I thought this week I’d try to do something a little more positive. I thought it would be a good time to start my semi-irregularly scheduled series on much beloved–but sadly no longer with us–comics and/or companies. So, as the saying goes, first things first!
FIRST COMICS!! (Like how I set that up? Bwa-ha-ha!)
First Comics weren’t my first comics, but they were greatly enjoyed and very missed. The company began publishing comics in 1983. I would have been reasonably well-versed in Marvel and DC by then. I had cut my teeth on one of those old plastic-bagged three-packs for $1: Fantastic Four, Marvel Team-Up and Avengers. I don’t remember the numbers, but I remember the comics and still have them somewhere. Marvel seemed to be the most readily available in my market. My parents would treat me with a bag if we were at a Target or K-Mart or toy store and I behaved well. Looking back, they probably thought it was a better choice than another toy I’d lose interest in a week later. Now they probably regret creating the comic monster I’ve become. Grrr….Argghh…. (That’s a Joss Whedon reference if you didn’t get it.) My DC exposure came at the hands of All-Star Squadron (I’m old, I know) and the Batman. It was capes, capes and more capes. Even Darth Vader had a cape–I got those first three issues of Star Wars from Marvel for a buck too, and still have them, dog-chewed corners, missing covers and all. But if you discount the space opera tie-in EVERYTHING I read was superhero fare. Four color marvelous and dynamic champions swinging from webs and bat-ropes, leaping tall buildings or smashing right through them, fighting for truth, justice and the American Way in a world that fears and hates them. This was the focused totality of my comic knowledgebase.
One day I was at the local Ben Franklin (or the “Five and Dime” made famous by Bryan Adams in the Summer of ’69). I had a couple dead presidents in my pocket, debating over a Power Lords action figure (remember those?) or handful of Topps wax packs. That’s a tough call, let me tell you. Power Lords were advertised in the comics I’d been getting at that point. No cartoon tie-in, no…hmmm…I guess that’s it. I don’t think there was much else to promote toys back then. If it wasn’t an established line like G.I. Joe or Hot Wheels, and it didn’t tie in to a cartoon like He-Man or a live action show like the Six Million Dollar Man, there wasn’t much to be done. So Power Lords and Micronauts were a kind of uncharted territory. The only place I’d been exposed to them were the comics. And these same comics had conned me into ordering a box of 500 army men, tanks, helicopters, and other military effigies that arrived in full two dimensional splendor. That’s right, these weren’t the army men original MTV VJ Martha Quinn would sport in her ears (the flamethrower dudes no less! God I miss her), these were fragile and extremely flat warriors of disappointment. These were the Gwyneth Paltrow of combat toys. And no, I don’t think she’s that great at acting either. Somebody lock her in a Hardee’s or Carl Jr. until she achieves the third dimension. Oh crap, this is the positive column! Back to it then!
As I rounded the corner, debating my options, I spied some 3 for $1 comic bags. Uh oh. Another choice to make. Of course, it’s no choice at all if the comic in the middle of the bag–the one I could never quite tell what it is–should turn out to be one I already had, or worse, was something I didn’t like. I didn’t quite cleave to Conan and Thor back then like I do now. Oooh, maybe there’ll be some Daredevil or Marvel Two-In-One featuring The Thing or…what minute…what the Hell? Who is Nexus? Flip this sucker over–American Flagg? What in the world did those madmen do to my Captain America?!? Dare I even look in the middle? Slide-pull-pinch-fan-look around to make sure I don’t get caught even though I’m not doing anything wrong-slide the other way…Badger? Badger? I DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ BADGER!
I bought 4 bags of this stuff.
I got home and yanked plastic with wild abandon (and if I was a girl, that would sound even dirtier). Jon Sable, Whisper, Nexus, Warp, more Grim Jack, Badger and Flagg, and a couple of Elrics, and a Hawkmoon. And I have no idea what I’m looking at. This isn’t Marvel or DC, this is First Comics. This is a whole line of comics featuring nobody I’d ever heard of. Back then, I wasn’t at all concerned with the credits, so I wouldn’t realize until much later that some of these creators were not unknown to me. I’d seen Howard Chaykin on Star Wars somewhere. And I’d probably seen a P. Craig Russell somewhere too. But Tim Truman, Mike Baron, Mike Grell, Steve Rude–they might as well have been Escher, Pollack and Rembrandt for all I knew.
The first thing I discovered is that most of the comics I now owned with the First Comics logo in the upper left corner of the cover were shockingly light on superheroes. In fact, Badger was the only one remotely close to what I was used to. Well, maybe Nexus wasn’t that far off from the more sci-fi themed comics like the Fantastic Four or Green Lantern, but American Flagg, Grimjack, Whisper and Jon Sable were really, really different. Elric and Hawkmoon were kinda like that one Conan I had that I never really got into. But they looked pretty cool. In fact, the art was pretty engaging all around. Truman’s Grimjack, Rude’s Nexus, Grell’s Sable and Chaykin’s Flagg were completely enthralling.
Grimjack was this sheriff type who policed a city that regularly phased in and out of synch with various planes of reality. He was like Clint Eastwood–dark, gruff, and a deadeye with his irons. John Ostrander’s dialogue and Truman’s art was (and is) a perfect marriage. There was a lighter, more comedic back-up feature in some issues centered around Grimjack’s personal watering whole, Munden’s Bar, where anything could happen, even a visit by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!
Nexus was more sci-fi, featuring Steve Rude’s art with Mike Baron’s writing. Horatio Hellpop and Judah Maccabee zipped around the galaxy dispensing justice at the behest of an alien entity that directed the heroes, who didn’t seem to happy with the arrangement. I didn’t have access to a comic specialty store on a regular basis back then, so my exposure to this title was spotty. But Rude’s art wasn’t. His style was incredibly clean and somehow both modern and retro. He’s still an incredible talent. I think the ideas in this book, the characterization of Horatio, the modern themes explored through Rude’s retro-sensible art–I think I’d like this comic even more today than I did then.
Speaking of Spotty, Chaykin’s American Flagg was extremely spotty. No, no, my friends, the writing was fine. Not a Fabian Nicieza-sized plot hole to be found! (And you thought I’d go a whole column without getting a dig in, silly wabbits!) The scripts were mature and adult-oriented than anything else I’d experienced at that time. Titillating, I dare say. No, the art was spotty. On purpose! My first exposure Chaykin’s signature inking style was American Flagg. Instead of thick, heavy inks (think Mignola) or more common cross-hatching (think everyone at Image), Chaykin used dots. LOTS AND LOTS of dots. I heard once that he did it with a toothbrush, but the spacing always seemed to organized for that to be true. I’d be interested to know what the real story is behind his style. To this day, I hold American Flagg in the highest regard. Adult themes, socio-political commentary and/or satire, and that unique artwork–this opened my eyes to what comics could be. Too me, this is why we have things like Y the Last Man. Books like Chaykin’s made it acceptable to produce comics that didn’t have eye-beams or exploding poker cards. It was possible to tell a political story to a more sophisticated audience. Not that there’s anything wrong with eye beams. But exploding poker cards…no.
Mike Grell’s Jon Sable wasn’t my cup of tea back then. I didn’t quite grasp the appeal of high-adventure yet. But now, Sable is one of my favorites. The art was beautiful. I’d go on to follow Grell’s work on other gems, particularly the Green Arrow classic “The Longbow Hunters”. The Jon Sable character is one of the first socially aware characters I can remember encountering. He was outraged by the terrorist actions at the Munich Games (you might have seen a recent movie about this, by some dude named Steve something–that guy who edited out all the guns in E.T. and ordered all those Atari cartridges to be buried out in the desert) . He lost his family to the criminal element in Africa. And he became one part Frank Castle and one part James Bond. And how cool would THAT crossover be? Sable-Castle-Bond, by Grell, with covers by Mike Zeck. I should see if Team Brevoort isn’t too busy to get this ball rolling. Sable seems just as relevant today as he did 20+ years ago.
Mike Baron’s Badger was my First Comics touchstone to tradition. He was a superhero. He was also, I’d quickly discover, completely off his rocker. How many superhero characters back then had major psychological problems, other than Henry Pym and arguably Batman? Badger had Multiple Personality Disorder. These would prove useful in a variety of situations. The book featured art by the likes of Butch Guice and Ron Lim. Butch is one of my favorite artists today. His Doctor Strange run in the 90s featured the best drawn women anywhere until Greg Land showed up. That’s my honest opinion. Butch=hottie vampires and demon chicks. Ron Lim illustrated one of my favorite Marvel stories ever–the Silver Surfer at the time of the Thanos Quest and the Infinity Gauntlet. The Surfer and Thanos Quest issues were just recently collected and the Gauntlet can probably be found easily enough too. Go get ’em, kiddies, and you won’t be disappointed. Listen to your Uncle Jeff, or I’ll make you read Thunderbolts.
I wish I could tell you more about these, and other First comics I didn’t read more than one issue of like Mars, Warp, Evangeline, and Dynamo Joe, but they’re well-buried in the maelstrom known as my spare bedroom where my collection has grown uncontrollably like Eric Cartman under the control of a Dawson’s Creek Trapper Keeper. But I don’t won’t to close without mentioning that Mike Grell’s Starslayer and Lone Wolf and Cub were also published by First Comics. There’s probably a whole column to be written somewhere down the line about Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s masterpiece. But First Comics introduced America to it, well, first! The whole Michael Moorcock line of Elric, Hawkmoon and Corum helped opened my mind to the world of Conan, and for that they have my undying gratitude.
Wonderful stories, flawed heroes, many of them non-super powered, exciting art–First Comics had it all. They also had something rather unprecedented at the time–creator rights. That’s right. First Comics titles were owned by their creators. I may be wrong, but I don’t think DC offered creator ownership rights to anybody until Chris Claremont started Sovereign 7. And even today, the Big 2 are not very given to letting creators own anything original creations. I think that’s why there’s so little innovation in their universes. Creators are afraid they’ll create the next Wolverine or Punisher or Venom and never see anything beyond the dollars designated by their work-for-hire contracts. First Comics were a labor of love, because the creators had a personal stake in the characters. It made for some fantastic reads while it lasted. In 1991, First Comics had published it’s last comics. It was back to Marvel and DC for me. Back to capes and cowls and never for a moment being allowed to forget what S.H.I.E.L.D.* stood for. At least until the next year, 1992, when seven Marvel creators of some renown packed up their toys and went off to La Jolla, California to set up their own playground, Image Comics. Dark Horse was around too, but not widely available in my area and in my opinion still not sure of themselves. They of course would become the masters of licensed comic book material, but in the St. Louis suburbs of 1991, I was down to two choices. And Grimjack and American Flagg weren’t a part of either option.
*Welcome to my nightmare.
