Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinForgetting to update the site's corner box pic since 1969

“Making a splash…of BLOOD!” I mean.

§ November 8th, 2024 § Filed under indies § 14 Comments

Hi pals…gonna continue trying to have some fun here on the site, but wanted to acknowledge that, well, things didn’t quite turn out as we hoped here in the States. It’s going to be rough, especially for women, minorities, and the LBGQTIA+ community, so let’s all look out for each other and do our best to get through this.

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So anyway, let’s shift gears a bit and talk about EXTREME VIOLENCE, at least as represented by a specific indie comic from the 1980s.

I’m sure I came across references to Grips in the “Coming Attractions” section of the Amazing Heroes ‘zine at the time, but my earliest specific memory of the title is from a comic book convention I attended in the mid-1980s.

This was at a monthly Los Angeles comic con, that had the usual assortment of Special Guests and upcoming movie presentations (inexplicably, my friends and I sat through a preview of the Garbage Pail Kids, for which members of our little group won a movie poster and free passes to see the film — which went unused, might I add). But there were also rows upon rows of dealer tables, and up and down the aisles there was a young gentleman, meandering equidistant from the displays on either side, calling out “Grips! Who’s got Grips! I’m looking for Grips!” over and over again.

And he wasn’t the only one. Well, okay, he was the only one doing specifically that, but I heard other folks asking dealers for Grips and talking about Grips and I believe I recall seeing copies of Grips on display there with very optimistic pricing.

Grips was not a comic I recalled seeing at my local comic shop (the same one I would be employed at a small handful of years later). I did ask my former boss the other day as i was prepping for this post if he carried it, and he said “absolutely,” noting that first series sold very well for him. I can only presume that I missed it on the shelf (or it sold out before I got to the shop for my weekly visit), or that it just didn’t register with me.

And I suspect it wouldn’t have registered with me, as, despite the fact that I was always looking at what small press comics were being offered, Grips did not appear to be up my alley.

Okay, okay…as the Firesign Theatre could’ve said, “What Am Grips, Anyway?” Well, the opinion I sort of formed way back when I first learned of it was that this was about a fella trying to out-Wolverine Wolverine, then the mainstream comics gold standard of A Violent Character. Look, he even had the claws an’ everything. The controversy-courting appeal of the title was its Extreme Violence, and if you don’t believe me, take the Overstreet Price Guide’s word for it:

That’s…kind of an unexpected bit of editorializing from Overstreet there, but when you get down to it that appears to be the main selling point of the comic. And was it violent? Sure, a bit…here’s a slightly disarming panel giving you a minor example of the gory delights within:

This, and other incidents in these early issues, are certainly more gruesome than what you’d find in your standard issue of a superhero comic (despite the companies sometimes giving it the ol’ college try), even if they look crude and amateurish today.

And, well, maybe “amateurish” is a little harsh, given that these are the early works of Tim Vigil, a artist who would achieve fame and/or notoriety for the highly detailed artwork for the violently and sexually explicit series Faust and a mildly less-explicit short run of Badger.

In fact, despite all the demand for the book back in the ’80s, it’s pretty much forgotten now. If it’s remembered at all, it’s remembered solely because it is early work by Vigil. Any high prices they may have commanded once upon a time have slipped away to nothing. Even the Hot Comics App has these as “Non-Keys” at a typical price of about three bucks apiece. (A look at eBay shows somewhat more adventurous pricing, and I suspect the truth is, as usual, somewhere in the middle.)

Speaking of pricing, my Bluesky pal Steve contributed some grist for the Grips mill here, as he was a collector of the title and offered this up for me:

That’s a price listing for the various Grips titles from the publisher, with stories ripped from today’s headlines, apparently. Issue #4 has “High Violence!” Another issue has “Grips infected w/AIDS!”

You may notice, if you looked closely, that there are ea whole lot more Grips comics in this price listing than in the Overstreet Price Guide scan I posted up there. Well, Overstreet only listed the first mini, probably because of the Vigil connection. Otherwise, the Guide tends to not bother with most books from the 1980s black and white boom era, when anyone who could hold a pencil and find his way to the local print shop put out a comic hoping to be the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There was plenty of good stuff that came from the boom, but there was a whole lot of dreck as well, and Overstreet preferred to just not devote the space to it.

In the case of Grips, in addition to that initial four issue run, there was a second series sans Vigil that ran 12 issues, and 8 issue run of Gurps Adventures (which I totally want to be the “Kid-Friendly” version of Grips à la Batman Adventures, and the one-shot Grips Special. It was one of these later comics that got me on this whole Grips kick in the first place, what with a stray issue #7 from the second Grips run turning up in a collection the other day:

Would you like to see a page from the inside? Of course you would, why wouldn’t you:

To be completely honest, I’m very surprised there hasn’t been an attempted revival of Grips in all these years since it vanished off the stands. Of the output from Silver Wolf/Greater Mercury, Grips was the comic that made the biggest splash, despite it being mostly out of comic fans’ minds today.

It was a weird and crude book, one borne out of an exciting and interesting time when it seems like just about anyone could get a title out on the stands, unhampered by an editorial hand that would tell them “no.” I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was, y’know, “good,” but more power to the Silver Wolf/Greater Mercury folks for putting together this amateur press empire for however briefly it breathed.

And just because Internet Pal Steve sent these pics my way, here are a couple more comics from his collection, some Grips variants:

Collect ’em all, kids!