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SABRE. A 38-page trade paperback written by Don McGregor and illustrated by Paul

Gulacy that was fi rst published in 1978, Sabre became the fi rst publication issued by
Eclipse Enterprises, which would go on to become Eclipse Comics. It can also lay claim
to being one of the fi rst graphic novels, appearing in the same year as Will Eisner’s
A Contract with God, which is widely (though not quite accurately) cited as the fi rst
graphic novel. Sabre is also historically important because the original paperback was
sold exclusively through comic-book stores, proving the viability of that method of
distribution for longer and more expensive comics. Th e initial Sabre paperback, once
again in print in a 20th-anniversary edition published by Image Comics in 1998, was
followed by a 14-issue comic-book series, the fi rst two of which reprinted the original
black-and-white graphic novel in color. All of the Sabre comics feature the same epony-
mous African American hero, given his name by his favorite weapon, though he also
totes a fancy high-tech pistol.
Sabre and his beautiful-but-deadly (white) lover-sidekick, Melissa Siren, have no
actual superpowers, but both are preternaturally tough, courageous, and skilled in
combat. Sabre, in particular, has become a hero and has developed his own staunchly
held code of beliefs, tempered in the fi res of a diffi cult upbringing in a series of rehabili-
tation centers, none of which were able to quell his fi erce individualism and resistance
to oppressive authority. He continues in this vein in the comics, which take place in a
post-apocalyptic America in which the social system has collapsed beneath the pres-
sures of greed and conformism. As Sabre explains to Melissa in one key (postcoital)
conversation, his rebellion against society began when he realized that most in the
general population were being “narcotized” by their “sensory video systems,” a sort of
futuristic form of television. As he puts it, “the materialistic carrot held under their