State of the weblog address...

So, as another year draws to a close...

Had a pretty good run of activity here for a few weeks in the middle of the year.  That was weird.  Could happen again, in terms of volume of posts, but probably not in total wordcount.  Those posts were way too long for what I had to say.  Anyway, got distracted by a few things, but lately have gotten back into more frequent reading of comics, especially now that I have appropriate eyewear to the task (I've needed reading glasses for a few years now, but was delayed in getting them first by the pandemic, then by general procrastination).  It's fifty/fifty on whether that reading will result in a desire to write about what I'm reading.

I've also started to buy comics again, after two years of buying almost nothing except a few mail order things and stuff I get free, thanks to an on-going tour of the Toronto and surrounding areas comic shops I've been doing with a friend I've re-connected with after a decade when he lived abroad.  Initially the comic shop visits were more of an excuse to get together for lunch and drive around, but I ended up finding a handful of places where I could get a nice selection of fairly cheap ($1-$3 or less) back issues, some of which fill long-time gaps in my collection, more often are things I was curious about from ads or previews in other books or fanzines, or from other work by the creators, and some just catching my fancy in the moment.  This resulted in a crazy acquisition spree in the past year, about 1000 comics, which pretty much makes up for the two years of nothing (my ideal acquisition rate is one comic per day on average).  Still have to read most of those, it's been hard enough indexing and filing them...

(that graphic on the right is a random sampling of they kind of stuff I've gotten)

I've also now got a list of about six comic shops that I intend to hit every six months or so, which should give them time to replenish their stock. I also have a longer list  of comic shops I'll probably never go near again, but that's neither here nor there. I'm kind of hoping in the next year I can mostly wipe out my list of older comics that I want that are in my price range and unlikely to be reprinted or legally available digitally.

So there'll be no shortage of stuff I can read and write about, if the urge arises.  And that's just print stuff I own.  Between that, the print and digital resources of the Toronto Public Library and the DC and Marvel "streaming" digital offerings getting closer to comprehensive (whenever I get around to subscribing to them), I'm not at any loss on things to read and write about.

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And of course movies and TV are more accessible than ever.  But still more often than not I tend to re-watch something (lately SOPRANOS, NEWSRADIO, PARKS AND RECREATION, THE GOOD WIFE or COMMUNITY) rather than watch something I haven't seen before.  A few new to me things have caught my eye recently.

SEVERANCE was probably the most successful, with one season complete on AppleTV+, and more to come eventually.  It's a science fiction show about a world where a corporation has developed a technology where employees' minds are bifurcated, so while they're at work they have no memory of the outside world and when they leave have no memory of work.  That's all sinister sounding enough, but everything about the show compounds it, to the clues about the mysterious work our main cast of four (led by Adam Scott) is doing, hints about the past of the characters, various cultish activities and conspiracies both inside and outside the corporation which make the work/home divide much less firm than they'd have you believe.  Nine episodes in the first season, it starts off a bit slow, but picks up, making you sorry by the end that you'll have to wait an indeterminate time for more.  Definitely a show not to binge, though.  Take at least a few days between episodes to let it sit in your head.

A few other things I watched on AppleTV+ while I had the service.  THE AFTERPARTY was a mostly successful high-concept comedic murder mystery, where every episode was filmed with the trappings of a specific TV/film genre based on the character whose perspective is the focus. Doesn't completely work, but it was a worthwhile experiment. I'm not sure how it will sustain a second season, but if it's there whenever I re-up to watch more SEVERANCE I'll give it a look.

Which I probably wouldn't say about LOOT, the Maya Rudolph show about a recently divorced multi-billionaire who tries to find some meaning in her life and rehabilitate her reputation by working directly with the charitable foundation she was previously hands-off with. I don't know, I usually like Maya Rudolph, but I think I like her more in smaller doses. As a series lead she can be a bit much.  This seemed to have the bones of an interesting show, and a pretty good cast, but it just didn't gel. Maybe having the lead be so ridiculously wealthy got in the way. It also seemed a bit odd how out of touch Rudolph's character was when it was clear the wealth wasn't something she was born with, but came to her in her adulthood. Anyway, not ruling out watching more, but won't seek it out.

Objectively THE MORNING SHOW is even worse, but it might just dip into the rarefied of being so bad you have to watch it.  I mean, an absurdly expensive cast, great production values, incredibly self-important writing (and delivery of same) about what everyone should realize is a shallow subject matter, taking all the wrong lessons from the Aaron Sorkin school of scriptwriting. How can you not love it between shaking your head at how awful it is, and how little it realizes how awful it is?  Oh yeah, I'll watch more, but I'd caution you about getting sucked into it.

Other than that, FOUNDATION was terrible, but I'll probably torture myself and watch more, and BLACK BIRD was okay, but seems to end a bit abruptly.

The rotating streaming service wheel has spun to a free 6 month subscription to Disney+, so I'll probably watch a lot of Marvel, Star Wars and Muppet stuff.

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Movies I've also fallen way behind on new stuff in favour of revisiting old favourites.  I'm still not willing to go back to... those big rooms where they charge you too much to watch movies with rude strangers in uncomfortable seats, with over-priced unappetizing food, and they don't even let you pause or rewind or turn on subtitles.  What did we call those?  Of the 2022 movies I've actually seen in 2022, I thought EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) was easily the best. Of the 2021 movies I got around to seeing this year, DUNE (2021), CODA (2021) and NIGHTMARE ALLEY (2021) are the ones I'd recommend.  Got some time coming up, planning to catch up on some more recent stuff, including NOPE (2022) at the top of the list (I think the last two non-children's movies I've been to in the... theatre (?was that what they were called?) were Jordan Peele's two previous movies).

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Since I've been driving a bunch lately, I've been listening to more music than I normally do, both from digging the old CDs out of the basement and listening to Spotify, as opposed to listening to the same 1400 songs I put on an MP3 player a few years ago that I can no longer modify because it uses an off-brand proprietary USB connection instead of a standard.  I'd been kind of interesting to hear a few things I haven't heard in years, or occasionally go into deeper cuts beyond the dozen greatest hits for a few artists.  As I may have mentioned before, my taste in music largely ossified back around the time I was 25, which is now officially more than half a lifetime ago, and I'm not sure anything can reach both my head and my heart at the same time as anything I heard before that, but sometimes something gets close.

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Well, that's more than long enough, and I didn't really get to the point of what I meant to write about, just some rambling about stuff that I want to write about in more detail that history shows I probably won't.  Maybe I'll get back to the other stuff later.

DEMON by Jason Shiga

Jason Shiga's DEMON was first self-published in 21 chapters, print and digital, from 2014 to 2016, and then collected into four books from First Second in 2016 and 2017. It's the story of a man who, upon attempting suicide, discovers that he's a demon, meaning when his body dies his consciousness survives and he "possesses" the nearest human at the time of death. Complications ensue.

This is a really fun, if absurdly profane, comic, maybe Shiga's magnum opus to date (though I still have to pick up his new ADVENTUREGAME COMICS book, which seems promising). He creates a weird set of rules for how and why "demons" work in this world, and explores them in ways I can't even begin to understand how he got there.  I have to admit, there is a twist in the final book which I'm not sure I completely understand, in terms of what we've been told of how everything works, but I trust Shiga that the logic works out.

Just read it for the third time, but the first time in a short interval (one chapter a day most days for four weeks, and I have to say, a lot of those cliffhangers made sticking to the one-a-day plan difficult). I think it reads much better this way, and I'm kind of surprised that First Second split it the way they did, instead of one big book, or haven't come out with a complete one-volume version since.

Scribbly art update

 

Update on the Scribbly art by Sheldon Mayer I wrote about here.

The auction was won by Alex Johnson, and if it had to go to someone who wasn't me (or someone who would give it to me), Alex would have been my choice. He's found out a bit more about the history of the art and its prior owner. Look through his gallery, he's got some other Mayer work, plus lots of commissions of other artists doing covers for the non-existent "SUGAR & SPIKE #100".  All of them are great, but pay special attention to the Sergio Aragonés and Ramona Fradon ones.

He's also provided a closer look at the editorial note on the artwork.  Here's what we think it says:

1st line: Dear ... [maybe starts with a G?] Eliminate boardwalk
2nd line: Leave BG for sky. Also note
3rd line: Buzzy and Susie are okay in
4th line: position. Show other girls
5th line: All [being] seated and standing
6th line: in BG looking toward Buzzy.and Susie
7th line: Smiling flirtatiously and some just
8th line: Smiling (not as Sheldon
9th line: Interpreted them)

("BG" means "background")

That name on the first line is maddeningly unclear, but I'm pretty sure it starts with a "G".  And as it happens, "Graham Place" is the name of a major artist of the DC teen humour titles of the era, including being attributed with some BUZZY stories and covers (they were almost all unsigned, except for Mayer, so credits are spotty).  Anyone familiar with the styles of the time want to weigh in on whether he drew the BUZZY cover based on Mayer's unused SCRIBBLY cover?

Kevin O'Neill, R.I.P.

Sad to note the passing of Kevin O'Neill, comic book artist known in these parts for Nemesis the Warlock, Marshal Law and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 

First, here's a cross-section of his career in covers:

Now a random look at some interior pages:

Obviously THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN has been his major work for the last two decades, with six volumes in collaboration with Alan Moore.  An interesting series, with O'Neill called upon to do some almost impossible things a few times every issue, and managing to make it look easy.

He did a few stories featuring the character Lobo, the most notable being LOBO CONVENTION SPECIAL #1 [1993] with Keith Giffen (Lobo co-creator with Roger Slifer) and Alan Grant.  

Here's a nice oddity, O'Neill inking a Jack Kirby page, featuring an obscure SHIELD villain of Kirby's creation.

A pair of pages for DC featuring their classic characters.  The Batman splash is an interesting design, and the Bizarro page from WHO'S WHO has some funny stuff in the background.  Rather famously, Alan Moore once talked about a proposal for a Bizarro series he wanted to do with O'Neill, which never came to pass (O'Neill did eventually do a short story with another writer).

Here's a promo piece for another of his major works, Nemesis the Warlock with writer Pat Mills.  Always thought it was a shame O'Neill wasn't able to draw more of the series, though the other artists (especially Bryan Talbot) did a good job carrying on in the world he designed. Definitely my favourite series to come out of 2000 AD.

Here's a nice charity piece he did for AARGH [1988], an anthology inspired by some homophobic laws being passed in the UK in that era.

O'Neill came in a few times on the OMEGA MEN series created by Joe Staton and Marv Wolfman.  The short story "Brief Lives" is an early collaboration with Alan Moore, and a cute story, while the other page is from a Marv Wolfman story, nicely realizing a nightmare alien world.

MARSHAL LAW is another major work, again in collaboration with Pat Mills, starting with an Epic series in 1987 and continuing through various publishers and crossovers for years after. I think that was the first place I saw his work.  A great series, always outrageous, frequently funny and a must read.

Another Alan Moore collaboration was "Tygers", a Green Lantern story featuring Abin Sur (created by Gil Kane and John Broome) which had more ideas per page than a lot of creators come up with in their careers.

417 years ago today...

 Remember, remember

 the fifth of November

The gunpowder treason and plot.

I see no reason

why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

(with thanks to David Lloyd, Alan Moore, Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle, Jack Kirby, Joe Simon and whoever drew BUSTER)

Unseen Sheldon Mayer SCRIBBLY cover

So, interesting auction item, already out of my price range, and probably headed to much more.  This is a Sheldon Mayer cover to his SCRIBBLY series, which ran for 15 issues from 1948 to 1952 (the character himself dates back to 1936), but not one of the 15 covers that ran on the book.  According to the description, it was intended for #13 in 1950, but labelled as written off in 1951.

That alone makes it one of the most interesting bits of original art I've seen in a while. SCRIBBLY is a great little comic, really should have been reprinted by this point, so it's great to see a "new" page from it out of the blue.

But there's more...

Also with the original art from circa 1950 is this full sized re-creation from the 1980s by Sheldon Mayer.  A real delight, especially looking at some of the changes Mayer made, having Scribbly drawing the girls (which more fits in with the theme of the series), with the broken pencils in the sand.

Well, that's pretty cool.  Now how much would you pay. But there's more...

Very faint on the artwork is a note, unknown author, which has some notes about changing this into a cover for another DC teen book of the era, BUZZY.  It's not all legible (if you happen to buy it, let me know if more of it is readable).

What I can make out is:

"[illegible] Leave B.G. [background] For sky Also Buzzy and Susie are okay in position. Show other girls [illegible] In B.G. looking towards Buzzy and Susie smiling flirtatiously(?) and some just smiling (not as Sheldon interpreted(?) them)"

(see update for more)

Well, that's pretty interesting.  I wonder if...

Yep, BUZZY #33, artist unknown, from September-October 1950.  Which happens to be the same date as SCRIBBLY #13.  And which happens to be one of the issues of BUZZY to feature a Scribbly back-up story by Mayer (SCRIBBLY has a one year hiatus between #13 and #14, during which time DC's comics shrank from 52 pages to 36 pages, and a bunch of Scribbly short stories ran as back-ups in other DC teen titles). 

Well, that's quite enough...

Wait, did I mention the pages are "From the Harlan Ellison Collection"?  Well, that's kind of interesting.  Ellison was a prominent fantasy writer in a number of fields, with his hand in comics at several points, from as far back as a letter in a 1947 DC comic, plotting a 1954 EC comic by Al Williamson and many more activities as both a fan and a professional until his passing in 2018. His collection was legendary, to the point that Paul Chadwick made it the centerpiece of a Concrete story appearing in DARK HORSE PRESENTS #66 [1992], "Byrdland's Secret", where a barely-at-all disguised version of Ellison, "Dwayne Byrd" ("Cordwainer Bird" was a pen-name Ellison occasionally used for writing work he felt was compromised enough to take his name off).  Might be my favourite Concrete story, certainly the one that pops into my head most often, for a very specific reason.

In the story, Concrete and his friend Larry are invited to the home of Byrd, who was one of the writers on a movie that Concrete had worked on in a previous story (which was itself based on the 1987 MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE film), ostensibly inviting Concrete to help decide if he should remove his name from the movie (presumably using a pseudonym like "Harlequin Ellis"), but obviously just wanting to meet Concrete.  

Byrd's house has an impressive collection, including a massive comic book collection which, ever since I read it, was how I imagined my dream comic collection storage system if I ever had stupid money (hasn't happened yet...).  Just something about rolling banks of shelves... I don't know why, shelving on tracks with hand cranks has always appealed to me.

Anyway, Byrd's house is obviously based on a Chadwick visit to Ellison's house, so even if it didn't make the panels, the Mayer cover and recreation are probably in there somewhere.  I am curious about the history of it, whether Ellison acquired the art and commissioned the recreation himself, or it it went through other hands before reaching him.

Well, anyway, I found it all interesting And not to be a cliché, but Christmas is always coming, and I do have at least one birthday every year, plus I'm sure there has to be a Blogger's Day or something...

Update with some new info here

Drew Ford, R.I.P.

Sad to note the sudden passing of Drew Ford at age 48.  There's a fundraiser right now to help the family through this difficult time.

I became aware of Ford when, from 2015 to 2017, he ran a comic book division for Dover Publications. This was an imprint remarkably aligned to my tastes, as you can see from that gallery of books up top, and moreover dedicated to delivering a quality product in cooperation with the creators, unlike most re-publishers of classic comics.  That PUMA BLUES book has a new 40-page coda by Zulli and Murphy.  That WANDERING STAR book has Teri Wood's original mini-comic version, plus numerous colour covers and prints. ATTU has a whole third unpublished book by Sam Glanzman.  PALEO has several stories never before printed by Jim Lawson, including two written by Stephen R. Bissette (who also provides detailed historical notes for several of the books).  I've written before about my "paper moratorium", where I avoid getting newly published comics with some exceptions for about the last decade. Well, for those years, these were most of the exceptions.  All gorgeous books, and I was tempted by many more that they published.

Never was quite sure why the line folded so quickly.  Certainly wasn't the quality of the work or the production.  Anyway, after that Ford founded his own It's Alive Press, continuing to bring some classic work back into print.

Pogofest 1995 Program [1995] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Pogofest 1995 Program [1995]

This is the program to the 9th annual Pogofest, honouring the work of Walt Kelly, held in Waycross Georgia on October 27-28, 1995. just up the road from scenic  Okefenokee Swamp Park. Not sure if it's still held, or if not when it stopped, but my selection of programs goes to 2005, so that was probably it.  And no, I've never actually attended, though I have a bunch of programs...

This is a 16-page package put together by Steve Thompson, a name that should need no introduction to Pogo fans.  In addition to the map and schedule of the festival, this includes an introduction by Thompson, an essay by Carolyn Kelly, and several Walt Kelly rarities from magazines like COLLIER'S, TRUE THE MAN'S MAGAZINE and LIFE, plus a Kelly-inspired drawing by Charles Crumb from 1958. A fun sampler of the kind of stuff you'd find in Thompson's FORT MUDGE MOST magazine which ran for at least 95 issues.  The long COLLIER'S piece from 1955 is especially interesting for the drawing of Pogo meeting an actual possum.

Goodnight, Irene [2007] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Goodnight, Irene [2007]

This is a collection of the works of Carol Lay, featuring her character Irene Van de Kamp, published in the title GOOD GIRLS from 1987 to 1991 from Fantagraphics and then Rip Off Press.  Lay also does some new stories in the end of this book, published by Last Gasp.

I'd seen the old comic around every now and then, and it looked intriguing, but I didn't really start paying attention to Carol Lay until I started reading her Story Minute comic strip (later titled Way Lay) around the turn of the century.  Really loved those, so of course looked for her earlier work. Discovered she did some CAPTAIN CARROT comics I enjoyed back in the early 1980s (initially inking, then eventually co-writing and drawing the OZ-WONDERLAND WAR mini-series), but obviously much of her own style didn't come through on that. Read a few of the GOOD GIRLS issues, but eventually this book came out.

Irene's story began as one-shot parody back-up story, making fun of standard romance comics tropes with an extreme version of the situations they're built on, in this case an American heiress lost as a baby and raised by an African tribe that practices face-shaping, including a lip-plate. Returning to America as a young wealthy woman, she struggles to find love, hoping a blind lawyer might be the one, only to have her hopes dashed. A funny little story that Lay created in 1980, but didn't publish until years later.  After a few issues as a back-up, Irene's story took over the books, adding more colourful characters and complications. 

A very fun book, and it's interesting to see the evolution of Lay's style in the long creative process between the first story and the last.  The first story is a solid classic style, as befits the parody roots. Later on she melds that style with a lot of the Love&Rockets look, especially Jaime Hernandez, which is a natural fit, as they seem to have a lot of common influences.  You can gradually see her work going towards that Story Minute / Way Lay style as the book goes on, with some sudden jumps in the two new stories in the back which update Irene's story to the then-modern day.

The original Irene related covers and back-covers are presented in the back, and there's a new preface by Lay and introduction by musician Mark Mothersbaugh.

Upcoming DeMatteis comics news

So, interesting news coming from the always-interesting J.M. DeMatteis that he's co-creating four very different books with four very different artists/co-creators (all of whom he has some history with), to be launched under the umbrella of "The DeMultiverse" from a new publisher, Spellbound Comics.

The four titles are:

LAYLA IN THE LANDS OF AFTER with Shawn McManus

WISDOM with Tom Mandrake

GODSEND with Matthew Dow Smith

ANYMAN with David Baldeón

Details are gradually being announced. LAYLA is set in the afterlife, WISDOM is some kind of fantasy/western hybrid, the other two look like variations on super-heroic myths.

From what I can gather, the plan of the publisher is to publish the first issue of each series, both as standalone comics and a collection of all four, through pre-sales on their own website and Kickstarter, and then let people who ordered the books decide which one will continue on to more stories first, with the plan to eventually continue them all, presumably more quickly the more successful the publisher is. Maybe a bit convoluted to my tastes, but a new publisher has to do what it must to launch, and I'm sure that DeMatteis is able to craft the four stories so that they're satisfying reads on their own, while holding the promise of even more if/when they're able to continue.

Also, good on DeMatteis for having the artists all listed as co-creators right up front, and good on Spellbound for the books being creator owned (by both writer and artist), not work for hire like many new publishers where the books read like movie pitches disguised as comics, owned by just the company or just the writer and the company.  These look like comics undisguised as comics.

BATMAN/SPAWN 2022 vs SPAWN/BATMAN 2006

Well, in a desire to get more timely and clickbaity content on this weblog (the scenes of Herbie meeting Queen Elizabeth didn't seem to cut it. I thought I had a surefire viral hit there)...

I wonder how much the just solicited BATMAN/SPAWN comic from DC was originally done for the SPAWN/BATMAN comic that Image Comics was supposed to publish back in 2006?  Can't find the cover, unfortunately (if anyone has a print copy of Previews from back then...) [got it], here's the description:

SPAWN/BATMAN: INNER DEMONS 

story TODD MCFARLANE

art TODD MCFARLANE & GREG CAPULLO

covers TODD MCFARLANE

56 PAGES FC DECEMBER 28, 2006

$5.99

It’s been over a decade since their first meeting. The Dark Knight and the even darker one. But this time is perhaps the most dangerous meeting of all. A battle for our heroes’ very souls and sanity. Sure Batman knows how to fight The Joker, Spawn and The Clown, but what if Spawn had to deal with Batman’s legendary nemesis? And for that matter, is Batman really capable of fighting a TRUE DEMON from hell? Two great heroes must face each other’s greatest villains! Get ready for drama, mayhem and madness like you’ve never seen before from comics master TODD MCFARLANE!

Let's compare the new one

BATMAN/SPAWN #1

Written by TODD McFARLANE

Art and cover by GREG CAPULLO

[variant covers endless list redacted]

[ratio covers endless list redacted]

$6.99 US | 48 pages | Prestige | One-shot (all covers are card stock)

ON SALE 12/13/22 

 

Two dark heroes, cursed by tragedy, find their paths again crossing…but not by choice! What sinister foe is at work, pitting the Dark Knight against the Hellspawn? From the shadows of Gotham City to New York City, this epic event is the blockbuster you've been waiting almost two decades for!

Well, one dollar higher, which isn't that bad, less than 1% annualized inflation. Slightly fewer pages, which might be a blessing (probably would have been filler/ad pages, and I think Image counts the covers while DC doesn't).  McFarlane not explicitly involved in the art.  Also not doing the main cover, but that may have been moved to one of the many variant/ratio/custom/limited/reprint covers we'll no doubt see.  The first time they explicitly mention the Joker and the Clown as the villains, which is still a possibility with the new one, except that DC these days is never shy about telling you when the Joker is appearing some place.

Now what we need is for Image to publish a new SPAWN/BATMAN, written by the whole current Batman team, let's say Tom King, Chip Zdarsky, Ram V and James Tynion, drawn by, oh, let's give it to Mikel Janin, I like his stuff. Is Klaus Janson still inking? Anyway, the story, given Tom King's involvement, will undoubtedly involve Spawn realizing he's been suffering from PTSD all these years...

(Batman created by Bill Finger with... damn, always forget his name. Kob Brane?)
(Spawn created by Todd McFarlane, I guess, unless he ripped off some co-creator, although many of his supporting characters co-created by Neil Gaiman. Probably not appearing in this book, though, since Gaiman won them in a lawsuit and sold/gave them to either Marvel or the CBLDF.  That's not really relevant, I just like to bring it up.  Miracleman's coming back, too...)

Here's some other ridiculous art I found from the unpublished book:

Classic Herbie somehow fitting the biggest news of the day...

 Somewhere in America, a Duke weeps tonight...

But only because he can't find his rare cinnamon flavoured lollipop. 

And do you knight someone to make them a Duke?  Who researched this thing?

Ogden Whitney and Richard E. Hughes were fond of throwing in celebrity cameos in their 1958-1967 series from ACG, and Queen Elizabeth, Second of Her Name, was there frequently, although kind of inconsistently characterized.

Atom Bomb Thief redux

So, this one actually popped into my head a few weeks ago, when some initial reports of the news of the day indicated nuclear secrets were involved.  Now that it's all intensified, I pretty much had to cobble this together to get it out of my head.

 All apologies to Harvey Kurtzman, creator of the 1950 source story, a remarkably tight and exciting story from early in his classic EC tenure (see MAN AND SUPERMAN AND OTHER STORIES in the EC Artists' Library series).  And a general apology to all professional comic book letterers everywhere, and Jim Wroten specifically in this case, for the slipshod work on my part.

The original page

The Cowboy Wally Show [1996] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

The Cowboy Wally Show [1996]

This is a book created by Kyle Baker, first published in 1988 from Doubleday. That edition seemed to be mostly famous for being hard to find, though those that did find it seemed to really like it.

So eight years later when another "mainstream" publisher, Marlowe & Company, decided to try out a comic book line, they picked a re-issue of this among their early releases, which ended up being just four books that I know of (though I recall they announced plans for a few more). Not sure it did much better the second time around, but it did give some of us who'd heard the praises sung of the first edition a chance to get a copy.

I think the only real difference between the two editions is the new cover.

Overall it's a pretty funny book, presented as a documentary about the bizarre career of television personality Cowboy Wally, a man whose main talent seems to be putting his foot in his mouth. Maybe it's not laugh out loud  as I was expecting from years of build-up, but consistently amusing and clever. I think this was Kyle Baker's first writing work, after a few years mostly inking, and I think contemporary with his work on THE SHADOW at DC, with Andrew Helfer.

The book was subsequently published by DC's Vertigo imprint, and has been self-published in several different print and digital editions by Baker since he re-acquired the rights.