When I was a wee lad, I had the lack of taste to write-off Thriller as a piece of crap. Created by Fleming and Von Eeden in 1983 and published by DC Comics, it was in fact an avant garde sci-fi comic book with some great characters - Salvo, the crack shot who won’t injure anyone (“I won’t kill a fly so don’t ask me!”), the frightening Scabbard, and one character who became so self-enlightened that he disappeared from reality - as well as some surprisingly contemporary concepts about the media and Islamist terrorism. Its one of those books I wish would be reprinted as a trade paper back (the later issues, I think 8 onwards, were written by someone else and truly sucked).
Another one is Howard Chaykin’s Amerikan Flagg!, which was Chaykin’s second shot at the title he created, and which effectively wrapped up the storyline for Reuben Flagg, the former porn-star from Mars turned cop. Published by First Comics it was filled with cheeky humour, sex, and some bizarre concepts (one of which, reverse aparthied, seems to have come to life in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe).
Frank Miller’s first effort in 1983 (there is that year again) at the non-franchise writing, Ronin, was equally odd - a dystopia haunted by the avatar of a Japanese masterless warrior and his demon adversary, with some really noticable improvements in the art as it went along (it was almost as if Miller was taking drawing lessons).
The 1988 Annual of DC’s Star Trek was titled “Retrospect”. It’s about Scotty and a lifelong love. It’s very good.
Not exactly what you have in mind, I’m sure, but I was tidying up my comic collection recently and I found this issue.
Ditto on Elfquest. When I first discovered them in the 1980s (when they were in color), I found them addictive like nothing else I’d seen. I recently started buying the whole series anew, but now they’re being reprinted without color.
DC’s Babylon 5 comics had the worst (and ugliest) art in the history of comic books, but they were part of the show’s official continuity, and, if you read them carefully, they told you the answer to one of the mysteries of the TV series before it was revealed.
In one episode, it was revealed – after much speculation – that Talia Winters was a brainwashed spy for the Psi Corps. In the comic – shown at least six months before the episode, there’s a scene where Talia is shown being brought unconscious to a mysterious secret Psi Corps facility on Mars.
I also agree with the OP: American Flagg! was one of the great comic books of all time. The first year was especially brilliant.
Can we count Grimjack? One of the best books ever! I thought Jon Sable was very good, but I’m not a real fan of Grell’s art style. The stories were engaging as I recall.
Ditto on on Loeb’s Quest books.
Cerebus until it just got plain weird and talky.
Have the Elfquest Collection. Nothing they’ve done since has reached the quality of that initial storyline.
I also enjoyed Jonah Hex and Enemy Ace stories a good deal.
I always thought Flagg had the potential to be a great book, but it never quite got there. No fault of the art (until Chaykin (SP?) quit drawing it), but the writing was sloppy and incomplete. Of course I bought every issue, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.
Oh, Thriller was off to a GREAT start but just fell apart around issue 8.
More Recently Crossgen gave us Sojourn, Scion, Meridian, Way of the Rat, Crux, and Negation – really a shame, they were well written and beautifully drawn. Pity they were managed so poorly.
You know what was shaping up to be awesome? Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Got caught up in the CrossGen implosion but it was an excellent twist on the Bond theme.
Most of my reading is done in the superhero or superhero-related (Planetary, Constantine, Sandman, Powers) genre.
Fables is an excellent current non-super title, though.
Amen! I’ll have to use the St. John’s knives on anyone who diagrees.
I will always have a soft spot in my mempries for Jack Kirby’s Kamandi. lots of post-apocalyptic action and weird humor, plus the hero’s girlfriend never wore a top! Yowza.
I didn’t since it’s clearly a superhero-type book but I agree it’s one of the best comics I’ve ever read. I still miss Bob.
I may have been the only person in America who thought so, but there was a mini called Sonic Disruptors from DC that got cancelled several issues in that I thought was quite good. It was about pirate radio operators who escaped worldwide censorship by broadcasting from space. If anyone knows how it was supposed to end, please let me know.
Sonic Disruptors is famous for being the only limited series comics publication which was cancelled before its series completed. I remember seeing the ads for it (“The US Army vs. The Army of Rock!”) and had no interest. With respect, you are the second person I have encountered who read it and the first person who liked it.
I still have a soft spot for Strikeforce: Morituri, by Peter B. Gillis and Brent Anderson (who did the first 20 issues; the subsequent ones sucked). The premise is that Earth is under attack from alien invaders, and the cutting-edge hope for humanity is a risky experimental procedure that gives (surviving) volunteers super-powers – but kills them inside of a year. IMO it doesn’t qualify as a super-hero comic, since the focus of the story is primarily on the repercussions of the process and the characters’ reasons for subjecting themselves to it.
I’d seriously love to see the first 20 issues collected in a monster TPB.
