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Underground > Comic Books >

!mpact Comics

01:43 / 18.01.02

Does anybody remember the !mpact Comics line put out by DC(?) about six or seven years ago? It was a revamp of Archie comics superheroes like the Fly and the Comet. They went belly up a year or so after they started but there was some quality stuff there (like Legend of the Shield and the the Fly). I personally loved the entire line, and I had every issue of every title (which comes to about 100 comics total, I think) until I gave them lot of them away to charity.
I don't expect an in-depth discussion of the comparative merits of the W.E.B. versus the Jaguar, I was just wondering if anyone else had ever even heard of !mpact. Help a guy justify a lot of wasted money, okay?

Possible signature sign-off: "Melbatoast!"

03:34 / 18.01.02

Yep, I remember that stuff. I got a kick out of the Fly when I was 10 or 11.

04:54 / 18.01.02

I'm currently working on getting every copy of the Jaguar, myself. In some ways, Bill Messner-Loebs is one of my favourite writers, just because he's so optimistic.

I might try to locate some Comet comics after that (and after I finish collecting the old Howard the Duck run).

06:18 / 18.01.02

Wasn't the whole line designed for 'younger readers' ?

06:18 / 18.01.02

Yup, I remember them. Never read any of 'em, but saw them on the racks.

DBC

11:00 / 18.01.02

Yeah, they were kinda aimed at younger readers, but they're weren't out-and-out kiddie comics.

You know what? I'd love to acquire the rights to some of those Archie superheroes and put my own spin on them. I'm completely blue-sky-ing here, but how would one go about doing something like that?

12:26 / 18.01.02

Hm. I don't know if you could get those characters directly. Did DC buy them outright, or were they just a loaner from Archie? Either way, I can't see either company giving them up.

If you're in the market for other characters, you could wait around for a company to go under and buy their properties. McFarlane purchased Miracleman, the Heap, Airboy and others for somewhere around $40,000.

Licenced properties from other media could work, too. I just read the Speed Racer Companion (don't ask) and it appears that NOW comics bought the rights to Speed Racer for $1000 and 5% of receipt royalties. Those comics went on to make over $2 million.

Or, the easiest way. Use a character that has gone into the public domain.

Shuffling now off before someone comes in and suggests quite strongly that you create your own damn characters.

Almost forgot. I wasn't really that familiar with the Impact line, but I believe Mike Parobeck made his start with one of those titles. Man, that guy was one of the best. I should track those down.

[ 18-01-2002: Message edited by: moriarty ]

12:34 / 18.01.02

the strongest argument for aquiring old characters and creating stories from them is that there is thought to be a built in audience for them.

This is why the SF shelf at many bookstores is almost entirely made up of Star trek titles.

Then again many star trek fans would by ANYTHING with those sared words on them as proven by the continued existence of the star trek fact files (articles on klingon love poetry anyone?)

Matthew Fluxington

14:42 / 18.01.02

I just remember picking a few of those up when I was maybe 11 or 12 when they first started that up, and being horrified by how poorly done they were....

Then I started reading Doom Patrol and Shade The Changing Man...

00:03 / 19.01.02

quote:Originally posted by Storm of Blue vs. God's Paperweight:

You know what? I'd love to acquire the rights to some of those Archie superheroes and put my own spin on them. I'm completely blue-sky-ing here, but how would one go about doing something like that?

Well, you could scan them and use them to make your own Flash show (a la Space Ghost and SeaLab) or online comic (like "My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable") and then distribute it around the internet. It would be illegal, but you could get away with it.

Good Antlerhead

04:18 / 22.01.02

Impact Comics debuted at the first San Diego Comic Con I went to, in 1991, when I was nine–they were handing out a few copies; I remember I really like the humanistic approach to the characters (this was the same convention at which I told Superman editor Mike Carlin off because "Superman's invincible, what's the whole point?" They killed him the next year... hmmm), especially The Fly. I later did my own version of an Impact comic with MacPaint, a gritty Dark Knight-like epic called "The Frog," which I printed out and made double-sided by using my dad's rubber cement, even including ads photocopied from other comics. Ahh, nostalgia. Some of those Impact characters weren't bad.