E-Man

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E-Man

E-Man #1 (First Comics)

Publisher	Charlton Comics, First Comics, Comico, Alpha
First appearance	E-Man #1 (1973)
Created by	Nicola Cuti, Joe Staton

Characteristics
Alter ego	Alec Tronn
Affiliations	Nova Kane, Mike Mauser
Abilities	energy-based

E-Man is a fictional comic book superhero created by writer Nicola Cuti and artist Joe Staton for Charlton Comics in 1973. Though the character's original series was short-lived, the lightly humorous hero has become a cult-classic sporadically revived by various independent comics publishers.

1 Charlton Comics
2 First Comics
3 Later publications
4 References

[edit] Charlton Comics

The character premiered in E-Man #1, the first of ten issues (Oct. 1973 - Sept. 1975) published by the Derby, Connecticut-based Charlton Comics. For the last four, artist Staton created painted covers, a comics rarity at time.

E-Man is a sentient packet of energy thrown off by a nova. Traveling the galaxy he learned about life, how to duplicate the appearance of life, and good and evil. Reaching Earth, he met exotic dancer/grad student Katrinka Colchnzski, also known as Nova Kane, and formed himself into a superhero he called E-Man, with a civilian identity he self-mockingly dubbed "Alec Tronn". Nova would later be caught in a nuclear explosion and gain the same powers as E-Man and become his partner. The stories were humorous and lighthearted, in the style of Plastic Man, especially as E-Man could form himself into anything he wanted.

E-Man #4 (Aug. 1974), art by Joe Staton

Backup features were Cuti and Tom Sutton's "The Knight", starring a superspy agent of C.H.E.S.S.; Joe Gill and Steve Ditko's "Liberty Belle"; two stories of writer-artist Ditko's fascinatingly bizarre, superhero Objectivism tract, "Killjoy"; the time-traveling "Travis", by Cuti and Wayne Howard; and, in the color-comics debut of John Byrne, four stories of "Rog-2000", written by Cuti and starring a wiseacre, cigar-smoking robot Byrne had created in his fan-artist days.

A supporting character, the grubby but right-hearted detective Mike Mauser, got his own backup series in Charlton's Vengeance Squad. An additional E-Man story, which introduced his energy-being "sister", Vamfire, appeared in the company's in-house fan magazine, Charlton Bullseye #4.

In 1977, the original 10-issue run was reprinted by a company called Modern Comics for sale as bagged sets in discount department stores across North America.

[edit] First Comics

In 1983, during a period of financial uncertainty for Charlton, the company sold independent publisher First Comics the rights to E-Man. First's E-Man ran 25 issues (April 1983 - Aug. 1985), with the company also publishing a seven-issue miniseries, The Original E-Man and Michael Mauser, that reprinted those characters' Charlton stories.

Staton did the artwork, with stories written by Martin Pasko, Paul Kupperberg, Cuti, and Staton himself. This series was more satirical than the original Charlton run.

[edit] Later publications

After First Comics went out of business, Comico published an E-Man one-shot (Sept. 1989) by Cuti & Staton, followed by a three-issue miniseries (Jan.-March 1990. After Comico's demise, Alpha Productions did a one-shot in (Sept. 1993), as well as three ashcan previews of that issue.