The Heart Of Texas!

Michael Golden
Texas Comics was just one of the myriad comics companies that popped up during the 80's rush that developed after the advent of the direct sales market. The stands were besotted with all sorts of start-ups and wannabes, most all of them featuring superheroes. Texas Comics produced exactly one comic, but it was a whopper featuring an eye-popping wraparound cover by Michael Golden The comic co-starred  The Justice Machine and the T.HU.N.D.E.R. Agents, and debuted the Elementals. This was a one-shot Indy that delivered.

John Byrne and Mike Gustovich
The Justice Machine created by Bob Gustovich had a run at Noble Comics, but were licensed to the Texas Comics boys. Later they showed up at Comico, Innovation, and others.

Lou Manna and Willie Blyberg

George Perez
The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents had a venerable career extending back to the 60's and Tower Comics. They were revived in  the early 80's by John Carbonaro in his JC Comics and later by Deluxe Comics. The latter caused quite a stink which resulted in litigation lasting  years, and which kept the Agents off the racks for decades.

Bill Willingham and Bill Anderson
Perhaps the the most notable achievement of the Texas Comics experiment was the debut of The Elementals created by Bill Willingham. They were picked up by Comico and proved to be a sturdy superteam, surviving well into the 90's under various imprints.

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Resounding Thunder!

DC has announced (yet again) that they are going to publish new adventures of the classic Tower Comics heroes the THUNDER Agents.

Tower was an upstart company led creatively by artist and writer Wally Wood and writer Len Brown, and it employed artists like Gil Kane, Mike Sekowsky, Reed Crandall, Chic Stone, Steve Ditko,George Tuska, Manny Stallman and many others. The stories were by and large well-crafted superhero tales embedded in a somewhat espionage environment. Superman-Meets-Bond would probably capture the essential flavor of the series.

The books lasted a few years, priced at twenty-five cents a copy they were high-end for the time. But they were gems. I was a wee bit young to have dived into these, but I do remember seeing them on the stands. And a decade or more back I put together a mostly complete collection. Beautiful storytelling in a blend early and later Silver Age styles.

The Agents have been since their cancellation the stuff of legend. They were acquired by John Carbanaro who spent years looking for just the right deal to bring them back. During the first wave of independents unleashed by the direct sales market they appeared in a new company named Deluxe but that fell through and then Carbonaro produced his own books before the Agents then became the ultimate crossover stars appearing all over the comics landscape of the 80's. Even the Penthouse magazine folks tried a reboot during the 90's.

Then DC said they had them, but the deal fell through. The archives developed out of that and then sadly Carbonaro passed away. Last year DC said they were going to do new stories again, but then it all went silent again.


Until yesterday when news broke that a new THUNDER Agents book is scheduled to appear this fall. I'll believe that when I see it. The Agents have had a long long history, most of it involving anticipation and disappointment, so we'll see how this develops.

I do like how Frank Quitely's cover art for the debut evokes the classic look of a vintage Wally Wood cover. On the downside, the use of the word "clone" as opposed to "android" for the bodies that Noman will use is a bit distressing. Either it's a change I don't like or the writer doesn't know the difference that's problematic.

Sigh.

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