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Mars Will Send No More

~ Comic books, art, poetry, and other obsessions

Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: Eclipse Comics

more free comics?!

16 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in indie, science fiction

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Tags

big box of comics, comic books, Dreadstar, Eclipse Comics, Epic Comics, Jim Starlin, MiracleMan, Neil Gaiman

Just when I’d wrapped up a series of posts about the big box of free comics I got thanks to readers who used my affiliate links to find books at MyComicShop.com, another note from the retailer arrived to say I’d earned an additional $80 in store credit. That same week, I’d found a good deal on eBay to replace one of my favorite (and previously sold) action/crime series, DC/Vertigo’s The Losers, so I was left with very few holes in my collection. The Dark Horse Conan stories I’d like to read again were either too pricey or currently out of stock, so I dug around in my short boxes until it hit me: I still don’t have the complete original Miracleman series!

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Over the years, I’d tracked down affordable copies in respectable condition of issues #1–20, and this quest was aided near the end by Marvel’s reprints of the original series. As Marvel made new, high-quality reprints available, the ridiculous prices for the original books decreased. Issue #15, the one gem I have yet to add to my collection, used to go for several hundred bucks.

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I didn’t worry too much about collecting issues #21–24 because Marvel reprinted #21 and 22 in their repackaging of Neil Gaiman’s Golden Age storyline, and it seemed that Gaiman was slated to finish the Silver Age story that ended with a cliffhanger and was never completed due to Eclipse Comics’ demise. But here we are, years later, and we still haven’t seen the end of that story. I’m glad for Gaiman’s recent success with American Gods, but it isn’t a project that interests me. The gods I want to read about have “Miracle” in their names!

So, armed with some store credit, I picked up issues #21-23 of the original series. (Update: I’ve since added #24 to my collection.) I’ve read them all before, thanks to scans posted online, but it’s just a different and more satisfying experience to read the physical copies.

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Those three books ate up most of my store credit, but I had just enough left over to pick up another story I’ve read before but was partially incomplete in my collection: The Price by Jim Starlin. Sure, I have the color “remastered” version that was the Dreadstar Annual, but I have never seen nor owned the original magazine-sized black-and-white edition, and I just love the black-and-white painted art of the original Metamorphosis Odyssey that appeared in Epic Illustrated and started the whole Dreadstar saga.

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The original art reveals just how much the coloring/painting process enhanced the artwork’s mood and the story’s vibrancy. The original feels cold compared to the color version. It lacks the brilliant reds of the robes worn by members of the Church of the Instrumentality, the eye-popping colors that bring various cosmic and mystical energies to life on the page, and the powerful emotions suggested by the reprint’s color artwork.

Dreadstar The Price- (18)

However, the front and back-cover paintings are rendered in their original full-color and full-size glory, unlike in the reprint where they are shrunk and surrounded by additional cover elements that distract from their beauty—a complaint that at least one reader expressed in the original letters column of Dreadstar when the Annual was discussed.

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I’m pleased to now have both versions of The Price in my Dreadstar collection, and the original was the one piece I’ve felt was missing over the years. How I assembled, lost, and re-assembled the entire original series four times is a saga of collector triumph and tragedy, but I’m happy to now have every issue I ever wanted from one of my all-time favorite stories in any medium.

Now if we could just see the end of Miracleman, all would be right with the universe.

Thank you, readers and fans of sequential art for visiting this site and using it to find the books you want!

Collectors’ Guide:

Miracleman #1-24 (original 1985 series, Eclipse Comics)

Miracleman (reprint series by Marvel Comics, includes original issues #1-16)

Miracleman Golden Age (reprint series by Marvel, includes original issues #17-22 )

The Price (original magazine-sized b&w edition, Eclipse Comics)

Dreadstar Annual #1 (full-color reprint of the original, Epic/Marvel comics)

Jim Starlin’s Origin of God and Birth of Death!

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in first issue, indie

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Death, Eclipse Comics, first issue, God, indie box, Indie Comics, Jim Starlin, origin, science fiction, Star Reach, Star Reach Classics

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Jim Starlin’s single-page origin of god and his short origin of death originally appeared in the first issue of the 1974 series Star Reach. Star Reach Productions published its own Greatest Hits in 1979. In 1984, Eclipse reprinted six issues of highlights from the series as Star Reach Classics. We recommend it for fans of classic 70s science fiction. It’s in stock far more often than the original issues, and Eclipse printed it on high-quality paper, a really nice production. You can get most of them for just a couple dollars a piece.

Starlin gives us some of his finest 70s illustration, artistically superior to his more famous work on Captain Marvel, and on par with his best Warlock stories. If you enjoy these, you will enjoy Starlin’s Darklon the Mystic from that same era. Diversions of the Groovy Kind hosts some pages from Warren’s Eerie magazine where you can read part of Darklon in black and white. Or, you can drop a dollar on a back issue by Pacific Comics that reprints the complete Darklon story in color.

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Collector’s Guide: From Star Reach Classics #1; Eclipse, 1984.







If Dinosaurs Were Meant to Fly…

16 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in dinosaur

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dinosaur, dinosaur comics, dr. watchstop, eclipse, Eclipse Comics, flight, fusion, Indie Comics, ken macklin, right stuff

fusion 7 -001

In this three-page story by Ken Macklin, a dinosaur invents the first set of artificial wings. “Dr. WatchStop” was one of several original creations by Macklin, about whom I haven’t been able to discover much. It seems he was in underground comics in the 70s, too.

Collector’s Guide: from Fusion #7; Eclipse, 1988.

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Zot Ads!

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in indie, superhero

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Eclipse Comics, Indie Comics, Scott McCloud, Zot

Eclipse comics ads for Zot.

We like the collected black and white issues put out in hard and soft cover a few years back. But if there’s one thing we hate about collections, it’s when they don’t reproduce all the covers! Somebody in design thought we’d enjoy seeing all the Zot covers the size of a thumbnail in their collected edition. THEY WERE WRONG. So, it just might be worth our time to dig up all the back issues. Like most formerly expensive back issues, they don’t cost much these days, usually less than the price of new books on the stands.

This Pure Act of Creation!

14 Monday Mar 2011

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in educational, indie, superhero

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alan Moore, birth, birth scene, Eclipse Comics, Indie Comics, MiracleMan, MiracleMan 9, Rick Veitch

The birth scene in Miracleman #9 made it one of the most controversial issues of arguably the greatest superhero story of the twentieth century. Isn’t it strange that a candid depiction of birth, an event all of us experience at least once, often draws harsher criticisms than graphic depictions of violence? Hats off to Alan Moore and Rick Veitch for this one.

Collector’s Guide: From Miracleman #9; Eclipse. Reprinted in MiracleMan TPB #2.




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