Random Comics Theatre
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.
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