Friday, August 15, 2008

Faded Memories in Black and White

TMNT#6 one of the first, if not thee first, black and white indy comics I bought.

Back in the first half of 1980s there was a small boom of independent comic book publishing with black and white comics. It really kicked off because of the success of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and spawned all sorts of creative and not so creative books from individuals and startup comic companies. Besides TMNT the biggest legacy of the Black and White boom would have to be Usagi Yojimbo and Dark Horse Comics (all of DHC’s initial output was black and white). It was a Wild and Wahoo time in comics and I was in the thick of it as a kid, reader, and collector. I bought a lot of it and still own most of the crazy crap I purchased. There were some real gems once in a while but most of it was quite disposable. Regardless, it was still fun to pick up some odd stuff because you never knew what you might find between the pages.

As a lark, I thought I would list all the black and white 80s comics off the top of my head I can remember without snooping around the net. Most the comics I’ll mention I actually own but some were just memorable because of their title. I did this exercise a few years ago on a thread someplace but I thought it might be enjoyable to revisit it again, so her goes:
(I’m excluding Manga and Magazines)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (of course)
Critters
Usagi Yojimbo
Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters
Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils
Preteen Dirty Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos
Space Ark
Tales of the Aniverse
Dead World
Mildly Microwaved Kung-Fu Gophers
Gnat-Rat
Laffin’ Gas
Ex-Mutants
Wild Knights
The New Humans
War World
Dark Horse Presents
Aliens
Boris the Bear
Wacky Squirrel
New York: Year Zero
Portia Prinz (sp?)
The Dreamery
Miami Mice
Hamster Vice
Guerilla Groundhog
P.J. Warlock
Tales of Beanworld
Puma Blues
Samurai Squirrel
Twilight Avenger
Concrete
Aldebedo (sp?)
Cutie Rabbit (is this one?)
Xenoxic Tales
Samurai Penguins (is this one?)
Reagan’s Raiders
The Tick
The Crow
After Apocalypse
Zooniverse (was that in b/w?)
Fusion
Trekker
Bratpack (was that in b/w?)
Baker Street
Zot!
Combat Wombat
Predator
The American
Logan’s Run (not the Marvel one)
The March Hare
Man
Revolving Doors (was that b/w)?
The Realm
Four Fisted Tales
Mister Monster (When he was at Dark Horse)
Adventures (I think)
Captain Jack
War of the Worlds
Reid Fleming the world toughest MilkMan
Ms. Tree (was that b/w?)
Kola Commandos

That's all I got...

If I made mistakes oh well



-Swinebread

4 comments:

Randal Graves said...

Oh yeah, Dead World! I completely forgot about that one. King Zombie, or whatever the hell his name was. Damn you, age. I think I remember reading some of the TMNT, but I definitely remember the RPG.

Arkonbey said...

The Tick rules. At least until issue 12.

I had a single Ried Fleming that has sadly disappeared...

Unfortunately I only got into TMNT with the compilation books of the late 80's early 90's.

PS 238 is my bw fix now.

Pandabonium said...

Turtle soup.

Swinebread said...

Randal – Dead word was one of the few real horror hits in the comic world. Sad to say but I wasn’t really into horror at the time and skipped it. I do hear there are some collections floating about though. I had the TMNT RPG game too but I sold it about 5 years ago. I never used it.

Ark – I’ve read some tick but I think not many of the 1st 12 issues though. I’d have to see ‘em to be sure.

They funny thing with TMNT is I actually didn’t follow it very long but it was amusing for a while.

Panda – and why not? I be they would taste great especially served French style.