SWC at 30: Lorelei’s Brief Resurrection

Continuing the history of StarWarp Concepts, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. When we left off, the year 1995 had seen the end of SWC’s Lorelei series and the blink-and-you-missed-it debut of Heartstopper, a “bad girl” comic that I canceled after a falling out with its publisher.

Nineteen ninety-six found StarWarp Concepts without a comic to solicit or even publish, yet Lori still made her way back to store shelves that summer, courtesy of indie house Power Comics (formerly Pocket Change Comics) and its head honcho, Scott Shriver. 

Scott—who, like me, had made the decision to move from digest-size photocopied books to full-sized comics around the same time that I did—had been publishing his own femme fatale series, Shadow Slasher, and was a Lorelei fan disappointed by my cancelation of the series. His solution? Bring Lori over to Power and he’d reprint my issues under the PC banner, and then continue publishing from where I’d left off. How could I say no to such an offer? And I had a way in mind that we could continue the story while at the same time introducing new potential readers to the character.

The Lorelei Returns! Special was released in June; accompanying the latest chapter of Lori’s origin story (intended to be SWC’s Lorelei #6, and still being drawn by David C. Matthews) was a handy recap of the series up to that point. The recap featured pencils by Uriel Caton and inks by “Chainsaw” Chuck Majewski, both veterans of Heartstopper, and looked amazing when it was turned in. Unfortunately, Chuck’s delicate linework was fairly obliterated by the poor printing job the special received. 

(In fact, I felt so bad about the art reproduction that I reused the pages—now with 21st-century printing technology—as the opening segment of Lorelei Presents: House Macabre, published by SWC in 2015…and still available from the SWC webstore!)

Also published that month was a reprint of Lorelei #1—the cover art printed with gold ink to distinguish it from the SWC edition—and a limited-edition digest version of the new chapter from the special, with cover art by Uriel; half the run was printed on gold cover stock, the other half on silver. 

Things were looking up for The ’Warp…until Scott closed Power’s doors when he ran out of money, just after the special came out. If I remember correctly, he’d expended his finances on his own comic, and on printing the Lorelei variant printings and the special; the retailer orders had been shockingly low, the return on his investment nonexistent. It wasn’t too long after that he informed me Power Comics was shutting down.

So much for Lori’s triumphant return, eh? Well, it was fun while it lasted, and I appreciated Scott for making that herculean effort. He had the right attitude to be an indie publisher, he just lacked the resources to handle more than one series.

(Scott, by the way, has continued to pop up in comics now and then, providing art for such titles as Bloke’s Terrible Tomb of Terror, Champions of Earth, and AC Comics’ Femforce.)

And so SWC Hiatus 2.0 when into effect at that point, and it would last until 2001. But that didn’t mean I was lacking in SWC-related things to keep me occupied…