Early Byrne work...

[50 Cent #II (1st)]

Is this the 2nd appearance of Rog 2000?

 

[the blob]

is it really a second appearance is it's an ad for the character? or is there more to it in there?

 

Anyway, why think when you can just cut and paste wiki?:

 

The character began life during Byrne's fan-artist days in the 1970s, as a spot illustration for Roger Stern and Bob Layton's fanzine CPL (Contemporary Pictorial Literature). Layton gave the character a name (riffing on the amount of "Rogers" who contributed to CPL) and he and Stern began using him as a magazine mascot, with Byrne supplying additional art. A Rog-2000 story, "The Coming of the Gang", appeared in CPL #11 (1974), written by Stern with art by Byrne and Layton, and featuring caricatures of "the CPL gang," including Byrne and fellow CPL contributor Duffy Vohland.

 

On the strength of that fan piece, Charlton Comics writer Nicola Cuti contacted Byrne about drawing the character for professional comic books — making Rog-2000 perhaps the only fanzine mascot to make that jump. Written by Cuti, "Rog-2000" became one of several alternating backup features in the Charlton Comics superhero series E-Man, starting with the eight-page "That Was No Lady" in issue #6 (Jan. 1975). This marked the color-comics debut of future industry star Byrne, who'd previously drawn a two-page story for Skywald Publications' black-and-white horror-comics magazine Nightmare #20 (Aug. 1974). The character also appeared in the small-press hobbyist magazine The Comic Reader #44 (Jan. 1975).

 

Three additional, seven-page "Rog-2000" stories — "Withering Heights", "The Wish", and "Rog. vs. The Sog", all by Cuti & Byrne — appeared in E-Man #7, 9-10 (March, July-Sept. 1975), respectively. All the Charlton stories were reprinted in Pacific Comics' ROG 2000 #1 (June 1982).

 

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It may depend on what January 1975 actually means. For E-Man 6, that most likely means sometime in Fall 1974 and would E-Man 7 have actualy been released in 1974 as well? (Dunno if the book was montly or bi-monthly) Whereas the Charlton Comic Reader may have actually been released in Jan. 1975, rather than doing the thing with newstand dates that comics did.

 

So, with that said, if you consider a "Reader" a comic, why not a fanzine? In which case E-Man 6 isn't even the first appearance.

 

Just goes to show how badly run Charlton was. Byrne would have probably been happy to pump out this guy for them while also doing 3 marvel titles, but they basically blew him off. I really liked those E-Man books when I was a kid. For some reason a local magazine shop carried them and a few other oddball titles, not mainstream stuff.

[DocL-migration]

Very informative post blob on Rog 2000.

 

I recently posted on my blog a piece on CPL (some scans are included) at: http://doclehman.wordpress.com