Gumby #2 [2006] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Gumby #2 [2006]

Gumby was a claymation cartoon created by Art Clokey in the 1950s, with cartoons created into the 1960s and some later revivals. I have no memory of ever seeing it as a child, although I did see (and usually actively avoided) Clokey's other famous claymation series Davey and Goliath. Like most of my generation, I think I first encountered the character in the rather absurd version of the character Eddie Murphy did on Saturday Night Live.

For some reason the character appeared in comics in the late 1980s, most famously in two one-shots drawn by Arthur Adams, one written by Bob Burden and the other by Steve Purcell. Then in 2006 Burden returned to the character for this series with artist Rick Geary (the two had worked together one two issues of JUNIOR CARROT PATROL in 1989/90).  Looks like it was planned to continue at last one more issue but only lasted three. Burden even did one of the covers for this issue, which very much feels like a FLAMING CARROT cover.

Each of the three issues is a standalone story, with some light continuity around the girl introduced in the first issue, Cuddles. In this one, Gumby wants to get a fancy pair of boots to impress Cuddles, working some odd jobs and eventually winding up in the same circus where he had an adventure in #1, this time getting a job as a clown and then later getting turned into a golem. And then it starts to get really weird.

A pretty decent story, a long 34-pages in a packed issue which also has a frontispiece (which kind of gives away the ending of the story), a letter column and a biography of Geary plugging his various other works.

The Wasteland [1989] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

The Wasteland [1989] 

THE WASTELAND is a one-shot comic of single page comics by Dan Sweetman and Dave Louapre, published in 1989 by DC's short-lived Piranha Press imprint in the first year of its brief existence. The publisher was already several months into Sweetman and Louapre on-going title BEAUTIFUL STORIES FOR UGLY CHILDREN (the imprint's only on-going book) when this came out. Louapre's foreword is deliberately oblique on the source of the comics (being more concerned with the seemingly persistent comparisons of the strip to Garfield, instead of the obviously preferred Family Circus pedigree he aspires to), except to note that they were created over a four year period. Checking around, it seems they appeared in publications like FANGORIA and THE L.A. WEEKLY.  The result is 124 single panel comics, plus cover and foreword.

Other than the aforementioned Family Circus, the most obvious comparison for the comics is to the work of Gahan Wilson, in particular his gag strips for magazines like PLAYBOY and THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. There's a similar macabre sensibility, especially in looking at the more mundane aspects of normal life and giving them a dark twist, often predicated on a small bit of wordplay. That kind of work might be best known today from probably also Wilson-influenced newspaper strips like The Far Side and Bizarro, although taking it in a more extreme and explicit direction than you can in syndicate-approved comics.

Like any such collection, it doesn't always hit, but there are a number of excellent strips which I remembered vividly ever since I first read this some 30 years ago, even if I didn't always remember this is where I read them (one particular strip I always think of when I hear expression "leisure suit"). Sweetman's art goes through a few phases, as you'd expect from a four-year creation process (I don't think the strips are presented in anything resembling the order of creation), a lot of places you can see him settling into a few of the many styles he'd use for BSFUC.