Eclipso #5
Eclipso #5 (April 1969) sits near the heart of Arédit's pioneering effort to bring DC Comics to French readers through the digest-format Comics Pocket line — one of the very first French series devoted entirely to American superhero material. The issue is notable for packaging early Neal Adams Deadman material from Strange Adventures #206–207 alongside Eclipso's own mid-1960s Bruce Gordon adventures, giving French readers access to some of the most visually progressive DC storytelling of the era in a single affordable pocket volume. It represents a key point in the transatlantic diffusion of Silver Age DC characters to a European audience that had little other access to this material. As a quarterly artifact labeled 'bandes dessinées pour adultes,' it also reflects the particular regulatory environment Arédit navigated to publish American comics in France at all.
In "Une lutte acharnée," Boston Brand, the ghostly Deadman, finds himself entangled in a deadly game when his criminal brother Jeff, driven by greed, arrives at the circus with plans to claim Boston’s life insurance. With Deadman’s instincts sharpened by the supernatural, he begins to unravel a web of deception, suspecting Jeff of murder while also confronting Rocky Manzel, a former threat with a new vendetta. Written by Arnold Drake and illustrated with intense precision by Neal Adams, with inks by George Roussos, this 1969 issue delivers a gripping, suspense-filled mystery that keeps the stakes high and the tension unrelenting. Cover by Neal Adams.
In "Une lutte acharnée," Eclipso strands Gordon and the Bennets on a deserted island, then hijacks Gordon’s robot, ROGER, turning it against them. With time running out, the group must find a way to reclaim control and stop Eclipso before it’s too late.
In "La déesse de la mort," an blind archaeologist brings a statue of Medusa to Midway's museum, unwittingly unleashing the ancient spirit of the Gorgon. The entity possesses Shayera Hol, transforming her into a conduit for deadly magic as she begins to unravel the city’s defenses.
In "Un cadavre emcombrant," Frankie Stoker, a small-time con artist, bets everything on a risky heist—stealing a corpse from a funeral home to blackmail the grieving family. What starts as a desperate scam quickly unravels into something far stranger when the dead man begins to move, defying all reason.
In "Œil pour œil, dent pour dent !", Boston Brand navigates a web of suspicion as his criminal brother Jeff arrives at the circus, eager to claim the insurance payout from Boston’s supposed death—prompting Deadman to question Jeff’s innocence. As Boston investigates, he turns his focus to Rocky Manzel, a known threat with a history of violence, leading to a tense confrontation with Manzel and his counterfeit ring.
In "Double danger!", Earth-2 faces extinction as a comet’s deadly radiation spreads across the planet. Desperate, Jay Garrick journeys to Earth-1, arriving just as Barry Allen battles two of his most dangerous foes. With time running out and lives at stake, the two Flashes use Jay’s urgent quest as a trap, turning his search for answers into a clever plan to bring the criminals to justice.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Arédit traces its roots to Artima, a French small-format publisher that began releasing comics in the 1950s and was acquired by Presses de la Cité in 1962, subsequently rebranded as Arédit. The Comics Pocket imprint launched in April 1966, initially mixing French prose adaptations with occasional American comics filler, before Eclipso became one of the first titles in the line dedicated wholly to DC Comics material when it debuted in April 1968. Arédit carried the label 'bandes dessinées pour adultes' on its Comics Pocket covers — a designation that exempted the publisher from French press regulations (loi 49-956) but also barred the books from front-of-kiosk display, shaping the series' niche collector identity from the outset. Crucially, Bédéthèque documents that Arédit routinely recropped and sometimes deleted pages from the American originals to fit the digest format, meaning the stories in this issue reached French readers in an editorially altered state.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published April 1969 by Arédit under the Comics Pocket imprint, issue #5 of an ongoing quarterly digest series that launched in April 1968.
- Physical format: digest-sized (13 × 19 cm), 164 pages, black-and-white reproduction on newsprint, squarebound.
- Labeled 'bandes dessinées pour adultes' (comics for adults) on the cover — Arédit's workaround to French press law that otherwise restricted American comics distribution.
- Contains reprints sourced from: The Flash (DC) #129, Doom Patrol (DC) #95, Strange Adventures (DC) #206 and #207, and Hawkman (DC) #25, plus an Eclipso lead story featuring Bruce Gordon, robot ROGER, and the Bennets on a deserted island.
- The Strange Adventures #206–207 material reprinted here represents the earliest Neal Adams Deadman chapters — among the most artistically significant DC stories of the late 1960s — reaching French audiences for the first time.
- The Eclipso character headlining the series was created by writer Bob Haney and artist Lee Elias, first appearing in House of Secrets #61 (August 1963), with the premise of scientist Bruce Gordon involuntarily transforming into a villain via a cursed black diamond during eclipses — a deliberate Jekyll-and-Hyde structure.
- Arédit editorially altered source pages for this and other issues in the line: panels were recropped and some pages deleted entirely to fit the pocket format.
- The Eclipso Comics Pocket series ran for decades (into the 1980s), eventually exceeding 80 issues and drawing from a wide range of DC, Marvel, and Charlton material — making this early quarterly one of the foundational installments of what became a long-running French anthology institution.
Full credits
Reprints
↩ Reprints Strange Suspense Stories #2 (1952), The Flash #129 (1962), House of Secrets #67 (1964), The Doom Patrol #95 (1965), Strange Adventures #206 (1967), Strange Adventures #207 (1967), Hawkman #25 (1968)
Key issues in Eclipso
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