Having mentioned ’60s superheroes, at Marvel and DC, and Alan Moore, I thought I’d talk about those who tried to take the genre somewhere else in past years.
Steve Gerber
It was Steve Gerber who got me back into comics in the ’70s, […]

All of my favourite newspaper strips were at the comedy end of the market – and it is worth noting here how big an influence Segar’s Popeye was on adventure strips. Nonetheless, there were some great adventure strips, back in the days whe[…]

EC
It was, more than anything else, EC’s powerful horror comics that led to uproar and US Senate hearings in the ’50s – and for years afterwards, comics were aimed more squarely at children than any time before or since.
They don&#8[…]

According to Wikipedia, this is the formula for the evil god Darkseid’s Anti-Life Equation, currently menacing DC comics:

“loneliness + alienation + fear + despair + self-worth ÷ mockery ÷ condemnation ÷ misunderstanding x guilt x sha[…]

The last item (bar a bonus insert) in this series was on European comics. Two of the all-time great children’s creators could have been covered there. It’s worth noting that comics have been a medium aimed overwhelmingly at children, espe[…]

(I thought it was worth adding this review of a recent release as a supplement to the recent piece on old DC superhero comics).
The second Flash volume is, for me, the best Showcase* collection yet. I love Carmine Infantino’s art on these old c[…]

I remember long ago constantly being told that European comics was a mature artform for adults, to be envied. There is material like that, and material of the very highest quality – but my god there’s a gigantic amount of beautifully draw[…]

Another person who deserves his own entry in this series is Alan Moore, surely the most award-laden writer in the history of comics, and one of the most influential.
He first came to prominence in the early ’80s in Britain, with two great stori[…]

Well, the old avant-garde anyway – I’m out of touch these days, so apologies for talking about yesterday’s pioneers. Raw was a comic magazine, published in a variety of formats, which specialised in the strange and experimental, str[…]

War is not among my favourite genres, but it has been the subject matter for some great comics over the years. It’s also been the genre for probably the most successful British comics over the years, the apparently endless Commando series, whic[…]