deejayway wrote:
So who are these Nightwing and Flambird characters. I keep hearing about them in relation to Superman and they even seem to be back..
This isn't Dick Grayson is it?

Nope.
Originally, before the COIE, Nightwing & Flamebird were none other than Superman & Jimmy Olsen respectively (it always struck me as interesting that Superman chose a "dark" identity for himself, a la Batman) who visited the bottled city of Kandor whenever they were bored out of their minds to have adventures (Superman doesn't have his powers while inside Kandor, remember)
Eventually, they were replaced by Van-Zee, a Kandorian scientist who looked almost identical to Superman (sigh) and his lab assistant Ak-Zee.
The CURRENT duo of Nightwing & Flamebird running around the James Robinson Superman books are two different persons. (If you're not reading them, I would be spoiling it for you)



I'm particularly interested in work by the likes of Jeff Jones

Did you ever try DARK MANSION OF FORBIDDEN LOVE or its sister title SINISTER HOUSE OF SECRET LOVE?
Both featured "novel-length" stories of Gothic terror, and had lovely painted covers by the likes of your homeboy Jeff Jones (ideally suited to the subject)
DARK MANSION OF FORBIDDEN LOVE was a bit too girlie for my tastes, to be honest. In many ways it reminded me of those cheesy Romance comics from the 50s and 60s people HERE seem to like so much, but which are just plain embarrassing. However, after issue 4 they changed the title to FORBIDDEN TALES OF DARK MANSION, cut the number of pages and filled it with smaller stories. It became less femenine, but it also lost what made it unique. Oh well, the first page, featuring the host Chastity (which would come back one day in Robinson's Starman series) were usually by Kaluta or Wrightson, so that was okay.
SINISTER HOUSE OF SECRET LOVE was more about the occult. Like DARK MANSION, the best stories were the ones by Tony DeZuñiga. I only knew him from those Savage Sword of Conan B&W tales, so this was a real eye-opener for me. His pages were moody and atmospheric. Unfortunately, this title was ALSO changed after its fourth issue and became SECRETS OF THE SINISTER HOUSE (as I mentioned in my previous post) . Its host was Eve. It was as if EVERY DC mystery anthology had to be identical. Depressing, really.
Here's a few of the painted covers I was talking about:

Jeff Jones

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Joe Orlando

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More Jeff Jones

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Some DeZuñiga inside art:

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And just for laughs, some Kirby

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