Why was First Comics the best publisher that ever existed and why are you not reading their comics right now?
>Alter Ego
>American Flagg!
>Badger
>Corum
>Elric
>E-Man
>Evangeline
>Grimjack
>Jon Sable
>Lone Wolf and Cub (translated this shit back when manga in english was nearly unheard of)
>Nexus
>Sensei
>Shatter
>Starslayer
>Team Yankee
>Time2
>Warp
>Whisper
... and tons of other shit.
No one else could even touch their quality ratio.
E-man is so op.
Energy being that can do telepathy, transform/create matter, he can even give you his powers.
>Mike Baron
>Steve Rude
>Mike Grell
>John Ostrander
>Howard Chaykin
It's amazing how much top tier talent was working for the indie publishers in the 80s. Then you had guys like Chuck Dixon and Timothy Truman over at Eclipse.
First had a pretty good selection it is not false.
I guess the only company I would put against them from that era would be Epic (which is just a smaller part of Marvel) who had a ridiculous string of success.
First Comics put out some great books and is probably the best of the direct market-focused publishers that came to dominate the 1980s "indie boom," but Eclipse Comics wasn't far behind, quality-wise.
Eclipse had Miracleman, Scout, Coyote, DNAgents, Axel Pressbutton, The Rocketeer, Twisted Tales, Aztec Ace, etc.
And it was also a significant contributor to the early manga market with Mai the Psychic Girl (the first manga series to be published to completion in English), Area 88, and Appleseed (Masamune Shirow's first work to be translated to English). In fact, Eclipse's manga division went on to become today's VIZ Media.
That said, it's a little pointless to argue who was the better between the two—the companies shared a lot of the same freelancer talent, and some titles (such as Starslayer) were published at different times by both First and Eclipse.
I'm reading through a bunch of Grimjack issues I bought last weekend. Ostrander and Truman are such a great pair, not to mention those back up stories by people like Rick Veitch
I need to start getting Nexus now, I have the Origin one-shot Baron and Rude did with Dark Horse so I shouldn't have to worry about what's in the original magazine size issues right?
Epic put out some solid titles under Archie Goodwin's guidance (he helped land the licenses to the Moebius library and Akira) and the first year or so of Carl Potts' run as the imprint's executive editor.
Too bad it seemed like Marvel's editors-in-chief (first Jim Shooter, then Tom DeFalco) had no idea what to do with it, though. With the financial clout of prime Marvel behind it, Epic Comics could have been the biggest and most successful creator-owned imprint/European and manga import publisher.
Badger and American Flagg are the only original properties there I recognize.
Epic was basically Groo, Alien Legion, Akira reprints, and miniseries. Weird how they didn't have more ongoings.
You're forgetting Dreadstar. It was one of Epic Comics' first titles and was its best-selling ongoing series for a good long while (I think it outsold Avengers at some point). And then Starlin moved it to First Comics once the original contract was up (ha!).
Don't underestimate Epic's impact on the mainstream American comics scene, though. For a lot of kids back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Epic's English-language reprints of Moebius' various graphic albums and Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira were their first exposure to some of the best comics the non-Anglophone world had to offer. There's a whole generation of North American indie cartoonists (guys like Brandon Graham) who are still being influenced by the Moebius/Otomo juxtaposition that Epic offered back in the day.
Fantagraphics though
This was the '80s, right? It was a good time for comics in general.
I completely forgot that was ever published by Marvel.
I don't personally get the fascination with ongoings for everything.
There were also anthologies
Yeah, I'm more of a miniseries/finite series guy myself. The ability to sustain an indefinitely ongoing series is useful as an informal indicator of an imprint/publisher's commercial viability, I suppose.
Epic > Vertigo
>I shouldn't have to worry about what's in the original magazine size issues right?
What?
I storytimed Warp! here just to expose Sup Forums to the sheer lunacy of it. I'm planning to do it again sometime when I have the time, it's so great
Will look forward to that.
First Comics was relaunched with only one project announced, but merged with Devil's Due last year. Only Badger so far has been revived under the merged entity.
Eclipse must have been the most prolific indie publisher of the 80s. How many titles did they release? Think it could have been in the 100s?
Weird how their introduction of manga to Americans is probably their real legacy.
Warp! is legitimately cool fucking comics. Wish I could go do the research on the stage production.
Is there any video of it?
If they where do great then why did they go out of business?
Checkmate, aethiest