final ’90s countdown

The Final ’90s Countdown continues, with the next alphabetical entry in the one-vote getters:

Scud: The Disposable Assassin (Fireman Press, 1994 – 1998)

Now this was one popular series. Scud (as we will refer to it here instead of your pal Mike typing out the full name every single time) was written and drawn by Rob Schrab, a quite talented gent that surely is most famous for being in the Dead Alewives, but also did some other stuff too (like co-creating and directing the Sarah Silverman Program, directed some Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, and plenty of other movie and TV work.

The comic’s premise presented a world in which one could purchase a single use assassin robot out of a vending machine that, upon completing its mission of, y’know, killin’ a dude, would self-destruct. The hero of our comic, Scud, is one of those robots, who figures out a way to avoid self-destruction (i.e. just hurting his target somethin’ fierce instead of killing him) and then goes freelance.

As I said at the start, this was a very popular comic book, selling lots of copies to kind of the same crowd that was getting Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and other quirky indie titles. There were spin-off titles as well, such as La Cosa Nostroid (probably the most popular of the bunch, dealing with Tony Tastey of the Cyborg Mafia, but unfortunately unfinished), Scud: Tales from the Vending Machine (five-issue mini with other creators telling stories about other Scud robots), the one-shot Drywall Unzipped and the two-issue Drywall and Oswald, with side adventures of Scud’s partner Drywall.

The main Scud series itself initially stopped at issue #20 in 1998, leaving the story incomplete. It wouldn’t be until 2008 that Schrab would be able to fit in the production of the final four issues amongst his showbiz work to finally give the series its proper sendoff. Following its completion, the entire Scud series was collected (along with Drywall: Unzipped) into a big ol’ volume called Scud: The Disposable Assassin: The Whole Shebang! which still remains available, and relatively popular, today! (The other tie-ins do not appear to have been reprinted.)

That Schrab went back and completed the story sure kept this series from becoming a forgotten floppy in the bargain bins to an in-demand, in-print graphic novel. Can think of a few titles where I wish they finished the job so we could get sellable trades out of them. Imagine a world where, like, the Bone comic book series petered out about halfway through. A classic series of graphic novels would be missing from the market, Jeff Smith wouldn’t be getting any of that income, hundreds of thousands of kids wouldn’t be exposed to the joy of sequential comic book art (at least until Dog Man showed up).

Anyway, glad Scud is still around.

And here we go with the next one-vote-receiver in our Final ’90s Countdown:

Savage Dragon (Image Comics, 1993 – present)

Hoo boy, here’s a biggie. With Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, these are the two Image Comics launch titles (kinda sorta…more on that in a moment) still continuing today. And most amazingly, Savage Dragon‘s Erik Larsen has written and drawn all 277 issues so far (more or less) of the series.

Oh, and he also did the preceding mini-series, too. The three-issue Savage Dragon mini ran in ’92, and was the actual Image launch title, with the still-ongoing main title starting in 1993. Plus, in 1994 the Image founders switched books, so someone else wrote and drew #13 of the series…causing Larsen to later go back and produce another #13 on his own to keep his run on the book intact.

Now the comic itself…Larsen has put it through some real changes over the decade, to keep up reader interest and almost certainly to keep up his own. It starts with Mr. S. Dragon appearing naked in a burning field, no idea where he came from, step 2: ????, step 3: he becomes a policeman and the book very quickly fills with other superpowered beings that Dragon has to deal with. It’s a wild, action-packed book with Kirby-inspired but not Kirby-copying storytelliing. Guest stars abound, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Hellboy, the public domain Mickey Mouse, and [checks notes] God? Yup, God’s here too.

Without going into the details as to how things change, but change they do, to the point where the book currently revolves around Malcolm Dragon, the Dragon’s son, his wife, and their pile of little Dragon kids. Also in the last few years the, shall we say, mature audiences content dial was turned up to about a 9, and

That this comic is still being produced even today is astounding to me. Over three decades of evolution with one man maintaining the storylines…it just makes you wonder what we would have gotten if, say, Rob Liefeld started with his Youngblood #1 and just kept doing issue after issue, a new one every month or two, for 30+ years, and what we’d have at the end there. You can draw a line from where Savage Dragon started to where it ended, but its differences are definitely going to be more noticeable than its similarities.

Now, Savage Dragon has been around for a long time, with lots of spin-offs, tie-ins, spin-ins, tie-offs, the works. Lots of crossovers with other characters and franchises..I have soft spots for Savage Dragon Vs. the Savage Megaton Man and Savage Dragon/Marshal Law. Plus, there were standalone minis with the Dragon like Red Horizons. Your mileage may vary amongst the various titles.

Reprints are a trickier subject. There are inexpensive “Archives” that given you about 25 issues of the main series per volume, but they’re all in black and white. There are miscellaneous trade paperbacks in color reprinting issues from the main series. Given the low print runs on some of the later issues, this may be the only way newcomers can catch up on the comic without paying a fortune on eBay. Honestly, there are a lot of books, so you might want to check with your retailer as to what’s available.

Or you can just grab an issue and jump in, really. I mean, if you read any X-Men title, one of them was your first, and I’m betting it wasn’t #1. You can handle it.

I should also note that the Dragon’s initial appearance, in slightly altered form, was in the very small press book Graphic Fantasy, which have been reprinted in various forms. Plus, it looks like this early version, or at least the design, of the character has returned in recent years to the main series.

Anyway, Savage Dragon is hard to sum up here, but it’s nice that there’s a personal vision of a genre character that has persisted for all this time under the eye of its creator. This is certainly a rarity in the American comic book market, and something to be celebrated. Even if the comic gets a bit naughty at times.

Just movin’ right along with the next one-vote receiver in the Final ’90s Countdown:

Sailor Moon (Tokyopop, 1998-2001)

Now the heading here, indicating Sailor Moon‘s Tokyopop run starting in 1998, may be a tiny bit misleading. This series is, I believe, the first ongoing U.S. series featuring the property, but the series, created by Naoko Takeuchi, was originally serialized in the Japanese magazine Nakayoshi starting in 1991.

Sailor Moon was an immense hit, appearing in many publications around the world, not to mention multiple animated adaptations. Sailor Moon was a real kick in the pants to the “magical girl” genre, which had preexisted the series by decades, and inspired many other creative works that followed.

The premise of the series is fairly straightforward, in that a young student discovers she is, in fact, the reincarnation of the magically-powered Sailor Moon, and is soon joined by other similarly powered beings (Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter…well, you get the idea). All these Sailors then spend their time protecting their fellow man, saving the world, all that jazz.

I remember the initial Sailor Moon comics doing quite well for us at the shop at the time, and subsequent releases of various Sailor Moon books and other products found a ready audience as well.

I’m not going to try to listen every single permutation of Sailor Moon books here, but I can note that there was a ten volume series of Sailor Moon Eternal Edition which appears to reprint the entire original serialized story. Those are still available for order.

Keep in mind here, I’m no expert on Sailor Moon or manga in general. I had to look up a lot of what I wrote up there. But I do know that Sailor Moon is a perennial favorite and a popular seller, and is one of those classics that should always be in print and available.

Back to the Final ’90s Countdown, with the next in line of the one-vote receivers:

Optic Nerve (Drawn & Quarterly, 1995-2015)

Now here’s a comic where I read every gosh-darn issue, unlike some of thge other entries in this particular series of posts. Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve had its origins in a series of self-published mini-comics in the first half of the 1990s. …Which, okay, I lied, I hadn’t read the mini-comics, but can easily at any time, which I’ll get into in a sec.

Optic Nerve, at least the Drawn & Quarterly run, always sort of struck me as a quieter, more melancholy Dan Clowes, with stories that are only sporadically autobiographical, and often very slice-of-life tales. Very emotional at times, often sad, always affecting.

There are a number of reprints for these comics, including (as I noted) the original minis, which can be read in a book titled 32 Stories. There is also a boxed set of replicas of the seven individual minis called the 32 Stories Optic Nerve Box Set.

Of the Drawn & Quarterly series, there are four collections: Sleepwalk and Other Stories, Shortcomings, Summer Blonde, and Killing and Dying. Of interest is an additional book called Q & A, in which Tomine answers questions about his work and career. These are of..sporadic availability from the main distributors for most comic shops, but those stores that have set up accounts with more general distributors may have better luck.

Honestly, I was surprised to discover Optic Nerve came to an end as long ago as 2015, but Tomine’s done more than just that series. There was his humorous collection Scenes from an Impending Marriage, Scrapbook: Uncollected Work 1990-2004, New York Drawings, and most recently, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, where he relates tales of his life in the cartooning business.

Really one of the top boks of the “autobio” genre from the period, of which there were many, even if that element was only occasionally present. Well worth tracking down and visiting if you haven’t before…and worth revisiting if it’s been a while.

Still at the one-vote level of the Final ’90s Countdown…remember what I’ve said before, that there’s no shame in getting just a single vote, it’s just an indication of the wide range of titles still being published during what was generally considered a downturn in the industry.

The Nocturnals (Malibu/Bravura, 1995)

Here’s another title that I shockingly didn’t not read, coming out as it did when the comics market was in serious flux and so was my disposable income. Now, the person who voted for this title actually voted for Nocturnals: Black Planet, which was the 1998 trade paperback edition published by Oni Press and was kinda its own thing which I’ll discuss in a moment.

But this is the series that introduced the Nocturnals to the world, so it’s as good a place as any to start. Written and drawn — or, rather, painted — by Dan Brereton, the comic follows the pulp action adventures of Doc Horror and his team of weirdly-powered misfits as they defend their city from supernatural events. Well, that actually sounds pretty fun to me, and as someone who’s all-in on Hellboy and his parade of spin-offs, I feel like I missed a bet by not buying this series myself. Plus, the painted artwork is quite striking and not quite like anything else on the stands.

Luckily the Nocturnals comics, of which there were a handful in the late ’90s/early ’00s, including a serial in Dark Horse Presents, have been reprinted. That aforementioned Black Planet TPB includes this entire first series, as well as a sketchbook section by Brereton, and pin-ups by Gene Colan, Mike Allred, Bruce Timm, and others.

There are two Nocturnals omnibuses from Dark Horse Comics in 2021 which appear to collect all the previously published material. And good news, everyone, they are still available for reorder from Penguin Random House. Also, there is a rerelease of the Nocturnals graphic novel, “The Sinister Path,” as a mini-series that’s starting next month (the first appearance of this story in periodical form)! Oh, the timeliness of this post.

Continuing along at the one-vote level of the Final ’90s Countdown:

Meat Cake (Fantagraphics, 1993-2008)

The greatest indie comic that may or may not have been named after a George Carlin gag (“could be meat…could be cake…meat cake!”) was created by the inventive and creative Dame Darcy.

The comic initially was released as a one-shot from Caliber Press in 1992, When Fantagraphics picked up the series in 2003, that Caliber issue was reprinted as part of the new series as an issue #0.

Dame Darcy’s art style is a little tricky to describe…you can get a taste of it on the cover I reproduced above. It’s very…well, “ethereal” isn’t quite the right description, and I’ve seen people call it “Victorian,” which doesn’t really land the plane for me either. I want to say “what if later Gene Colan had tighter pencils,” but that’ll probably get the villagers with rakes and torches swarming outside my castle. Regardless of how you’d describe it, “unique” feels like the best descriptor, even though I’m about to say she reminds me just a little of being in the same general area as, for example, Gary Panter or Mark Marek, perhaps on the more representational side of things.

Meat Cake has had a few reprtin collections, the most comprensive likely being the Meat Cake Bible, released by Fantagraphics in 2016, reprinting the entire series plus extra material intended for an unpublished issue.

In addition to Meat Cake, she’s produced work for several other publishers, including collaborations with Alan Moore.

Dame Darcy in more recent years has involved herself in other artistic endeavors, including film, TV, book illustration, fashion, teaching, and music. (A long time ago at the previous place of employment, we received a comp copy of a Death by Doll CD, Dame Darcy’s band, which I still own and occasionally listen to even now.)

Meat Cake is a very distinctive and personal artistic expression, and one well worth seeking out, especially for those who want an excellent example of just what great weirdness comics can achieve.

Continuing on with the one-vote receivers from our poll:

The Mask (Dark Horse Comics, 1991)

Well, here’s one where I kinda goofed up. I’d forgotten that this version of The Mask actually had its start as a feature in the Mayhem series in 1989, those stories later being reprinted in an issue #0 as part of thge first Mask mini-series from 1991. Which means this character began prior to 1990 and should have been disqualified.

But I didn’t catch it when it was nominated, and it’s not like I’m going to be thrown into an oubliette if I talk about it anyway, so…let’s talk about it anyway. (And I’m still going to do a special sidebar on Eightball, another series associated heavily with the ’90s but began in the ’80s, which seems only fair.)

Anyway, the idea for the Mask was initially conceived of by Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson, eventually beginning life as “The Masque” in the company’s anthology series Dark Horse Presents in the late ’80s, handled by other creators.

Eventually, “The Masque” strip was canned, and the concept was retooled into the version that we all recognize today, even if all you ever saw was the movie. (More on that in a bit.) Debuting in Mayhem in 1989, then moving into his own four-issue mini-series by John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke in 1991, The Mask tells the story of Stanley Ipkiss, an unassuming, put-upon fella who finds an ancient magical mask that, when donned, converts him into a wild, crazy, physics-defying and massively violent creature known in-universe as “Big Head.” As the mini-series, and adventures, continue, the mask passes from person to person with equally destructive results.

The initial storyline runs through three minis, including The Mask Returns and The Mask Strikes Back. After this, The Mask franchise expands into new stories and crossovers (like cross-company events such as Joker/Mask, Lobo/Mask, and Mask/Marshal Law), as well as child-friendly comics and graphic novels (such as those by Rick Geary).

Of course, probably the most famous iteration of the Mask is the 1994 movie starring Jim Carrey, which amps up the Looney Tunes-esque comedy aspects and reduces the level of dark humor and violence from the comics. It was quite successful, and, actually, a pretty good movie and a solid adaptation of the premise, if not the tone, of the original comics. (I sort of dread the eventual film reboot that ramps up the darkness again, but…could be good, you never know.)

The movie did result in a universally panned sequel (Son of the Mask in 2005, and an animated series (that itself had a comic book spinoff.)

As it stands now, the Mask comics franchise is largely dormant, no reprint books appearing to be available at the moment. The last comic book series with the character was I Pledge Allegiance to the Mask, a four-issue mini-series released in 2019. There were two Omnibus volumes which appear to cover just about everything outside the intercompany crossovers and maybe the children’s comics. I’m not sure if the movie adaptation is included.

This is an enjoyable series, particularly the initial thee minis (and the related mini Walter, a mute giant nemesis of the Mask who seems to be one of the few (only?) being impervious to Big Head’s shenanigans). Later comics are a little more of a mixed bag, but there is still fun to be had here and there. Of particuliar note is Virtual Surreality, a 1997 release featuring contributions by multiple creators, including Sergio Aragones, Mike Mignola, and Ivan Reis.

The Final ’90s Countdown continues, as we are still working our way alphabetically through the single-vote receivers in our poll! Again, no shame in getting only a single vote…there was a lot of good stuff coming out in the ’90s!

Louis Riel (Drawn & Quarterly, 1999-2003)

This ten-issue series was the one of Chester Brown’s earliest post-Yummy Fur longform projects, preceded by aborted Underwater in the mid/late-ish 1990s. (Surprisingly, Underwater lasted 11 issues, but its central conceit of babies gradually learning to understand the language spoken around them, resulting in most of the text being gibberish, was I think more than the readership was willing to do along with.)

But Louis Riel is what we’re talking about here, Brown’s biographical examination of this figure from Canadian historty, and his conflicts with the Canadian government as well as his own apparently mental issues. It is meticulously and thoroughly researched, with each issue containing copious notes in the back pages, and the story itself is drawn out with Brown’s deceptively simple and almost plain style. It makes for compelling reading, even if you’re, like, an American who thought “ah, what does this bunch of Canadian shenanigans have to do with me?” You’ll find yourself bingeing this book in short order once you start.

As I said, this was originally a ten-issue series of comics, printed in a slightly-smaller, almost digest-sized format and released over a four-year period. Its ultimate form is the collected edition, natch, available in both trade paperback and hardcover forms. But I like my set of the digest-sized comics…I love small press mini-comics, and, well, given the sales on this as individual issues was supposed not all that great, I. guess this counts as “small press.” Regardless of how you read it, it’s highly recommended.

Hi pals…the medical visits have slowed down briefly, but I still have that impending surgery which is happening sooner rather than later. Things may be sporadic still for a little while yet, but I’ll still bring that all important non-AI-generated Content™ when I can.

So let’s get back to our Final ’90s Countdown, where we look at the titles you voted as your favorites!

Hilly Rose (Astro Comics, 1995-7)

Here’s yet another comic from this period that’s on this ongoing list of books that I didn’t read, despite remembering its existence quite well. Hilly Rose by B.C. Boyer published a scant nine issues over a three year period, with a series of very nice sci-fi pulpy covers.

Aside from seeing the covers, I don’t know much about the actual contents, I’m afraid. The one trade paperback released for the series in 1996, reprinting the first five issues, is titled Hilly Rose Space Reporter so that should give you some idea. As a last resort I’ve dipped into my copy of The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide, Second Edition (2003) — last resort only because the print is far smaller than I’m comfortably able to read — for a bit more of a description:

“It’s science-fiction adventure with a strong humourous element used to undercut an otherwise hard-boiled tale.”

The description goes on to say that Hilly got her reporting job thanks to her influential father, but surprisingly gets offered an even more prestigious position, so there are mysteries and shenanigans involved, I’m sure.

I remember Boyer having done his Will Eisner’s The Spirit-esque The Masked Man in the earlier ’80s, to some critical acclaim. I don’t recall much critical response to Hilly Rose at the time (the Slings and Arrows book thought it was okay, if unfocused), but I know at least the cartooning is top notch. And hey, someone voted for it as their favorite ’90s series here, so I’m sure it’s a great series!

Okay, I couldn’t just leave it at that, so using the ‘zine search engine, and found this quote from Indy Magazine #14, describing the book as

“…a really fun science fiction comic with cute writing and beautiful art.”

And from Wizard #47:

“Throw together Terry and the Pirates and Bone, add a dash of drama and satire, and you’ll have something that comes pretty close to B.C. Boyer’s new self-published comic.”

So there you go. Seems like a fun comic worth seeking out to me!

An additional note: as I was searching up info on Hilly Rose, I found this Wikipedia entry on a radio talk show personality with the same name. I’m going to guess this person was not unknown to Boyer.