The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1519: Vanguard Illustrated #3, March 1984

The opening editorial in issue #1 calls this series a try-out book. What this means is that it's a place where the publisher would give emerging writers and artists a chance to get some work published. DC did this with their New Talent Showcase, as have others, and the result is often a mixed bag, which really is the case with any anthology title. What I find a bit odd about it is that one of the emerging writers is David Campiti, but he has a story in every issue thus far. I'm not sure that's really in the spirit of a try-out book, but I wasn't there and don't know the circumstances.

Regardless, Campiti's story in today's issue is phenomenal. It's called "Be It What It Will, I'll Go To It Laughing," and tells the story of an alternate history in which human beings make it to Mars, and about the way Ray Bradbury inspired one young boy to get there. It has an excellent ending that actually gave me chills. That doesn't happen very often.

A bit of research on Mr. Campiti tells me that he's a prolific writer, or was, and is not working internationally with artists trying to establish themselves in various markets. He story today goes pretty close to the top of my list of comic book science fiction stories, and really just comic book stories in general. Beautifully illustrated by Tom Yeates, it's worth your while if you can find the comic.

"Stubbs from Moby-Dick. You'll want to read it someday."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1518: Vanguard Illustrated #2, January 1984

I've said it before, I do love me some Dave Stevens artwork. I mean, he appears to exist in a world where every woman is a pin-up model, which seems to me a bit boring, but he's really good at showing us scenes from that world. That cover up there is amazing.

One thing I neglected to mention yesterday is that there's a serial in here called "Freakwave" and it's written by Peter Milligan, whose work I've been tracking down over the last little while. I had no idea he was in this series. To make matters even better, "Freakwave" is illustrated by Brendan McCarthy, whose Zaucer of Zilk I read a few weeks back. It's not quite the psychedelic festival that McCarthy's later work becomes, but you can definitely see flashes. What's also interesting about this serial is that it really, really resembles the film Waterworld. In fact, it resembles the film so much that when that film was released in 1995, 10 years after "Freakwave," the creators made some attempt at taking legal action. It doesn't seem to have amounted to much, but I will say that when I started reading this serial, I was really shocked at the similarities.

But what's the old saw? There's only 2 or 3 stories to tell, really. Everything else is just variations.

"Before the cumbersome Mickey Death can launch another attack, Tia and Drifter race across the cabin and..."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1517: Vanguard Illustrated #1, November 1983

I've had this series completed and ready to read for about a year now, I think. I've noted before in my reviews of anthology titles that the problem with them is that the quality between stories is often quite variable. This title, a self-proclaimed "new talent book," runs that risk of variable quality not only because it's an anthology, but because it's new writers. Regardless of how talented a creator is, their first few forays are not going to be stellar, with a few exceptions of course. Even Alan Moore's Maxwell the Magic Cat is good, but it's no Watchmen.

That said, I quite enjoyed this issue. It's definitely pulling on the old pulp science fiction traditions of the pre-comic book days. Nowhere is this more clear than the covers, most presenting a scantily-clad (or unclad, in today's case) woman in a strange science fiction setting. When I was reading old pre-code horror stuff, I came across comics published by Avon, a paperback publisher. Rather than using comic artists, the covers were apparently (this according to Tales Too Terrible To Tell) done by paperback artists, and you can tell. There's a different design aesthetic to them. The reason I bring this up is that Vanguard Illustrated does a nice job of taking the elements of old sci-fi covers and rather than simply giving up a paperback cover, uses those elements in the mold of a comic cover.

It's a subtle thing, and probably one of those things that only someone like me notices. Comics, cover-wise, have to ride that fine line between magazine copy and book copy, and it's a line that is not always successfully walked.

"You done made a bad choice, bro! Tha's cannibal country for sure!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 148: Eclipse Monthly #1, August 1983 (Two Weeks From The Dollar Bin - Day 12)

Anthology titles are always an iffy prospect, and that's why you find a large number of them in dollar bins. This title, for example, has five different stories in it. While the caliber of talent lined up for these stories is pretty impressive, you're always going to have one story you enjoy more than the others, and then the others pale in comparison. So then you don't really look forward to the other stories, and end up paying a lot of money for 5 pages in an anthology title.

Or, at least, that's how I find it is with me.

Of all of the stories in here, I think I enjoyed Doug Wildey's "Rio" the most. So far it's reading a bit like a Cormac McCarthy novel, and while I'm not a huge fan of McCarthy, the particular atmosphere and period he evokes in Blood Meridian is really pretty fascinating. So to see it transferred to the comics page is a treat. I was kind of excited to see another oddball Steve Ditko piece in here, but "Static" failed to electrify me (see what I did there?). But I did get the first four issues of the title, so perhaps they'll get better as we go on. While I do like Trina Robbins' art, her contribution to this anthology is a continuation of her work in Eclipse Magazine, so the story's a bit lost on me, it being part 8 of 10. Which leave Marshall Rogers' "Cap'n Quick and a Foozle" and B.C. Boyer's "The Masked Man," both of which were entertaining, but not terribly gripping.

So the western wins out. Interesting. As I say, I've got at least three more issues of this series to go through. I'm curious as to why anthology titles very rarely succeed. I've suggested a reason above, but I don't think that's all there is to it. Perhaps it's because it's so hard to convey any drama and development when you've only a small amount of pages in which to tell (part of) a story. I'll think more on this, and talk about it a bit more next time we have an anthology come up.

See you tomorrow.