The Next Issue Project is a brainchild of Erik Larsen, one of the Image Comics' founding partners. It drew on his fascination with some of the more obscure comic books from late 1930s- early 1940s. Comic book fans tend to refer to that era as the Golden Age of Comics. It wasn't because most of the comics that were released at the time were any good ( Read more... )

Something that's been on my tabs for a while:

• Sequential Romance posted scans of a story from a romance comic that, amazingly, actually involved an interracial relationship. Sort of. It 's kind of open ended. But in the context of the time, it's pretty progressive and interesting for purely historical reasons.

• Meanwhile, Out of This World blog posted ( Read more... )

ttp://www.postmodernbarney.com/ gives us some out-of context panels form Ken Shannon, a Golden Age crime comic.

Harvey Comics, home of Casper the Friendly Ghost and Richie Rich, once did a story involving it's teen characters doing LSD. Seriously. And they are not very subtle about it, either.

All I can say is - how the helling hell did this get past the Comic Code?

And, looking back at the early days of American comics, Savannah College of Art and Design ( Read more... )

Hillman Comics were known for two things - weird-ass superheroes and a whole slew of "Air Fighter" characters. Air Fighters were basically aviator characters with really odd gimmicks - Airboy had a plane that flapped it's wings like a bird, Skywolf flew a plane that could split into two, Iron Ace wore a knight's armor while flying a bulletproof ( Read more... )

Spider Widow is one of the more unusual Quality Comics' Golden Age superheroes (even by Quality Comics standards). This is her origin story. The art is surprisingly good for a Golden Age comic, but then again, Quality Comics' artists were better than most of their contemporaries.

In any case, here's her bizarre origin story

Part 1
Part 2