Big Bang Comics #19, published in June of 1998 by Image Comics was the second issue to be subtitled TOP SECRET ORIGINS. The first had been BB #5 two years earlier. That issue had starred Ultiman, Knight Watchman and the Silver Age Blitz,
This particular issue didn’t contain any of Big Bang’s headliners, but it did expand our horizons and started to pave the way for the two volumes of HISTORY OF BIG BANG COMICS that would be printed in the next year.
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The front cover to Big Bang #18 was penciled and inked by Dave Cockrum, featuring Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon fighting the Pantheon of Heroes. It should be noted that Cockrum’s original version contained Thunder Girl, but he was kind enough to provide me the Ultragirl art to patch on that I requested for some reason no longer known to me. Both versions are reprinted here.
I was a big fan of Dave’s, especially his run on the Legion of Super-Heroes, and this issue gave me the opportunity to provide homages to three separate eras of the LSH, one of my favorite comics growing up and of all time.
This issue of Big Bang Comics was something of a departure for us; three stories, all featuring female protagonists, with all stories set in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Jerry Acerno’s front cover promises THRILLS – MYSTERY – GLAMOUR” and I like to think that we delivered.
As our first “all-girl” issue, I dubbed this issue a “She-Bang” on the inside front cover. Headlining this issue is Jerry’s beautiful and sexy Shadow Lady starring in Chapter One of the serial “Murder By Microphone”.
The front cover of Big Bang Comics was drawn by the late, great Bill Fugate and promises a Thunder Girl story entitled “The Land Of Long Ago.” Yet, when you flip open the cover, there is the World’s Strongest Girl starring in “The Clock That Turned Back Time.” Huh? What gives?
Here’s what happened. Bill Fugate wrote and drew the story that accompanied the cover, but was going through a rough stretch in his life at the time and was locked out of his apartment by an S.O.B. of a landlord who threw away all of Bill’s stuff, including the afore mentioned story and art. All this about two weeks before the issue was due at the printer.
