Bizarre Thrills The Paragon Publications Story TPB (2012) comic books

1st printing. This is it- the non-AC book that AC Comics fans have been waiting almost three decades for!! If you read & enjoy AC Comics, youll want to have this book to understand where it all comes from. In an era before the independent, direct-sales comic book distribution system existed, Bill Black created a line of comic-book style periodicals that incorporated the idea of design and featured his own original characters in ongoing, interconnected stories - a comics universe. No, this was NOT AC Comics; this came before that. This was Bills legendary PARAGON PUBLICATIONS. Between 1968 and 1982, PARAGON released more than 40 publications, fueled not only by Bills tasteful sense of visuals and impactful storytelling, but also a healthy dose of something woefully rare in the mainstream comics of the day, and that is STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS, styled with Bills fascination for the glamorous good girl art comic books of the 1940′s. That creative vision mustve been well-realized, since many of those characters are still appearing today in the AC Comics line; in FEMFORCE and elsewhere. This volume collects some of the BEST of the PARAGON material; 21 full vintage stories in all, starring the likes of SYNN (when she was still referred to as The Girl From LSD), The SHADE (his ORIGINAL origin), TARA, STORMY TEMPEST, NIGHTVEIL (at a point that she was being referred to as Phantom Lady), The (original) SCARLET SCORPION, the prototype for STARDUST; the villainous ALIZARIN CRIMSON, Dr. RIVITS, No-NOSE NANETTE and GORGANNA - plus a number of great characters you may never have heard of, including The STARMASTERS, The DEFENDER and SPACE GUARDIAN. See the origins of SYNN and the SCARLET SCORPION, AND THE FIRST FEMFORCE story ever published anywhere!! Although Bill did the writing and art on virtually EVERY story in the PARAGON era, he occasionally had a little help from his friends in terms of collaborators like Martin Greim, Bob Cosgrove, Gary Brown, Marc Hempel( and if youre familiar with his current art style, youd NEVER recognize him here!!) Willie Blyberg and Steve Vance. Also, pin-ups by the likes of Terry Austin, John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Dick Giordano, Mike Golden, Gil Kane, Bob McLeod, Don Newton, George Perez, Mike Royer, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alex Toth and Mike Zeck fill out the book, all behind a striking Joe Staton- Bill Black color cover. In addition, Bill provides a complete PARAGON PUBLICATIONS index, an overview to how it all ran, notes and history; plus comments from fans/readers of the day. Most of this material has been unseen anywhere for more than three decades. When the PARAGON books were originally circulated as a mail-order product sold through fanzine ads, they sold a ridiculously high number of copies-in some cases, more than a number of mainstream books sell today. Whoever bought the magazines back then must have liked them, since despite the fact that they sold in high volume, very few copies find their way onto the collectors market; hence the inflated prices when they DO show up. Among regular AC fans and readers, few things have garnered more requests than a reprinting of the classic vintage material in this book. But thats not all!! When Bill started AC Comics at the tail-end of 1982, virtually all of the PARAGON plotlines were left hanging and unfinished- even those relating to characters that showed up in AC continuity virtually untouched. This always bothered the Wild One, so especially for this volume, Bill teamed up with ace penciler Eric Coile to produce an ALL NEW, NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN 23-page story involving STARDUST, SYNN and the rest of the FEMFORCE in a contemporary tale that actually RESOLVES all of those old plotlines today!! A 2012-era PARAGON adventure!! Who else but Bill Black would take the time and effort to finish up stories more than thirty years old? Softcover, 200 pages, B&W. Mature Readers Cover price $29.95.