Eclipse Comics
Eclipse Comics was an American comic book publisher, one of several independent publishers during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1978, it published the first graphic novel intended for the newly created comic book specialty store market. It was one of the first to offer royalties and creator ownership of rights.
Creators whose early work appears in Eclipse publications include Scott McCloud, Timothy Truman, Dan Brereton, James Hudnall and Chris Ware, while the publisher also produced creator-owned work by Don McGregor, Mark Evanier, Gene Colan, Alan Moore, Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber and P. Craig Russell.
History
Foundation
The company was founded as Eclipse Enterprises by brothers Jan and Dean Mullaney – the sons of early electronica musician Dave Mullaney of the band Hot Butter – in April 1977. Dean Mullaney later claimed that he was inspired to create the company after learning of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's struggles to gain recognition for creating Superman in 1968, and that this led him to create a company with an ethos that respected creator ownership and royalty payments over the then-standard industry practice of work-for-hire. Jan Mullaney, a session keyboardist who had toured with the Bee Gees and Bad Company, put up the $2000 starting money.The name was thought up by Sue Pollina, a friend of the Mullaneys, while the company's first logo was designed by Mark Gruenwald. The company was initially headquartered at 81 Delaware Street, Staten Island, New York.
Early graphic novels
Eclipse published one of the first original graphic novels, and the first to be sold through the new "direct market" of comic-book stores, Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy. Published on 30 September 1978 and previewed in Heavy Metal, the book was a success. This led to the Mullaneys being contacted by P. Craig Russell, McGregor's collaborator on Marvel Comics' Amazing Adventures. Eclipse published Russell's experimental Night Music 1 in November 1979, by which time the company had also released a compilation of Fred Hembeck's parody Dateline: @!!?# strips from The Buyer's Guide to Comics Fandom. Russell later created comic adaptations of numerous operas for Eclipse. A more sophisticated logo was also commissioned from Tom Orzechowski; it remained the company's insignia for the rest of its existence, minor alterations aside. The profits earned to date were used to fund publication of McGregor's Detectives, Inc.: A Remembrance of Threatening Green and Steve Gerber's Stewart the Rat. In 1980, Mullaney moonlighted as co-editor of the brand-new hobbyist publication Comics Feature, produced by Hal Schuster's New Media Publishing, but left after a year to focus on Eclipse.Ongoing titles
Not wanting to limit the company to graphic novels alone, the brothers devised Eclipse, the Magazine, a 68-page bi-monthly black-and-white anthology title with a rotating group of creator-owned characters. The first issue, dated May 1981, introduced the hard-boiled female detective Ms. Tree by Max Allan Collins and Steve Ditko's Static. The title later introduced Steve Englehart's Coyote, Trina Robbins' adaptation of Sax Rohmer's Dope, McGregor and Colan's Ragamuffins and B.C. Boyer's Masked Man. October 1981 saw the publication of Jim Starlin's Dreadstar graphic novel The Price when the writer-artist was having contractual issues with Marvel. The success of the volume enabled Starlin to leverage a better deal with Marvel, and led to the creation of Marvel's Epic Comics imprint in 1982. Dean Mullaney later claimed Epic's name was purposefully picked to cause confusion with Eclipse. Another disgruntled Marvel creator to work for Eclipse was Gerber; Eclipse commissioned his Destroyer Duck series. Another anthology, it was partly motivated to allow Gerber to raise funds to sue Marvel over the ownership of Howard the Duck. The first issue of Destroyer Duck sold 80,000 copies and proved to the Mullaneys that color ongoing comics were viable; a Saber series started in 1982 and ran for 14 issues.In December 1981 production of Destroyer Duck introduced Dean Mullaney to Cat Yronwode, then news reporter for Comics Buyer's Guide. At the time, Yronwode was working as an archivist for Will Eisner. Yronwode recalled that Eisner and his wife Ann "hosted a party for me with all these comic book men I was flirting with. All these men came up; they all wanted to meet Will. One of them was Dean Mullaney, the co-owner of Eclipse Comics, a small independent publishing house. He was the most flirtatious." The pair began a personal and professional relationship, though the former aspect was initially kept private. Yronwode rapidly became Eclipse's de facto editor-in-chief.
Expansion
While Jan Mullaney remained based in New York to handle the economic side of the business, Dean Mullaney focused on the role of publisher and Yronwode that of editor-in-chief for Eclipse's growing number of titles, and the pair briefly relocated to Columbia, Missouri. After meeting Mark Evanier and Will Meugniot, Eclipse published their first superhero regular series, The DNAgents. It was joined by Eclipse Monthly, a color successor to Eclipse, the Magazine that continued Static, Dope and Masked Man as well as introducing further characters. Ms. Tree was spun off into its own title, while Yronwode rediscovered Will Eisner's lost 1948 story John Law, which was published for the first time. After the stopover in Missouri, Dean Mullaney and Yronwode established Eclipse's main offices in the small town of Guerneville in July 1983. In October 1984 Jan Mullaney opted to discontinue his involvement in order to focus on his music career, leaving his brother as sole publisher and Yronwode officially promoted to editor-in-chief. Eclipse's advertising copy flagged their stance on creator ownership, the maturity of the material and the individuality of the outputIncreased output included Scott McCloud's Zot! and Doug Moench's Aztec Ace. Yronwode effectively became the face of the company, continuing to write her influential Fit to Print comic in Comics Buyer's Guide and from late 1984 penning the Penumbra column printed in most Eclipse titles; it had previously been named Notes from Surf City in reference to the 1963 Jan and Dean song, an in-joke between the similarly named Mullaney brothers. During this time her name was professionally rendered as "cat ⊕ yronwode" in CBG and Eclipse material. The comic market experienced a downturn in 1984 due to a crowded market but Eclipse was successful enough to weather it; when rival Pacific Comics folded, Mullaney was able to arrange purchasing their titles. This included Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer, Mr. Monster and Somerset Holmes, as well as a recently signed deal for the American rights to Quality Communications' acclaimed British anthology Warrior. They also set up the Independent Comics Group to publish two issues of the anthology Twisted Tales, while Fred Burke also joined the company in 1984. Burke subsequently edited and wrote numerous titles for Eclipse.
The inherited deal with Quality was fortuitously timed: Alan Moore had recently taken over writing Saga of the Swamp Thing for DC Comics, triggering the so-called British invasion. The Warrior deal brought in Axel Pressbutton and The Spiral Path, which were colored by Eclipse and printed in limited series, as well as taking over Peter Milligan's Strange Days anthology, starring Johnny Nemo. The deal also included the acclaimed revival of Marvelman written by Moore, though legal issues – resulting in the book being retitled Miracleman – had to be resolved before Eclipse could run the title. Miracleman was originally one of three 75¢ books launched by Eclipse as part of a short-lived deal with a Finnish printer at the time they were the cheapest direct market full color comics ever made. However, the results of the printing were severely lacking and the price soon became unviable, with Eclipse reverting the books to their standard 95¢ bracket after the initial printing contract expired. After the Warrior material ran out Moore continued the series at Eclipse. Other new additions around this time were Timothy Truman's Scout, Larry Marder's Tales of the Beanworld and Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, Don Chin's spoof of the already-parodic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, while Russell continued his adaptations with comic versions of the operas Salome and Pelleas and Melisandre under the Night Music banner. Eclipse also produced a series of Murray Ward's indexes to various DC titles, continuing from his deal with Pacific; to avoid the complication of Eclipse's logo appearing on books featuring another publisher's intellectual property, these were published via a sub-label named the Independent Comic Group.
Eclipse attempted to innovate with new publishing models for comics. Among these were so-called "micro-series", limited series of two bi-weekly or even weekly issues; a line of 3-D stereoscopy books in collaboration with Ray Zone ; and – later – flexi disc records containing theme songs for titles. By this point, Eclipse was selling around half a million comics a month, and was the third largest comics publisher after Marvel Comics and DC Comics.
Flooding
Eclipse suffered a major setback on February 14, 1986, when the Russian River flooded after heavy rainfall. Eclipse's offices were swamped; the water reached the second floor of their building, as well as Mullaney and Yronwode's homes. Mullaney recalled that Yronwode had to be rescued from her office by a Red Cross canoe; while he was able to save much of the original artwork in the offices by moving it up to the third floor, it destroyed the company's inventory of back issues, as well as color separations for planned reprints of Zot! and Yronwode's notes for a non-fiction book about Steve Ditko. The subject was covered in Fit to Print and Penumbra columns. The events were alluded to in a tongue-in-cheek framing sequence Yronwode wrote for Miracleman #8. The damage caused was estimated at $200,000.Despite the material and financial losses, in July 1986 the company launched its first regular bi-weekly title, Airboy. A revival of a defunct Golden Age aviator hero originally published by Hillman Periodicals between 1942 and 1953, the series was written by the prolific Chuck Dixon. The title initially had another unusual format, being a 16-page 50¢ full-color title. While this was eventually dropped, Airboy was a critical and commercial success for Eclipse, and several spin-off titles followed. Superhero series The New Wave also launched using the bi-weekly model before becoming a standard monthly. To deal with the increasing output, both Burke and Letita Glozer were added to the full-time editorial staff, while Beau Smith joined as Sales Manager.
To avoid further flooding the company also relocated to Forestville in Sonoma County, California. In July 1987, Yronwode used her Fit to Print column to announce her forthcoming marriage to Dean Mullaney, set to take place on August 15 in Forestville; readers were encouraged to write in to receive invitations.