And, since Chris Sims has fallen behind on his regular monthly feature, Chris vs. Previews, our first Tale From the Quarter Bin will be to look at the August 1, 1985 issue of Amazing Heroes. Yup, today I found one with today's date, albeit two decades ago.
For those of you too young to remember, Amazing Heroes was a bi-weekly (mostly) news magazine covering the comic industry. For $2.25 you would get 70ish pages of news, articles, reviews, sales charts, and advertisements for some of the oddest titles you ever done saw. In those heady pre-Internet days, it was one of the primary sources for "news" for fans.So what was going on in the wild world of comics books 22 years ago today?
Our cover story was a 10 page article (yes, 10 pages!) on the inside scoop as to why Alpha Flight and The Incredible Hulk were swapping creative teams: John Byrne was taking over the Hulk, and Bill Mantlo and Mike Mignola were going to Alpha Flight. Since Byrne's run on the Hulk (this time) lasted only 5 issues, one can say with hindsight that maybe the 10 page cover story wasn't exactly warranted. Mantlo did last 38 issues on Alpha Flight, a healthy run.
In the news section, we learn that:
- Marvel will be raising their cover price to 75¢, to match DC.
- Starting in Iron Man #202, Tony Stark "embarks on a quest for his lost fortune." Note for younger readers: at this point, Stark was not yet a fascist butt-hole.
- Devil Dinosaur was announced as a guest-star for The Thing #31
- DC announced the creative teams for all 12 issues of the DC Challenge
- Comico Comics (!) announces that The Badger will be going monthly.
- Eclipse Comics (!) announces that issue #10 will be the final issue of Zot! SPOILER ALERT: it wasn't really the last issue.
Among the comics scheduled for release August 1-15, 1985 were:
- Crisis on Infinite Earths #8--the death of Barry Allen!! Note for younger readers: this was before every DC maxi-series got tagged with the word "Crisis." It was also when DC maxi-series were actually good, and not complete crap. Amazingly, though, Barry is still dead...this is the one death that DC not dare undo...unless...
- Fury of Firestorm#42--"Firehawk and Wonder Girl search for Wonder Girl's husband." SPOILER ALERT: they find him, but he'll be erased from continuity...and put back in...and erased...why don't they just change Donna Troy's heroic name to "Yo-yo!"
- Legion of Super-Heroes #17--"Special 'primer' issue for new Legion readers." SPOILER ALERT: Why bother? The Legion will reboot about 8 times in the next 22 years...
- Crossfire #14--"Will Rainbow bare all for Chic Saxon's new men's magazine?" SPOILER ALERT: No.
- Captain America #312--"Featuring the Flag Smasher." Written by Gruenwald. SPOILER ALERT: Bucky is alive.
- Marvel Heroes for Hope--The X-Men #1--"A one-shot famine relief comic for East Africa, including work by Alan Moore, Harlan Ellison, Stephen King, Berni Wrightson, Richard Corben, Jim Starlin, and others." SPOILER ALERT: It didn't work.
- The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #1--Yup, #1. The first. "The Abomination through Batroc's Brigade!!"
- Power Pack #17--"Franklin Richards becomes the fifth member of the Power Pack." And so our long national nightmare began.
- ROM Annual #4--Ahhhhh....
The "Top 100" is a sales chart, based on Amazing Heroes' survey of 50+ comics stores. For the titles that went on sale in March, the top five were
- Secret Wars II #1
- X-Men #195
- Crisis on Infinite Earths #4
- Web of Spider-Man #4
- Cloak and Dagger #1
The reviews section, by R.A. Jones, features a glowing review for Miracleman #1. Sigh....
That all for now. I won't bore you with 8-page history of Eclipso (with a nice, but monstrously out-of-date checklist), or the 7 page history of Lois Lane. But stay tuned, in the near future, for more TALES FROM THE QUARTER BIN!!!
TRUE FACT: I was all set to do CvP last night, to the point where I had notes written on everything I wanted to talk about from the first half, and ended up leaving Previews at work.
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