2016 Comic Challenge 114 Curse of the Weird #02

TITLE-Curse of the Weird #02
PUBLISHER-Marvel Comics

Starting in the fall of 1994 and lasting for 4 issues Curse of the Weird was a Marvel mini series that reprinted lots of pre-code horror/weird stories. I have no clue why I skipped this mini when it was coming out. But got lucky back in 2010 and found the complete run cheap at a con.

Like the titles the stories originally appeared in Curse of the Weird is an anthology title.In this issue we get 5 stories. Ghost of Grismore Castle is the first story. Written by Stan Lee,it has pencils by one of my favorite Silver Age artists Steve Ditko.The second story is titled Bat's Tale. Once again Stan Lee is the writer but this story has Russ Heath Jr doing the pencils. Up next is Innocent Bystander.Sadly the name of whoever wrote this story is unknown. And Dick Briefer handles the pencils.The 4th story is The Unsolid Man.Written by Carl Wessler and the legendary Joe Orlando handles the pencils.And the final story is No Sign of Life. Were once again Stan Lee does the writing. And the great Steve Ditko does the pencils.

Not only do you get 5 pretty good weird/horror stories. But also a bit of backstory for each story. With this being only a 4 issue mini I doubt we will ever see a trade of it. So it is nice that the single issues are worth at most cover price. And aren't that hard to find.

Curse of the Weird #02 gets a BUY!

2016 Comic Challenge 113 The Ferret #01

TITLE-The Ferret #01
PUBLISHER-Malibu Comics

Ferret was the Protectors' version of Wolverine. In his normal life he is your average rock guitarist. But once he throws on his costume he becomes the Ferret. Out of all the spin offs from the main Protectors comic this was the best.And also the one that ran the longest.Now it is hard to tell from the above picture but the cover and entire comic was die cut in the shape of the Ferret's head.

Like with Airman we get R.A. Jones writing this title. But they did get a decent artist to handle the interior art.Dean Zachary handles the pencils and Ken Branch is the inker.The cover was done by Mike S Miller and Dean Zachary.

I noticed that in these solo Ferret stories he took on lots of drug dealers and street level villains. So while he was a Wolverine clone,his rogues' gallery was more like say Daredevil's or Green Hornet's.

Sadly like all the Protectors stuff ,the Ferret had a short run. Lasting only 10 issues. Now all I gotta do is find issues 4 and 8 and I got a full run of this series.

The Ferret #01 gets a buy.

2016 Comic Challenge 112 Airman #01

TITLE-Airman #01
PUBLISHER-Malibu Comics

Between the time when Image left Malibu,and the start of the Ultraverse,you have the short lived Protectors series. Were Malibu took a bunch of Golden Age public domain heroes and revamped them a bit for the modern age. After a few issues of the Protectors had come out,Malibu started pumping out lots of spin offs and one shots. Airman #01 is one of these one shots.

Honestly if I hadn't been trying to get a complete run of all the Protectors comics and stuff connected to them I wouldn't have held onto this comic. The story by R.A.Jones is bad. The interior art by Matt Reynolds is crap. But I can hear some people saying "The art on the cover looks decent." Well that was one of the drawbacks to the Protectors stuff. They usually had a good artist on the cover and a much inferior one doing the interior art. The cover artist for Airman #01 is Tom Derenick.

The comic feels like they thought it would sell well enough to merit an ongoing series. But since this is the only issue I must assume sales were not that good.

Airman #01 gets a  pass.

2016 Comic Challenge 111 Black Hole #01

TITLE-Black Hole #01
PUBLISHER-Kitchen Sink Press

I know that sometimes with indie comics they come out late. But this series is one of the worst examples of this. Starting in March of 1995.And the final issue came out in December 2004. Oh yeah forgot to mention this series was only 12 issues long.

Part of it might be this series started off at Kitchen Sink Press,who went bankrupt in the mid 90s.So only the first 4 issues came out for them. The rest were published by Fantagraphics.

The comic is about a new disease that is spreading thru the teenage population.If you catch it,it causes your body to mutate. And out lead finds a bunch of these mutated teens living not that far outside his town.

Written and drawn by Charles Burn,this is a series that after reading this first issue I knew I had to get the rest of the series. Thankfully I didn't start reading issue 1 until a couple of years ago. So now all I gotta do is track down the trade or hardcover collecting the entire run.

Black Hole #01 gets a Buy.

2016 Comic Challenge 110 Fish Police #25

TITLE-Fish Police #25
PUBLISHER-Apple Comics

Outside of seeing a few episodes of the short lived animated TV show I know nothing about Fish Police. So when I found the above issue for a quarter last fall I grabbed it. It got shuffled towards the bottom of my "Maybe I should read comics out of this stack before it gets taller than I am"stack.

All I remember from the show was the main guy was named Gil. And in this comic he now has legs and seems to have a multiple personality. Honestly most of this comic made no sense to me. Then when I saw in the letters page that this is the next to last issue I realized why the comic made no sense. I am trying to start the story by reading the next to last chapter.

Steve Moncuse is the writer,penciler and inker. And I do like the artwork. We get 25 pages of his art i in the main story. A couple of pages of letters. Then the rest of the issue is made up of character sketches.

While the comic made almost no sense it did get me interested enough in the series that I do want to read the rest of it. No clue how hard it will be to track down the issues. But I kind of doubt any of them will cost me more than a buck or two an issue.

Fish Police #25 gets a borrow.But only cause it made no sense to me.