Revisiting the Eighties with Grimjack & The New Teen Titans!

Welcome to Cool Comics in My Collection Episode 234, where we look at various comic books I own (and in some cases ones that I let get away), both new and old, often with a nostalgic leaning for those feelings of yesteryear. I hope you have as much fun reading about them as I had writing about these cool comics!

For each of the comic books I include here, I list the current secondary market pricing (except for of digital issues, which don’t have collectible value). This is according to the websites ComicBookRealm.com (CBR) and Zap-Kapow Comics (ZKC), using the comic book grading scale of 9.4 (if both sites have the same price, you’ll find just one price for that issue). Not all my comics meet that grade. Some are probably better, and some are certainly worse. But to simplify it, that’s the scale I use here. And remember, a comic book is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. And for those who enjoy the additional fun of knowing some of the more important issues in your collection, I recognize each Cool Comic that is listed in Key Collector Comics

If you have any comments, please scroll to the bottom of the page to where it says, “Leave a Reply.” And now, Episode 234…

Cool Comics News!

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Cool Comics Battle of the Week!

Your Cool Comics Battle of the Week is Cable versus Grimjack! What do you think would happen if they faced each other in a titanic tussle, and how do you see the winner achieving victory? Let us know in the comments section below.

Cool Comics Creations!

This episode’s creation comes to us from Robert A. Kraus (aka RAK), creator of Chakan and many other fantastic works of art, along with cool games he’s developed. This Teen Titans SUPERFREAKS image perfectly complements our Cool Comics Classic issue this episode! To learn more about RAK, be sure to visit his website at http://www.rakgraphics.com/.

You can have a piece of your art featured right here in Cool Comics Creations! Just send an electronic file in an email featuring one of your drawings, whether you’re a professional or amateur, (it can be just pencils, or inks too…or full color if you prefer) or a picture of a craft or sculpture that you’ve done, and as long as it’s family friendly (and not controversial…let’s try to keep this fun), you’ll be a part of an upcoming Cool Comics episode. We also want your name and any other background information you want to provide, such as a website or a way you can be contacted about your art (who knows, maybe someone will make you an offer for the original!). And then email it to edgosney62@gmail.com.

Cool Comics In My Collection

Contemporary Cool Comics

#1190 — Cable #1, Marvel, May 2020.

When I started reading comic books again in 1993, which I consider my third phase of comic collecting (my second phase was a brief foray in 1982), Cable hit my radar, and I wanted to learn more about this old guy who was somehow the son of Scott Summers. I started buying X-Force and any back issues of comics with Cable that I could find, including a Cable mini-series and eventually an ongoing Cable comic. I was also excited when he was in the X-Men cartoon that aired during the Nineties (I’m currently doing a rewatch of it on Disney+). And all of that came to an end in 2003 when I quit comics cold turkey. But since mid-2017, I’ve returned to buying new comics (I started this Cool Comics blog in 2015, but at that time had no intention of buying new comics), and for some reason, the powers that be at Marvel decided to have a young version of Cable kill the old version of Cable. I’ll tell you straight out that I’m not a fan of that move. What made the situation so unique was the son being older than the parents. When I found out Cable was going to have his own series again, I wasn’t too thrilled. But since I’ve been keeping up with this entire Dawn of X storyline, I had to check it out, right? When I opened this issue, I didn’t find the art to my liking…but I tried not to think about negatives. And as I read on, the art ceased being a distraction, and actually started to grow on me. And I think a big part of that is because Gerry Duggan’s wordsmithing keeps you turning pages. There’s a fun surprise element here, having to do with a sword that Cable finds. I don’t want to spoil anything, as this comic just released last week, I’m looking forward to where they are going with it. In addition, the final few pages convinced me that I made the right choice to add Cable to my pull list. The cover price of Cable #1 is $4.99, while the current value is $5. The Key Collector Comics value is $5.

Cool Comics from the Quarter Bin

#1191 — Grimjack #33, First Comics, April 1987.

For the Cool Comic above, I mentioned a little about some of my comic book collecting phases, as I like to call them. But something I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned here before is that between phases 2 and 3, I bought some First Comics at a discount store. It may have been Odd Lots or Big Lots…it was a Lot of some sort! This would have been sometime between 1989 and 1992, if memory serves. And it seems to me that I bought them in prepacks. But I can’t find any evidence online that First Comics did this. Then again, maybe the store itself did this. And there’s a very real possibility that I just bought them loose, at discounted prices. Regardless, when I bought these, I had no knowledge of First Comics, but since I hadn’t bought any comic books since 1982, I thought it would be fun to try these. Some of the titles I ended up with were Badger, Grimjack, Nexus, Sable, and Whisper. Perhaps they were known by current comic fans of the time, but for someone who was no longer part of the gang, these were mysterious adventures waiting to happen, which can be fun…if you don’t get lost! Unfortunately, I sold all my issues at a garage sale a few years back, and now I hunt for them in quarter bins every once in a while. I tried to learn a little about Grimjack before reading this issue, and if you want to know more also, just click here. I wouldn’t mind adding additional issues in this series. Do you have a love for some of the characters and creators of First Comics? The creative team of this issue (and possibly all the Grimjack comics) is John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake. The cover price of Grimjack #33 is $1.25, while the current value is $3.

FCBD the Cool Comics Way (Week 46)

#1192 — Wolfie Monster and the Big Bad Pizza Battle, Graphix, May 2019.

I am most certainly not the demographic this Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) issue is geared towards. But as always, my aim is to cover each FCBD release here at Cool Comics, so I can’t let any of you down. Which means I read them to the very (and in some cases bitter) end. And while lots of the action going on just wasn’t my cup of tea, I tried to toss lots of decades of my life out of my mind and go back to that golden age of twelve while reading this. But I think I needed to shave off a few more years to truly appreciate it. Don’t get me wrong, I think that with the right audience, this comic would be popular, and for all I know, it is. But it wasn’t for me. What I do like about it is that I can hand this off to a kid and not worry that they’ll be reading something inappropriate. It’s just a lot of clean, goofy shenanigans involving the strange looking creatures on the cover, and pizza. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? The cover price of Wolfie Monster and the Big Bad Pizza Battle is free, while the current value is $1.

Cool Comics Kids

#1193 — Dennis the Menace Bonus Series Magazine #189, Fawcett Publications, June 1979.

Dennis the Menace comic books were among my favorites when I was young. I didn’t care for the old black and white TV series, but I really loved the comics for some reason. They had great holiday issues back in those days, and it didn’t feel like Christmas unless I was reading either a holiday digest or regular size Christmas special. And since I’ve been building my Cool Comics Kids library, it never hit me until I found this issue a few weeks ago that for all the kid comics I’ve found in quarter bins, Dennis the Menace hasn’t been one of the titles. Why is that? Could it be that others have that same fondness for the loveable, yet troubled, Dennis, and refuse to part with his comic book adventures? Or maybe there are other Dennis fans out there who keep beating me to the bins when these classics get discounted. I may never know the answer, but I do know that when I sold thousands of comics at a garage sale years ago, I didn’t part with my Dennis the Menace comic books. The cover price of Dennis the Menace Bonus Series Magazine #189 is 40¢, while the current value is $7.

Cool Comics Classics

#1194 — The New Teen Titans #12, DC, October 1981.

I tend to talk about the past quite a bit in my Cool Comic commentaries, but I think most comic book lovers understand why. We often romanticize the comics from our childhood…or teen years…or even last year, if you recently started collecting. Sometimes the comics we bought and read in the Eighties (or whatever era you want to put here – I’ve chosen the Eighties because this book came out in 1981) are just as good when we pick them up today. And sometimes we discover that they weren’t all that great, but it doesn’t really matter, because they represent our beginnings with the hobby. If you did just start reading last year, you’ll know this feeling even better in another decade or two…or three or four! And because of this, regardless of the issue number, just seeing a copy of The New Teen Titans takes me back to Winter and Spring quarters of 1982 at The Ohio State University, where a roommate and friend of mine (also named Ed) helped boost me back into comics (I’d quit collecting in the late Seventies). Ed recommended certain titles, and The New Teen Titans was one of them. I was smart enough to follow this advice and have great memories of discovering the team, learning about their powers, and having this bond with my friend. But things going on in my life that Summer found me drifting away from comic books, and once more I quit. But I cherish those long-ago days and think of them often. And that’s where my thoughts gravitated to while reading this issue. The cover price of The New Teen Titans #12 is 60¢, while the current value is $7.

Cool Collected Editions with Dr. Omnibus

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers:  Year Two Deluxe Edition Hardcover

Dr. Omnibus score: 8 out of 10

Continuing with my Power Rangers reading, I moved on to Year Two. If you caught episode 231 of CCIMC you may remember that I rated Year One 7.5 out of 10, so I didn’t love it, but I shall proceed down this path at least through the Shattered Grid storyline, which is the third hardcover. Because I am invested, and I just have to finish what I start.

The Book Itself

This book is constructed just like year one, but the cover features the red ranger instead of Rita and the Green Ranger. It contains issues 13-24 of the main series and a pretty good assortment of short anthology type stories. One thing I really enjoyed is that a much smaller percentage of this volume was filled with the variant gallery. There is considerably more actual comic content in this volume, despite the issue count being approximately the same.

The Words

By Kyle Higgins

I can really tell that Kyle’s comfort with these characters has increased. Things feel a bit more fluid in this collection, and the story is considerably vaster as far as its depth and reach. Lots of interdimensional stuff really gives this a very strong sci-fi base. Thinking about how one could exist outside reality as we know it is always fun for me. There are even some geo-political thriller elements, which really just get started and help paint a picture for where some plotlines may lead. Just about every aspect of the writing in this volume was superior to that found in Year One.

As I mentioned, there are a pretty good handful of short stories from a large assortment of writers included in this volume. Many were great, some were not so great. I did not take these into consideration when providing my rating for this book, as I feel it would deter people from reading the main story, which is pretty good. But the ones that are good are very good, so I wouldn’t recommend skipping them altogether.

The Art

By Hendry Prasetya

I didn’t notice any marked change in the art; it was on point in Year One and that is maintained in Year 2.

The quality of art is extremely variable in the short stories. I don’t want to say any of it is bad. From a technical standpoint, I’m sure it’s fine, but a lot of it was not very eye catching or interesting. On the other hand, some of the best art in the book can also be found in these.

The Gist

With Year Two being better overall than Year One, I am considerably more excited to read the Shattered Grid Deluxe Edition Hardcover than I was to read this volume, after Year one. I see lots of opportunity with what they have set up and expect some strong dramatics. If you were on the fence after reading Year one, I encourage you to carry on. So far, things are trending in the right direction.

Damian Starr is a long-time collector of comics who, in recent years, has converted his focus to reading—almost exclusively—trade paperbacks, hardcovers, and Omnibus editions. Additionally, he is a frequent contributor to the MCBCFA Play Network YouTube channel (check out his Dr. Omnibus playlists). To add one more layer to his geekery, he is an amateur comic author and co-founder of Illuminatus Comics.

Cool Comics Reader Reviews!

Darth Maul

Reviewed by Steve Adams

Hey fellow comic geeks. My name is Steve Adams and I have been a member of the Cool Comics Facebook group for a short time but have been reading comics since 1979 or 1980. I have a collection of comics from the 80’s and 90’s but had to stop buying as I couldn’t afford it anymore. I see some of the current cover prices of these books now and am glad I am not trying to scrape money together each week. I do, though, like to get the collected editions from my library and read those. I was a Mighty Marvel fan growing up, and that is what I largely stick to, although I have some DC and Image in my collection as well.

After watching The Mandalorian, as well as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, I have been in Star Wars mode for a couple months now and have been filling that void with some Star Wars comics. For my first review, I will be looking at the Darth Maul series, issues 1-5, from 2017. Luke Ross and Nolan Woodard do a fantastic job of bringing Maul to menacing visual life. The art is fantastic, and you can see the hatred in Maul’s face on every page. Cullen Bunn does a good job of laying out the conflict in Maul between subservience to Darth Sidious and his desire to use his Sith training. His sole purpose: kill Jedi. He finally learns of a Padawan who has been captured, and he undertakes to “free” her for his own reasons. However, he cannot let Sidious know that he is disobeying his master by going after her.

This series obviously takes place shortly before Episode I and does a good job of exploring Maul’s motivations without giving away too much of his personal history. It retains a sense of mystery about Maul’s past, and I appreciate that. One of my biggest problems with the prequels was that they gave away too much about Vader’s past. The mystery was gone. The writer avoids this temptation here, and the story is better for it. The pacing is superb, as it does take breaks from its action-packed sequences for some exposition. I felt the resolution was realistic and believable, with some nice foreshadowing of the fall of the Jedi depicted in the prequel trilogy.

If you like the expansion of the stories into the comics and novels, and haven’t read this yet, I recommend it. It’s a quick, easy read that will appeal to fans of the best Star Wars villain not named Darth Vader.

Would you like to write a review of a comic book or graphic novel for all the Internet to see? Our Cool Comics Reader Reviews section is looking for fans just like you to submit reviews of 500 words or less (introductions about yourself don’t go against the word count), along with a cover image of the comic, to edgosney62@gmail.com. Please keep in mind that we reserve the right to decide what will and won’t go in the blog, so keep the language clean, pick out a comic that won’t cause controversy (we try to have fun here!), and start tapping away on your keyboard!

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