not.

Yes, you can fix the world, too!

This was the only comic book they published that I was unable to find when I was doing this blog about Eclipse Comics, and it’s now well and truly finished.

*phew*

I Saw It (1982) by Keiji Nakazawa.

What’s this then?

This is one of the first Japanese comics translated into English, but the connection to Eclipse Comics, which is the subject of this blog series, is pretty nebulous.

Nowhere in this book is Eclipse Comics mentioned, but that’s not unique in Eclipse’s history. catherine ⊕ yronwode’s web site lists it, though, which usually means that Eclipse were responsible for the distribution of the book to comics stores, so I’m guessing that that’s what happened here. And ads like this seems to support that, even if that ad was published five years later…

Anyway, this is a 48 a page newsprint comic book, done with flat “mechanical” colours. It was apparently printed in black and white originally in Japan, but was (perhaps?) coloured specially for the American edition.

I had this comic when I was, like, 14, and it made a huge impression on me. Keiji Nakazawa’s style is so straightforward and non-dramatic that nothing really prepares you for the horror that’s to come. This book is, of course, about the bombing of Hiroshima, which happened when Keiji Nakazawa was a child (and living in that city).

These pages retain all their shock value today.

And while Nakazawa depicts the heart-breaking things that happened to his family, the book doesn’t dwell on the bombing itself.

We’re quickly in the aftermath where Nakazawa unsentimentally tries to convey to the readers how a child reacts to being in this situation, and he’s so successful in just showing us without editorialising or idealising.

The last half of the book is about surviving as a dirt poor family after the war, and deals mostly with the author’s aspirations towards becoming a comic book artist, so while we’re still in autobiographical mode, it’s a pacing problem. After all the horror we’ve witnessed, it can be a bit hard to take in Nakazawa triumphs in being hired to draw comics for boy’s magazines.

But he emotionally ties it all together by devoting much of the story to his mother’s fate.

I thought that this was a wonderful comic book when I was 14, and I haven’t changed my mind. But I do think that it feels rushed… it could do with being expanded. Which is what Nakazawa did: He created a four volume epic, Barefoot Gen, that retells the same story over many, many more pages.

I remember reading the first volume of that in translation to some language or other in the 80s, but I don’t remember much about it otherwise. Hm… Oh, I see that Last Gasp published a new ten volume edition a decade ago. Perhaps I should buy that one…

So that’s… almost 3000 pages that (I think) covers more or less the same storyline as these 48 pages? Geez. No wonder this felt a bit cramped.

Ah, Leonard Rifas published a couple of volumes back in the 80s, too. His Educomics was an attempt at getting comics accepted in schools as teaching materials, so the ads mention buying complete class sets of these books.

[Edit some months later: I’ve now read the first two volumes of Barefoot Gen, and it’s… I don’t know a polite way to put this. It’s crap. It’s total, undiluted crap. It’s the worst kind of relentless melodrama, where everything that happens is awful, but that’s not enough: It has to be awful in five different ways at the same time to wring every possible drop of literally unbelievable drama out of every moment. I know that Keiji Nakazawa meant this as a piece of propaganda aimed at teaching children that war’s, like, bad, and Japan, like, sucks, but I’m afraid it has a paradoxical opposite effect: As nothing that happens seems believable, I found myself doubting the narrative more and more, and by the second book I was starting to ponder whether Hiroshima had even existed. Did Japan? Does the Earth? Do I? And that’s when I knew that I’d never read the final eight volumes of that unconscionably over-rated steaming pile. It’s like everybody responds to the idea of the book existing instead of the contents within. I Saw It, on the other hand, remains a pretty powerful book, but Keiji Nakazawa only had 40 pages in him.]

True Crime (1993) #1-2 by Max Allan Collins, George Hagenauer, Paul Lee, Valarie Jones, Peggy Collier and Jon Bright.

In its declining years, Eclipse published more trading cards than comics. The most controversial of these were the True Crime card sets. The introduction to this book explains:

I’m assuming this is written by Eclipse editor-in-chief cat ⊕ yronwode, because it reads like her text. The explains that even before the cards were published, Eclipse was subject to a hatchet job on Entertainment Tonight (complete with fake video)… which sounds… er… somebody should try to dig out that video and post it on Youtube, because it sounds in-credible.

Anyway, what does sounds credible is that lawmakers throughout the US (and Canada) tried to enact laws to stop these outrages against decency, and that most of them faded away. Nassau County were the only ones who got a law into the books, and you could apparently get a year in jail if you had any of these trading cards.

And here’s the explanation for why this book exists: Eclipse had promised not to reprint the trading cards (presumably because that would devalue the “collectability” of the cards, so they instead reprinted them as small booklets.

The one I have is all about mobsters (mostly from before World War II), and is therefore not very controversial. And it’s not very interesting, either, in my opinion. As trading cards, even if they are boring recitations of historical facts, there’s at least something about the format that has some kind of interest. Max Allan Collins’s writing is very dry.

As booklets, there’s… Not a lot to hold my interest. The artwork is nice and all, but it’s uninspired to the extreme.

There’s a few pieces where Paul Lee perks up and does something interesting, but they’re far between.

The booklet series was apparently not very successful for Eclipse, because they only published two of these?

The second booklet has all the controversial stuff, and is written by Jones and Collier. While the first booklet is a staid presentation of random mobsters, this is a gallery of mass murderers and serial killers, many of them still living.

We get a bit pop psychology…

… but mostly page after depressing page of uninteresting assholes, with a short text of their trivial stories.

We also get a few war criminals, which is a bit more interesting.

Bright has one single approach towards depicting these douchecanoes: A painting traced from a photo with some blood spatter beneath.

Jones and Collier write these textlets well, but the combined tedium and nausea made me bail on reading this after a dozen cards or so.

While the attempts at banning these cards were ridiculous, but so was publishing them. It’s the most distasteful cash grab in Eclipse’s story, and that says quite a lot.