COUNT DUCKULA #14 November, 1990 COUNT DUCKULA #14 was the first professional comic book I ever wrote (or co-wrote, as was most often the case, with Mike Kanterovich.) It also represented my first regular Marvel assignment–one that only lasted until #15, when the book, based on the British animated series then running on Nickelodeon, was … Continue reading BHOCOS: COUNT DUCKULA #14
ALL- FLASH #8 January-February, 1943 ALL-FLASH #8 was the first Golden Age comic I ever purchased. I picked it up in 1990, on my first trip to the San Diego Comic Convention. Ever since reading the Jay Garrick story reprinted in FLASH #DC-22, I’d been a big fan of the work Gardner Fox and E.E. … Continue reading BHOCOS: ALL-FLASH COMICS #8
HEPCATS #2 1989 Martin Wagner’s HEPCATS was a full-length comic book version of a daily strip he’d done for his college newspaper. Obviously influenced by CEREBUS (much as the daily strip, which Wagner eventually collected into a trade paperback, was strongly DOONESBURY-flavored), Wagner was clearly interested in following in Dave Sim’s footsteps by producing an … Continue reading BHOCOS: HEPCATS #2
Wolverine Saga #4 - Mid December, 1989 WOLVERINE SAGA #4 contains my first published credit, although it doesn’t really say in what capacity I was being credited. WOLVERINE SAGA was an overpriced, bookshelf-format life’s story of Wolverine, published at a time when pretty much everything starring the X-Men sold tremendously well. It was well researched … Continue reading BHOCOS: WOLVERINE SAGA #4
KEIF LLAMA, XENO-TECH #4 December, 1988 My favorite of all of Matt Howarth’s offbeat comics, KEIF LLAMA followed the adventures of a young Xeno-Tech– someone who’d been trained to understand alien thought processes and to effectively communicate around the incompatible differences between alien species. It was an intelligent science fiction series with something of the … Continue reading BHOCOS: KEIF LLAMA, XENOTECH #4
DENIZENS OF DEEP CITY #1 December, 1988 Doug Potter’s short-lived DENIZENS OF DEEP CITY was an entertaining, surrealistic romp through the urban landscape. While the series did have an ensemble cast, any given issue might focus more primarily on a single new individual, relating their mundane-yet-extraordinary experiences through a strange, hallucination-like haze. In the case … Continue reading BHOCOS: DENIZENS OF DEEP CITY #1
2014 Note: There was an entry for FANTASTIC FOUR #29 at this point, but the text of it has been lost to the mists of time. There are a handful of entries that are similarly missing.
DISHMAN #1 August, 1985 An exceedingly clever mini-comic, I first encountered DISHMAN when the first six installments were compiled into a single regular issue by Eclipse. It made me want to read more, and I eventually managed to hunt down the first 10 issues of the minicomic. If anybody has any further issues that they’d … Continue reading BHOCOS: DISHMAN #1
NEAT STUFF #9April, 1988 The forerunner of the more popular HATE, NEAT STUFF was cartoonist Peter Bagge’s magazine-sized anthology series, in which he could and would try just about anything. One of the last of the underground cartoonists, Bagge brought a keen wit and a sharp anti-establishment perspective to his NEAT STUFF work, eventually settling … Continue reading BHOCOS: NEAT STUFF #9
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE It’s to my mind the single most consistently well-crafted and relevant strip that graces the funny pages. FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE is a daily tour de force of characterization, observational humor, farce and emotional verisimilitude. Chronicling the lives and tribulations of the Patterson family, cartoonist Lynn Johnston wrings comedy … Continue reading BHOCOS: FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE
The Tom Brevoort Experience 