Inspired by The Lost 100-Pagers and Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues, I've decided to create my own take on comic book covers. These are all-original art illustrated by me, Reno Maniquis. Thank you and a good afternoon. Excelsior!

Friday, July 31, 2026

Three Men and a Lady


Thunder Illustrated Magasin was an all-action anthology from the late 1980s in the Philippines. The two regular superhero features in its pages was Altaru and Sapot ni Gagamba Kasama si Scorpio. Altaru was newly created for the comic at that time, but Gagamba and Scorpio were characters who originally debuted in the 1960s. You can read more about Altaru here and all about Gagamba and Scorpio here.

Thursday, July 23, 2026

Justified

 

J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, became one of my favorite Justice League members during the Justice League International era. But the team that came before that had a tragic ending. Two of them ended up dead, Vibe and Steel.

The title was rebooted and became Justice League, then Justice League International, then finally split into Justice League America and Justice League Europe. But what if the original title kept on going? This might be what happened if that was the case.

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Newsboys

It’s great that DC and Marvel have been doing crossovers again recently. I just wish that they would do full-length stories again like the Limited Collectors/Treasury editions back in the 1970s/80s, or even like the Prestige format ones in the 1990s.


Wednesday, July 8, 2026

The One to Beat

 

I used to buy Eclipse Monthly whenever I would see it in bookstores or in discount bins way back when. This might be around 1986 or 1987, so it has long since ceased publication by the time I was buying it. I think I’ve managed to buy all the issues except for one or two. Among the regular features, my favorite was The Masked Man. It had a great balance of humor, action, and drama. Plus, I like street-level heroes a lot. Strangely enough, I used to see a lot of copies of Eclipse Monthly all over back then in my neck of the woods, but I hardly saw any copies of The Masked Man comic book series.

Monday, June 29, 2026

Johnny Come Wakely

 

Kid Colt has the distinction of being the longest running Western themed comic book of all time, with a little more than three decades of publication. I only ever had one issue of Kid Colt (issue number 202), which was a reprint of issue no. 129. And it was also previously reprinted in issue no. 162! I’m not certain if most (or all) of the 1970s issues were reprints, but I guess they were selling well enough for the title to have lasted until 1979.

Monday, June 22, 2026

Teenage Mutant Cub Reporter

 

Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga began in the pages of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen, so I decided to mashup a Silver Age Jimmy Olsen trope with a Bronze Age one. A mind-controlled Giant Turtle Man would be a pretty useful tool for Darkseid.

Sunday, June 14, 2026

After the Fox


 I am too young to have seen the Walt Disney Zorro series when it was being shown on TV, but among all the Zorros I think Guy Williams is top of mind for most people, including myself.

I think the first movie I saw that had Zorro as a legacy character was Zorro: The Gay Blade with George Hamilton playing the son (or more accurately, sons) of the original who has to take up the mantle. This cover imagines if that happened to Williams’ Don Diego. Who would he have passed the mantle on to?

Wednesday, June 3, 2026

E is for… Eternia?

 


The new Masters of the Universe movie opened today in my corner of the globe, so it’s the perfect time for another pun that I couldn’t resist making an illustration of. The E-Man series from First Comics was heavily into parody back then, so this is something that the creators might have done, considering both the comic and the Masters of the Universe cartoon both came out in 1983.

Friday, May 29, 2026

Hire Power

I wasn’t following Power Man and Iron Fist when their series ended, so I didn’t know that Iron Fist was supposed to be dead. I only found out about it in John Byrne’s Namor series where he was brought back to life. I’m glad he did because Danny Rand is too good of a character to waste.

Thursday, May 21, 2026

Ape is Enough


An obvious Tarzan copy, but it’s also more than that. It also incorporates elements from the Hulk. Hogarth is a hybrid of a human and an ape. He was born human, but when he gets angry or upset, he turns into a savage ape. Just don’t ask how he managed to get the DNA of both species.

And his name Hogarth is obviously a callback to one of the most popular Tarzan comic strip artists, Burne Hogarth.