Having recently enjoyed re-watching the 1938 Universal movie serial Red Barry, starring Buster Crabbe, I became curious about the Will Gould newspaper comic strip that it was based on. After a little hunting around online, I discovered a 1989 Red Barry strip collection from Fantagraphics. I ordered a copy, and am more than halfway through it. Terrific stuff!
I then went through my Amazon wish list to see if anything I had on there had gone down in price. I've long wanted a copy of DC's The Warlord: The Savage Empire trade paperback by Mike Grell & company, but it's long out of print and used copies tended to be prohibitively expensive. Surprisingly, I was able to find a reasonably-priced copy listed and ordered it. It hasn't arrived yet, so I have my fingers crossed that it arrives in the "Very Good" condition advertised by the seller.
Another collection from the same time period that I ordered was DC's Cosmic Odyssey trade paperback by Jim Starlin & Mike Mignola. I missed the original 4-issue miniseries when it came out back in '88 and never got my hands on it after that. But it popped up on my radar recently thanks to Rip Jagger's Dojo, and since I've always loved Mignola's art, I decided to get it. I'm especially looking forward to his handling of Jack Kirby's Darkseid and The New Gods characters.
The last of the graphic novels I purchased was the new Fantagraphics collection of Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk comics, originally published in the 1940's as a feature in Target Comics. Back in the 90s, Dark Horse reprinted many of these bizarre and brilliant adventures in B&W comic book reprints, with a few new stories about the character produced by various artists and writers. I have four of five of these issues, but I'm missing at least one, and I'm not sure if Dark Horse actually got around to reprinting the entire run. This new collection is both complete and in color. I love Wolverton's work, and I love the character - he's sort of like Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name" in space, an unfathomable and unstoppable entity with a vast array of weapons and gadgets at his disposable.
Finally, in the non-comics category, I placed an order for an early Andrew Offutt sword & planet papernck novel. Chieftain of Andor. I read a lot of Offutt's fantasy novels in the 80s - primarily his Robert E. Howard pastiches and Thieves World stories - and look forward to reading this one, too.
5 comments:
I'm glad I could inspire you to read The Cosmic Odyssey. It was a satisfying read indeed, and Mignola can actually draw Orion's helmet pretty well, not an easy thing to do apparently.
The Rocketeer collection is beautiful. The Savage Empire I found a few years ago and it's the only Warlord I own or have ever read. It's pretty good stuff. Grell is a really good comic book artist, and this shows him off to best effect. Those IDW Sable books are calling my name most recently.
Rip Off
Is that Warlord TPB the original series or the more recent stuff?
Cosmic Odyssey is a great story. I was fortunate enough to grab it off the rack when it was released. I rarely had such foresight.
Good story, good art. Sets the standard for all JLA vs Darkseid conflicts from that point forward.
The Warlord trade collects the first 12 issues of the original series. I thought that it collected the 1992 miniseries, but apparently I was mistaken.
Still thrilled to get it, though.
Nice haul there Chris. I'd like to read those Warlord comics too. Currently reading the prose Tarzan novel.
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