Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinWhere legends live since 1969

I have held in my hands every comic mentioned in this post.

§ April 8th, 2022 § Filed under indies § 9 Comments

Born in that post-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles black and white comics boom, of the 1980s, Solson Comics was a company that was…not especially highly regarded by fans or critics. I mean, there were worse comics out there, but something about Solson struck some folks as one of the more cynical attempts at cashing in on this latest comics fad.

That said, I do sort of admire the sort of wild variety of books that were just kinda thrown out there into the marketplace, with the hopes that one of them would stick. I mean, this one, as I vaguely recall, was okay:

…and this one clearly had one of the all-time great comic book titles:

Plus, there’s this “Christmas” comic that achieved some notoriety when it was discovered that the inking was credited to a “Jim Lee.” It does appear to be the same Jim Lee we all know and love for putting a collar and cuffs on Superman’s costume, but I recall there being some debate for a brief time as to whether or not it was the same Jim Lee.

Anyway, nothing really “stuck” like they were hoping for, I think…nobody wanted to make toys or cartoons based on Rock Heads:

…or maybe they did want to and they just never came to fruition. You never know.

But two things did have some staying power from this company, aside from speculators and their slabbed copies of Samurai Santa. First, amusingly enough, in their pursuit for Turtles money, Solson actually produced licensed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics:

…some martial arts training comics, as well as a “how to draw” comic. Instead of trying to make money off a Turtles rip-off, just make money off the Turtles themselves. Well played, Solson, well played indeed.

The other comic with lasting cultural impact, at least within the realm of comic book fandom, is the one, the only…

…Reagan’s Raiders. Long before there were a million Trump and Obama comics, Reagan was just all over the place in funnybooks during the ’80s. Yeah, sure, people liked putting Nixon into comics…but pop culture really cottoned to Reagan for a bit. And no appearance shines in a comic fan’s memory more than…well, okay, that issue of Captain America where Reagan turned into a snake monster, but Reagan’s Raiders is a darn close second.

In that picture above is the only copy I had in stock at my shop (already sold, sorry!). But this thingie here is an item I found in one of the many boxes of ancient promo stuff I took in from the previous place of employment:

Not sure you need any commentary on this particular document, as it pretty well speaks for itself. Though I do like that “color cover” is offered as a selling point. And having military ranks on the creative team (“Sgt. Dick Ayers”) is a wild touch.

The only thing I’m wondering now is — does the Reagan Library have a set of these Reagan’s Raiders comics? Y’know, that Library isn’t all that far away from me, so maybe I can go and ask. If you never hear from me again, at least you’ll know what happened.