Originally Posted by Wonder Boy
[Linked Image from images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com]

Offering a better apocalyptic future story, from ALIEN WORLDS 7, here's "Ride the Blue Bus" by Bruce Jones, with both pencils and inks by George Perez.
https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/Alien-Worlds/Issue-7?id=109404#29

It's a Ray Bradbury-esque story, of a cheerful optimistic kid growing up in the radioactive waste after a nuclear war. You as the reader can see telltale signs, but the kid doesn't see that his parents and neighbors' hair and teeth are falling out and they're slowly dying. But despite the sadness around him, the kid seems to be okay. And his inspiration and hope for a better life is a blue bus that drives by, from some area that is radiation free. He dreams of the bus stopping for him, and being able to take a ride just once on "the blue bus".

Just 6 pages, and a very rare example of Perez doing both pencils and inks, and nicely colored. I'm hard pressed to think of another example where Perez did the full art himself.

ALIEN WORLDS, and other Bruce Jones-written and edited books for Pacific Comics, such as TWISTED TALES, SOMERSET HOLMES, BERNI WRIGHTSON: MASTER OF THE MACABRE, PATHWAYS TO FANTASY and SILVERHEELS, all rank among my favorites for the beautiful art, coloring, and overall beautiful design of their line of books. I think they set the standard that Marvel, DC, Eclipse, First and other publishers never quite equalled in that era.



Adding an updated link, more free of pop-up ads :
https://readallcomics.com/alien-worlds-7/


Here's what George Perez had to say about this story, from an interview in Fantagraphics' FOCUS ON GEORGE PEREZ book (Aug 1985) :


  • GEORGE PEREZ: In an industry where a lot of people can make more money by doing the thing that'll make the most money, I'm no different.
    CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS is my security blanket. They'll take the book they can make money on. I'm sure most people don't have the faith that the book [ ALIEN WORLDS anthology ] is going to be anything that they should commit that much time, because they're not going to get anything on the back end of it. It has never been proved that way, but I would love to do it. Again, I'm doing CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS to have room for this type of nonsense. If I weren't on contract with DC, I'd love to be able to market it someplace. "Hey, if you want me to do something..."

    I don't know if you saw the story, it was in ALIEN WORLDS, [ in a short story titled] "Ride the Blue Bus"

    HEIDI MacDONALD: No, I didn't.

    GEORGE PEREZ: It was a story that I was asked by Bruce Jones if I would please do something for [his] science fiction [anthology]. It was the first time I've ever received an offer from someone who didn't take advantage of the fact that he was using George Perez. He gave me a story that had a rocket, no big-boobed women, no skin-tight costumes, it was a post-holocaust story about a little boy in the middle of a desolate area, an atomic swamp, a nuclear Detroit. He's the only member of the family who has not gone through [ symptoms of radiation sickness].
    And at the end, the Blue Bus finally stops in front of him, he gets in, he's the only passenger on that bus. Instead of windows, there are holographic images of what Earth used to look like. It was the first time he'd seen trees, the first time he'd seen waterfalls, and the Blue Bus driver saying what he's always been doing with this bus [driving by every day] is trying to find those who have survived and who will be able to repopulate the world. And that was the whole lesson of the story.

    And in the end he's just being driven off on the Blue Bus, and he leaves his [dying radiation-poisoned] family behind. It was such a change of pace for me. I enjoyed that so immensely. I thank Bruce [for] just giving me a chance to do something different. He took into account that I could draw, wihout taking into account what I'd been drawing. It gave me a shot at doing something totally new. And I was so proud of that job. It was one of my first inking jobs [ both pencils and inks ] that I did. I did it right before I did the TEEN TITANS, and I was just so proud of that.
    [ Perez apparently pencilled and inked the "Blue Bus" story in late 1980, before he began the TEEN TITANS series a few months later, but it was not published until early 1984. ]

    Unfortunately, the only chances I get on doing stories like that are usually going to be [for] alternative companies.