TOTALLY EPIC

Chiller (1993) #1-2
by James D. Hudnall and John Ridgway

Hey! Hudnall and Ridgway! I like both of those guy, so perhaps this’ll be better than the previous two Epic mini-series.

It’s published in a format that’s slightly unusual for Epic: It’s two 64-page squarebound issues (at a no doubt scandalous $8 price point). Epic were mostly publishing four-issues 32-page floppies at this point, but I guess they were experimenting…

And this isn’t a “Heavy Hitters” book, either.

Nice. I like Ridgway’s heavy black spotting. His faces sometimes go off model, but the lines have a solidity to them that’s pleasing. And you get a sense of place: This is underground, and it feels that way.

Some hyper-violence (it is 1993, after all), but I like the deranged action here (with the floating arms and stuff), and I love that monster design, with those huge red, featureless eyes and that sloppy mouth.

The protagonist of the book is a magician with… magic powers. It’s pretty close to being a super-hero, I guess.

The first issue was brisk and fun: Lots of new, slightly odd concept thrown at us, told via Ridgway’s super-clear humanistic artwork. The second issue, though, feels really unbalanced. We get pages and pages of explanations about what this is all about, and it is (of course) a world-spanning conspiracy etc etc. That’s fine, but it feels like very little happens…

… until the denouement (which comes on the pages following this; I don’t want to spoil everything, right?) when everything is over in a couple of pages.

It’s something of a disappointment.

Still, it’s an enjoyable read.

A collected edition was published by Image in 2001, and it can currently be bought as an e-book from all the normal places.

I was unable to find any reviews of it.

Strange Combat Tales (1993) #1-4
by Rob Stofega, Aubrey Singer, Dave Matthews, Allen Nunis and others

Epic was doing the “Heavy Hitters” initiative in 1993, but here’s another one that’s definitely not hitting very heavily. It has the whiff of a Marvel UK production, but I tried googling the creators to see if they were from Britain, and… I’m not sure? Perhaps not?

It definitely doesn’t fit in with what Epic was publishing at the time, which was (generally and surprisingly) kinda good. This is… barely readable.

Every page is full of leaden captions describing what we’re seeing. The artwork is relentlessly ugly, and devoid of niceties like backgrounds…

Or anatomy.

But it tries hard to be edgy? Or something?

The turgid dialogue often spills out of the panels, leading somebody to put in helpful arrows to direct the reader’s path through these pages. I appreciate the consideration, but it’s… amateurish?

It turns out that this series is four separate stories of “strange combat” (i.e., supernatural or sci-fi stuff dropped into various eras).

So we get, for instance, this woman fighting War of the Worlds aliens during the US civil war.

At least she comes from a sensible age.

And then (like the female sidekick in the first issue) she dies. And then it turns out that that was just a story written by the guy from the next issue? This may seem like a cool conceit, and it is, but it’s the only segue of this kind. (I think. It’s so badly written that it’s hard to pay attention.)

They fight dragons from airplanes.

And then the main female character dies.

IT”S ALMOST LIKE THERE”S A PATTERN HERE!!1!ONE

I couldn’t finish the final issue. I’m sorry — this series broke me.

This back cover sums up the series.

It has never been collected (yay), and there’s nary a trace of it on the interwebs the usual people trying to sell their copies or the comics databases.

Somebody on Reddit discovered an issue:

Good lord, this looks ridiculous and obscenely violent.

…worth reading? I’m gonna go with a YES unless someone says strongly otherwise.

It doesn’t look like the people who did this series have worked extensively in the comics business either before or after, but my google-fu may be weak.