8/5/07

It Came From The 90s: Intro

There are three good comic shops here in Nashville one of which has a couple of branches. My hold box is at the one closest to my house. It's also at the one with the employees I prefer to deal with. However, I go to the other shop once every couple of months because they sell a lot more than just comics. I was in their Half-Price-Or-Less store a couple of weeks ago and a spinner rack filled with overstuffed comic bags caught my eye. They had two different deals:

5 for a dollar.

12 for two dollars.

I figure they ended up with a bunch of comics that neither they nor the original owners wanted. Kinda like the situation Mike Sterling talks about in this post.

I was curious enough to shell out a few bucks of my relatively hard-earned cash to see what was in these treasure troves. All I had to go on was what the dudes at the comic store chose to put on each end of the stack. I predicted that there would be a bunch of titles from the 1990s in there and that they would be very, very bad. As you can see from the list below, I was right about the first part of the prediction. As for the second part, that remains to be seen.

Follow along with me and help me decide which book to review next. Here are the first twelve comics I opened up. I'll start with the two I could see when I made my choice because those are presumably the best of the lot. We'll see about that.

EDIT: I have changed the name of this feature from "Parade of Mediocrity" to "It Came From The '90s". Also I will add the link to each review below as it is written.

1. Superman in Action Comics #687 (DC - 1993) This was the "front cover" of the stack. It's also one of the post-Death-Of-Superman titles. Here's the cover:



2. The Hacker Files #10 (DC - 1993) This was the "back cover" and I have to admit that it looks pretty cool. It was even written by one of my favorite authors, Lewis Shiner:



3. The Maxx #4 (Image - 1993)
4. Prototype #6 (Malibu - 1994)
5. Stormwatch #3 (Image - 1993)
6. Batman: Shadow of the Bat Annual #1 (DC - 1993)
7. The Amazing Scarlet Spider #1 (Marvel - 1995)
8. Archer & Armstrong #20 (Valiant - 1994)
9. Pitt #2 (Image - 1993)
10. Ultraforce #0 (Malibu - 1994)
11. Marvel Comics Presents #93 (Marvel - 1991) [features Wolverine and Nova]
12. Brigade #5 (Image - 1993)

So, there they are. I'm going to review each of them and I'm curious to see what they are like. The only one of them I have read before is Action #687 and I don't remember much about it. I hope there will be some pleasant surprises and I expect to see some now-familiar names from earlier in their careers.

Leave a comment if there's one you'd like to see me move up the review list. I don't have a set order right now.

3 comments:

Yedna said...

Wow! I'd say you scored big time. I was a huge fan of the early Image days, with Deathblow, Gen 13 etc. I loved both The Maxx & Pitt. I would love to hear a review of either of those titles.

Vaklam said...

The Maxx it is! I never read the comic but I have vague memories of the animated version on MTV.

Jason said...

You know, those books are all from my first rfew years in college when I was collecting virtually zero comics (except for Preacher). I will say this, if I remember correctly, fear Brigade, it's like everything that was awful about Liefeld/Image comics in one little package.

You're a brave man and I look forward to reading the reviews.