The Final ’90s Countdown: Part One.
And away we go…I’ve tallied your votes for your favorite ’90s indie titles, and we’re starting, in alphabetical order, with the single vote-getter funnybooks. And there ain’t no shame in only getting one vote…there was a wide variety of comics submitted for this survey, with many great titles having that one supporter in my comments!
As a reminder, the dates show for each title are generally for the initial run of the primary series, and not for any follow-ups afterwards, though I’ll try to discuss them, in any exist. I might fudge things a little…for example, second title below had a one-shot kicking everything off in 1995, then an ongoing series that started in ’96, so I went ahead and included the ’95 book in the notated date range. It’ll all make some kind of sense, I promise.
Now, to the books…!
Action Girl Comics (Slave Labor, 1994-2000)
This black and white anthology series, edited by Sarah Dyer, includes as a recurring feature her superhero character Action Girl, hence the comic’s title. The stories were all by female creators, including such folks as Roberta Gregory, Megan Kelso and Jessica Abel. Many of the stories were mainly slice-of-life, down to Earth tales, with even the Action Girl stories themselves being more grounded.
The covers were very eye-catching, such as the example I included here, all presenting variations on the title character by a variety of artists.
Unfortunately, I didn’t pick up this series for myself for almost certainly financial reasons, though we did carry it at the time. Given that it was a book from Slave Labor Graphics, a publisher I followed and enjoyed, I’m sure I at least glanced through copies as they came in. In retrospect, this is likely a comic I should go back and acquire, as the more I read about it in my research, the more I realize this is totally a comic I would have enjoyed but missed out on it like a dummy. Ah well.
Far as I can tell, there were no collections of this series into either hardcover or paperback editions, and the only (legal) way you can get this comic is by digging through those back issue bins (I think I may even have a couple at my store right now). It’s possible some of the contributors reprinted their stories in publications on their own.
Anyway, if a copy of Action Girl Comics happens across your path, pick it up and take a look. And if you don’t want it, send it to me!
Akiko (Sirius, 1995-2004)
One of my primary memories of Akiko was mentioning to a postal clerk at the post office I frequented on store business that, oh, hey, she had the same name as this long-running comic. Okay, that sounds weird typing it out like that, but I was at the post office a lot, and was friendly with all the clerks. Anyway, she thought that was neat, then rang me up for the, like, forty packages I was shipping.
But, yes, the comic. Akiko by Mark Crilley was initially a one-shot graphic novel, Akiko on the Planet Smoo, then a black and white series. And, while I knew it’d been around a while, I was still shocked to see that its initial run lasted for 52 issues! That’s pretty good for a black and white indie in the 1990s. It was about our title character, Akiko, and her life and adventures on the planet Smoo with some of her alien friends. This was a fairly popular series at our shop as I recall.
Eventually the series transitioned into a series of prose novels, if I’m understanding correctly, with early issues retelling the comics then moving into new stories. The prose novels lasted ten volumes, before Crilley moved on to other projects.
The comics themselves were reprinted in a series of paperbacks, with volumes 1 through 7 reprinting the main stories up through issue 47. The remainder of the series, up through 52, as well as the back-up stories and pin-ups, were reprinted in the volume Flights of Fancy: The High FLying Expanded Edition (not to be confused with the regular Flights of Fancy which doesn’t include the last issues of the series..)
No collections appear to be available from Diamond Comics right now, which either means they’re out of print, or haven’t been restocked given Diamond’s
bankruptcy. The first Planet Smoo prose novel is currently available from Penguin Random House. But I imagine all these books are readily available on the secondary market if you search around for ’em.
Oh wow, I loved those books! It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about Akiko, but it was so good, and Action Girl was just plain inspirational.
For all the crap the 90s gets, there were some amazing comics out there.
Thumb’s up for Action Girl! I’m pretty sure I bought every issue as a new release back then, and now I hope those survived my various collection purges in the decades since. I’ll have to check.
I was reading/buying any Evan Dorkin comics I could find then, but I don’t think I knew about the Dyer-Dorkin connection at first. Dyer, et al’s covers stood out as being happy to be comics, suggesting a superhero as cosplay theme. (Remember that Peter Parker sewed his own costume, showing he was as much a home economics nerd as a science nerd.) It also gave off a sense of comics-are-fun that stood out against the wimmen-can-underground-too approach on display in Twisted Sisters, Real Girl, and the Mary Fleener-Roberta Gregory-Julie Doucet-Ariel Schrag aesthetic (which were also great comics, but more serious in tone).
I hope Action Girl shows up right underneath Action Comics in the Overstreet Price Guide these days, so that eager speculators can be subliminally aware that it existed.
Action Girl Comics was definitely on my shortlist as I was brainstorming my favorites from that era. I came to the series late, after first becoming a fan of Jessica Abel through Artbabe, and Chynna Clugston-Flores through Blue Monday. If memory serves, Action Girl even had early Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson. Took me years to piece together a full run of back issues. I need to sit down and do a full end-to-end re-read.
Action Girl was a favorite of my ex-wife. Enjoyable slice-of-life stuff. Quite rightly when we split they went with her.
But a terrific series.
Never checked out Akiko, might have to do that.
I bought some back issues of ACTION GIRL around 2000 or so due to the inclusion of Chynna Clugston-Major (now Chynna Clugston Flores). I was a big fan of her BLUE MONDAY comics, which I first saw from Oni Comics.
Oh, nice! I enjoyed issues of both of these books, but I doubt I have full runs of either. (Maybe Action Girl, who knows? The answer is in…my basement!)
Thoroughly enjoyed Akiko. I read many issues with my young daughter just a couple of years later. Even got an issue autographed to her (probably while she was still an infant!) from Mark Crilley.
I went through all the issues of Action Girl on comics.org and only found a few reprints. Two one-page comics by Jessica Able and one three-page comic by Megan Kelso.
Matthew — thank you, I’ll update the post soon.
Possible fodder for a future column.
“the only (legal) way you can get this comic”
I am a physical media person (my books/comics/movies are legitimately started to overwhelm my house), but if the owner of a work does not make it available in physical form I have no problem sailing the seas to obtain a copy.
DC won’t put out the Rex the Wonder Dog and Sugar & Spike omnibuses I long for? Well, I got copies of those issues anyhow (they aren’t on DC Infinite).
Disney won’t put out the theatrical version of Star Wars? Project 4K77 is right there.
I’d be interested how everyone here feels about this.
“And there ain’t no shame in only getting one vote”
Walter Mondale might disagree.
Loving all this action girl reminiscence. I picked it up as it came out and the run is a jewel in my collection. So much talent. So many stories. As for obtaining issues these days I wonder if Sarah Dyer herself might have advice. I’m sure she has some online presence out there somewhere?
@Adam I don’t know about her, but Dorkin sure does. Scrolling through his Bluesky account is kinda depressing, though. He thinks of himself as a washed-up, unemployable relic of the Punk Era.
“Dorkin… He thinks of himself as a washed-up, unemployable relic of the Punk Era.”
What! ridic! Milk & Cheese/Eltingville/the murder Family! great stuff! Admittedly, I don’t know what he’s been doing recently.