final ’90s countdown

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.

Okay, the voting, she is over, and I have counted your entries and there is one clear “winner” — but that said, all nominated are winners as they represent a solid representation of the variety of great comics the 1990s had to offer. Often a maligned decade due to the long shadow cast by the massive market crash, it was still a peak time for exciting works by talented creators.

I only had to disqualify a couple votes…since I had decided From Hell was disqualified having first appeared in the Taboo anthology in the late ’80s, I felt this also applied to Wolff and Byrd Counselors of the Macabre since it first showed up as a strip in 1979. Sorry, pals…it is a good comic.

Some of you lamented that Eightball was disqualified due to its 1989 debut, and that it was much a ’90s comic as its indie brethren. I was going to say it got covered during my Final ’80s Countdown…but rather, Eightball-precursor Lloyd Llewellyn was the title covered. I guess folks thought it was a ’90s title during that poll, too. …Maybe I’ll have to do a special review of Eightball as a sidebar to all this to make up for its borderline status.

The next thing I had to think about a bit was Peter Bagge’s Hate. Technically, it’s a continuation of material that had appeared in Bagge’s humor anthology Neat Stuff, which had started in the 1980s. It would seem to put this in the same category as From Hell and Wolff and Byrd, series that began in previous publications before continuing as its own title. But I think the shift of focus from “The Bradleys” in Neat Stuff to just specifically Buddy Bradley in Hate is enough of a transformation to make Hate its own thing. If it had been a series of stories titled “Hate” in Neat Stuff that eventually spun off into a separate comic of the same name, that would have been different. I realize it’s really splitting hairs, but I’m making the call that Hate isn’t disqualified.

A more general realization is that, looking over the final list of titles here, there are some comics I’m just plain not going to have much to say about. I mean, I recognize every single comic suggested, we definitely carried them at the shop, but I know literally nothing about them otherwise. It’s not like the ’80s Countdown where I had at least something to note about each title from personal experience, whether I read it or not. I’m chalking this up to my own transition from being a fan in the ’80s, being more immersed in reading the comics and reading about them in ‘zines and such, to working in comics retail through the ’90s, where it was more about selling the comics to customers. I mean, of course I had to know something about each title in order to do properly sell them, it’s not the same as being a fan and, y’know, actually reading them. It’s like memorizing something for a test and then immediately forgetting it afterwards once you don’t need it anymore.

Well, okay, not the best analogy there, but I hope you get my meaning. I’ll do my best discussing some of these titles I’m knowledge-deficient on…get ready for lots of Wikipedia links. …Well, okay, I’ll try to find more personal and informative links than that, but we’ll muddle through all this together, I hope.

On the other hand, a few of these titles I have plenty to say about, so gird your internet loins for that. I’ll start discussing these comics next week, starting with the lowest vote-getters in alphabetical order and working our way up through future installments over the next few…months, probably? Anyway, thanks to all you folks for participating (and I haven’t yet looked at the seperate discussion thread on the voting…I’ll get to that, too!)!

Please leave the comments section for the previous post just for votes, but feel free to discuss what’s goin’ on right here. Thanks!

So I think I’ve recovered sufficiently from the Final ’80s Countdown series of posts, in which I tallied your votes for your favorite indie comic titles of the 1980s and discussed them all.

Thus, it’s time for the Final ’90s Countdown, in which I ask, nay, demand of you to tell me your favorite independent title of the much-maligned 1990s era of comic books right here in this post’s comments section. ’90s comics may get a lot of grief, but honest, there were good books too!

There are rules, because aren’t there always?

• This poll is for indie titles only…no Marvel, no DC, no Vertigo, none of their other subdivisions, etc. I know Wildstorm leaves Image and joins DC Comics in 1999, but…let’s try to stick to pre-DC Wildstorm if you’re picking one of their titles.
  

• No one-shots or graphic novels…just actual comic book series that ran at least three issues.
  

• Series had to start in the 1990s. If it’s a feature that ran through multiple mini-series, you can nominate all those as “one” series if you want, but those series had to have started in the ’90s (like, for example, Lady Death, but not the 1980s-originating Concrete).

  EDIT: if you’re not sure when the series started, you can look it up on the Grand Comics Database!
  

• Just ONE vote per person, please! That means leaving just one title in your comment…maybe with a little additional commentary if you want, or it could just be the name of the book.
  

• I am going to have to request my more…verbose commenters to please not get into an extended conversation in this comments section. Just leave it for votes only, please. (I’ll set up a separate post where you can chat about this here.)

And I think that’s about it. Please tell me your favorite indie comics of the 1990s, and eventually I’ll cut off voting and start discussin’. I’ll try to get some folks on Bluesky to participate, too, to boost up the numbers hopefully.

Thanks, pals, and we’ll see how it goes! I look forward to talking about your choices! Even if it’s Purgatori!