Mikester

Continuing on with the single-voters in the Final ’90s Countdown poll….

Finder (Lightspeed Press, 1996-2005)

Now I remember Finder as being a popular book with the indie comics cognoscenti (comicsnocenti?). It had relatively strong sales for us at the previous place of employment, and its many wonderful and strange covers always caught my eye and stood out on the rack.

And of course, it’s yet another title I haven’t read, either through lack of time, or lack of money in that “Working for The Man” stage of my life, before I became The Man and opened my own shop. And of course now I definitely don’t have the time. Or money.

But anyway, I’ve seen creator Carla Speed McNeil’s work often enough to know I enjoy their artstyle…a clean, confident cartooning line that’s immensely appealing and again, like other books before and after on this Final ’90s Countdown list, make me feel like a real dummy for not reading their primary work of Finder before.

The book itself, from what I’ve gathered from researching AKA Googling, takes place in a future Earth where technologically-advanced domed population centers are surrounded by aboriginal tribes trying to survive in a desolated world. The initial focus is on an aboriginal detective named Jaeger, who recurs throughout the series and its many storylines as either a main or supporting character. (If you want to Read More About It by someone who’s actually read the comic, this seems like a good essay on the topic.)

The series was self-published by McNeil for 38 issues, before they moved to a webcomic format in 2005. Unfortunately, the webcomic, and even the Lightspeed Press page, appear to be gone (or taken over by squatters). If the webcomics are availahle somewhere I’m not seeing, please let me know. There was also a serialized story in Dark Horse Presents.

It appears all the Finder stories, including the webcomics and the DHP story, have been reprinted in paperback form, either in 11 single volumes, each containing one multi-issue story. The first two volumes are in fact parts one and two of a single story, which have also been reprinted together in a smaller book with some expanded material.

Speaking of Dark Horse, they’re the company that’s maining the print form of Finder, which as of their most recent printings, collection the series as follows: the first 8 paperbacks are reprinted in The Finder Library volumes 1 and 2. The remaining three stories are each reprinted in their own individual volume. Availability to comic shops appears spotty at the moment, with only one book offered in any of my distributors’ listings. I do know these are highly regarded works, so with any luck they’ll be around again in short order.

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An HTML error in my previous post make a point I was making unclear in the last paragraph. The line was supposed to be “…is a virtue for the Metamorpho comic.” The title was dropped out. Sorry about that.

Continuing alphabetically through the single-vote receivers from the Final ’90s Countdown poll…and as a reminder, there ain’t no shame in a single vote here, just a reaffirming of the wide range of good material available during that decade!

Box Office Poison (Antarctic Press, 1996-2000)

Look, so when I was processing the image file for this entry, I kept naming it “Box Office Potion,” and frankly, all I can say is that I’ve watched this video too many times.

This title, by Alex Robinson, is another that I certainly recall selling during this period of my comics retailing career, but alas it is also another one I haven’t read. I do remember it had a small but faithful following at the shop, some minor back issue movement, but not an outstanding seller or anything. It was a black and white (mostly) indie title, and that it held a readership through the tough post-crash times of the comics market is testament to its quality. It was also nominated for several comics awards, such as the Harveys and the Eisners, in the early 2000s. A French translation did win an award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2005, information I’m totally cribbing from the Wikipedia entry. Oh, and looking in a Diamond Comics stock listing, apparently it was voted by Wizard as the best indie graphic novel…of all time. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!

It’s a genre that we don’t see a lot of nowadays, slice-of-life real world “adventures” of a group of friends making their way through life in New York City. One character is a cartoonist of a popular comic book character, and his storyline apparently involves trying to get proper recompense for his work, so, you know, so plus ça change an’ all that. What’s nice is that this is a fairly short-run book, telling a complete story, with clever bookending covers on its first and last issues.

In addition to the 21-issue run of the main series, there were a couple of one-shots, including one in color. In 2017 IDW reprinted five issues in color in what appeared to be an attempt to reissue the entire series, but ended early. As for collections, the best and most recent were from Top Shelf: Box Office Poison Complete New Edition (as it’s called in Diamond’s database) appears to have the main series, and the More Box Office Poison Stories volume, putting lie to the title of the previous book, which includes all the other stuff not in that book, like some short stories and the one-shots and such.

So anyway, finding yet more comics I need to acquire and read that I’d missed the first time around, like this series, is a huge side effect of doing this survey. Maybe there’s a potion for that.

Continuing on with the Final ’90s Countdown, still in the “single vote” tier, but even only getting one vote doesn’t make it less than great, as seen by this fine example:

Black Hole (Kitchen Sink/Fantagraphics, 1995-2005)

Gotta admit, it’s been a while since I’ve read Black Hole, the book that could very well be described as Charles Burns’ magnum opus. I mean, I may be more a Big Baby guy myself, but regardless of whatever project he’s working on, it’s hard to think of anyone who does just straight up creepy and unsettling comics imagery in so sleek a fashion as Burns does.

And Black Hole is absolutely a showcase for those talents, as the story, involving an STD spreading through a bunch of teens that leaves them with grotesque deformities, provides ample opportunity for Burns to disturb the reader.

Interestingly there’s a short precursor to Black Hole that ran in Steve Bissette’s horror anthology Taboo in 1989. Titled “Contagious,” and just four pages, but definitely of a piece with the longer work. It ends on more of a EC Comics-ish “we’re all doomed” note, as opposed to Black Hole which delves more deeply into the personal impact and societal implications of such a disease.

You may have notice that I had two publishers listed for the series above. The first four issues came out from Kitchen Sink Press, which unfortunately went out of business following the release of #4. Fantagraphics published the remaining eight issues, while rereleasing issues 1 through 4. It took a while for these 12 issues to come out, just over an issue per year, but as I recall interest in the title remained strong at the shop over its run. Each new issue created a small flurry of interest in previous issues, and I think they were readily available for reorder from one source or another.

Of course now you don’t need to fiddle around with them floppy ol’ funnybooks, as the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle has since been gathered together under one cover, as is the popular way with comics of note. That Black Hole collection, available from Pantheon, is still currently available in both hardcover and trade paperback form. It should also be noted that a copy of this book makes a cameo in the film Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014), as a young human bonds with Maurice the orangutan as they peruse it.

Anyway, be like Maurice: if you haven’t read this comic and can handle some distressing imagery, I recommend you give it a try. It’s definitely a classic of the medium…not usually mentioned in the same breath as Maus and Watchmen, but probably should be.

Okay, before I launch into the festivities, I wanted to point out that I was recently sorting out some comics at home and discovered I had two copies of a particular hard-to-find comics ‘zine with an original Jaime Hernandez cover. In fact, it’s an issue of Wood-Eye, the anthology digest that me ‘n’ my pals put together in the mid-1990s (thus keeping with the theme of today’s post). I put on the eBays for folks to fight over…auction ends this Wednesday, so bid early, bid often!

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And now, for today’s entry in your favorite books from the Final ’90s Countdown:

Archer & Armstrong (Valiant, 1992-1994)

Released as Valiant Comics was still in its prime hotness during the ’90s comics market boom, and drawn by the legendary Barry Windsor-Smith (for at least a few issues), Archer & Armstrong hit the ground running and picked up a lot of fans from the get-go. Alas, as you can tell by the dates noted above, the original run of the series was one of the many, many victims of the ’90s comics market crash, not helped by the fact that Windsor-Smith departed art chores after issue #12. (Not to cast aspersions on those who came after…Mike Baron boarding as writer was a good hook to try keeping readers around.)

Despite the short run, folks even today still hold the series in high regard, and relaunches of the series by other hands have been attempted throughout the 2000s.

The comic centers around a super-powered duo…super-fighter and somewhat sheltered Archer, paired up with the immortal yet slovenly Armstrong. The two (and I had to look this up, as it’s been a while) find themselves in conflict with The Sect, a secret religious cult, and I seem to recall it all being of a humorous bent, but serious when it needed to be. Plenty of humorous conflict between the worldviews of our two leads, an nearly-guaranteed effective trope in buddy-adventures like this one.

There were also ties to the larger Valiant Universe as a whole (aside from the Unity crossover in issues #1 and #2), as Armstrong’s brothers were the Eternal Warrior and the Timewalker, both immortal beings that also had their own individual series.

As inferred, I did buy this series, as well as the rest of the Valiant line, and it really felt they were building a coherent shared universe with a consistent look and feel. A lot of that tone seemed to go away after company cofounder and creative glue Jim Shooter left the company. I ended up dropping all the titles shortly after Shooter’s departure, and I noticed sales on the books had declined as well at our shop. And when the bottom fell out of the marketplace, Valiant went with it.

A lot of Valiant’s early success was tied to the sudden increase in comic speculators, pushed along by Wizard and other Wizard-a-likes that came along. The release of Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1 in 1993, overordered and undersold, was one of the events that either helped to bring on the comics crash or was a symptom of the same. Regardless, that was one of the nails in the coffin of Valiant’s desirability to collectors.

In regards to Archer and Armstrong, the first issue of the series (a #0, of course — it was the 1990s) was the primary “hot” book of the run, and even now can still sell relatively quickly, if not as expensively. And of course there were the “gold” editions (like the one pictured here) that commanded some demand, and still do as “rare” items. (Last issues of various classic Valiant series also can be at a premium, due to their low print runs.)

If you wanted to read some of these original Archer and Armstrongs today, you’re in luck, as a paperback reprinting #0 through #12, the entirety of Windsor-Smith’s run, is currently available. A number of years ago there was a Classic Omnibus that reprinted the whole series, as well as some tie-in material. Out of print now, but maybe you can track it down.

Though it’s been a long time since I’ve read these, I do remember enjoying them quite a bit, even after the Windsor-Smith departure. These comics are well-remembered for a reason.

Amy Unbounded (Pughouse Press, 1996-1999)

So leave it to my old customer Carol (who, alas, moved away, but I am heartened to know she still reads my site) to utterly confound me with this title by Rachel Hartman, one that despite everything does sound vaguely familiar but about which I can’t some up with any specific or, like, personal in-store experiences.

Looking at the pic there, it does ring a very small bell in what’s left of my mind, so I feel like we must have had it at some point. We were ordering from a variety of distributors that carried small press things like this (assuming it wasn’t available from Diamond at this time, which it might not have been). I honestly don’t know. It’d be a shame if we didn’t, because the initial Amy Unbounded series, a twelve issue run in a smaller black and white comics digest format, would totally have been a thing I’d be into. Particularly given my interest in small press, and my own dabblings in same.

The comic itself is set in a fantasy world, with dragons that can change into human form. The central character is Amy, a little girl whose adventures we follow, hence the name. Yes, alas, I can’t say more about the contents because I don’t know, I hadn’t read it, and I’m sorry I haven’t. However, looking at the Grand Comics Database, there was, after the first series, a Galaxion/Amy Unbounded Flip Book one-shot in ’99, and a trade paperback in 2002, reprinting the back half of the series.

And checking the unerring fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia, Hartman’s first prose novel Seraphina is set in the world of Amy Unbounded Plus, there was also a webcomic titled “Return of the Mad Bun,” whose initial host site is now defunct (or rather, in the hands of someone with a slightly more prurient focus), but is discussed here (just don’t click the links). However, some use of the Wayback Machine can give you a taste.

So there you go, a comic I wished I knew more about, but hopefully the info above will point you in the directions you need to find what appears to be a delightful comic. Hey, Carol liked it, it must be good!

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.