There actually is another volume of sorts in between the original 10-issue run and this 25-issue volume published through First Comics. But it's just a reprinting of six of those original 10 issues so I don't even know if it should count.
Where the original series was closer to a straightforward superhero adventure, with a bit of "fish out of water" stuff thrown in, the 1980s E-Man book leans more into comedy and at times, melodrama. Which probably reflects the changing aspects of superhero comics on the whole. Issues 2 and 3 are basically a parody of The Dark Phoenix Saga, where Nova (who gained powers identical to E-Man's late in the previous series) is targeted by the creepy Ford Fairmont (Chris Claremont in a wheelchair) and his "F-Men". There's an issue that combines the Smurfs with Elfquest and the nightmare that was '80s children's programming. Later on, E-Man encounters the fugitive merc squad "The B-Team", and the member of their team with mental issues spends a couple of issues running around calling himself the Golden Gopher.
I can't tell if that's a spoof on Mike Baron's The Badger, or the creative just attended the University of Minnesota.
There are certainly others, but those were the most obvious to me. As with all those kinds of parodies, it pretty much demands you have some knowledge of the thing they're making fun, enough to get the references and hopefully find them funny. On the last point, I'd say the success rate is much closer to 0 than 100.
I enjoy the book more when it just focuses on its own characters and it's own weirdness. For example, issue 12, when Nova and Alec move to Chicago because she's taken a job as host of a late-night horror movie program for a local station, and Alec ends up dealing with dedicated Communist revolutionary Tyger Lily, who has teamed up with a giant, talking alligator crimeboss name Big Al, in a plot that involves a giant gator-bot and dangerous fusion reactors. Or issue 19, "Hoodoo Blues", where a famous blues player who was murdered before he could play his set is brought back from the grave.
Martin Pasko writes most of the first year's stories, working with Paul Kupperberg in the latter parts of that stretch, before Staton takes over writing for most of the second year (with Rich Burchett becoming Staton's inker, presumably to free up some time for Staton to work on writing). Nicola Cuti returns for the last two issues, an origin story for Michael Mauser, and one where E-Man gets tangled up in something with some island gods while trying to sort out his feelings about Nova (this series is marked by a fair amount of will they/won't they between those two.) It would be nice if you could draw a simple line between the two writer teams, but it's not that simple. The F-Men was under Pasko's pen, the B-Team and "Smelt Quest" were Staton's doing.
Staton's artwork seems less cramped in this series than the first one, though I'm not sure why. His page layouts don't look too noticeably different in terms of the number of panels. But the first book, with it's monster of the week aspect, might have leaned into horror a little more, wanting the reader to feel trapped. Or maybe it's just Cuti was a more verbose writer than Staton, Pasko, etc, and Staton's art had to allow for that. He definitely favors a stronger, more sharply defined line in this series, while simplifying and in some cases exaggerating figures for effect. Mauser gets considerably shorter and pudgier here, where he's halfway a spoof of the disreputable private investigator, compared to the first volume where I think he just was a disreputable private investigator.
The tone of this volume (and probably the quality of the printing) also leads to Fiore using brighter colors generally, which keeps things from feeling as dark and claustrophobic. There aren't a lot of narrow panels set in ominously dark alleys in this book.
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