Alternative comics or independent comics cover a range of American comics that have appeared since the 1980s, following the underground comix movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Alternative comics present an alternative to mainstream superhero comics which in the past have dominated the American comic book industry. They span across a wide range of genres, artistic styles, and subjects.
Warren Publishing was an American magazine company founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades. Magazines published by Warren include After Hours, Creepy, Eerie, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Help!, and Vampirella.
Weird Fantasy is an American dark fantasy and science fiction anthology comic that was part of the EC Comics line in the early 1950s. The companion comic for Weird Fantasy was Weird Science. Over a four-year span, Weird Fantasy ran for 22 issues, ending with the November–December 1953 issue.
Jay Kinney is an American author, editor, and former underground cartoonist. Kinney has been noted for "adding new dimensions to the political comic" in the underground comix press of the 1970s and '80s.
Ian C. Thomas, a.k.a. Ian T., is a long-term Australian comics artist, cartoonist, and musician. He created Australia's first minicomic, produced Maelstrom (1982) and contributed to the early Australian anthology Reverie, as well as a comic strip about a busker in Melbourne newspaper City Extra.
Romance comics are a genre of comic books that were most popular during the Golden Age of Comics. The market for comics, which had been growing rapidly throughout the 1940s, began to plummet after the end of World War II when military contracts to provide disposable reading matter to servicemen ended. This left many comic creators seeking new markets. In 1947, part of an effort to tap into new adult audiences, the romance comic genre was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby with the Crestwood Publications title Young Romance.
Australian comics have been published since 1908 and Australian comics creators have gone to produce influential work in the global comics industry,
Christopher Sequeira is a Sydney-based Australian editor, writer and artist who works predominantly in the speculative fiction and mystery realms.
Young Romance is a romantic comic book series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for the Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics in 1947. Generally considered the first romance comic, the series ran for 124 consecutive issues under Prize imprint, and a further 84 published by DC Comics after Crestwood stopped producing comics.
Secrets of Sinister House was a horror-suspense anthology comic book series published by DC Comics from 1972-1974, a companion to Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion. Both series were originally inspired by the successful ABC soap opera Dark Shadows, which ran from 1966 to 1971.
Gay Comix is an underground comics series published from 1980 to 1998 featuring cartoons by and for gay men and lesbians. The comic books had the tagline "Lesbians and Gay Men Put It On Paper!"
Bernard Caleo is a Melbourne-based Australia comic artist, comic book editor, performer, and presenter.
Nicki Greenberg is a Melbourne-based Australian comic artist and illustrator.
Tim Molloy is a New Zealand illustrator and comic artist, living and working in Melbourne. Molloy's work has appeared in Tango, Torpedo and Desktop Magazine. In 2007 he published a collection of his comic art as Under the Bed. Since 2006 he has collaborated with writer Adam Lachlan to produce Life on Earth cartoons. Recently he has published two graphic novels, It Shines and Shakes and Laughs and Mr Unpronounceable Adventures through Australian publisher, Milk Shadow Books.
Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. In the US market, horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the imposition of the self-censorship Comics Code Authority contributed to the demise of many titles and the toning down of others. Black-and-white horror-comics magazines, which did not fall under the Code, flourished from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s from a variety of publishers. Mainstream American color comic books experienced a horror resurgence in the 1970s, following a loosening of the Code. While the genre has had greater and lesser periods of popularity, it occupies a firm niche in comics as of the 2010s.
Girl Comics is the name of two comic-book series published by Marvel Comics and its forerunners, Timely Comics and Atlas Comics. The first, debuting in 1949, ran 35 issues, changing its title to Girl Confessions with issue #13. The second was a three-issue limited series published in 2010.
Haunted Love is a horror-romance anthology comic book series that was published by American company Charlton Comics from 1973 to 1975. It was part of the Gothic Romance comic book mini-trend of the era, which included the short-lived DC Comics series The Dark Mansion Of Forbidden Love and The Sinister House of Secret Love, and Atlas/Seaboard Comics' one-shot magazine Gothic Romances. Haunted Love was also part of Charlton's wave of early 1970s horror-themed titles, including Ghostly Haunts, Haunted, Midnight Tales, and Scary Tales.
Out of This World Adventures was an American pulp magazine which published two issues, in July and December 1950. It included several pages of comics as well as science fiction stories. It was edited by Donald A. Wollheim and published by Avon. Sales were weak, and after two issues Avon decided to cancel it.
Northwest Press is an American publisher specializing in LGBT-themed comic books and graphic novels. It was founded in 2010 by Charles "Zan" Christensen. The company publishes in print, as well as through digital channels such as ComiXology and Apple's iBooks, and also retails some similarly-themed books published independently.
