As we covered not long ago, Airboy was one of the most successful characters of the Golden Age of Comics. Not quite a super hero, more an adventurer aviator, the characters was perhaps better positioned to adjust to the changing tastes of the evolving audience, particularly in the postwar period. Created in 1942, AIRBOY COMICS … Continue reading The Last Airboy Story
In 1988, Eclipse comics was celebrating its ten-year anniversary as a publisher. Founded by Jan and Dean Mullaney, Eclipse was one of the earliest entrants into the nascent Direct Sales marketplace of Comic Book specialty shops. The company was also a proponent of creator-ownership and offered a better publishing arrangement than the mainstream outfits of … Continue reading Brand Echh: TOTAL ECLIPSE #1
Airboy was one of the more popular and long-lasting series of the Golden Age of Comics. Created by Charles Biro in the pages of AIR FIGHTERS COMICS #2, Airboy was young Davy Nelson, the heir to a robotic batwinged plane named Birdie developed by his late father, who used it to fight the Axis in … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: AIRBOY v3 #12
Walt Simonson had taken over the reins of FANTASTIC FOUR and propelled it into the stratosphere with a series of expansive stories that drew upon the best of Jack Kirby's era on the title and turned the concepts up to eleven. Graphically, the book looked sweet as well, as Walter was able to channel Kirby's … Continue reading 5BC: The Five Best Comic Books of 1991
Eclipse had established itself early on as one of the most creator-friendly alternative comics on the burgeoning Direct Market scene. They began publishing in 1978 with the issuing of Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy's graphic novel SABRE. Publishers Jan and Dean Mullaney had been huge comics fans throughout the 1970s, and as the tastes of … Continue reading Brand Echh: Airboy #1
As the Direct Market opened up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in addition to a sudden surge in prospective comic book publishers there also came an increased number of comic book fanzines. These publications tended to have better production values as a whole than the cheap mimeographed publications of years past, but most … Continue reading THE COMIC TIMES #2: Steve Englehart Interview
This is one of those staged events where, even while it was happening, a lot of people in fandom were unaware of it. This despite the fact that it wasn't truly disguised at all. It's somewhat remarkable that a thing of this nature happened in this way this late in the game--though similar things happened … Continue reading Lost Crossovers: The Unofficial Inter-Company Crossover between the New Teen Titans and the DNAgents
DESTROYER DUCK #1 was a stopping point in a much larger saga, one that I'll recount the broad strokes of momentarily. It was also a benefit book published by Eclipse, work on which was provided free by all of the contributors in support of the underlying cause of the book in the first place. It … Continue reading Brand Echh: Destroyer Duck #1
One of the areas in which the nascent Pacific Comics publishing firm made some unexpected inroads was with a series of comics devoted primarily to horror and science fiction themes--titles in keeping with the well-regarded EC books of the past. Nobody else was quite doing this material in this fashion, and certainly nobody else was … Continue reading Brand Echh: Vanguard Illustrated #7
At the start of the 1980s, Pacific Comics was one of the first of the new breed of comic book publishers. They had started out as one of the many distributors into what is now called the Direct Market chain of comic book specialty shops that had been popping up nationwide. Eventually, there was a … Continue reading Brand Echh: Starslayer #2
The Tom Brevoort Experience 