Clipped from Wikipedia: Silverwolf Comics was a California-based American comic book publisher founded by Kris Silver in the mid-’80s with titles and characters created entirely by him. A notable distinction of Grips was that its main character’s alter-ego was a comic book illustrator whose own creation, dubbed Fat Ninja, was also put out as a title by Silverwolf. Silverwolf ceased publication in 1987, but re-emerged as Greater Mercury Comics in 1989, publishing more material and characters created by Silver, until GMC ceased publishing in the early 1990s.
Clipped from www.drawnandquarterly.com: Foster says Silver was a “strange, nunchuck-wielding nerd” who owned Alexander’s Comics in south Sacramento on Freeport Boulevard. He published books out of this storefront under the Silver Wolf banner. Foster, McCart, and even local artists like Ron Lim and Tim Vigil ended up doing work for Silver Wolf.
Many say these comics were bad; Foster calls them “unreadable” and “poorly drawn,” noting that Silver would employ such slapdash methods as using a typewriter to jot out captions and inelegantly pasting them onto the panels.
But collectors during the mid-’80s were eating up black-and-white comic books. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series had brought about a boon, and Silver Wolf rode its coattails...
Many say these comics were bad; Foster calls them “unreadable” and “poorly drawn,” noting that Silver would employ such slapdash methods as using a typewriter to jot out captions and inelegantly pasting them onto the panels.
But collectors during the mid-’80s were eating up black-and-white comic books. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series had brought about a boon, and Silver Wolf rode its coattails...
...Grips sold like gangbusters and was Silver Wolf’s most popular title.
Dork Note: A few years back I went to Sears to get my tires changed and struck up a conversation about comics with the dude there. He told me he use to draw a comic called Eradicators for Silverwolf Comics. I was like, "Fuck Dude, I collected that book!" He just laughed at me...I'm a dork in all situations!
9 comments:
Ah, Silverwolf. Yeah, they were pretty bad. But they were different, at the least. Sooooo much of what was coming out of the mainstream of comics at that time was soulless, anything they could put a #1 on they printed. In that sense, the others were no better than Silverwolf, they just had better art.
Kris Silver's books were the absolute worst written books anyone could imagine though. He did not have anything really unique or different, save bad details like using Macintosh to letter all his books. Every character he ever created is a bad-ass vigilante type with some combination of "Death"/"Dark" and "Lord"/"Hawk"/"Assassin" etc.
As a 15 year old I was on holiday in the States with my folks and came across a Silverwolf comic 'convention' in a shopping mall. I remember Kris dumping a few comics (at a price) on me and my bro to take back to the UK and try and get some interest from comic shops. Still got a bunch of signed copies by Kris & some of the artists in my Dads attic. Bet they are worth a bomb now.
I stumbled across Silverwolf the very first time I walked into a real comic shop as a kid. I never did read any of the other titles but I did grip up a copy of Eradicator's #1. I know the stuff get's dogged somewhat by folks but myself , even though the closest shop was over 100 miles from my house I went out of my way to get #2 , #3 of the series. Unfortunately #4 always eluded me. My point is it wasn't that bad. It had a market for a second , and it had some decent ideas. I certainly read worse by far , from much much larger companies.
I Loved the characters!
Kris silver was and as far as I know, still is, a giant ass. I worked fir him doing that period and nearly everything he wrote and sold was trash. It seems like he us still best at talking about things, instead of doing them.
They had spunk.
Eradicator was one of the most one dimensional stories ever. Didn't care for Kris Silver much as a person either. He was never a nice and hated his customers. I remember his shop in Crossroads on Freeport Blvd all the middle school kids would bend the corners of the expensive bagged comics. Wonder what happened to that turd.
I have read most Siverwolf and Greater Mercury comics, and at their best these comics are merely immature nonsense, but in a very short time these titles often didn't make sense. The characters would often made massively stupid decisions, and the dialogue was truly the worst written dialogue and scene descriptions I have ever read. It's not even a matter of debate that the characters are in fact idiots, just based on their own behavior. It is also not uncommon for the plots to fall apart into pointless scenarios of characters making decisions that have no common sense or rational explanation.
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