Weird heroes

the long version

WEIRD HEROES was a 1970s series of mostly anthology books that tried to replicate and update the concept of 1930s pulp fiction. Most of the writers and artists, especially in the early volumes, were strongly associated with comic books. "Greatheart Silver," by Philip Jose Farmer, is an over-the-top pastiche of the Shadow, Doc Savage, and the like. It's illustrated by Tom Sutton. Silver appears in three of the eight WEIRD HEROES volumes, and the stories were later collected/combined into a single novel by a different publisher. "Quest of the Gypsy" by Ron Goulart and Alex Niño is a post-apocalypse thriller; the character is brought back for a novel-length story in Volume 3. "Adam Stalker: The Darkstar File" is a detective story by Archie Goodwin and underground cartoonist Dave Sheridan. The main character is a Native American Vietnam vet with counterculture edge. The term "stalker" did not have its current unsavory connotation when this was published in 1975. "Rose in the Sunshine State" by Joann Kobin and Jeffrey Jones, is about an elderly woman in an assisted care facility, and is a big departure in tone from the high adventure in the other stories (although much of "Greatheart Silver" also takes place in elder care). "Guts, the Cosmic Greaser" by Byron Preiss, with art by Jim Steranko and Rich Buckler, is a time travel story trying hard to capitalize on the popularity of Arthur Fonzarelli. WEIRD HEROES lasted for eight volumes and strayed from its original vision pretty quickly. It was, among other things, an opportunity for comic book writers to get prose work published in a slightly more respectable format, though later volumes focused more heavily on established science fiction prose novelists. (That's not really an issue these days; most new comic book writers are only hired if they have prior publishing and screenwriting credits. In the 1970s, though, new comic book writers came almost exclusively from the fan and fanzine communities.) Also, four of the eight volumes were book-length stories about a single character, drifting from the anthology format. Volume 1 may be the clearest look at what this series was intended to be.