Eclipse (magazine)

Eclipse, the Magazine was a black-and-white comics anthology magazine published bi-monthly by Eclipse Comics from 1981 to 1983. It was the company's first ongoing title, Eclipse having previously published graphic novels, and was designed as a competitor to the likes of Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal.

Overview

Like the rest of Eclipse's output at the time, the anthology allowed creators to retain ownership of their material. The format attracted an eclectic mix of contributors, from mainstream industry veterans such as Steve Englehart, Don McGregor, Steve Gerber and Gene Colan to underground comix figures including Howard Cruse, Rick Geary, Hunt Emerson and Harvey Pekar, as well as newcomers to the medium like Max Allan Collins and Charles Vess.
There was no set format for contributions, which ranged from a single page to 11 pages in length, and mixed serialised stories with one-offs. Further freedom was permitted by Eclipse not being a signatory for the Comics Code Authority. Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik's "Role Model" and "Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others" in Eclipse #2–3 directly addressed the hypocrisy of censorship.
Eclipse introduced several strips that would go on to appear elsewhere – Collins and Terry Beatty created hardboiled detective Ms. Tree for the first issue, and would be ever-present in the magazine before receiving her own series from 1983; Englehart and Marshall Rogers's Coyote first appeared in the second issue, and would be collected in a graphic novel by Eclipse; McGregor and Colan's Ragamuffins would be similarly collected; and B.C. Boyer's tongue-in-cheek Masked Man would debut in #7, and later graduate to his own title.
Due to the diverse number of contributors the magazine struggled to keep to its bi-monthly schedule; Eclipse publisher and title editor Dean Mullaney would later state the difficulties in co-ordinating the freelance creators led to the title's cancellation after 8 issues. It was replaced by the color anthology Eclipse Monthly, which ran from August 1983 to July 1984, and continued both The Masked Man and Trina Robbins' adaptation of Sax Rohmer's novel Dope.

Features

Issue	Date	Contents
1	May 1981	Klonsbon the Foozle Amber III Death The Chimera Cartoon Man Crystal Sett Ms. Tree
2	July 1981	Rick Rabbit He Always Wanted to Write for Ernie Kovacs... Coyote What's the "Little Blond-Haired Guy" Doing Here? Sax Rohmer's Dope Role Model Quick Trim Crime in the City Ms. Tree
3	November 1981	Coyote Vamp Dance Ragamuffins Homer's Idyll Large Cow Comix Sax Rohmer's Dope Caring, Sharing and Helping Others Because Ms. Tree
4	January 1982	Coyote Forgotten Adventures on the Kon-Tiki The Demon Chronicles Dirty Pool A Fistful of Graveyard Dirt Sax Rohmer's Dope A Victorian Murder Ms. Tree
5	March 1982	Coyote The HitchHiker Forgotten Adventures on the Kon-Tiki Among the Scarabaeidae Down the Drain Sax Rohmer's Dope Ragamuffins Ms. Tree
6	July 1982	Ms. Tree Alice Quinn A Lil' Monster Making a Phone Call Luke the Drifter Sax Rohmer's Dope A Walk Up Avenue U My Transformation Coyote
7	November 1982	The Masked Man The Fate of Charity Hope Sax Rohmer's Dope The Twin in the Doorway The Underground Lighthouse An Autobiography Coyote
8	January 1983	The Masked Man Mr. Walk-Down-the-Street Mackie Goes Native Ragamuffins Sax Rohmer's Dope Coyote