Death's Head Stares Across The Years

Eagle featured several memorable characters, but none made the impression on me that DEATH'S HEAD did. A lumbering beast with a really wicked looking skeletal visage and a shotgun, the big bad hunter showed up in Eagle #4 when Doctors Gordon and Scott (and Peplum fans will get the reference there) pulled a Talik Hunting Dog through a Temporal Redundancy by accident. Death's Head was on the case and ready to hunt down the creature.
Simple eh?
But this character was so damned cool looking the gents at Eagle HQ fleshed him out with a great back story that not only made him a repeating character, but gave an epic sweep to the entire saga of Richard Eagle along the way. While I would love to recap all the goodness, I think this is a surprise best left to you readers that will be enjoying the reprints of the series. Trust me, you'll dig it. After a few appearances in Eagle, including pivotal appearances in the origin issue (#12), the character was given a chance to shine on it's own. While it is an Eagle Tie-In, the story in Death's Head number 1-which continues on as a serialized back up with Eagle 20 from Apple Comics-stands alone and is a fast paced tale of vengeance, shotguns, Regulators and lots of flying debris. Death's Head was like a sequel to Eagle cleverly wrapped into the original story-and I'm hoping that the adventures of the big purple creature with no lower jaw will continue on-and Crystal Coast Cities inhabitants will get a chance to shine.


Next... But WHY can't "Death's Head" rise from the ashes? Perhaps a Dark Angel can tell us!

The Pin-Up Perch Of Richard Eagle

If you go through the Crystal Comics run of EAGLE you can't help but notice the huge array of talented guys getting started during the black and white boom. There are tons to choose from, so we'll start out first with Adam Hughes, who also did the covers for The Dark Mirror Saga series from Comic Zone. Eagle is getting his swerve on it would appear... a hard days fighting deserves a reward I guess.
Then we move on to Erik Larsen, currently the publisher at Image Comics and Eagle contributor as well. I like his piece, it is very different from Neil's work-but is really striking.

More pinups and guest covers to come Oh Inner Circle Members, as we get back in the Temporal Groove of Richard Eagle!

A History Of Eagle Part 4-An Orb Is A Circle Without End

A HISTORY OF EAGLE PART 4

by Neil Vokes

Read Part 1 Here, Part 2 Here, Part 3 Here

In the intervening years between then and now (the early summer of 2007) I attempted several relaunches of the book, but to no avail-I even started a story introducing new characters and potential plotlines, but couldn’t find a writer that was up to the task of scripting it from my art (having “misplaced” Jack Herman through the years-I’m still saddened by that) and I wasn’t up to the task either so between that and other work it was put on the shelf).

(unpublished Eagle-The Lost Years page)

We very quietly celebrated Eagle’s 20^th anniversary in September of ‘06 and I’m afraid I let that slip by without any kind of new EAGLE comic available. I still kick myself about that to this day.

The good news is that things have changed since the beginning of the New Year. My family and I have moved into a new home (I finally have my own studio!) and I found a writer who was willing to dive into the deep end of Eagle’s deep universe. Robert Tinnell is a very talented filmmaker who I met some years back at a Famous Monsters of Filmland convention. We’re both huge horror film fans and became close friends. In that time we started working together on several original graphic novels (including THE BLACK FOREST 1 & 2 and THE WICKED WEST 1 & 2) so he was a natural to get to write Richard Eagle’s new adventures.

The other, very important person who has become involved in this new undertaking is another horror geek like Bob and me, David Zuzelo, or Z as I call him. Z has the distinction of being the first person to be officially involved with Eagle who was a fan of the comic as a young man back in the ‘80s (true, I’m a fan of Eagle also, but it’s not the same thing.) so he comes at it from a unique angle: he probably knows more about the world of Eagle than even I do!. He has become the heart and soul of this new book and Bob and I couldn’t do it without him (I think you’ll get a kick out of what Z has planned for you-including this very blog he created himself)

We plan to provide you a new storyline-bringing Eagle back from the limbo he’s been in all these years-mixed with reprints of the original series, which I have somewhat “Lucased” (a term I coined to cover the tweaks I made to some of the art-may the Comic Gods-and especially Rich-forgive me) What we hope to accomplish at the very least with the newer Eagle tales, dear reader, is to remind the loyal fans of what they loved about the character and to invite new fans into his world.

Yes, a new EAGLE page!

I’d like to add to what my buddy Rich said earlier about thanking everyone out there for their undying loyalty these past 20 years. Though Rich left the comics world behind long, long ago, I think I can speak for him and say that he appreciates it as much as I do to this very day.

As for myself, I’m looking forward to celebrating my 23^rd anniversary in the comic biz in November of this year. I have had the most fun anyone could possibly hope telling comic book stories for you. With any luck Eagle and I both will be entertaining you for many years to come.

That’s All There Is To It,
Neil D Vokes
6.8.07

A History Of Eagle Part 3

A HISTORY OF EAGLE by Neil Vokes and Rich Rankin

Part 3

Read Part 1 Here and Part 2 Here

Soon after this, the black & white boom went bust. By the time EAGLE #2 came out in December, many distributors were starting to slash their black & white orders across the board. Even so, we sold a respectable 42,000 copies. Issue #3 was a different story. Even though fan support of EAGLE remained high, distributors and retailers were in the midst of one of the worst slumps in comic history. It was the dead of winter, and sales were so bad that many retailers were either going out of business or having a hard time paying their bills. Orders on most black & whites were down by as much as 85% and this encompassed good and bad titles alike.

Sales on EAGLE #3 dropped to 25,000 even though it was the second part of a two-part story. Because of this, it has become extremely difficult to find in many areas of the country. With issue #4, sales had slipped even lower with orders just topping 20,000. Of course, most black & whites were ordering much less with orders less than 10,000 becoming commonplace. Even with the tremendous glut of product, and sales dropping off sharply, EAGLE was still among the top ten best selling black & whites in the country! One of the only titles in the top ten that featured a human, non-funny animal type, character in the lead.

As of the spring of 1987 (when Rich was writing the original Orb-Bits column-Neil), Eagle’s sales have stabilized and it remains one of the top black & white sellers. We would like to think that it’s because of the time and effort that the whole team puts into each and every issue.

* At this point I’m going to skip ahead to Rich’s ish # 16 Orb-Bits (April ’88)…you’ll see why-Neil *

Well, this is the column I had hoped I’d never have to write. Crystal Publications is no more. The copy of EAGLE you now hold in your hands is the last ish from Crystal. But don’t despair, EAGLE fans, just as our hero has escaped the jaws of death many times in the past, so too has he escaped the cold, cruel hand of cancellation. EAGLE will now be published by Apple Comics. They have assured us a smooth changeover which means you won’t have to miss a single issue. In case you were worried, the same team of Neil Vokes, Rich Rankin, Jack Herman and Gary Fields will continue to bring you the same quality of work that you’ve come to expect from us over the last 16 issues.

Neil and I now want to take this opportunity to thank all of our loyal readers out there that have stayed with us and supported us all this time. It has been a great year and a half and we couldn’t have made it without you. We hope to be around for a long time to come.

We’ve got a lot of great stuff coming your way including a 6 part story beginning in EAGLE #20. You won’t want to miss this story as it brings back a villain not seen since issue #1.

* Now we skip ahead to ish # 23 (April ’90) in the “Inner Circle” letters column-Neil*

Yes, this will be our last issue of EAGLE. We had hoped to at least end the current storyline, but circumstances prevent this. The reasons are many, mostly financial, but I won’t bore you with the details.

Having said that, I will now promise you that at some point in the future EAGLE shall return!

* And indeed he did (In January of ’92) under the banner of Rich’s comic shop named company THE COMIC ZONE. A 4 ish mini series was planned that would complete the aforementioned 6 ish story we started under the Apple Comics tree. Rich left me to my own devices with this undertaking because he had recently dropped out of the ever crazy whirlwind that is professional comics to run his store fulltime. He did manage to get our good buddy Adam Hughes (who at that time was still a few years from being the awesome star he later became) to do the 4 covers while I took care of the interiors.

Shiro and Tanya share a moment in Dark Mirror Saga #4 w/ art by Oeming

I incorporated both old and new material into the telling of what became known as THE DARK MIRROR SAGA. There was the existing story that we had published already at Apple and new story and art that I added at the start and end of each ish providing a framing story wherein we found Eagle lost in a non descript limbo which turned out to be the realm of the infamous Orb.

After finishing up the Dark Mirror storyline (with the invaluable help of a very young, but extremely talented Mike Oeming) our hero was left standing on the snowy edge of a cliff in some forgotten edge of the world 25 years after he had disappeared from the EAGLE universe…at least within the world of the comic. For those of us out here in the real world it was July of 1992.

TO BE... CONCLUDED?

A History Of Eagle Part 2

A HISTORY OF EAGLE by Neil Vokes and Rich Rankin
Part 2

read part 1 HERE

At first, we decided to shop the book around and go for the traditional color format. The first company we approached was Comico, of course. Unfortunately, their money was tied up with JONNY QUEST and GRENDEL and there wasn’t anything left for untried projects. While this was discouraging at first since we had been with them from the beginning and did not want to go elsewhere, it was the deciding factor in publishing our own book.

With the loving support of our wives, the help of others too numerous to mention, a few dollars in our pockets and lots of determination, we decided to buck the odds and enter the already overcrowded black & white & market.

April 1986…This is when things started coming together. Neil & I began updating EAGLE and bringing him more into line with what we thought he should be (it needs to be said here that it was my own growing obsession with martial arts films, including samurai epics like Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO and 7 SAMURAI, that drove my wanting our character to kick ass like Bruce Lee and sword fight like Mifune or Tomisaburo Wakayama-it’s also important-very telling even-that the cult film HIGHLANDER was released at this time-those of you who are familiar with the film-and my passion for it-will appreciate the evolution of Eagle even more-Neil)

The first sketch of Richard Eagle...Psychic Detective!

We conceived him as an action oriented character rooted in the martial arts, but also as very mysterious with one foot planted firmly in the supernatural. It was this combination that we felt made Eagle unique and gave him just the right mix we were looking for. This way, he would not be just another ninja, samurai or Bruce Lee clone.

We then proceeded to write up the initial plot lines for the first five issues. We knew that supporting characters were going to be very important to Eagle’s existence in order to keep the story lines interesting. At the very heart of this were the villains. Interesting villains were a must, as every fan of Jack Kirby knows. Without a good villain to fight, what good are heroes?

After all the characters were assembled, we decided to make the first story as action packed as possible and complete in one issue (A lost art now days-Neil). We knew that issue #2 wouldn’t be out for at least 3 months after that, and maybe never if you fans didn’t like it. Why start off with a continuing story that you can never finish? We also didn’t want to start with a boring origin issue. We thought it was better to get right into the action and reveal Eagle’s origin as we go along (not to mention, even we didn’t know everything about our character yet-the beauty of Eagle was that he grew as a character with each successive issue-he virtually told US his story-Neil) We didn’t want to bog anyone down with too many details in the beginning, and besides, everyone loves a mystery, right? So what better subject to base the first issue on than…ninja!!! But we didn’t want to do just any ninja story. Everyone was doing ninja stories at that time so we wanted ours to take a different approach. What if we packed as many ninja into one issue as humanly possible and then killed them all off?!

June 1, 1986 was the date the solicitations for EAGLE #1 went out to distributors. We sent out as much artwork as we had available at the time, along with the covers for issues #1 & #2. Then we sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. It wasn’t until August that we finally started getting orders back on the first issue.

Neil and I had high hopes, of course, that EAGLE would sell pretty well. We had no idea, however, of just how well it would do. Our orders were up to 30,000 copies, and we had only talked to about half the distributors! By the time all the orders were in, we were over 50,000 copies!!!

August 15, 1986 was the day that we sent the stats of EAGLE #1 to the printers. We decided to print 55,000 copies in order to cover any re-orders that might come in. We had no way of knowing just how many we would receive. We were in for a big surprise.

September 15, 1986 was the official release date for EAGLE #1. It was with great enthusiasm that we prepared for the first issue to hit the stands. The two weeks from the time the book shipped until the time it hit the comic book stores seemed like a lifetime. The first hint of how the book was doing came from several local comic shops. “It’s selling like hotcakes,” they told us. “We put them on the shelves and they disappear.”

We began to make calls to different retailers around the country and were hearing similar comments. In fact, many stores were selling out in one day! The full realization of how well the book was doing didn’t hit us until a few days later when the re-orders began pouring in. Within just seven days, our entire print run of 55,000 was sold out and re-orders were still coming in. At final count, we had orders for some 75,000 books!

A History Of Eagle Part 1

Over the next few days I'm happy to present a comprehensive history of EAGLE written by Neil Vokes. This is fascinating stuff friends! A tale that spans decades proves that a great character will ALWAYS be in demand for comics readers hungry for something unique. So settle in all you Inner Circle members-get your comfy Gi pants on and cross those limber legs, it's time for the tumultuous tale of pencils, publishing and a pugilistic philosophical man of mystery!

A HISTORY OF EAGLE by Neil Vokes and Rich Rankin
Part 1

What follows is an edited version of my partner & friend Rich Rankin’s “Orb-Bits” column (with amendments and additions) telling how he and I created Eagle. These Orb-Bits quotes were originally printed in the 1^st 6 issues between ’86-’87. I really wanted to have Rich’s “voice” somewhere in here, alongside his inking prowess, because without Rich Rankin the character of Eagle would never have been created.

My editorial notes may crop up now and then to fill in any gaps or just so I can be annoying-Neil

For those of you who are wondering just who the heck Richard Eagle is, I’m going to try to give you some background on the character and explain how he ended up coming into being.

It all began one fateful day in 1983 when I was working as a humble manager of a comic book store in New Jersey. I was hanging up pictures of super-heroes on the wall that I had penciled and inked, as any self-respecting future hopeful comic book professional would do, when a fellow came into the store to buy his weekly fix of pictorial pleasures. As fate would have it, this fellow turned out to be EAGLE penciller extraordinaire, Neil D. Vokes.

Neil took one look at my feeble versions of X-this and Mutants-that and said, in so many words,”Boy, you can ink but you sure can’t pencil! Fortunately, I can pencil but I can’t ink. Why don’t we get together and work up a story?” So we did!

Our first (technically it wasn’t first-we had done several sketches together of various super hero types for his mail order comic books business newsletter-even a full length Wolverine tale--Neil) story together was a little thing called “Gauntlet”, a 9 page action-adventure story that we did just for the fun of it and to see how well we worked together as a team. We never intended for the story to be seen by anyone (except the editors of various comics companies-Neil), let alone be published, but that is what happened exactly one year later when Comico the Comic Company published “Gauntlet” in issue #6 of their talent showcase COMICO PRIMER. (There is quite a bit more back-story to our relationship as both friends and partners and how we tried to break into comic books, then ended up at Comico, but we need to focus on the beginnings of EAGLE here. I’ll leave those details for our individual tell-all autobiographies in the future. Suffice to say Rich’s and my comic book careers officially began in November of 1984-Neil)

Comico had entered into a licensing deal with Harmony Gold who was producing the American version of a Japanese animated cartoon called ROBOTECH. Because Comico now desperately needed three art teams to produce the three ROBOTECH titles, they called upon Neil and me to pitch in and take over one of the titles, ROBOTECH MASTERS, as well as to fill in on the main title, ROBOTECH: THE MACROSS SAGA, until they could choose another team. We ended up doing issues #2 and #3 of MACROSS and the first four issues of MASTERS together before we temporarily went our separate ways.

Allow me to back track a little, as this was early in 1985 and Eagle actually came into being late in 1984. At that time, Matt Wagner and Bill Willingham had set up Bain Sidhe Studios in Philadelphia and they were looking for a couple other artists to go in with them. As luck would have it, I was available as was Bill Cucinotta, former publisher and partner at Comico. Since I was also working on ELEMENTALS at that time, it was very convenient for me. Neil soon joined us after Bill moved on. Working in that atmosphere was very exhilarating. With all these creative juices flowing in one area, it was only natural that EAGLE should be born there.

Originally, he was intended to be a psychic detective, utilizing his orb to channel his psychic energies which would enable him to help solve difficult or unsolvable crimes. There were only a few existing drawings of him and he looked only slightly like he does now. Oh, there were a few similarities like his all black clothing and long black hair, but he was basically a very different character.

For one thing, Eagle had no connection to the martial arts. He never carried a sword and as far as I know did not even know how to use one. For another thing, Eagle was just a detective not the vigilante type character he is now.

When Neil and I began working full-time on ROBOTECH, Eagle went into hibernation temporarily and may have been forgotten if it wasn’t for the black & white explosion of ’86.

Early in 1986, Neil & I decided that we wanted to do our own comic book. Until that time we were just happy to be working. A good friend and co-worker of ours, Reggie Byers, had been publishing his own book, SHURIKEN (co-created and with snazzy costume design by yours truly-Neil) in the black & white format and we were very impressed with how well it was doing. Although we weren’t sure the black & white market was for us, Reggie planted a seed in our minds that slowly started to grow.

Shuriken

Coven Of Covers (Reversed) #1

The Crystal Comics run of Eagle featured some fantastic artwork on the covers of the books. Leaping, smashing and crashing off store shelves with a combination of Ditko and Manga (Ditkanga?)-there are some real gems of early Vokesian design. Have no fear we'll be putting each one of them up for your enjoyment here. But what you don't often see is the BACK covers of these books floating around online. Crystal Comics went all out and provided a bonus image on the back of each book-and these rival the cover! Here is the back of EAGLE #1.
What is particularly cool about this is that the art is clean of logos and featured the characters from the story you just read. Here is Richard Eagle's menagerie of menace from the early years.
Yes indeed, we need more ninjas...

Enjoy! Be sure to click the thumbnails for a full sized look.



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Welcome To The Inner Circle!

Welcome to the kinetic world of Richard Eagle! A place where alien technology meets martial arts mysticism... and death lurks only the edge of a blade away.
In the cult series created by Neil Vokes and Rich Rankin we met a mysterious (and very darkly clad) man that sought only to be centered within a world of chaos. Instead he found himself the host to an alien technology that threatened everything in his world... Besieged by an array of very strange creatures, aliens, monsters, ninjas and dudes with shirts that said BAD ASS, Eagle stands tall, even though the battle for his very being tore him apart.
Part samurai, part detective and all adventurer, Eagle remains one of the 80's most memorable black and white comics.
In the coming days this blog will be an open ended exploration of all aspects of Eagle, from the character's own history-which spans both the distant past and the far flung future-to the creators and creative process behind the upcoming revival of the characters Neil co-created decades ago.
And like the original series, surprises will lurk around every corner. You never know when a four armed rock man will materialize and need a beat down!! Now that is an adventure for you and I, but in the world of Richard Eagle it is a fact that nearly anything can happen...and will!

Character model sheet for Richard Eagle and Nikki from the upcoming EAGLE adventure.