Some of my favorite comics series have only lasted a few issues. I thought I would share them with you because they are generally cheap enough to pick up in the back issue bins, and I am curious as to whether anyone else read them.
Archer and Armstrong. This was fabulous under Barry Windsor-Smith, then Mike Baron or someone took over, and it was okay to pretty good, then Valiant decided to relaunch it in an unreadable fashion, but the 12 or so initial issues were excellent.
Brain Boy. There were no credits to this Dell 4 Color Series, but I tracked down all 7 issues. If I become a famous writer, and some company letsd me do anything, I have a Brain Boy series all mapped out.
Aquaman by Shaun McLaughlin. Not the best series in the world, but a nice, solid superhero series. The issue with Batman as guest star is a true classic of bronze age characterization placed in a post-Crisis context.
Nth Man, the Ultimate Ninja by Larry Hama. This series was both wacky and rather tragic. It crossed over with Excaliber, and ended rather well all things considered.
Ambush Bug by Levitz, Giffen, Fleming and others. Not strictly a series, but an inspired character who invaded the DC Universe for a time in the mid-1980's.
Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes by Mindy Newll. Okay, this is a kind of a cheat, but I don't think Ms. Newell has ever received proper credit. She scripted (over Levitz plots, apparently) several issues of a hugely popular team book. She was doing this while Paul Levitz himself, one of the greatest writers in the history of the medium, was writing the exact same characters during an era where devotion to the comic was at a peak, and she held up perfectly including solid stories with Dev Em and Supergirl. I think that's pretty impressive. I mean, imagine if if you hire Bobby Flay or Jean Jaha or cook a twelve course meal for a group of fanatical gourmets. But he also picks someone else to cook half the meal, and none of the diners complain that six of the courses aren't up to snuff even by comparison. That's Mindy Newell on Legion.
Quantum and Woody by Priest and Bright. This series is pretty well known, and among the regular readers of this blog I know several are fans. I had an idea for a story which I offered to priest. He liked the idea so much that he asked me to write it up as a fill in. I had the perfect pen name planned out: Phil N'Gai. (I wanted to use "Jim Owsley," but he told me not to. I remember when Paul Monitor moved to the Toronto Blue Jays. Someone was using his number, so Paul took Robin Yount's number. Then when the other guy was traded, they offered him his old number. Paul said, "I'm keeping this one until Robin comes here and wants it back.")
Posted by Mike Chary at February 25, 2005 9:35 PM
ah--the quick hook!
always sad...
I'm still pissed about Power of the Atom, although they did make it to issue #18, so I guess that doesn't count...
I really like The Claws of The Cat--and that one got run out of town in a hurry...despite Wally Wood's wondrous work (not that I was actually alive at the time to feel bad about it, or anything...)
Speedball--that was great!
Shadow Strikes!--again, it lasted better than two years...but still...why the hell wasn't it more popular?
last, and quite possibly least, but still very important to me!
'Mazing Man!
"in this crazy world, we all need a friend...like Mazing Man..." why didn't we realize this before it was too late?
Rozakis and Destephano--those guys were great!
and why didn't the 3-D Man ever get his own series?
Dave
A few of mine that immediately come to mind:
The Heckler, by Giffen and Tom and Mary Bierbaum. Six issues of bizarre entertainment. I can't recall who did the art, but it was a great complement to the script--crowded, dark, and just ridiculous enough. My favorite villain of the run was probably C'est Hey, with the metatextual Mr. Generic (whose name I may have wrong) from issues 2 and 3 a close second.
Chase, by D. Curtis Johnson. Sadly, this remains (so far as I'm aware) Dan Johnson's only full-length comics work. A DEO agent hunts down metahumans. Had a fairly strong X-Files vibe, but maintained its own identity. Lovely art from J.H. Williams didn't hurt. Lasted almost a dozen issues, I believe.
Ultragirl, by Barbara Kesel. A three-issue miniseries from Marvel that should've been an ongoing. A half-Kree girl befriends a broken sentinel (long before Marvel's recent Sentinel series). I wish I could remember more, but it's been a while. Did Leonard Kirk do art for this?
I'll have to ponder this, and may post more later. I'd mention Aztek, but everyone around here knows it already....
Firearm, by James Robinson and--usually--Cully Hamner. 18 issues of hard-boiled private eye in a superhero world action, before Marvel came along and ruined everything by buying the Ultraverse. (Well, to be fair, Robinson started concentrating on Starman as well.) It was relaunched as a 6-issue series written by Marv Wolfman and David Quinn which had nothing to do with the original series.
Short-lived series ... Well, Major Bummer comes to mind. Hilarious stuff. Aztek, the Ultimate Man was sheer brilliance. I always liked The Minx, which only lasted 7 issues. We all feel like we curse these somehow when they don't last, don't we?
Milk & Cheese - tag! You're Larry Storch!
Zero Assassin, a sadly probably unknown outside of Oz circles, aussie effort of the early ninties
Millar's run on Swamp Thing. I know some Howling regulars have a hate hard-on for Millar but at least he tries something bold with my favourite muck-man unlike so many of the post-Moore folks...
American Flagg
The Doom Patrol before Rachel Pollack and the so very evil John Byrne got their nasty little paws on the title...
there's more but it's 3am and I need some form of sleep this month - doctor's orders...
The aforementioned Nth Man was a great series, and I was sorely disappointed when it got cancelled.
Most of the Shooter-era Valiant comics were excellent, although after his departure they went into noticeable decline.
Likewise Dark Dominion from Shooter's Defiant Comics greatly intrigued me.
In the early 90's Jackson Guice did a run on Nick Fury, Agent of Shield which was excellent although I can't remember who the writer was. For a while, it seemed magical and then poof, it was gone.
Milk & Cheese doesn't count...it's not dead, just realllly slow. Dorkin's Livejournal gives occasional updates on his progress in the next issue.
A title not mentioned yet: Slapsick. A four-issue mini that really deserved a followup.
Seconds to Firearm and Chase, but I'd also add Chronos, which was introduced around the same time as Chase and met it's end just about as quickly (11 issues and a disjointed One Million issue, similar to Chase's 9 issues and even more disjointed One Million issue). They were starting to build a big, complex time travel story that, of course, had to be concluded far too soon, which made the ending rushed and completely unsatisfying. Good while it lasted, though.
Does The Maze Agency count? It was a mid-'80s detective-story book written by Mike Barr with art by Adam Hughes (and a "zero issue" drawn by Alan Davis). It came out first from Comico, and then from Innovation after Comico folded, so all told it ran at least two dozen issues (not all of them with Hughes art). At first glance it looked like a "Moonlighting" ripoff, but it took both the detective work and the leads' relationship more seriously.
Otherwise, I second the love for 'Mazing Man and nominate Young Heroes In Love.
American Flagg hardly counts as short-lived, does it?
The two that first come to my mind are the never-finished. How did Scorpio Rose end, anyway, and what was up in Foglio's D'Arc Tangent? I'd pay real money to buy out Freff so Phil could finish that.
Glad to see another 'Mazing Man fan in the house.
Wouldn't 'Mazing Man qualify as long-lived by modern standards? Still deserves to be reprinted.
As does Wasteland, which I'm surprised nobody else has mentioned yet. (Also a surprising no-show would be Puma Blues, probably the only comic I've ever bought just for the sake of the art...
'Mazing Man ran 12 monthly issues (1985-86) and 3 specials (1987, '88, '90). I suppose that's about par for the course (it's longer than Chronos or Chase) but I'd still say it was short-lived. Then again, I thought Hourman was short-lived, and it ran 25 issues.
I guess it's a duration vs. volume question. Staying in publication as a going concern over 5 years is a decent run, now or then...but 15 total issues isn't.
I'm with you on that Aquaman series. It was/is my favorite run of Aquaman ever and I was really sad to see it end.
Another comic that only lasted a few issues that I consider one of the greats was the original Ragman series which only lasted 5 issues but is a classic, if you ask me.