Eclipse (magazine)

Eclipse, The Magazine (renamed Eclipse from the second issue) was a black-and-white comics anthology magazine published bi-monthly by Eclipse Comics from 1981 to 1983. It was the company's first ongoing title, Eclipse having previously published graphic novels, and was designed as a competitor to the likes of Epic Illustrated and Heavy Metal.

Overview
Like the rest of Eclipse's output at the time, the anthology allowed creators to retain ownership of their material. The format attracted an eclectic mix of contributors, from mainstream industry veterans such as Steve Englehart, Don McGregor, Steve Gerber and Gene Colan to underground comix figures including Howard Cruse, Rick Geary, Hunt Emerson and Harvey Pekar, as well as newcomers to the medium like Max Allan Collins and Charles Vess.

There was no set format for contributions, which ranged from a single page to 11 pages in length, and mixed serialised stories with one-offs. Further freedom was permitted by Eclipse not being a signatory for the Comics Code Authority. Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik's "Role Model" and "Caring, Sharing, and Helping Others" in Eclipse #2–3 directly addressed the hypocrisy of censorship.

Eclipse introduced several strips that would go on to appear elsewhere – Collins and Terry Beatty created hardboiled detective Ms. Tree for the first issue, and would be ever-present in the magazine before receiving her own series from 1983; Englehart and Marshall Rogers's Coyote first appeared in the second issue, and would be collected in a graphic novel by Eclipse; McGregor and Colan's Ragamuffins would be similarly collected; and B.C. Boyer's tongue-in-cheek Masked Man would debut in #7, and later graduate to his own title.

Due to the diverse number of contributors the magazine struggled to keep to its bi-monthly schedule; Eclipse publisher and title editor Dean Mullaney would later state the difficulties in co-ordinating the freelance creators led to the title's cancellation after 8 issues. It was replaced by the color anthology Eclipse Monthly, which ran from August 1983 to July 1984, and continued both The Masked Man and Trina Robbins' adaptation of Sax Rohmer's novel Dope.