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Boneyard 07 - The Late, Great "Calvin and Hobbes" (Dec 2001)
The occasional work justifies its context, providing coattails for poorly-esteemed material like newspaper comics; and, during its lifespan, Watterson's 'Calvin and Hobbes' made opening a comics page worth the trouble.

Boneyard 06 - The Martyrdom of EC Comics (Dec 2001)
Even after entering the ash heap of failed comics publishing concerns, five decades later EC Comics has something to show talent and publishers who think they know how to make comics.

Columns from 2001

Boneyard 05 - The Shameful Demise of Avengers: United They Stand (Sep 2001)
Simple malice, as much as mismanagement and market forces, drove Avengers: United They Stand to an early demise.

Boneyard 04 - Sockless and Stalwart: Eisner's Spirit (Sep 2001)
Sometimes a classic concept becomes a classic because creators understand when to stop, a fate which befell Will Eisner's minimalist hero the Spirit.

Boneyard 03 - (The End of the) Fourth World (Sep 2001)
When accountants decide the quality of art, tragedies such as the euthanizing of Kirby's Fourth World books follow.

Boneyard 02 - The Passage of Hourman (Jul 2001)
The benign quirkiness of the ill-fated series Hourman created a tone and a vision much needed in a business that often took its concepts and conceits too seriously, and managed to explore the notion of a hero both flawed and innocent.

Boneyard 01 - Why a Comics Boneyard? (Jul 2001)
One may find the fundamental tragedy of comics not in all the garbage left to rot on the aesthetic ash heap, but in the untimely demise of productions that - despite market forces and other lethal factors - very much deserved to live.

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