AC COMICS | BASIC BLACK

VECTOR

Here’s a shout out to John Nadeau who started his art career at AC Comics decades ago drawing FEMFORCE and such diverse features as THE DURANGO KID and ROY ROGERS. John is a good friend and a great talent. He also supplied superb covers for FEMFORCE, CRYPT OF HORROR, STORMY TEMPEST and NIGHTVEIL in recent years. Now he has produced an extraordinary series entitled VECTOR.

When I flipped thru the new sci-fi comic VECTOR numbers one and two yesterday I was immediately struck by the visual complexity of the art… the architecture, the depth, free-hand line work and the hundreds and hundreds of little people delineated therein. I realized that absorbing all this would require a concentrated effort on my part. After all, if John Nadeau, creator, writer, artist, colorist, had put this much into VECTOR, reading it, drinking it all in, should have my undivided attention...

 Bill Black Jul 29, 2020

 Bill Black Jul 20, 2020

AC COMICS

BASIC BLACK – Episode 2 – “NIGHTVEIL MEETS CONRAD BROOKS!”

NIGHTVEIL MEETS CONRAD BROOKS!

Here’s something that nobody else has seen. AC Comics was set up with David Sanford’s TRI-CITY GAMES at the GIANT COMIC BOOK WAREHOUSE SHOW in Orlando, FL in 1995 to promote the SUPERBABES Role Playing Game. David put up a huge display and made room for a few AC Comics’
Artists, Chris Allen, Mark Heike and Nick Northey. He also brought in, from Texas, Mary Capps to appear in costume as NIGHTVEIL. In addition Charlotte Foster was decked out as COLT, the Weapons Mistress. The famous guest star of the show was Hollywood actor, CONRAD BROOKS, of PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE fame.
I was there shooting video with a VHS camcorder so the picture quality is not so hot. Still this a good glimpse of the times as it happened 25 years ago.
Mary’s excellent NIGHTVEIL costume was commissioned by Steven Johnson for the 1994 San Diego Comic Con Costume Contest where she appeared as the mystic mistress...

 Bill Black Jul 02, 2020

AC COMICS

BASIC BLACK – Episode 1 – “30 Day Doom”

Bill Black discusses the labor involved in the early (1983) days of Indy comic book publishing. Pre-digital comics with mechanical color separations required a lot of time-consuming work and were very expensive to produce. This entry, the #) Day Doom, is the first in a series concerning the

When a reader picks up a comic book they first see the art then read the story. Little thought, if any, is given to the process of what it takes to physically produce the book. This segment of the History of AC Comics will focus not on the editorial aspect of publishing but the physical labor and equipment involved in the manufacturing of a comic book.

Most publishers create editorial content and pass everything else on to their printer. That is expensive. The primary reason, other than insanity, for the incredible longevity of AC is that all the grunt work was done in house. Whereas publishers have office staff… secretaries, proofreaders, office assistants, accountants, and so forth…...