Corbo

“To my parents, for their patience, and to Will Eisner, for the dreamers in all of us.” Patrick R Hamou

This post is an extension of one of my previous posts on Roger Broughton and Charlton Media Group. Although the company produced a lot of reprint work, Corbo stands as some of the only known original material published by the company and was published by one of Roger Broughton’s many imprints Sword in Stone Productions.

The story takes place in 1936 and follows Jonathan Proud, “a freedom fighter, a mercenary or a terrorist, it depends what newspaper you read or what politician you listened to”. Fighting for social causes in other countries, Proud returns home to learn he is not only wanted but that his own country is in need of his attention and expertise. Hence, Corbo the vigilante is born.

Corbo Stats

Corbo stats at the back of the comic.

Corbo was published in February of 1987 out of Genevieve, Quebec at the height of the black and white comics boom. A full 32 pages it was written by Roger Broughton himself, with lettering was done by A. Kroy. The art was done by Patrick Hamou with assists by Errol Burke and Geof Isherwood with cover art by Mike Kaluta. Although the second comic was scheduled for May, it was never released along with a comic entitled Sun Warrior, also credited to Broughton.

Interesting to note, the dedication of the book, while thanking Isherwood and Burke for their work also especially spotlights Bernie Mireault. The comic hails Mireault’s work for its originality and encourages the reader to check out The Jam. It is also one of the many comics to thank Gene Day in memoriam.

An especially interesting comic for it’s position in Canadian comics history. There seems to be a lot of intrigue and mystery around Roger Broughton and the current status of his company. I definitely recommend picking one up if you have the opportunity.

Roger Broughton and Charlton Media Group

In 1986, Roger Broughton purchased the remaining rights to Charlton Comics after DC had also purchased many of their titles. Through this purchase, Broughton obtained the rights to Adventures into the Unknown and other Charlton titles including Atomic Mouse and Atomic Rabbit. Shortly after, Broughton also purchased some American Comics Group (ACG) titles including Herbie and Magicman.

Broughton’s Montreal based company has published under many imprints such as Sword in Stone Productions, A+ comics, Avalon Communications and America’s Comics Group. Finally, as of 2002 he became Charlton Media Group through a merger with a Graphic Design company.

The company predominantly published reprint material from both of these former publishers with few original publications. One of more notable of these works is Corbo, a vigilante style comic concept taking place in 1936. The comic never exceeded 1 issue. Through Broughton’s publisher’s notes in the frontispiece of many of his comics, he seemed to have had greater ambitions including an interest in regularly putting out comics and producing more titles. Perhaps in the future there will be more work put out by the company.