Frank'sCuratedComics: Set Sale - Elric/Whisper/plus4

Get-ready-for-Christmas Sale

Elric/Whisper/plus4 set sale

I went to the secret comic book warehouse here in the wilds of western Pennsylvania and came back with quantity on a few choice sets and single issues.

I have THREE of these sets available. ALL SETS MAILED USPS PRIORITY.

Please email me capneasyATgmail to buy. I will send you PayPal address info.

25 bux postpaid gets you:

Elric three issue set - 1983

Whisper three issue set - 1983

Armor #1 - 1985

Swamp Thing #60 - 1987

Sabre #1 - 1982

Lady Crime #1 - 1950s reprints

**orders to Canada are $35 postpaid. Overseas orders $50 postpaid.

First up, Elric (below). I've written about this comic before here. This is one of my favorite comics because of the color process used to create it. P.Craig Russell and Michael T. Gilbert used watercolor, airbrush, dyes, inks, and the kitchen sink to color this one.

This is one of those examples of a creative team working together and figuring it out as they go and you can see that figuring out right on the page. Each issue's art gets better and it's exciting to see the palette and the drawings change.

Read the linked to article about the color process above - just remember that this was a watershed moment in comics coloring. It was early in the development of making full color comics and printing them affordably.

Check out the vibrancy of the colors in these panels. This independent series from Pacific Comics was a minor big deal because it was the beginning of the indy publishers outdoing the big publishers with nice paper and fancy inks.

Next up: Whisper. I was really into Whisper when I was doing Cold Heat. It's a very "sincere" girl ninja comic from 1983. It was published by Capital Comics which was a direct market comic book distributor in the midwest. Check out the airbrush on the cover of issue one:

Check out the 1983 design(above) - it looks like a Duran Duran record, I love it. The pastel colors that go bright and then are muted with overprinting. Another awesomely colored comic from an independent publisher that outdid the major publishers at the time.

Whisper went on to have a lengthy run at First comics. But I like these original Capital issues. Steven Grant and Rich Larson were a good team. Les Dorscheid colored the Capital issues. They look better than the First series.

However the First series did a 64 double issue (below) and it was colored very nicely by Weny Fiore. It's one of those comics that is so dense you can't believe that Larson can fit in that much detail - but it FLOWS well and that's why I always liked this comic because I could actually read it. Remember this was before the we got real manga translated here in the States. So comics about ninjas by artists who were on the border between North American storytelling and Japanese storytelling were hotly debated at the time. It's all funny to think about now because it is so meaningless. Fusion styles like Grant's appeared very forward thinking. Maybe I mean they looked new wave or something - but that was the trip - they pushed this new wave design and nice production and an "exotic" drawing style and of course ninjas. it was a winning combination in the early 80s. And surprisingly it holds up, I think. They look different than anything else in the back issue bins from the same era.

Next up: Armor #1(below)

A comic close to my heart. Drawn by Tom Grindberg, this comic allegedly made a deep impression on a young Sammy Harkham. Armor #1 does have some weird gore moments - as when the hero becomes Armor. I could see that this comic could warp Mr. Harkham's mind. When I was a teenager, the artist Tom Grindberg was the local pro in Pittsburgh. He would be at shows and patiently deal with me bugging him to look at my "portfolio" haha.

Next up: Swamp Thing #60 (below)

Drawn by John Totleben --this is another comic close to my heart. Mr. Totleben would also come to a lot of local comic book conventions in the late 80s and I saw the originals to this Swamp Thing comic many times. They were wild originals. They were like big collages. They were usually a combination of xeroxes of Totleben's drawings and cut up "real" drawings collaged on to the original bristol board.

Next up: Lady Crime #1(below)

All Bob Powell crime reprints from the late 1940s. Lady Crime is a riff on the Charles Biro "Mr. Crime" comics. Powell's art is like Jack Cole but a little more "refined". Kind of in between cartoonist and illustrator, Powell was like a proto EC guy. Classic mid century stuff. I honestly like copying these as warm up drawings because the figures have that "cartoony realism" that that's so hard to pull off. It isn't photo-referenced. Maybe that's the secret.

Next up: Sabre #1 (below)

The Paul Gulacy classic that was originally a black and white magazine sized graphic novel --reprinted here as a color comic book. This is the one you've been looking for, I'm telling you. This is one of the best Gulacy comics because this was his big shot at independence from the big comic book companies. Gulacy had made a big name for himself on Master of Kung Fu and then did Sabre to capitalize on the direct market changing how comics got to the fans. The magazine sized graphic novel was in black and white and didn't sell well--so they tried doing it comic book sized and colored it. The result is a pressure cooker of fine lined detail and 4 color ben day haze.