In the earliest days of S.H.I.E.L.D. stories, the tales were being told only about 20 years after World War II concluded. It made sense that a character like Fury would have continued to serve and to move up the ranks, doing what needed to be done. But since time generally passes very differently in comics than it does in reality, and the final days of the war got further and further away, something had to explain how Fury could keep so spry as his counterparts aged.

Marv Wolfman and George Pérez kicked off the second year of their New Teen Titans series with one of the best issues of their entire run, the November 1981 cover-dated The New Teen Titans #13. One issue after a 10¢ cover price increase provided DC’s issues with more story pages, the creative duo took full advantage of the extra space and packed extra adventure, suspense, and danger into the issue.

Created by writer-artist-editor Carl Potts, Alien Legion is the continuing story of Nomad Squadron, a unit in the TOPHAN Galactica Union’s multi-species military. It is essentially modeled after the French Foreign Legion, but instead of humans with different nationalities it is populated with a wide array of species – mostly, but not exclusively humanoids – who come with an equally wide array of financial, social, political, and criminal backgrounds from the Union’s member planets.

On any list of distinctive, game-changing works comic book works from the 1980s must be Dean Motter’s Mister X, a brilliant blend of crisp design sensibilities, early German cinema, the art deco movement, and the concept of “retro futurism” and mysteries wrapped in further mysteries.

In 1982, when writer-artist Jim Starlin put together a coda to his association with Marvel’s first Captain Marvel, it was billed as a special event. It received special treatment as the debut of the company’s graphic novel line – larger format, great paper stock, beautiful coloring from Steve Oliff, and a healthy bit of promotion. The adoption of the European graphic album format was billed as – and indeed was – a significant event in the American comic book world. 

Hell on Earth, alternately known as DC Science Fiction Graphic Novel #1. Cover dated January 1985, it’s based on Psycho author Robert Bloch’s short story of the same name, which originally appeared in the May 1942 issue of the pulp magazine Weird Tales. It was adapted by writer-artist Keith Giffen (Ambush Bug) and writer Robert Loren Fleming (Thriller).

What if you were a brilliant scientist – Stephen Hawking-type brilliant – but, also like Hawking, you were in a body that betrayed you?

James Tynion IV and Michael Avon Oeming’s Blue Book – Volume 1 was first published in trade paperback form in September 2023 by Dark Horse Comics. It collected Blue Book #1-5, which in turn collected the series that originally appeared on Tynion’s Substack. Written by Tynion, illustrated and colored by Oeming, and lettered by Aditya Bidikar, it’s a dramatization of the well-known story of the UFO encounter story related by Betty and Barney Hill.

Rook: Exodus #11 is the penultimate one in the second arc and it’s really hard to overstate the frightening elements in it. Rook, Dire Wolf, and the others have had to fight tremendous battles to get this far, and now they’re surrounded by the creepiest creatures and settings the creative team has given us to date. It’s a great issue, one that sets that stage for December’s conclusion.

Fish Police: Hairballs was a European graphic album format (like the Marvel Graphic Novel series) collection of the first four issues of the series, which had originally been published in black and white under Moncuse’s Fishwrap Productions imprint. Cover-dated October 1987, the Comico version presented the first story arc of The Fish Police in color for the first time.