Sabre (Eclipse Comics)

Sabre (subtitled Slow Fade of an Endangered Species), published in August 1978, is one of the first modern graphic novels and the first to be distributed in comic book shops. Created by writer Don McGregor and artist Paul Gulacy, it was published by Eclipse Enterprises, whose eventual division Eclipse Comics would publish a spin-off comic-book series.

Publication history
The initial project of Eclipse Enterprises, the graphic novel Sabre is a 38-page, black-and-white, science fiction swashbuckler in which the self-consciously romantic rebel Sabre and his companion Melissa Siren fight the mercenary Blackstar Blood and others to achieve freedom and strike a blow for individuality, all amid a futuristic Disneyland-turned-torture-chamber. It was published in August 1978 with no ISBN number. A second printing was published in February 1979.

As McGregor described the project's genesis in the afterword of the original edition, writer-editor Jim Salicrup, who in 1976 was toying with the idea of producing a weekly newspaper tabloid, asked McGregor to write a weekly adventure comic strip. McGregor had unsuccessfully pitched a feature called "Dagger" to Marvel Comics, for which he wrote features including "The Black Panther" and "Killraven, Warrior of the Worlds":

He later wrote, "I think i took a token sum of money from Dean Mullaney ... of $300. I wanted Dean to be able to afford to do the book. He invested in the book for over a year. Everyone else was paid over their [usual] page rate."

Described on the credits page as a "comic novel" (the term "graphic novel" not being in common usage at the time), it was followed in 1982 by a 14-issue comic book series (cover-dated Aug. 1982 - Aug. 1985) by McGregor and, consecutively, the artists Billy Graham and Jose Ortiz. The first two issues reprinted the graphic novel in color. According to McGregor, Eclipse co-founder Jan Mullaney strongly objected to some of the series's content, such as the graphic depiction of childbirth and the kiss between gay men, saying that it would cost them sales.

Annette Kawecki was the letterer. P. Craig Russell inked four pages, as revealed in a later edition's introduction.

The first graphic novel to be sold in the new "direct market" of comic-book stores, the book, priced at a then-considerable $6.00, helped prove the new format's viability by going into a February 1979 second printing.

Publisher Dean Mullaney recalled in 2008,

Eclipse published a 10th-anniversary edition of the original graphic novel (hardcover, ISBN 0-913035-65-3; trade paperback, ISBN 0-913035-59-9) with a new Gulacy cover and Jim Steranko logo. A 20th-anniversary edition was published by Image Comics in 1998, and a 30th-anniversary edition by Desperado Publishing in 2008.