Posted in: Comics | Tagged: big bang comics, chris ecker, comic reviews, Comics, comics review, gary carlson, Pulp 2.0 Press

Get A Big Bang Out Of Thunder Girl and Knight Watchman Comics

By Christopher Helton

One of the things that brings together the readers, and writers, of this site is the fact that we love comics. We love all sorts of comics from super-heroes to zombies to romance to manga to science fiction to fantasy. While I love my big, mainstream super-hero comics from companies like DC Comics or Image Comics or Marvel Comics, a big part of the reason that I am drawn to indie and micropress comics is because of the clear love for their material that they bring to their books.

Last week a couple of collections reprinting material from Gary Carlson and Chris Ecker's Big Bang Comics came for me in the mail. You may not know what Big Bang Comics is, or who Carlson and Ecker are, but let me tell you something. You should. Back in my long boxes I have the original singles that these collections were drawn from, but it has been a while since I looked at them so that meant that I got to look at these comics again with (almost) fresh eyes. The first thing that I saw was a lot of love.

Let me drop back and give a little bit of history, for those who may not be familiar with these comics, or these creators. Years ago, when I lived in Cleveland, I was lucky enough to have a comic store that stocked a lot of regional comic publishers. This meant, primarily, getting introduced to Gary Reed's Caliber Comics, but it also meant finding back issues of a small anthology book called Megaton. Megaton was a black and white super-hero anthology, sadly killed by the downfall of black and white comics back in the 80s. It produced early work of Rob Liefeld and Erik Larsen (including an early version of his Dragon character). If the market hadn't have tanked, Megaton might have even published Liefeld's Youngblood first. While I enjoyed all of this, one thing that interested me was a retro-inspired character named Ultraman (who was later renamed Ultiman for legal reasons).

While Megaton may have vanished into the great comic publishing graveyard, it did spawn something new: Big Bang Comics. Published through Reed's Caliber Comics, a four issue mini-series and zero issue debuted. Later, another 35 issues were published through Image Comics, culminating in a cross over between the Big Bang universe and the heroes of Alan Moore's 1963. These were comic stories done in the style of Silver and Golden Age comics, not as deconstructions or ironic reimaginings, but as homages to comics that Carlson and Ecker loved. Along the way they were joined by artists like Jeff Weigel and the late Bill Fugate, but they were making comics that they loved.

That is a very too long; didn't read overview and may skip some points that some people may find important. The point is to look into these comics. And now.

Now, Pulp 2.0 Press is reprinting and collecting some of these stories for newer comic audiences to see.

This may be a bit ranty, but as I was re-reading the stories in Thunder Girl Digest and Knight Watchman: The Golden Age, I was reminded about why I have been a fan of comics for 40-some years now: I love comics. I know, that seems a weird thing to say in a review of a comic book collection on a website that is primarily about comic books. The thing is, I think that for a lot of comics out there in the stores this love has been forgotten. Obviously not all of them. But these comics…these comics just ooze love for the medium and joy for super-heroes.

If you are looking for an escape from the grind of events, and a return to a time when stories were self-contained and took you away from the everyday world into a place where the marvelous and fantastic are everyday, then these collections of Big Bang Comics stories are for you. I'm not sure when I last found myself smiling after finishing a comic, but I did after reading the Thunder Girl Digest.

The inspirations for these characters is obvious. Knight Watchman is a stand in for Batman and Thunder Girl is the creators' way to tell stories in the same vein as the classic C.C. Beck Captain Marvel stories. In fact, the Thunder Girl Digest would be great for young female comic fans looking for a super-hero like them. Wiegel drew a Thunder Girl story co-starring Ultiman that wouldn't be out of place among the Curt Swan/Murphy Anderson Superman stories and Fugate channeled and modernized Beck's storytelling in his stories.

While the title of Knight Watchman: The Golden Age would have you think that the stories are all inspired by the Golden Age of comics, classic stories like "Doom In Dimension X" call back to the zaniness of Silver Age Batman stories with characters like the Knight-Sprite in homage to pre-New Look Batman stories featuring Bat Mite.

Now, while the homage to comics of the past is a feature for me, it might be a bug for others. That's cool. Everyone has different tastes. I will say that these comics do not attempt to slavishly recreate older comics, but they definitely feature art and story writing styles that wouldn't be out of place in those eras.

If you love comics and want to enjoy the works of others who enjoy comics as well, check out these (and other) collections from Pulp 2.0 Press, as well as the new ongoing Big Bang Universe comic coming from AC Comics in April. Tell the people at your comic stores now.

Christopher Helton is a blogger, podcaster and tabletop RPG publisher who talks about games and other forms of geekery at the long-running Dorkland! blog. He is also the co-publisher at the ENnie Award winning Battlefield Press, Inc.  You can find him on Twitter at @dorkland and on G+ at https://plus.google.com/+ChristopherHelton/ where he will talk your ear off about gaming and comics.

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