Chaos City comics - Mystery Inc, 1963

I've looked before (here to be precise) about some rare Martha Washington goes to war variants that were produced by Chaos City comics (in St Albans). Turns out these weren't the only comics they produced...

There was their AIDS awareness comic - here

They also produced some of their own variants of the Mystery Inc, 1963 comic

According to an article on page 15 of the November 1993 issue of Comics International was limited to a print run of...

a). 500 Gold editions (priced at £7.95)

b). 150 Platinum editions (priced at a staggering £29.95)

c). from the test run 20 incredibly rare Bronze editions

You can find copies of the gold edition quite easily on ebay (here for instance) 

You can see the platinum copy here

but no sign of the Bronze editions yet.

Chaos City comics - AIDS awareness

I've looked before (here to be precise) about some rare Martha Washington goes to war variants that were produced by Chaos City comics (in St Albans). Turns out these weren't the only comics they produced...

Next up is an AIDS awareness comic that was produced at the end of 1993. It looks like this...

(just search "chaos city comics" on ebay and you'll find a few examples for sale - this issue is for sale here). This, according to an article on page 15 of the November 1993 issue of Comics International was limited to a print run of 10,000 copies and retailed for £4.95 - cover is by Simon Bisley.

There was also a limited edition version available - limited to just 1,000 copies that retailed for £24.95 - the cover artist is uncredited.

There was also a 'gold' variant. Original price and print run are unknown to me. This seems easier to get hold of than the above issue. This copy for sale here 

The list of contributors includes Dave Gibbons, Simon Bisley, David Leach, Bryam Hitch, Henry Flint, Liam Sharp, Charlie Adlard, Dave Taylor, John Ridgway, Elitta Fell and plenty more!

  

Martha Washington rare variants

From a recent acquisition...

...are the details of some rare Martha Washington goes to war variants.

You can use this reel if you want to see the comic I'm talking about

Basically Chaos City comics produced...

a). a sky blue edition of 500 copies (different cover, signed by Dave Gibbons plus a trading card) - this cost £7.95 in Summer 1994

b). a sunset red edition of 100 copies (different cover, signed by Dave Gibbons and 50% signed by Frank Miller) - this cost £14.95 in Summer 1994

I'm not clear if the sunset red version comes with a trading card. The trading card isn't mentioned in the ad for the comics so I didn't even know it came with the sky blue edition until I saw the (above) reel.

If you purchased either of the editions then you'd have been entered into a draw to win one of the ultra rare white editions. This was limited to just 10 copies! 

Good luck tracking any of these down!

When comic retailers go into publishing...

So, if you run a comic shop it's a pretty safe bet that you love comics, that you see a load of comics fans every day and you (perhaps inevitably) think "...I could produce stuff better than Marvel / DC / Image", so here are some comics where the shop owner thought they could outdo their esteemed rivals...

3 issue mini-series from Krypton Comics (in 2005)...copies of all issues available on Amazon & ebay

and this appears to collect issues 1-3 together...

An AIDS awareness comic from St Albans based Chaos City Comics