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Mars Will Send No More

~ Comic books, art, poetry, and other obsessions

Mars Will Send No More

Tag Archives: first issue

Indie Box: Darwyn Cooke’s Parker Adaptations

21 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in crime

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

book review, crime, darwyn cooke, donald westlake, first issue, graphic novel, indie box, Indie Comics, parker, richard stark, the hunter

Reading The Hunter sheds light on how much Donald Westlake’s series of Parker novels influenced the ultra-gritty Sin City series by Frank Miller. It seems fair to say that the style of Sin City also influenced Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of its predecessor, bringing it all full-circle.

For example, Cooke sometimes fills a page with a single image and a column of narration on the side, something Miller often did, especially in the first Sin City volume The Hard Goodbye, and which John Byrne later parodied in She-Hulk.

Cooke also shows a fondness for the BAM sound effect rendered in blocky lettering when a pistol fires.

It’s a classic sound that brings to mind Miller’s iconic pages from the sixth issue of The Hard Goodbye where the sound effect becomes the frames for the action, and it reminds us that Westlake’s Parker and Miller’s Marv are cut from the same cloth.

If you crave stories with empowered women, then Parker isn’t for you. Parker’s world is a man’s world. Women are trotted onstage mostly for sex and betrayal. In Cooke’s four volumes, the woman with the most agency and initiative is Alma in The Outfit, since she sets up the heist while having her own secret plans. She wants to be a femme fatale, but her treachery does not end well for her.

Despite depicting a few variations on the female form, Cooke seems to have a default idea about what a beautiful woman looks like, and the faces of women in The Hunter often resemble faces he’s drawn before in his superhero comics. The face of the woman who betrayed Parker could easily be Cooke’s Wonder Woman or Catwoman, and that makes her feel a bit generic.

Oddly, that works for The Hunter, because Westlake built the story around characters who don’t run very deep—whether male or female. They are more like archetypal examples of the tropes of hard-boiled detective and crime fiction, as if they are so primal to the genre that they need little exploration. The Hunter is unconcerned with delving into what makes them unique, remaining entirely focused on the relentless advance of the revenge plot. If you want well-rounded female characters with depth and agency, go read some Greg Rucka or Gail Simone stories—because it ain’t happening in Parker!

This criticism didn’t stop me from being totally caught up in the story. What I love about Cooke’s adaptation of The Hunter is how he chooses when to tell the story wordlessly and when to deliver exposition. We get some narration and one brief line of dialogue on the first page, and then nearly twenty-five pages of story told without a single word or sound effect. But in those wordless pages, all the action is so clear, expressive, and compelling that it comes as a shock when words once again appear on the page.

I also love how Cooke’s stripped-down approach to visuals honors Westlake’s stripped-down approach to prose for Parker. Compared to Westlake’s more lighthearted Dortmunder novels, the sentences in the Parker series are much leaner and tighter. Cooke’s artwork echoes that with a kind of minimalism, a simplicity that only conveys the bare essence of details to create the mood and tell the story. Panels lack borders, and thick shadows and bright light do almost all the work of defining images without lines. Cooke might depict the ironwork on a bridge by only inking its shadows and never drawing the outline of the overall shapes. While I love the detailed linework of artists such as Juan Jose Ryp, Geoff Darrow, or Steve McNiven, Cooke creates compelling environments and people using light, shadow, and monochromatic midtones.

The Outfit relies entirely on purple, and The Score uses a warm, dirty yellow that suits the setting in a hot desert mining town. While Sin City did something similar in a few volumes, those colors were more like occasional highlights than Cooke’s creative midtones.

It would have been fun to see another volume in red. The end of the fourth volume did promise another return of Parker. Sadly, Cooke was taken from us by cancer in 2016 at only fifty-three years old, and we never saw a fifth Parker adaptation.

Volumes two through four had interesting moments. The Outfit abruptly interrupts the established visual style to insert a series of explanations about a series of crimes. We get a multi-page newspaper article about a casino robbery, cartoon guides to horse-race gambling and smuggling cash on airplane flights to pay for heroin, and several pages of how to operate an illegal “numbers” betting operation. Everything I previously knew about “numbers running” came from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, so it was interesting to get Westlake’s rundown on these vintage illegal enterprises.

The fourth and final volume, Slayground, traps Parker in an abandoned amusement park where he comes up with clever ways to use the environment against gangsters who want his money from a job he narrowly escaped. One of his ideas is spraying a blob of paint on every surface in the hall of mirrors, then luring someone in. I’ve seen so many hall-of-mirrors scenes in movies that I hoped to never see one again, but this was a brilliant take that restored my faith in reflective surfaces.

Slayground also delivers powerful moments of cinematic, wordless storytelling such as a four-panel page of a car we just saw lose control on the icy roads on the previous page, and now goes tumbling over our heads into the distance. You can almost feel the impact.

But of all four tales, my favorite is the first: a relentless revenge over a double-cross that made a heist go horribly wrong. It’s harder than hard-boiled and blacker than noir, a morally vacant tale about a repulsive protagonist who gets the job done with his hands.

It’s no spoiler to tell you that Parker makes it out of The Hunter alive. Westlake wrote twenty-four of these novels, and Cooke adapted four. At this point, you go into the series knowing the stakes are not life-or-death for Parker.

That does lower the dramatic tension. If you know the main character can’t be killed, then that lowers your investment in his success. In a series such as Sin City or Criminal, where individual stories are told out of order, a character might very well meet their end in any particular episode—and often does. Investment is high. You never know what’s coming next.

With Parker, we know he is unstoppable. The fun comes not from wondering whether he will live or die, but discovering how he bends circumstances to his will no matter what life throws at him. Parker’s world is a grim place, and he is not a role model nor even likeable. But he is enjoyable as an immovable object in a world of irresistible forces, or maybe the other way around. He possesses a singular focus and physical strength, and a superior insight into his amoral world of crime, lies, and power that helps him make it out alive—and, if he’s lucky, with a bit of money in his pocket.

Collector’s Guide: You can currently get the complete four-volume set of Cooke’s Parker adaptations in digital format for about $40 through Kindle/Comixology. Each volume was also printed in hardcover and paperback editions.

indie box: Tales of the Cherokee

02 Wednesday Oct 2019

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

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Tags

black and white, Cherokee, creation myth, first issue, Gene Gonzales, indie box, Indie Comics, Mandalay Books, Native American Myths, Native Americans, Tales of the Cherokee

Today’s pick from the box of indie and small-press comics is Tales of the Cherokee. Let’s have a look at Gene Gonzales’ illustrated version of the Cherokee creation myth in “How the World Was Made.” Dig that splash page featuring the worlds above and below!




Below is another tale, a Cherokee love story Gene calls “The Origin of Strawberries.”

Collector’s Guide:
– From Tales of the Cherokee #1, Mandalay Books 2001.

To see current works by Gene Gonzales, visit
http://www.genegonzales.com and http://www.genegonzales.blogspot.com



indie box: This Is Sold-Out

18 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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Augustus Mattick III, black and white, FantaCo, first issue, indie box, Indie Comics, John M Hebert, Roger Green, This is Sold Out, Tom Skulan

This is Sold-Out lampoons the comic book industry of the 1980s, and no one walks away without a few lumps. It’s too bad the creators never did a sequel satirizing the 1990s speculator craze. Long-time comic book fans will enjoy picking out the altered comic book titles on the racks and the ridiculous hyperbole about the medium we know and love.

My favorite moment might be when a rodent and a turtle use random words from the dictionary to come up with the title of the latest black-and-white indie sensation: The Catastrophic Obsequious Belgian Hibernation Retrieval. Someone must create that book!

This Is Sold Out has an outrageous second issue that concludes the story as the “Color Police” get together to eradicate all competition for the black-and-white madness. Absolute lunacy!

Collector’s Guide: From Sold Out; 1986, FantaCo. Last we checked, FantaCo was defunct and this title is out of print.

indie box: Salvador

11 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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Boom Studios, first issue, indie box, Indie Comics, JK Woodward, Mark Polish, Michael Polish, Polish Brothers, Salvador, Sebastian Jones

Today we open the indie short-box to find the first and only issue of a series that never happened: Salvador!

salvador 1-003

The ultimate intent of the lavish, wordless art remains a mystery to me. I felt like I followed the central character’s journey, even though the world was unfamiliar to me, and I could draw some conclusions about what it was all about. But did this episode set up a longer storyline, or is this issue a self-contained story? What did the creators think was coming next?

The blurb in the back of the book, which you can see in the scans below, says Salvador was to be a five-issue series, and the main character was a “savior for DNA discards” in a world of genetic engineering gone awry. He can fly, but he was born brittle, so he is easily broken. I don’t know if that will help you make more sense of this unfinished work, but have a look at these gorgeous pages anyway.

Collector’s Guide:
Salvador #1; Boom Studios, 2007.

salvador 1-005

Interview with 4 Seconds creator Paul O’Connor

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

4 seconds, Billy King, comic book scripting, concept art, digital comics, first issue, Indie Comics, interview, Karl Kesel, Paul O'Connor, think fast, thrillbent

Author Paul O’Connor joins us today for an interview about his newly launched digital comic book story 4 Seconds. You can read 4 Seconds for free at Mark Waid’s Thrillbent. Paul discusses with us the technical side of producing a story for Thrillbent’s unique reading platform, including how he invented a new scripting technique working with artist Billy King on the initial concept design and artist Karl Kesel on the final story.

Paul, what is 4 Seconds and how did it come about?

4 Seconds is an original comic story in digital form published at Mark Waid’s Thrillbent site. It is free to read right now, and I hope everyone will give it a shot. The story is self-contained and easy to complete in one sitting. It tells the tale of a petty thief who discovers she can see into the future… but only 4 seconds into the future! This proves to be just enough superpower to get her into trouble.

The story was born when I won Mark Waid’s open-microphone pitch contest at San Diego Comic-Con. I was super-excited for this job, because I am a big believer in the new way stories can be told at Thrillbent. There are dozens of stories at the site, many of them are free, and they all have something to say about how comic stories can be told beyond the printed page.

As someone who makes books, I’d love to hear about the technical side of creating 4 Seconds specifically for the Thrillbent digital format. What’s unique about Thrillbent compared to printed comics, or even other digital platforms?

Even during the pitch stage, it was important to me that I create a story best told (or perhaps only told) in the Thrillbent format. Thrillbent specializes in digital-native stories that expand the way comics stories are told. It is critical to understand that these are still comics stories. They aren’t motion comics, and they don’t have soundtracks or spoken dialogue. They are still words, pictures, and panels that the reader pages through at their own pace.

One way things are different is in the fluidity of transitions afforded by this platform. For instance, we can do actual fades, wipes, and pans, imparting a more cinematic feel to a traditional comics story. Likewise, this platform allows for new types of page architecture and panel borders, and new approaches to balloon placement and dialogue construction. In creating 4 Seconds, artist Karl Kesel and I tried to take full advantage of being in a paperless environment, and using this platform to tell our story in a more memorable way. 4 Seconds is built from the ground-up to be a new thing in familiar clothing.

Tell me how those possibilities came to life in creating a scene from 4 Seconds.

For example, we might have a “master shot”—say, a nighttime interior of the mansion of the villainous Anton Glass. Rather than show the entire shot at once, our story might reveal it in portions—first showing just that slice illuminated by the moody moonlight leaking through the floor-to-ceiling windows, then picking up the trail of bloody footprints on the floor, then finding the outstretched hand of a body lying just inside the shadows.

Across this, we place our characters, posing them for the critical moments of storytelling. And then we bring in dialogue balloons, captions, and sound effects. What Karl had to deliver were all the many individual panels, frames, and character poses that made up the story, which are then placed in the correct order for viewing via Thrillbent.

The results are equivalent to what might be many panels and pages in a paper comic, all playing out in the same narrative space using comic conventions of panels to parse time and focus reader attention on the sequential elements needed to tell the story. It’s still the same toolbox used in conventional comics, but there’s greater freedom of expression in how it’s used, particularly when it comes to isolating specific elements that you want the reader to see.

How was writing the 4 Seconds script different from comic scripts you’ve written for other media? Was it anything like a traditional comic book script?

This was a very different process. The Thrillbent format demanded that I take a new approach to scripting, and I also challenged myself to think in visual terms from the get-go. I deliberately went outside of my comfort zone of concentrating on dialogue and description and leaving everything else up to the artist. Instead, I wanted to provide a deeply thought-out visual blueprint for Karl, which he could (and did!) use as a springboard to make things even better in the penciling stage.

That meant I was doing scene-blocking and transitions—new things for me—and also figuring out how to break the rules as fast as I made them! To tie it all together, I invented a hybrid script form that offers conventional comics direction, dialogue, etc., but abandoned panels as the unit of storytelling in favor of frame advances. Determining how much information to add/change to each advance drives the pace of the story, and sometimes the challenge is as much about deciding what to retain from previous frames more than it is about what to add.

Thank you, Paul! 4 Seconds keeps the twists and turns coming right up to the very end. Revealing the story in frames like this means readers share Cassie’s experience of her world. They know something is coming in that empty space of the future, but they can’t see far enough ahead to be sure what it is. I found it drew me into the story and made me care that much more about what happened to her.

Read 4 Seconds for free at Mark Waid’s Thrillbent.

indie comics spotlight: 4 Seconds by O’Connor and Kesel

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

4 seconds, first issue, four seconds, Indie Comics, Karl Kesel, Mark Waid, online comics, Paul O'Connor, san diego comic-con, think fast, thrillbent, web comics

4 seconds paul oconnor promo

4 Seconds is a noir thriller about a petty thief who discovers she can see four seconds into the future. That’s just enough precognition to get into trouble, but not nearly enough time to pull off the heist that will save her sister’s life.

4 Seconds is an original story from Paul O’Connor of Longbox Graveyard, in collaboration with artist Karl Kesel, launching today at: Mark Waid’s Thrillbent.com. The complete story is FREE to read online.

Paul’s pitch for 4 Seconds won Mark’s fifteen-second pitch contest at San Diego Comic-Con. Click here for the full story of that memorable event.

indie comics spotlight: robbie burns witch hunter

27 Monday Jul 2015

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

emma beeby, first issue, Gordon Rennie, indie box, Indie Comics, robbie burns witch hunter, tiernen trevallion

In June, to promote their inclusion as award nominees by the Scottish Independent Comic Book Alliance, the creators of Robbie Burns: Witch Hunter made a preview of their work available. We read it, were immediately hooked, and ordered the book. One reviewer on Amazon has compared the artwork to Mike Mignola’s style on Hellboy, and we will agree that if you like Hellboy then you will love Witch Hunter.

robbie burns witch hunter sample splash

The story begins with the humiliation of poet Robbie Burns, a historical figure Witch Hunter brings to life in fiction. Soon, Burns stumbles across a pagan ritual in an abandoned church, a ritual matched in its sensuality only by its pure evil. There, Burns is rescued by a pair of experienced dispatchers of hellish hordes. And so begins his adventure. (Burns composed a horror poem you may know: Tam O’Shanter, first published in 1791. It serves as the inspiration for this tale.)

Did we mention how much we love the artwork in this book? Let us say it again, to give artist Tiernen Trevallion his due. After all, writers Gordon Rennie and Emma Beeby did win the Scottish Independent Comic Book Alliance ‘Best Writer’ awards at the Glasgow Comic Convention, Beeby won ‘Best New Writer’, and the book itself won ‘Best Graphic Novel’. But it’s Trevallion’s artwork, along with Jim Campbell’s lettering, that brings the rollicking script to life for us on the page.

robbie burns witch hunter sample page

You may recognize co-author Gordon Rennie from his work on Rogue Trooper, a classic 2000AD series we have featured on this site. So, if you are a fan of that unique Scottish comic-book sensibility which brought readers in the States such popular writers as Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, or if you are a fan of 2000AD comics in general, that’s just one more reason to read Witch Hunter.

Our favorite character is Meg: tough as nails, quick with profanity, great with a crossbow, and seemingly unafraid to ride into the very mouth of hell itself to do battle with the demonic forces of the underworld.

robbie burns witch hunter sample panels

Meg stands in sharp contrast to the vacuous ladies Burns pleasures himself with in the opening pages. She’s every bit an action hero with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, and her inclusion in this tale endears us to it all the more. And to think that Meg was merely the noble horse in the original Tam O’Shanter!

Fast-paced adventure with an outstanding cast of leading characters fighting the hordes of hell make Robbie Burns: Witch Hunter an enjoyable and unforgettable read. We look forward to more work by these creators and from Renegade Arts Entertainment.

You can order Robbie Burns: Witch Hunter directly from Renegade Arts Entertainment, or you can find it on Amazon in both hardcover and Kindle editions.

demo 1 by brian wood and becky cloonan

14 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in first issue

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

becky cloonan, black and white, Brian Wood, Dark Horse, DC Comics, demo, dreams, first issue, indie box, Indie Comics, Vertigo Comics, waking life of angels

demo 1 brain wood becky cloonan (2)

These page come from the beginning of the first issue of DC/Vertigo’s Demo series by Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan. AIT/Planet Lar published a twelve-issue Demo series in 2003-2004 before Wood and Cloonan began with a fresh number one at Vertigo in 2010. DC/Vertigo published both series in two Demo paperbacks, and Dark Horse put them together in a single Demo Complete Edition which is 464 pages softcover.

demo 1 brain wood becky cloonan (3)

I love Becky Cloonan’s black-and-white artwork and how she brings to life this dramatic first issue where dreams and reality intersect. Brian Wood is the author of DMZ, one of my favorite series. I did not feel like the target audience for the romantic drama of Wood’s New York Four and New York Five, but I have seen a few issues of Northlanders which interested me, and I enjoyed the three pointless punk-rock issues of Pounded.

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indie spotlight: Silvertongue 30xx, Space-time District Attorney

14 Friday Nov 2014

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

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black and white, first issue, Indie Comics, little nando, manga, silvertongue 30xx, spacetime detective

silvertongue interior 0 cover

The opening scene of Silvertongue 30xx: Space-Time District Attorney caught our eye and drew us into this book. The coin falling, flipping end over end from heads to tails, in a dramatic beam of light, with short voiceovers: what a visually dramatic way to bring us in and set up the story! In the scenes that follow, creator Nando Sarmiento delivers on the expectation for visually striking settings.

silvertongue interior 1

The opening scenes make it clear this digital manga will address political and cultural conflicts in its two-part story, The Chippewa Vendetta. Silvertongue Hernandez and all his supporting characters have a unique perspective on the central conflict: industrial construction and waste disposal in tribal lands. Each scene explores what they personally have at stake, and this really puts the meat on the bones of the main courtroom drama. We expected more of a straight detective story, but found ourselves drawn into a story you don’t usually see in comic books.

silvertongue interior 2

As with many first issues, it can feel like we need to do a lot of catching up to understand the main scenes. Background exposition takes the form of a news broadcast which reinforces the court case as a spectacle, a form of entertainment. The case takes place in a gigantic court-on-wheels whose laws change as it crosses state lines. This puts pressure on the case and keeps the dramatic tension at a feverish pitch.

silvertongue interior 3

The first issue promises an episodic manga with entertaining, dramatic artwork and character-driven scenes. We look forward to seeing how this story continues, and what other thought-provoking scenarios Nando can invent for his space-time district attorney.

View more interior artwork and a short video about Silvertongue 30xx: Space-time District Attorney at Little Nando’s website, where you can purchase the book in several digital formats.

Insanity in Black and White: Borderline by Trillo & Risso

27 Thursday Mar 2014

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

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Borderline, Carlos Trillo, collection, Dynamite Entertainment, Eduardo Risso, first issue, indie box, Indie Comics

Borderline TPB Collection - (4)

Four paperback volumes collect Borderline by Eduardo Risso and Carlos Trillo, the artist/writer team of Chicanos. Many fans know Risso from 100 Bullets. This science fiction serial overflows with weirdness, mental instability, assassination, and spying, rendered in Risso’s incredible high-contrast black and white style.

Borderline TPB Collection - (6)

Not for the little tykes, Borderline graphically depicts sex and violence in the course of twisted psychological and combat games the characters play. Trillo and Risso grind out a super-gritty, futuristic drama for publishers Dynamite Entertainment.

Borderline TPB Collection - (7)

Reading Borderline in collected form like a novel can be frustrating, as each snippet is more of an individual work of art than a device for advancing the plot. Yes, a kind of over-arching plot unifies the stories, and the set does have a final resolution to its story. But the storytellers seem more concerned with immersing the reader in the madness of the drama than moving it forward. If anything, it reminds us of Spy Vs. Spy cartoons by Antonio Prohías — except deadly, horrifyingly serious.

Borderline TPB Collection - (8)

You can usually pick up the four Borderline Trade Paperbacks for about $10-$15 a piece.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Graphic Novel Collection by First

26 Wednesday Mar 2014

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

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

collection, color reprints, first issue, First Publishing, graphic novel, Indie Comics, Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, TMNT

teenage mutant ninja turtles graphic novel set (2)

IDW has lately been reprinting the earliest and original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics from the 1980s. Back in the 80s, prices of first prints of the original comics skyrocketed, and they still retain a fairly high collector’s value. In response to their limited availability to all but the wealthiest collectors, First Publishing produced four, full-color, oversized graphic novels from the original black-and-white stories.

teenage mutant ninja turtles graphic novel set (20)
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The unique and gritty visual style of Eastman and Laird’s reptilian martial artists comes through even in color. First did a wonderfully professional job on this production. They wisely included the Leonardo one-shot, since its story leads right up to the events of issue #10. And, First thoughtfully preserved the dramatic three-page fold out from issue #10. We have scans of the original black and white pages in our archives for comparison.

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All of the splash pages look great, and the binding and paper quality of these turtle tomes remains evident decades later. From the first issue to the battle with Triceratons in space to the hilarious Cerebus crossover, all of the Turtles earliest adventures rock hard in this graphic novel format.

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Let us offer a few suggestions for those seeking some high-quality Turtles reprints. You can still find copies of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TPB by First in stock at reasonable prices ($10-$15 for a Fine copy,) though you may need to go to eBay to get a complete set all at once! IDW printed the stories in single issues in full color as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Color Classics, but it seems they left out the Leonardo one-shot to include issue #11 which more or less wraps up Eastman & Laird’s original plot line.

teenage mutant ninja turtles graphic novel set (16)

A second volume of color classics reprints some excellent adventures from the subsequent stories, including a reprint of the glorious Return to New York storyline this spring. Those who want these stories in black and white should get the excellent seven-volume Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Collected Book produced by Mirage in the 1990s. IDW more recently gave us The Ultimate Collection in hardcover which wisely includes the one-shots from the 80s as well as the original title.

teenage mutant ninja turtles graphic novel set (17)

Despite the availability of recent reprints, the old ones have held onto their collector’s value due to their limited runs and high production values. The First Publishing collection also gives you a much larger page size than, say, Mirage’s normal-zized Collected Book reprints.

teenage mutant ninja turtles graphic novel set (18)

IDW has much to gain by reprinting these collectible issues, but they also do readers a great service by keeping these classics in print. We sold both the First TPB set and the Collected Book set on eBay last year, but you can bet we would like another copy of Return to New York in our hands before all this is over!

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An Inhuman Retrospective

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Amazing Adventures, collection, Doug Moench, first issue, George Perez, Gil Kane, Inhumans, Jack Kirby, Jae Lee, Marvel Comics, Paul Jenkins

inhumans collection (1b)

We’ve always had a fondness for the Inhumans as characters and concepts despite the lackluster treatment they often receive in print. The Inhumans first appeared as supporting characters in the Fantastic Four when creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby still masterminded that title together. In 1970, Kirby launched Inhumans on their own adventures in Marvel’s second attempt at an Amazing Adventures title.

inhumans collection (1a)

Marvel ran the 1961 Amazing Adventures for just half a year, its first six issues collecting some entertainingly vintage stories by Kirby and Steve Ditko, Dick Ayres, Paul Reinman, Don Heck, and Larry Leiber. You can preview many of these golden-age sci-fi and monster stories in our archives.

Beginning with a new #1 issue — something that seems a monthly event at Marvel these days — the 1970 Amazing Adventures put both the Inhumans and the Black Widow on the cover. The Black Widow stories have some wonderful John Buscema and Gene Colan artwork you can preview at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

The Inhumans get the full Jack Kirby treatment for three issues. He writes and draws them in pretty straight-forward superhero adventures. We have the first story in our archives. Like Kirby’s Black Panther, they lack  depth but make fast-paced action stories for young readers. 1970 also gave Inhumans fans another Jack Kirby treatment of his genetically-modified heroes: the final issue of the first Silver Surfer series.

inhumans collection (1c)

Even the Mandarin appears in these Amazing Adventures, in his utterly ridiculous “Asian Villain” outfit! The Inhumans made it about sixteen issues in this format, with Roy Thomas and Neal Adams stepping up to create new stories after Kirby left. But like Thomas & Adams’ X-men, the Inhumans were doomed as a publication.

inhumans collection (1d)

Okay. Not exactly doomed. They got their own title after that! Leaving behind the anthology comic format, the Inhumans had earned their own shot as title characters. Doug Moench and George Perez launched them with Inhumans #1 in 1975. We have that first issue in our archives, too: Spawn of Alien Heat!

inhumans collection (1e)

That series showed a lot of potential, but its struggle to find its feet is almost palpable. You can find it reprinted in a hardcover format as Marvel Masterworks: Inhumans #2 from 2010, the first volume of which covers all those Amazing Adventures stories plus their origin story from Thor.

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Marvel billed the Inhumans as “uncanny” in this series, a word they would later apply to the X-men. The “Uncanny X-men” stuck, and few readers of bronze-age Marvel recall anyone but the X-men ever being uncanny! Gil Kane moved from cover art to interior art in this series. Although his style seems rough after Perez’s smooth work, Kane delivers some truly classic 70s work in stories like “A Trip to the Doom” in issue #7.

inhumans collection (1h)
inhumans collection (1i)

In what now feels like a desperate ploy to boost sales, the Inhumans fight Hulk in their final issue. The same thing happened to Kirby’s Eternals in the mid-70s. Bad sales figures? Hulk Smash! “Let Fall the Final Fury” turns out to be the last appearance of the Inhumans in their own title for about 25 years.

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Despite some great guest appearances in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four in the 1980s, the Inhumans never really got a stellar treatment until Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee crafted a twelve-issue limited series for them in the 21st century. We have some of that artwork in our archives. The Inhumans live up to their potential in this compelling story, despite its reliance on the same old struggle with Maximus the Mad.

The four-issue Inhumans series by Carlos Pacheco earlier that summer had some stunning art by Ladronn. It attempted to free the Inhumans from the only two stories they ever seemed to get: the fight with Black Bolt’s mad brother, and their thing about needing to live on the moon. Pacheco stepped in and said, “Let’s shake this up a bit,” taking their conceptual struggles in the next logical plot direction.

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But, in the wake of the Jenkins/Lee story, Marvel decided on a “next generation” approach to the Inhumans. The book became more teen-friendly and introduced a new, younger set of Inhumans characters, some of whom we met in Jenkin’s story. This 2003 Inhumans series ran for twelve issues. It has its merits and perhaps competed at the time with Marvel’s Runaways and Exiles for a teen audience wanting teen characters. Of those three, only Runaways kept our attention, proving to be a book about teens that older audiences could appreciate, too.

inhumans collection (2)

And that, dear Martians, is why some lucky buyer overseas ended up with a stack of Inhumans comics from us! We collected those first Kirby issues, the run of their 1970s title, and the Jenkins/Lee paperback, along with some other minor Inhumans goodies from over the years. It was fun to have them all close at hand for a few years, and we did hold on to our single-issue copies of the Jenkins stories.

inhumans collection (3)

Moon Knight by Moench and Sienkiewicz

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in superhero

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Bill Sienkiewicz, Doug Moench, first issue, fist of khonshu, Jim Owsley, Moon Knight, origin, Priest

moon knight 1980 series-001

One of our earliest childhood friends was a huge Moon Knight fan, so let’s have a look at some highlights of the series from the 1980s. The first issue declares the “macabre” Moon Knight, and elements of the supernatural and spooky would remain an integral part of the character. “Macabre” may be overstating the horror element, but you know how bronze age Marvel thrived on alliteration!

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The artwork is nowhere nearly as experimental as what Bill Sienkiewicz later developed for books like Elektra: Assassin. We have heard Moon Knight compared to Batman, and Sienkiewicz delivers a style that seems well-suited to attracting a Batman audience accustomed to the classic work of Neal Adams and Marshal Rogers. Sienkiewicz shows an early flair for dramatic layouts and panel shapes, as these pages show.

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Doug Moench cranks up the macabre in issue #12 by introducing Morpheus, a walking nightmare with a face only his mother could love and lots of icky black goo. This otherworldly menace gives Sienkiewicz a license to get weird, with dark and dramatic renditions of creepy interiors and conflicts.

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The energetically odd-shaped panels remind us of Neal Adams’ work on the X-Men during his brief stint with Roy Thomas on the title. In a 2001 interview with Comic Book Resources, Bill admitted his fascination with Adams’ style: “Studying Neal’s work… I became obsessed… and became fixated on it. It was like my intention was to be Neal… There was no one at this point saying don’t do that, you’ve got to be your own person… When I finally got started, what got me hired was the fact that I drew like Neal. Neal in fact called up Shooter and said, ‘I’ve got this kid fresh off the street and he draws like me. Is that a problem?'”

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Next up, let’s have a look inside issue #15. This one is so insane: something about white supremacists breeding rats in army helmets, and then a giant talking rat-man named Xenos shows up to assassinate a politician with a gun. WHAT?

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But, #15 also has some cool ‘Moon Knight Files’ that discuss his weapons and origin and his different personalities. Though not as kooky as the Badger, Moon Knight had a thing about his identity. “Shades of Moon Knight” by Doug Moench also tells us about the development of the character as a concept.

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Of all the issues we’ve read of this series, #24 stands out the most in terms of art and story. Focusing Moon Knight on crime takes him out of the spandex-clad superhero vibe and gives us some powerful human drama, masterfully rendered by Sienkiewicz. Let’s just look at the opening pages from this mini-masterpiece. Sienkiewicz treats us to visually appealing ‘stained glass window’ shapes, lots of dark shadows defining people and spaces, and great depictions of Moon Knight in stark black-and-white.

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Pretty awesome, huh? If the whole series had been this intense, we might have tried to fill in every issue in our set!

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We also dig this illustration from a subscription ad that portrays Moon Knight in an iconic pose rendered entirely in black and white. This needs to be a poster! More dramatic black-and-white Moon Knight art appears in an ad for #25.

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Before we go on, let’s pause for the sake of interested collectors. You can collect these 1980s issues very inexpensively as the single issues of Moon Knight Volume 1, or in the black and white reprint Essential Moon Knight. Essential Moon Knight covers, in three volumes, all kinds of early Moon Knight stories, the Moench run, the first six issues from the second series, and more! Don’t forget the Moon Knight Special Edition, which reprints on higher-quality paper the early back up stories from The Hulk. Now let us move forward in time to the short-lived Moon Knight Volume Two!

moon knight volume 2-001

Marvel cancelled the title and brought it back in a second volume with a new creative team, printing “Fist of Konshu: Moon Knight” on the cover. Frankly, we don’t understand why. It doesn’t have a significantly different vibe from volume one, and it revisits the themes of ancient Egypt and Morpheus in its early issues. We get a hint that Moon Knight’s split personality and new relationship with his power source will be a focus of the series, but it isn’t all that different from before.

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The Morpheus tale in #3 really is creepy, but Marvel’s “new” printing process makes the colors decidedly garish to our eyes. (We processed them here to look a little more normal.) Many books circa 1985 had this look, and we don’t like it any better now than we did then. It seemed like an attempt to move into today’s high-quality formats, but without really having a clue how that would work. Despite this harsh judgment, we dig the disturbing nightmare worlds created for some criminally insane residents of the institution! Totally twisted.

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The new creative team finds its feet in the first few issues, but then the book gets passed around. In #5, Jo Duffy gives us a morally grey tale where Moon Knight may or may not be in the right when he tries to stop a murder.

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Issue #6 sports one of our all-time favorite Moon Knight covers, a wonderfully painted and suitably spooky scene. James “Priest” Owsley steps in for a tale that ends our collection. Moon Knight jumps through a closed window and then hugs a crack whore before busting out of some chains in classic superhero style. All in a day’s work!

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Priest gave us some memorable stories in the 80s and our favorite Black Panther story more recently before moving out of comics and on to other endeavors. We also moved on to other things besides Moon Knight at this point in our early teenage collector days. The second series was cancelled after just six issues. What was the point of the reboot? We don’t know.

But, we have always had a fondness for the character, probably because he just looks so awesome when drawn well: the white cloak, the ankh, the face shrouded in darkness. We can’t help but wish that Sienkiewicz had some day returned to the character with his more lavishly abstract style, loaded with shadows and supernatural weirdness. Moon Knight works best the farther he gets away from standard superhero fare and off into the world of madness, mystics, and dreams.

Out of the Ruins of Fascist Amerika, Trashman Fights for Freedom!

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

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

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Agent of the Sixth International, Fantagraphics, first issue, Indie Comics, origin, Rip Off Press, Spain, Spain Rodriguez, Subvert, Trashman, Trashman Lives, underground comix

It’s our birthday today, so we offer you an origin story. But not just any origin story: Trashman! Bearded hero of the people’s revolution: Trashman! Sometimes called “the Superman of the New left”: Trashman!

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Subvert #1 by Spain Rodriguez contains the origin of his guerilla resistance character, Trashman. This off-beat 1970 story published by underground comix legends Rip Off Press describes the transformation of average guy Harry Barnes into an Agent of the Sixth International. He even masters molecular disintegration — whoa!

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Murder, nuclear apocalypse, covert agencies, class struggle, satire — and that’s just the origin! The longer story which completes Subvert #1 involves some sexually hungry female revolutionaries. It’s a hoot, but forgive us for not sharing a few pages of THAT with you here.

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Collector’s Guide: You can still find well-read copies of Subvert #1 for a few dollars if you are willing to dig. We found a VG- copy at the local comic store for 3 or 4 bucks, or you can go right to Subvert #1 on Amazon. Fantagraphics published a wonderful collection of all the Trashman stories from 1968 to 1985: Trashman Lives! It fetches a hefty price on Amazon these days, but we found a copy at a used bookstore for less than $20.

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Indie Spotlight: Nova Phase released today on Comixology!

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

8 bit art, Adam Elbatimy, comixology, first issue, Indie Comics, Matthew Ritter, Nova Phase, Slave Labor Graphics

nova phase 1 cover

Now that Nintendo is becoming ‘vintage’ and a generation of comics readers has already grown nostalgic for the nineties, Nova Phase may be hitting the market at just the right time. With a plot loaded with action and rendered in the style of 8-bit arcade graphics, it reads like one of Warren Ellis’ fast-paced sci-fi stories in the shape of an old video game.

In this six-issue series from Slave Labor Graphics, Veronica Darkwater is a down-on-her-luck bounty hunter who finds herself plunged into an intergalactic treasure hunt for a legendary world of untold wealth. But, she must compete with a crazy military commander who will stop at nothing to cement his name in history. Will she stay alive long enough to see if the legends of the mythical world of Una Tesara are true?

You can score the first issue of Nova Phase at http://www.comixology.com/Nova-Phase/comics-series/14632 — and the second issue is up now for just 99 cents!

From the creators of Nova Phase:

“I wanted to do a space western because I love space and I love westerns. I also love old video games. So there you go.” — Matthew Ritter, writer

“I love pixel art. I think of it as a genuine aesthetic choice, as apposed to a limitation. It has allowed us to give Nova Phase a really unique look.” — Adam Elbatimy, artist

Enclosed in a Globe of Pure Force is a Submicroscopic Insect!

13 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in first issue, golden age

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bob Powell, first issue, golden age, jet powers, magazine enterprises, meteor, wasp

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This panel comes from Jet Powers #1; Magazine Enterprises, 1950. The Thing in the Meteor. Artwork by Bob Powell.

Bob Powell’s work also appeared in the first issue of Race to the Moon, in the stories The Invasion and Disc Jockey.

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

≈ 3 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.







Men of War #1: The Origin of Gravedigger

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

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

≈ 1 Comment

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David Michelinie, ed davis, first appearance, first issue, gravedigger, men of war, origin, racism, Romeo Tanghal, war, war comics

Men of War #1 gives us the first half of the origin of Gravedigger in his first appearance in DC Comics. Author David Michelinie would conclude next issue with a tale of Gravedigger’s breaking into a military installation, an unlikely story that plays well as a comic book nevertheless. Gravedigger earns his nickname digging graves in a non-combat unit. He wants to fight in the war, but the color of his skin gets him assigned to an all-black non-combat unit.

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While films and novels have dealt with racism in the military before, Michelinie sticks to a theme of institutional racism. We do not see Gravedigger suffer from physical and verbal abuse, but we do see him confronting a racist system. Artists Ed Davis and Romeo Tanghal deliver a realistic style in the vein of DC’s other 1970s war comics like Sgt. Rock. Let’s have a look!

Collector’s Guide: Men of War #1; DC, 1977.






When I Ran the Avengers, We Didn’t Kill People!

27 Friday Sep 2013

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Avengers, Captain Marvel, first issue, Monica Rambeau, Next Wave, Photon, Stuart Immonen, Warren Ellis

Warren Ellis imagines a childhood with photonic laser powers for Monica Rambeau, also known as Photon, formerly known as Captain Marvel, and one-time leader of the Avengers. Bad doggie be quiet now.

Collector’s Guide: from Next Wave #1; Marvel.

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Dreams by John M. Pound

02 Friday Aug 2013

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

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dreams, first issue, Indie Comics, John Pound

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Check out this single page of dream images arranged as comic book panels. It doesn’t tell a story like the Rick Veitch things we’ve shared with you, but we dig the style. Especially cool is the hidden face… Do you see it?

Collector’s Guide: From Ground Pound Comix #1; Blackthrone, 1987. Art by John M. Pound, 1978

Captain America 100: This Monster Unmasked!

22 Monday Jul 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

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Black Panther, Captain America, first issue, Jack Kirby, origin, Stan Lee

05

People complain about Marvel’s constant renumbering of titles these days, and you can count us in on a vote for the ridiculousness of all that. But do you remember that in 1968, Marvel’s first volume of Captain America began at #100? Up until then, Cap had filled the pages of Tales of Suspense. When TOS rolled over from #99 to #100, it became Cap’s own book. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee present Cap’s origin, which they would also do a year later in #112, perhaps to bring even more and more fans on board. To be fair, this one only covers Cap’s defrosting by the Avengers.

Collector’s Guide: from Captain America #100; Marvel, 1968.








Alarming Tales 1: The Fourth Dimension Is a Many Splattered Thing by Jack Kirby!

21 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in first issue, science fiction

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Alarming Tales, first issue, Harvey Comics, Jack Kirby

In 1957 and 1958, Jack Kirby created stories for Harvey’s six-issue series Alarming Tales. These hard-to-find comics from the Golden Age showcase Kirby’s early flair for science fiction. You will see familiar themes like Martians, strange dimensions, conscious robots, and alien worlds. You will witness harbingers of future sciences like genetic engineering and cloning.

And, you will see a few ideas Kirby revisited decades later, such as the walking dogs and rats of “The Last Enemy” who resemble the animalistic characters of Kamandi, and a flying chair that would get an upgrade to seat Metron of the New Gods. Enjoy!

Collector’s Guide: From Alarming Tales #1-4; Harvey, 1957-1958. Issues #1-3 are now collected in a Kindle version!



Alarming Tales 1: The Cadmus Seed by Jack Kirby!

14 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by Mars Will Send No More in first issue, golden age, science fiction

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alarming Tales, first issue, golden age, Harvey Comics, Jack Kirby

In 1957 and 1958, Jack Kirby created artwork for Harvey’s six-issue series Alarming Tales. These hard-to-find comics from the Golden Age showcase Kirby’s early flair for science fiction. You will see familiar themes like Martians, strange dimensions, conscious robots, and alien worlds. You will witness harbingers of future sciences like genetic engineering and cloning.

And, you will see a few ideas Kirby revisited decades later, such as the walking dogs and rats of “The Last Enemy” who resemble the animalistic characters of Kamandi, and a flying chair that would get an upgrade to seat Metron of the New Gods. Enjoy!

Collector’s Guide: From Alarming Tales #1-4; Harvey, 1957-1958. Issues #1-3 are now collected in a Kindle version!



The Second First Issue of Man-Thing!

08 Monday Jul 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

alligator, Bob Wiacek, first issue, Jim Mooney, Man-Thing, Man-Thing Omnibus, Michael Fleisher

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Whatever knows fear… Blogs at the touch of Man-Thing! Here is the marvelous muck monster in his very first issue… No… wait a damn minute…

Okay, this is the second time Man-Thing has a first issue! It isn’t his real first issue, nor his first appearance. Regardless, it opens with an ass-kicking alligator fight! YEAH! If only the whole series had been as cool as these opening pages.

Collector’s Guide:
– From Man-Thing Vol 2, #1; Marvel, 1979.
– Reprinted in color in the Man-Thing Omnibus Hardcover; 2012.
– Reprinted in black and white in Essential Man-Thing #2, soft cover.



Speak of the Devil!

03 Friday May 2013

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Dark Horse Comics, first issue, Gilbert Hernandez, Hernandez Brothers, Indie Comics, Love and Rockets, Speak of the Devil

Speak of the Devil is a six-issue series by Gilbert Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame. The story begins with a peeping tom prowling the neighborhood while wearing a devil mask. The pervert turns out to be a promising young gymnast spying on the bedroom antics of her stepmother and father. She eventually gets a male friend involved. They uncover a web of secrets they will soon wish they had not.

Love and Rockets fans will recognize some characters, but it isn’t necessary to have a history with L&R to jump on board and enjoy this unusual story. We’ve included a few pages to whet your appetite.

Collector’s Guide: From Speak of the Devil #1; Dark Horse, 2007. Collected in the Speak of the Devil Hardcover



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