Menlo Park is not your average private detective. In fact, he’s not really average at all. He’s a reprogrammed janitor robot...

Even for a Marvel series and even during a strong period for indy titles, Dakota North #1 arrived in a sea of superheroes. The June 1986 cover-dated debut issue saw private investigator Dakota North hired to protect a fashion designer who had been targeted to prevent the release of his new clothing line. Not a supervillain in sight.

Captain America #275, the November 1982 issue of the series, was released during a healthy run by pencil artist Mike Zeck and one of his longtime partners, inker John Beatty. During their tenure on the series there are a number of terrific covers, most of them with more details than this one, and in fact many of them could be singled out in this column.

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.

A mysterious visitor to the king’s court conjures up some of the critical scenes of Conan’s life. For those among us who are devoted Conan fans, these pages will recall memories of great stories from prose and comic books past, while at the same time they are entirely accessible and powerful for newer readers.

The Scorpion, as the series debuted, was a man presently called “Moro Frost,” but who had many different identities over many different generations. Using themes he would continue to explore over the next 15 years, Chaykin created a pulp-type adventure hero set in the days just before World War II. He was just beginning to define the style of storytelling he would explore with American Flagg!, The Shadow and his other work.

As terraforming and the World Engine failed on Exodus, the people who had paid to restart their lives there paid even more to get away. This left the company’s employees there with the promise the company would return for them. As the story starts, it’s been a long time, they’re still waiting, and the place is starting to fall apart.  

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. One issue after a 10¢ cover price increase that came with the addition of more story pages, the duo took full advantage of the extra space and packed extra adventure, suspense, and danger into the issue.

It was retroactively billed at Marvel Graphic Novel #1, though that was not included in the indicia. That name was, though, included on the upper left-hand side of the front cover above the price, $5.95, which seemed a bit steep before readers got a chance to dive into its pages.

Until the Samuel L. Jackson era of Nick Fury firmly took hold due to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of the...