Convention season is in full swing, and that means that I'm spending a lot of time digging through dollar bins and picking up cheap back issues. The thing is, though, I'm not really looking for t...
Superhero comics are always gonna be weird, even when the aesthetics of the time they occupy are trying to lean hard into more Serious Issues. Like, say, that time in 1991 when Vandal Savage trie...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-flash-vandal-savages-war-against-drugs-1991/
The Batman of the '80s was certainly skewing darker than the previous eras, but that was also a time where all the leftovers from the Silver Age were still more or less directing the story. That'...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-crisis-of-the-calendar-man-1985/
Say what you will about the comics of the first Golden Age boom, but they are almost alarmingly direct, with a tenuous-at-best relationship with the concept of subtlety. Such is the case with Fig...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-kinks-mason-1940/
If you've been reading the current Superman titles, then you're no doubt aware that things have gotten pretty weird lately. Superman and Lois Lane are the characters from two reboots ago, and Cla...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-who-took-the-super-out-of-superman-1976/
It's Valentine's Day, and that means that our thoughts here at ComicsAlliance are turning inevitably to our favorite romances from comics. Well. Maybe that's not the right word, since I'm not sur...
You know how every now and then, you'll see a cover on an old comic, and it'll stick with you even if you don't actually read the issue? That happened to me with Detective Comics #365. Ever since...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-joker-tv-1967/
Last week, I wrote about "Manhunt on Land," an Aquaman story where he drove around in a pickup truck full of fish to track down a sea crook who had taken to land for the express purpose of avoidi...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-green-arrow-underwater-archers-1959/
If you read through enough back issues of Detective Comics, you'll run across a guy who seems an awful lot like a rough draft for Maxie Zeus. The only difference is that instead of fighting Batma...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-detective-comics-302-king-zeus/
The thing you need to understand about Riverdale is that people there don't react to things with the normal levels of emotions. I mean, that's pretty obvious, right? The entire town --- the entir...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-betty-veronica-snow-day-1985/
When you think about characters that are well-suited for saving Christmas, it's hard to come up with one more perfect for the job than Michelangelo the Ninja Turtle. Not only has he been making s...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-tmnt-michelangelo-saves-christmas-1985/
Sakura Tsukuba's Sweet Rein tells the story of Kurumi, a teenage girl who discovers that she's a Santa Claus when she encounters Kaito, a wispy and beautiful boy who is also sometimes a reindeer,...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-sweet-rein-2/
The weird thing about Santa Mythology is that while we're all pretty solid on what he does now --- you know, the North Pole, the elves, the sleigh and the toys, all that good stuff --- the origin...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-santas-first-christmas-trip/
After roughly four million installments of this column, it's probably pretty clear that I have a deep and abiding love the stranger side of old comics. That's one of the reasons that we're living...
Thanksgiving is just over the horizon, and that means that it's time once again for the annual bout of anxiety about spending time with your relatives. If it gets bad this year, though, maybe you...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-supergirls-big-sister/
So let's talk about the Jimmy Olsen Fan Club for a minute. I love Jimmy Olsen, and I will go to bat for him as being one of the single greatest comic book characters of all time, but even I am oc...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-jimmy-olsen-mystery-tiny-supermen-1960/
Every October, I like to scour my own archives for the spookiest back issues available, but this year, one found me. It's like something out of a scary movie --- I went to my barber for a haircut...
With the season of spookiness upon us, I thought for sure that the one thing I was guaranteed to get from 75 years of seafaring adventures was a story where Aquaman had to fight a ghost ship. It'...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-aquaman-ghost-ship-2011/
Moonchild was one of the strips that ran in Misty, which was originally conceived by Mills as a sister title for 2000 AD, complementing the sci-fi directed primarily at boys with supernatural spo...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-mills-armstrongs-moonchild-misty/
It's finally October, friends and neighbors, and that means that it's the spookiest time of year: Halloween Season! That frightfully fun time of year when we turn our attention to stories about D...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-black-magic-supergirl-1965/
Back in the dim and distant times before the manga boom at the turn of the century, if you wanted anything that looked even remotely like Japanese comics you had to hunt through long boxes and ho...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-eat-man-1997/
Getting super-powers can be a tricky bit of business. Sure, you could always wait for a magic space ring to just literally fall out of the sky, and if you're confident in your ability to be a pro...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-secret-of-the-super-box-1957/
So let's talk about The Silver Age. No, not the period from 1954 to 1971 that was largely defined by rigid rules, bizarre transformations, and Superman constantly playing educational pranks on al...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-silver-age-crossover-body-swaps-2000/
I think we can all agree that the single biggest piece of news in comics right now is the shocking return of Colonel Blimp in the pages of Tom King and Ivan Reis's Batman #6, in stores now. But j...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-colonel-blimp-1982/
Badger is a very weird comic, and it's weird in a way that's such a product of its time that the best way to read it may be to just pick up whatever back issue you see and read it in complete iso...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-badger-bruce-lee-elvis-1990/
But while the spirit of the Olympics is built on international friendship and good-natured competition, there are definitely villainous organizations out there trying to sabotage the games with t...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-teen-titans-secret-olympic-heroes-1966/
Over the past week or so, my thoughts have been primarily consumed with two things: Comet the Super-Horse and the Summer Olympics. For the former, I was mostly able to get all of my thoughts down...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-supergirl-fake-olympics-1970/
Tom Scioli has good taste in comics. That should probably be obvious if you look at the influences that have filtered down through his work on titles like Transformers vs. GI Joe. While most of h...
We've seen an awful lot of reboots over the past few years, and when it comes to giving a long-running character a new #1, there are a lot of choices you can make. The obvious one, of course, is ...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-adventures-of-superboy-alien-death-wish/
All right, look. I have made my share of jokes about Aquaman over the years. Heck, if you really want to get down to it, I've made several people's share of jokes about Aquaman, to the point wher...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-aquaman-one-hour-to-doom-1961/
It might be easier to visualize those stiff poses and flat coloring that make up the art, but it's that sweet, sweet dialogue that really serves as the hallmark of the Silver Age. It's all bold p...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-krypto-colossal-dog-1959/
So hey, you know how Jimmy Olsen sometimes runs into a mystical jewel called the Star of Cathay that sends his consciousness back in time to his past life as famous 13th century merchant and expl...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-jimmy-olsen-spartacus-1973/
I've been writing about weird old comics on the Internet for well over a decade now, and there are two things that you really need to take away from that. First, I am old, and never have I felt t...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-ddp-the-corps-2008/
If you're anything like me you're probably a little mystified by the current state of the Superman books. As fun as those stories might be, trying to figure out how the younger Superman of the Ne...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-superman-versus-superboy-1963/
Last week, Archie Comics announced that a new Josie and the Pussycats comic was on the way, and there are a lot of different directions the creators could take it in. They could head back to the ...
https://comicsalliance.com/bizarro-back-issues-josie-and-the-pussycats-falcons-claw/