Friday, September 4, 2015

Comic Review - Unexpected Guests

I was reading some of my old comics and this was one of them from 1995 - Avengers/Ultraforce (from Malibu Comics) by Warren Ellis and George Perez no less.

In pages 34-35, there was a splash page (of which George Perez is well-known for) I come across the image above. What made it interesting was that quite a number of characters were in there that were not supposed to be in there (as a tip of the hat to other players in the industry)

I have taken the trouble to highlight them in colored boxes.

First, we go thru' the light green boxes.
From left:
- American Flagg (Howard Chaykin's brainchild from First Comics back in the 80s)

- Ash (Joe Quesada - a creation from before he became Marvel's head honcho)

- Crimson Plague (George Perez's very own creation when he left mainstream comics.)


On the right side of the page, we have the 2 most famous barbarians of the comic book world
- Conan (Robert E Howard's creation whom I first came to know when Marvel published Conan back in the 70s)

- Groo the Wanderer (Sergio Aragones - yes, the genius who draws all the border comics on the MAD Magazine.)


Finally, we have the 2 characters in yellow boxes. They are none other than George Perez's other non-mainstream creation - Sachs & Violens (under Marvel's Epic label).

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Not Conan, Axus from Freebooters.

JM Loke said...

Apologies for the REALLY LATE reply but hmmm, I'm quite sure that's Conan. I've not heard of Axus before.

Unknown said...

Sorry, nope, it's definitely Axus. The indicia lists which non-Marvel characters are in their, with permission from their creators/owners, and it lists Axus. And when you see what Axus looks like, it's clear that this is him - no other character in the issue resembles Axus, and this character has Axus' horned helmet. chain armor and disc necklace. https://www.barrywindsor-smith.com/studio/fbcovernew.jpg

Unknown said...

Adding: You can see a breakdown of who is in the image here:
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix7/hardcase-hawke-uv.html#various
There's quite a lot of non-Marvel characters in the image, all appearing with approval of their creators and thus listed in the indicia.

JM Loke said...

Ahhh. Thanks for pointing it out. I have no idea of the character named Axus. Now, I gotta look for content with Axus (by Barry Windsor Smith no less)!

The link is great! It gives the details of EVERY character in the poster!