Favorite Obscure Comics?

[Zack]

There are a LOT of comics that I've found through eBay, quarter bins, etc. that I've enjoyed...but have kind of been lost to the sands of time.

Here are some of my favorites:

SPACE GHOST (Comico): It's Mark Evanier and Steve Rude doing Space Ghost a la the old cartoon, with painted colors by Ken Steacey. In addition, there's a great essay on the character by Evanier. Evanier and Rude also teamed on a fun MR. MIRACLE one-off for DC around this time.

GUMBY SUMMER FUN and GUMBY WINTER FUN specials (Comico): It's Art Adams going completely mental with scripts from Bob Burden (FLAMING CARROT) and Steve Purcell (SAM AND MAX), respectively. Literally everything you could possibly put in a comic book is contained within these two comics.

THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE (Vertigo): This was a somewhat misguided Vertigo crossover event, but the bookend single issues by Neil Gaiman are excellent, creepy stories staring the Dead Boy Detectives. I don't know that they've ever been reprinted.

BRAVO FOR ADVENTURE (Dragon Lady Press): Alex Toth drawing a hero who looks like Errol Flynn who flies biplanes. 'nuff said.

CORPUS MONSTRUM: I forget the publisher, but this is an oversize album reprinting Gary Gianni's "Monstermen" stories. Gianni in black and white in an overized format is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the eyeballs, fella.

THE UPTURNED STONE (Heavy Metal): This great graphic album by Scott Hampton is my all-time favorite Halloween comic, a creepy STAND BY ME-type story about four friends who eat a pie made from a pumpkin grown from the dirt of an unmarked grave. I believe it was reprinted in one of IDW's Hampton collections.

CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER (First): Mike Ploog does a fully-painted adaptation of his favorite book. It does a great job of capturing the charm and sense of adventure in the original book. Also amazing is his graphic album THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF SANTA CLAUS, a stunning adaptation of L. Frank Baum's book.

There are a lot more, but these are the ones that immediately come come to mind.

What are your favorites?

Zack Smith

[Lester C.]

All of you should read Xero.

[Zack]

Let me second that. Christopher Priest is one of the BEST comic writers out there, and that was some of his best work, despite editorial interference and a too-soon cancelation.

Zack Smith

[Noah Johnson]

Psychoanalysis.

Part of EC's failed "New Direction", their last-ditch attempt to keep the company solvent.

People sitting on couches talking about their feeling for four issues.

And it's all this insane 50s Freudian shit, with the analysis process on super-fast-forward.

It's too insane not to be awesome.

[MartinRedmond]

I have Gumby Summer Fun. I think I'm only missing a short story that Art Adams did in a Wonder Woman annual!

My favorite is Slow Jams by Dave Choe, though I'd like to see a more elaborate version of it one day. I think it's a comic made in 24 hours.

[Corrina]

Captain Confederacy!

.....what?

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

Batman Annual #11 by Alan Moore ("Mortal Clay")-- regardless of it now being in TPB. That never really got as much press as Moore's work in The Killing Joke. They're both stories about mentally ill villains, but I think "Mortal Clay" may even one-up The Killing Joke in that it takes the less obvious route of "Lookit me! I'm crazy AND evil! Humans are cattle who should die!" That's all well & good, but it can get really old after a while. "Mortal Clay" is just about a villain who tries to fix everything "wrong" with his life, but just ends up digging himself into a deeper & deeper hole because... well, he's a total fucknut shackin' up with a mannequin. I just find that a more original look at the old subject of 'the crazy supervillain.' Plus, it also makes for a good tip of the hat to the Englehart/Rogers Batman.

[icymatt]

The Archie Comics Knuckles the Echidna series. It was much better than the series it spun off from, what with all it's built-in mythology, unique (well...for what it was) stories, and Knuckles' ancestors constantly plotting...something.

[David O Burcham]

Klaw, the Unconquered
Devil Dinosaur
The Human Fly
Ragman
Black Goliath
Omega
Welcome Back, Kotter



All of those short-lived series from the 70's. Love 'em, love 'em LOVE 'EM!

[Draconomicon]

Chris Priests run on Conan. I think he went with his original name back there (owley?), and he introduced an incredible villain into the mythos: The Devourer of Souls.
The storyline went for good 2 years and culminated in a fantastic showdown between the devourer and conan, with a slight twist as everything was said and done.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

MOSAIC was a great, underappreciated gem of the generally mediocre mid-nineties and there was also a really fun Englehart/Stokes CONGORILLA miniseries that is worth reading if you ever see it in the cheapie bin.

[Screwtape]

Mostly single issues, but what the hell:

MOBY DICK by Bill Seinkeiwicz, and THE MAGIC FLUTE by P. Craig Russell. Both fabulous. Nuff said.

CROMWELL STONE, by Andreas (Dark Horse) - reprint of an ubercreepy French (I think) comic about a guy who discovers an immediate danger and keeps trying to track down and warn his friends, only to find that they have, one by one, succumbed to body-snatcher-like creatures. Lots of good background myth in this one. Weird, weird, weird. Art is GORGEOUS.

DEMON WITH A GLASS HAND by Harlan Ellison and Marshall Rogers - The cream of DC's SF GN series, this book is the screenplay that The Outer Limits refused to air uncut, so if you want to see the Ellison story as it should be, this is the place to go.

EPIC ILLUSTRATED #34 by Alan Moore and Rick Veitch - Bizarre Heavy-Metal type story about alien venereal disease that is absolutely one of the creepiest things I've ever read, ever.

HEARTBURST by Rick Veitch - Veitch's hugely underrated standalone SF GN for Marvel. RAVEN BANNER by Charles Vess and STARSTRUCK by Michael Wm. Kaluta are also highly recommended.

HELLRAISER #20 - This book has a Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean short story called Wordsworth that has some AMAZING stuff in it, as well as a top-flight short illustrated by Marc Hempel.

THE SPIRIT: THE NEW ADVENTURES #1 & 2 - The first issue is an Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons Spirit extravaganza from cover to cover, and the second has a great Neil Gaiman/Eddie Campbell short.

BROTHER POWER, THE GEEK by Rachel Pollack and Mike Allred - Allred in fine pop art form and Pollack giving him lots of weird shit to work with.

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT ANN. 4 by Mark Waid, Bryan Augustyn, and Joe Staton - Waid and Augustyn at the height of their flash-writing powers, doing Batman a la William Randolph Hearst with some really nifty art by Joe Staton - Bats is dead at the beginning of the story, and they have to find out how he got that way. I read the cover off my first copy of this book.

[Red Berens]

The original E-Man series published bt Charlton. This was such a fun series, and several issues have a back up story written and drawn by a very young John Byrne.

[shrike]

The Red Circle/ Archie Comics brief superhero revival titles in the early-ish 80's.

[rismo63]

(1) From a 25c bin: Sinistro, Boy Fiend, "Too Many Happy Endings," Charlton Premier (vol. 2, no. 3, 1968). Here's most of the first page's decription of the character:

Fate has cast Jack Biceps in the mold of the all-American boy ... in fact Jack Biceps intensely dislikes the good guys in our culture ... He has no love for Captain USA, the Green Spider, Aunt-Man, and he holds a special hatred for those greatest superheroes of all ... the Peacemaker, Blue Beetle, and Thunderbolt!

The comic is great, incoherent fun.

(2) I have always loved the Metal Men.

[David Bedlam]

7 Days to Fame: It's the story of how low humans will go to be entertained and how decent people end up giving them exactly the depraved entertainment they want. I wonder when issue two is out...

[Night Swordsman]

Spider-Woman(first series)esp. when Steve Leilohla(sp? my apologies if i mispelled) was drawing it.
Machine Man(the first 9 issues,drawn by Jack Kirby)
Omega the Unknown
Runaways(yes i know its still ongoing,but read it!)
Meridian
Firearm
The Black Hood
the Invaders(first series..esp. the Frank Robbins issues)
Fallen Angel(yes again,still ongoing but worth reading)
Chase
Suicide Squad

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

Oh, and the Martian Manhunter: American Secrets mini from 1992, by Gerard Jones & Eduardo Barreto. I remember that being a pretty interesting look at J'onn J'onnz's early life on Earth.