Eclipse moved several times: from 81 Delaware Street, Staten Island, New York to 295 Austin Street, Columbia, Missouri and then to the small towns of Guerneville and later Forestville in Sonoma County, California. I also think it is cool that d uring the early 1980s, the publisher based its operations in a few places but many were smaller towns. These are some of the great none DC/Marvel heroes of the ’80s. When I see the list of creators associated with Eclipse it is not as impressive as Pacific, but Eclipse published superhero titles including Miracleman by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, The Rocketeer (started at Pacific Comics) by Dave Stevens, and Zot! by Scott McCloud. Published in August 1978, it led to a 14-issue spin-off series for Eclipse. Eclipse published one of the first original graphic novels, and the first to be sold through the new “direct market” of comic-book stories, Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species by Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy. The company was founded as Eclipse Enterprises by brothers Jan and Dean Mullaney in 1977. I could not find a good side article about Eclipse comics but I still went back to Wikipedia for some info. So this week let’s look at Eclipse, there is only one big series Eclipse had that are not in Dollar bins. You can’t dig through a dollar box without coming across some Eclipse comics. In fact, many of the Pacific Comic series were picked up by Eclipse Comics. Our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and fans.After a great response last week to Pacific Comics, I kept seeing another comic publisher mentioned with the same breath as Pacific Comics.

Many people are leaving remembrances for Norm on the website of his funeral home. ComicMix put a benefit book together to help defray his ongoing expenses, The Whisper Campaign, which reprinted his first monthly job in comics, with new contributions from numerous pros that were also fans of Norm and his work. On December 18, 2014, Norm Breyfogle had an ischemic cerebrovascular accident that cut off blood flow to part of his brain and reduced his control of the left side of his body, cutting Norm’s career tragically short. He co-created the Batman characters the Ventriloquist, Ratcatcher, Zsasz, and Jeremiah Arkham, Prime for Malibu’s Ultraverse and owned his own character Metaphysique. Over a thirty-year career, Norm worked for DC, Dark Horse, Marvel, Valiant, Malibu, First, Archie, Speakeasy, Markosia, Angel Gate Press, and (we’re proud to say) ComicMix. Norman Keith “Norm” Breyfogle, a comic artist known as one of the premier Batman artists of the 80s and 90s, with a wide and varied career ranging from Archie to Whisper, passed away Monday at the age of 58.

Metaphysique by Norm Breyfogle