Next, we look at another 80s independent company, with a very up and down history, thoguh with a lot of innovation: Comico, the Comic Company.

Comico set up shop in 1982, in Norristown, PA, with Gerry Giovinco, Bill Cucinotta and Phil & Dennis Lasorda. Their first book was an anthology, Comico Primer:



Issue 1 features several stories and introduces Giovinco's Slaughterman, a sci-fi/adventure tale. Issue 2 featured the debut of Mat Wagner's Grendel, which would become one of the flagship Comico titles, though not yet. More on Grendel later. Issue 5 sees the debut of a somewhat paleolithic Maxx, from Sam Kieth, and issue 6 features the launch of Chuck Dixon and Judith Hunt's Evangeline. The early issues are rather amateurish in appearance, though not lacking in enthusiasm. The first issue material is so-so; but, Grendel is a breath of life, in issue 2, even if it is rather rough and cartoony. The seeds of Matt Wagner's epic essay on the destructive nature of violence is there, waiting to grow.



Slaughterman got two issues, with slightly improved artwork; but, it never rose above amateurish. it has violence and nudity; but, not a whole lot to recommend.



The Jam (not the New Wave band) was Bernie Mireault's gonzo mix of urban life and relationships, vigilante adventure, and psychological musings, all in a wry, satirical package. It started out in Northguard, and its own book, from Matrix Graphic Series,; then Comico, Slave Labor Graphics, Tundra, Dark Horse and Caliber. It's quite fun and interesting, mixing mundane life with the odder antics of the titular hero. It fits in well with similar things, like Madman and Flaming Carrot, as well as stuff like Hate and Eightball. It's definitely an idisyncratic book.



Next Man was the brainchild of Roger MacKenzie and Vince Argondezzi. It features David Boyd, an Army medic in Vietnam, who is mortally wounded in a booby=trapped hootch, but is preserved alive. he becomes a test subject for Project Stepping Stone, which keeps him (and others) cryogenically frozen, while they conduct experiments. He eventually is restored to health and genetically improved, become a perfect soldier. He finds the project's purpose to be sinister and rebels, ending up on the run. If the look and plot sound a bit familiar, it's probably because of a movie that came 2 years later: Robocop. However, these ideas had been explored in several science fiction works, such as Martin Caidin's Cyborg (basis for the Six Million Dollar Man) and in comics, such as Deathlok. This was genetic engineering and cellular healing, rather than cybernetics; but, the concepts were similar. It lasted 5 issues, without raising much of a fuss, though. Argondezzi's art is a bit of a weak link, as it isn't as strong as MacKenzie's writing and doesn't quite rise to the level of the story. It's a decent comic though, and worth checking out, if you like this kind of story.

I've previously discussed Justice Machine and Maze Agency, so I won't repeat that here. They were great comics and are definitely worth looking at, especially Maze Agency, with a young Adam Hughes. Justice Machine is fine adventure, with some excellent writing by Tony Isabella (for a time) and decent, if not totally consistent art from creator Mike Gustovich. Gustovich started the book himself, with Noble Comics, then brought it to Comico (after an annual, with Texas Comics, which introduced another Comico mainstay, Elementals).

I've also discussed Jonny Quest, which Hanna-Barbera licensed to Comico, as they were debuting a new series of Jonny Quest cartoons, for syndication. They also licensed another character...



Space Ghost features Mark Evanier and Steve Rude, in a labor of love. They weave together a fantastic story, of Space Ghost facing his greatest adversaries, in an epic tale. Evanier captures the dynamic flavor of the cartoon episodes and Rude is channeling pure Toth here, staying faithful to the character models and somewhat subverting his own style. Space Ghost was a massive influence on Nexus and that was used to help sell this series, as Rude was an indie superstar, by this point. It blows away the mini-series from DC, in the 2000s, and pretty much everything else done with the character, apart from Toth's original.

Another cartoon was licensed to Comico, with a bit more of a contemporary flair: Robotech.



Robotech was a syndicated cartoon, made up of 3 unrelated series: Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, Super Dimensional Cavalry Southern Cross, and Galactic Climber Mospeada. Footage of the three series was woven together, creating 3 distinct phases in the Robotech Saga. Comico launched three series, almost simultaneously, covering each of the three storylines. The comics themselves adapted the tv episodes. The series featured artwork that was consistent with the Japanese anime style of the original cartoons and found fans in the burgeoning American anime and manga fandom.

Comico also published adaptations of the earlier Space Battleship Yamato, better known in America as Star Blazers.



The mini-series, from Phil Foglio and Doug Rice, faithfully adapts Leiji Matsumoto's original Yamato space opera epic, as the Argo (the renamed battleship Yamato), journey's through space to reach the planet Iscandar, in hope of finding a machine that can cleanse the Earth of the radiation poisoning that is slowly killing it, thanks to attacks from the Gamelons, who pursue them. The original was epic and it played in syndication in the US, in the wake of Star Wars, with renamed characters and a slightly tweaked storyline. Rice was a huge fan (probably Foglio, too) and was very faithful to the original designs.

Next, we will look at some of Comico's other offerings, which found new life in other media, and explore one of their homegrown hits, the Elementals. All of that and Gumby, to follow!

The English adaptation of the Yamato cartoon series does have issues; but, there are a lot of great stories in there and it truly is an epic series.  Leiji Matsumoto was a real titan of space opera, with Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Space Battleship Yamato, and Galaxy Express 999.  The man knows how to do epic storytelling, with characters that grow across the story.

My intro to Star Blazers was in Starlog, who covered the series when it was about to hit American shores, circa 1980.  It wasn't shown locally and I didn't see an episode until a weekend at my grandparents' home, which features the crew saying goodbye to their families, before leaving the solar system, and hero Derek Wildstar (Susumu Kodai in Yamato) has no one to speak to.  It's a very poignant episode, about human attachments and frailties.  The series often shifted between the emotional drama and the action.  I had the first few episode on vhs, from the commercial releases, though never saw the entire story.  It is a little slow at getting going, and the voicework is fairly typical of these translations, which can be stilted.

I'm a huge fan of Space Ghost, having seen it and the Herculoids paired in a re-run show, in the late 70s (post-Star Wars, when the networks fell over anything related to space).  Those original cartoons are great adventures and just churn along.  The villains are pretty spectacular, too.  At the end of the series, they teamed the bulk of them up as  the Council of Doom, in a serial that finds Space Ghost teaming up with other H-B action heroes, like Shazzan, the Herculoids, and Mightor.  I also watched the Space Stars series, which had new adventures of Space Ghost, teh Herculoids, Teen Force (a revamp of the Galaxy Trio), and Astro and the Space Mutts (definite weak link).  They weren't bad; but, lacked the spark of the original, which was done before the violence crackdown that made 70s cartoons so tame.  This comic captures the fun and action of those 60s cartoons, while also giving us some character development they never had time for.  By comparison, that DC mini was a violent, poorly developed mess, that ignored the best elements of the series.  I'd almost rather have had it been Space Ghost Coast to Coast (which had its amusing moments).

Only picked up the odd and end Comico stuff as much of it that ever caught my attention. Followed the Justice Machine, Elementals and the Robotech series throughout their runs. Gonna have to drag those out one day and read again to see if time and age has changed them for me?

More Comico...



Az was a two issue B&W comic, from Phil Lasorda, one of the Comico publishers. Like Gerry Giovinco's Slaughterman, it's a mix of sci-fi and underground cartoon tropes and artistic style, and also looks pretty amateurish. These early experiments from the guys who started Comico would soon be shown up by another of their crowd and they stuck to publishing his work, and others. more in a moment.



Bloodscent was something truly groundbreaking. The story features a look into the mind and the actions of a serial killer. If that wasn't enough, said look was illustrated and shot straight from the pencil art of Gene Colan. This was pure, unadulterated Colan, with all of his mood, impressions, and cinematic staging. It's an exercise in terror and artistry, with an introduction from Tom Savini. I remember reading the article about this in Comic Scene and being intrigued, though it was a long time before I saw it. Colan had mostly broken away from DC and Marvel (though he did the odd assignment for them) and had been doing things like Detectives, Inc at Eclipse and some other stuff. No Colan fan worth his salt should be missing this book.



Evangeline debuted in Comico Primer and then got two issues, at Comico. It's from husband and wife Charles (!!) Dixon and Judith Hunt. Yep, that's Charles, as in "Chuck" Dixon. The series follows a nun, in the future, to various destinations and adventures. The first issue, "Guns of Mars," sees a space western, as Dixon and Hunt channel a whole lot of Clint Eastwood into a tale of vengeance. Evangeline, a nun, is driving a rig on the Martian surface and stops at a rest stop, where two men get into an argument, over a game. She identifies one and shoots him dead. The other ends up accompanying her, as she brings the rig to town, fulfilling a promise to the dead owner. We learn of massacred nuns and orphans, and Evangeline's quest for vengeance, against the killers and the people behind it. The inside cover features Evangeline in a pose, with her weapons, taken straight from Outlaw Josey Wales...



and the Hispanic companion keeps calling Evangeline "Blondie", after Eli Wallach in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. It's a great adventure thriller, right up Dixon's alley.  Hunt's art is terrific and mixes an Alien/Outland future lived-in frontier look, with an old fashioned western tale of vengeance.

Issue 2 sees Evangeline, who is also, apparently, a countess, on a ship traveling to family holdings (as in the Church), when the ship is hijacked. The hijackers are linking up with a derelict Earth military vessel, which contained a cargo of stolen gems. turns out the hijacker chief was a senior officer who pulled off the crime, leaving other s for dead. They aren't dead, and much fighting and double-crossing ensues, while Evangeline and a petty thief (who cut his way into the transport to steal some cargo) are caught in the middle. A small spacecraft, seen later, bears a resemblance to a certain snow speeder, from some 1980 sci-fi movie.

These are darn good adventure tales and worth checking out.



Amazon was a mini-series from Steven Seagle and a young artist who got a bit of attention, thanks to another Comico book, Tim Sale. It features a very political story about a reporter who comes to the Amazon in search of a story. A saboteur has been hitting a timber mining company. What he finds is a missing American, who falls in with a local tribe, and a spirit summoned to protect the people and the land, which inhabits the American, Robertson. The reporter doesn't believe in that; but, he slowly encounters more and more unusual things. It's a stinging tale of environmentalism, as the topic of the deforestation of the Amazon was starting to come to the fore. Seagle and Sale are decidedly on the side of environmentalists, though the journalist tries to stay neutral.  He isn't neutral in comments about a group of American missionaries who are seen in the first issue, who are compared to strip-miners. It's strong stuff, the kind of thing Eclipse liked to do; but, Comico did them one better. It's a very well done mystery/propaganda piece. it's not for everyone, though, and stirred controversy (among those who saw it). Comico swam through a lot of that, around this time. Grendel was in the midst of a storyline that pitted the Church against a new Grendel, who was tearing it down. Diana Schutz engaged in some heated debates in the letters column about religion and the historical actions of the Church, with a capital C, versus the professed teachings of their faith. Comico wasn't quite as politically active as Eclipse; but, it was there.



Ribit! was a 4-issue mini-series from Frank Thorne, mixing fantasy and sci-fi, sex, violence, babes with big hooters in metal bikinis, and photos of Thorne and Linda Berhle (she of ample cleavage) as characters. I'll be honest, I've never been able to get very far reading anything written by Frank Thorne. He's a great artist; but, his own stories come across as rather repressed, juvenile stuff. I've tried Ghita, Lann, Moonshine McJuggs, and this and I pretty much skimmed through them. Thorne has moments; but, they are few and they don't really knit well into whole stories, to my eyes. Your mileage may vary. This series did cause a bit of trouble, though.

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, the Reagan and Bush administrations made noises about obscenity in the media and arts, with the Meese Commission and attacks on Robert Maplethorpe, the National Endowment for the Arts and other elements coming under fire. Conservative Christian and family groups were emboldened and pushed local government agencies in going after what they perceived as obscenity. Comics were not left out of the bargain. in 1986, the shop Friendly Franks, in Chicago, was raided and the manager arrested for selling obscene materials. The case led to industry and fandom fundraising drives and involvement from civil liberties groups, which ultimately led to the founding of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. That was just one of several raids in this era. I can't find the exact reference; but, there was another, I believe in the southwest (Oklahoma had several press-hungry prosecutors who targeted obscenity cases) where a shop was raided and Ribit! was seized as "child pornography." The main character is diminutive and sexualized; but, is not a child. She is a transformed adult lizard. It's made pretty clear, if you actually read the thing. That case was eventually dropped, as it became clear the state didn't have a leg to stand on; but, it sent chills down the industry. The Michael Diana Case went even further and justice was not served on that one. I was working at Barnes & Noble, a few years later and we were targeted by James Dobson's Focus on the Family organization, for carrying books by photographers Sally Mann and Jock Sturges. It died down when B&N stared down the group and the authorities upheld the First Amendment rights of the works. Around the same time, Blockbuster was raided in Oklahoma for carrying The Tin Drum, which was claimed to represent child pornography, due to a couple of scenes.

It ended up being more attention than the comic go from any other source, which kind of illustrates the blowback that censorship tends to bring. Same with ann and Struges, as we had more people interested in the books thanks to Dobson, than were ever aware of their existence before the brouhaha.

Anyway..

We finally come to two books that became synonymous with Comico and which garnered them tons of fan and industry press and praise (and awards): Mage and Grendel



I can't begin to do justice with Mage and Grendel, in a short space; I will come back to them in more depth. That said, these were the favored children of Comico. Both are the creation of Matt Wagner and they represent two sides of light and darkness.

Mage tells the story of Kevin Matchstick, a somewhat depressed young man (resembling Wagner) who encounters a street magician and finds himself drawn into a world of evil creatures and their attacks. It turns out that Kevin is the reincarnated hero of long past and he must find the hero inside him. The magician, known as the Mage, helps him do it. Along the way, they meet a young woman, named Edsel, who becomes a knight for Kevin, and whose baseball bat becomes a legendary weapon, in Kevin's hands.

Mage is about heroism, about finding the courage that resides within ordinary people that rises to the surface when faced with true evil, in desperate struggles. Kevin believes he is no one; but, others see the hero within him; and, eventually, he does too. However, the fight isn't without casualties. This is a truly mature work and was lightyears ahead of the other work from the Comico partners. At the heart of it is an essay on finding your inner strengths and believing in yourself, while also taking responsibility for the world around you. Kevin is forced to do that and, eventually rises to the occasion. The series was collectively known as Mage: the Hero Discovered. It was discussed that the story would progress, with Mage: The Hero Defined and Mage: The Hero Denied. Comico's bankruptcy disrupted the continuation of Mage for years, as Comico co-owned the book and it took several years for the legal issues to be sorted, before Mage returned, at Image. We are still waiting for the final volume. 80s comic fans have learned to be extremely patient, though most of us have given up on Big Numbers.

Grendel is a long essay on violence and the destructive nature of it. The series begins with Hunter Rose, a polymath and bestselling author, who is also the criminal overlord Grendel, after the monster in Beowulf. Hunter Rose is the darling of society and the arts world, Grendel the scourge of society, orchestrating various crimes through agents and his own daring. he is a vicious killer, though a surgical one. fear is as much a weapon as his two-pronged fork weapon. He is hunted by Argent, a humanoid wolf. The two clash in an epic battle.  This Grendel bears elements of classic pulp villains, Fantomas and Dr Mabuse, as well as Prof. Moriarty, Arsene Lupin, and comic s figure Diabolik.

The series progressed with new hosts for the spirit of Grendel, first directly, via descendents and direct contacts, then across history and society. Grendel's granddaughter is the next, a writer who takes the legacy to hunt the murderer of her son. Her lover becomes the next host, then a policeman. It grows to inhabit gangs and others. It eventually settles in a mentally disturbed man, Eppy Thatcher, who attacks a corrupt Western Church and its pontiff. Eppy finds an ally in the manipulative Orion Asante, who turns out to be the true vessel for Grendel. Orion tries to turn Grendel into a positive force, though even the noblest intentions are undone by violence. Grendel came to an end, at Comico, with issue 40, the end of Orion's story. After a shorter dormancy (compared to Mage), Grendel came back to life at Dark Horse, which published War Child, the already planned storyline, and Four Devils, One Hell, which started the Grendel Tales series (though Comico previewed the idea) where others got to play in Wagner's sandbox. There is so much meat there, I want to explore it in its entirety. So, stay tuned, as I will revisit these books, as well as Nexus and Badger.

Wagner was also able to, finally (!!!) publish the long-planned Batman/Grendel crossover, where Hunter Rose went up against Batman, in a fantastic story of two evenly matched titans.  This was followed by a second crossover, between Grendel Prime (introduced in War Child) and Batman. I first saw artwork for the original crossover, in 1991, in Atlanta, when it looked like the project was dead, due to the bankruptcy. Matt Wagner had it on display, at his table. I watched him and John K Snyder III create painted sketches, using colored paper and paint markers and wished I had budgeted more for artwork, as well as comics. He talked about the slim possibilities of getting the crossover out and the headaches he was enduring, over the issues.

So, that is Comico; well, the parts that count. The Andrew Lev era exemplified what was wrong with a lot of 90s publishers, who came and went quickly. The original Comico started following a different trend, the black & white boom, then turned into a pretty decent independent publisher, with critically acclaimed books, mixed with eclectic titles and licensed work; but which undercut itself with bad business decisions. The first sign of the fall was the defection of Bob Schreck and Diana Schutz to Dark Horse. Bankruptcy claimed the company not too much later. Some titles found new life elsewhere, at places like Dark Horse and Innovation. It is Innovation that I look at, next.

^This series came on my radar a year or so ago and I have been meaning to start tracking it down, but haven't had the chance yet. This review might be what kickstarts me into looking for it.

-M

Ironically, today I put together a photo poster, for a funeral, for a Vietnam veteran, who won the Purple Heart. The photo was his Army portrait, from the 60s.