Invasion Comics Portfolio
Special Edition - with Color Covers inside
Regular Edition - B/W interior
Back in 1986, just as the Black-and-White Comic Book boom was about to go bust, 3 guys tried their hand at publishing Comic Books. It was called Invasion Comics – Invading Your Homes with Adventure! They were able to publish 3 comic books before the company imploded. This collection includes those three comics as well as some works that never saw the light of day … The Solution and The Iron Scepter.
Author’s Note
Back in 1986, three young men started a company called Tri-P Productions. One of their first acts was to create a comic book publishing line called: Invasion Comics. We felt the unusual success of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) and the rise of the independent comic book shop was a great time to ride the Black-and-White Comic Book Wave. Just to give you some perspective, there were ten independent publishers in early 1984, and by the end of 1987, there were 170. We were part of that 170.
One article[1] put it this way,
“... what made TMNT successful was its uniqueness: artistically, it stood out because there was nothing else like it in the market, and the value of issues resulted from those tiny print runs. Once consumers were faced with hundreds of titles, each of them available in abundance, the idiosyncrasy and scarcity disappeared. … In late 1986 and 1987, the bottom fell out. Hard. Collectors stopped paying top dollar for new number-one issues. Dissatisfied readers stopped buying the new wave of black-and-white comics. Retailers, who’d over-ordered copies of the stuff, felt the financial burden of a glut of unsold comics they couldn’t return. Publishers couldn’t convince retailers to get back on board, and they started going under. … The era of black-and-white excitement was over.”
Our first issue for Adventures of B.O.C. #1: Escape from Darkness was in November 1986. In other words, we started just as the Black-and-White Comic Book Wave crashed! We printed two more Adventures of B.O.C. issues, and we had plans for other titles, such as The Solution and The Iron Scepter. We advertised our new lineup, even promising the titles would be in Color, hoping to get distributors interested. But it was too much too late. The Comic Books shops were burned and were unwilling to take any more chances.
We folded early in 1988. We held on by sending our work out to various publishers but to no avail. Therefore, some of our work never so the light of day. This book is a chance to correct that injustice. Our little company didn’t make the splash as we hoped. But at least we tried. And creativity should never be discouraged.
[1] A. J. Riesman and A. J. Riesman, “Teenage mutant ninja turtles once caused a massive bubble in comics: The black-and-white boom (and bust),” Vulture, https://www.vulture.com/2016/06/turtles-speculation-bubble.html (accessed May 11, 2023).
