The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2098: Boy Comics #103, July 1954

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The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1309: Alias: #1, July 1990

There aren't a lot of comics in my collection form Now Comics, so I thought I'd read through them all. Be warned: two of them are Married...With Children comics that are likely to be just awful. But we'll persevere, shall we.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I opened this comic up this morning, but leading off with a Bill Sienkiewicz cover is a bold move. The comic within, actually, doesn't disappoint. It's intriguing and mysterious, following the life of a, as one FBI agent puts it, "contract serial killer." The series runs five issues, and I hope there's some resolution. I'm of a mind to pick this one up when I see it. I'd like to see how things turn out.

From an aesthetic, narrative as well as visual, perspective, this is a very, very early 90s comic. The art reminds me of Steve Yeowell's work on The Invisibles, and the story, following a very definite anti-hero through his macabre life, smacks of the sorts of stories we see in early Vertigo. As I say, I don't have a lot of Now Comics stuff in the collection, certainly not enough to get a sense of whether or not this comic was indicative of their output, or aberrant somehow. It doesn't bear much resemblance to Vector, and certainly not to Married... .

Will the strangely charismatic serial killer avoid capture by the canny FBI agent? There's an excellent chance I'll never know.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1296: Crime Does Not Pay #97, April 1951

When I picked up today's comic to read it, I realized that it's a year older than my Mum. Easily one of the oldest pieces in the collection, the other interesting thing is that, literally, minutes ago when I downloaded this cover from the GCD was the first time I've ever seen the cover of this comic. The copy I have was part of a lot of coverless issues I picked up a couple of years ago. Many of them are this old, and I'm happy to actually have some representation of this era in my collection, despite their coverless nature.

And that's a pretty great cover, really.

The stories, ostensibly ripped from the headlines and police reports of the time, are actually pretty cool. I haven't read much in the way of crime comics, but these ones did not disappoint with their grim, noir detectives and dames, and the crafty crooks who menace them. The lead story, "Death on the Run" follows a detective as he stumbles through a case when he is hired by a man who is, seconds later, murdered, and the crooks go after the detective as well. He solves the case even as he has to stay one step ahead of them.

The stories definitely live up to the title of the comic. The criminals in each story meet bad ends, learning that the straight and narrow is the only way to avoid Death's icy grip.

More to come...