While I was bagging and boarding comics…

While I was bagging and boarding some issues of Miracleman this afternoon I saw this ad for a series of pins from Eclipse comics. This ad was on the back cover of issue #6 from February 1986. I’m guessing that these pins are for the most popular titles that Eclipse was putting out at the time. I’m familiar with most of the titles and am currently collecting several of them.

What’s really amazing about the ad though is how quintessentially eighties it is. The black and white grid with 3-d color squiggles looks like it came right out of an A-Ha video. The askew, shadowed images really pop off the page. Comic buttons and pins were popular at the time, they were a nice small item a comic shop could keep on the counter at the register as an impulse buy. I can attest to the fact that they were popular because I had quite a few. They were on my jacket, my book bag, and for a little while my baseball caps.

Old pins like these are not something that are very collectible these days, they can usually be found in big bins of old stuff at shops and flea markets on the cheap. If I ever came across these Eclipse pins I’d grab the DNAgents or Crossfire ones in a heartbeat!