Boone on the Fourth of July

by J.S. Holland


And now it begins.

My novel The Devil and Daniel Boone now has an official release date of July 4, 2012. Pre-ordering details will be made abundantly clear in the weeks to come. It will be available both as a tree-book and an e-book, for those who prefer their deathless literature to be composed of imaginary digital air, wirelessly delivered from the borg-brain Cloud.

Though The Devil and Daniel Boone is a historical novel in a Steampunk sort of sense, hardcore scholars will probably cringe at the utter lack of regard for strict accuracy the story displays - which is to say, about as much resemblance to pioneer days as Inglourious Basterds displayed to World War II days. But, my dears, that's why they call it fiction.

(Not that I believe everything the history books tell me, anyway.)

The story postulates frontiersmen Daniel Boone and Jim Bridger joining forces to make their way through Kentucky to blaze the Wilderness Trail for Richard Henderson's Transylvania Colony in 1775. But the longer they lurk in what they thought was previously unexplored territory, the more they find that others have already gotten here first. And as each of the three men pursue their own idealistic goals, the spectre of the approaching Revolutionary War threatens to throw their plans into disarray.

This is the first volley in a series of pulp-fiction-style JSH novels, as foretold last year. And literary snobs, be ye warned: we're talking here about a book by a guy who holds Harry Stephen Keeler in the highest regard, without a trace of camp or irony.

The Devil Went Down to Florida

by J.S. Holland

Florida's a land of powerful contradictions, which of course suits me to a T. There's something about the mojo of this peculiar peninsula that attracts both the wealthy and powerful, and the downtrodden and fugitive. It's a land of great natural beauty and profound man-made tackiness.

The earliest known European explorers came with the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León, who discovered it on April 2, 1513 and named it La Florida. (You thought Cristoforo "Christopher Columbus" Columbo was the first European to set foot in North America? Go to the back of the class. He never actually visited the mainland, and the closest he came was Cuba) And yet, even in Juan's telling of this alleged first contact with Florida, weirdness ensues: he was surprised to find an "indigenous tribesman" here who already spoke Spanish.

Over the subsequent years, Florida became a free-for-all mess. The Spanish, the French, and the English were all mucking around here, trying to take it over. The native Americans were warring with all of them, as well as with each other. Africans who had been brought to America as slaves often sought refuge here. It wasn't until 1845 that the USA managed to fully get their lunch-hooks in Florida and claim it as a state, and we did so as part of an agreement with Spain that we would not seek any claim to Texas in the future. I guess you know how that promise turned out.


Though I shut down almost all my blogs back in July, I knew I'd be back here at the Victorian Squares clubhouse to file the occasional report. Having just returned from the Florida Gulf Coast and, by extension, Interzone, I have much data to relay. Unfortunately almost all of it's classified.

What I can tell you is, I drank a lot of the demon rum. It's really disconcerting for a Kentuckian to find himself in a bar with only seven bourbons but 44 different kinds of rum. I hung out with the ghost of F. Scott Fitzgerald (and maybe, just maybe, the ghosts of Ernest Hemingway and Joe Strummer as well) on St. Pete's Beach in an old pink palace. Ignoring my own warnings about Corexit, I happily ate fresh-caught mackerel at the Anna Maria Island city pier and went back for seconds.


But did I get any work done? Well, a little bit. I thought this FL trip would give me the setting I needed to finish these still-in-progress novels I've been fiddling with all year, but what it really did was give me inspiration for other novels to write next.

I was constantly reminded of the dialogue from the Naked Lunch movie where Jack Kerouac says, "My novel's all-American as apple pie, Bill. I couldn't finish it here." And Burroughs responds with the bit about how America is not a young country and how before the settlers, before the pirates, even before the Indians, there was something here, something dark and dirty and mysterious.

I defintely felt that indefinable something while creeping around at night in the untamed jungles of Leffis Key. While chatting with an old Haitian voodoo guy who makes masks and sells them to upscale tourists who have no idea what they're bringing into their homes. While sitting on the dock of the bay at Rod & Reel Pier, seeing the enigmatic Egmont Key taunting me just out of reach. My biggest disappointment of this visit is that an expedition to Egmont got scuttled by high winds, storm clouds, and super-choppy waters that prevented our little catamaran from making the journey. Thanks to tropical storm (almost became a hurricane) Phillipe for that.


I was called unexpectedly back to the Commonwealth, alas, and had to cut my visit short. Missed out on the Salvador Dali Museum, as well as the Mote Aquarium. Next time. I got a lot more Floridizin' on the road to my horizon.


To put the gulf area in perspective for my Kentucky readers, think of Tampa as Louisville and Sarasota as Lexington, with Bradenton as the quainter, mellower Frankfort in between. Then you have your islands off to the side - Anna Maria, Perico, Key Royale, Longboat Key, Beer Can Island (pictured above), Leffis Key, Lido Key, Sand Key, Clearwater Beach, Treasure Island, Honeymoon Island, etc. - which mirror the rural-yet-touristy weirdness we have in Midway, Berea, Bowling Green and Cave City. But, you know, with beaches and sharks and dolphins and gators and women walking around in Wicked Weasels.

Dylan Williams In Memoriam

by J.T. Dockery
from his Covertly and by Snatches blog

When I found out in making plans months ago with Tom Neely to share a table at SPX 2011, which happened last weekend, that we would also be representing Dylan Williams's Sparkplug Comics (my favorite publisher), I was giddy as a school girl. As it became apparent to me that he was in ill health, the giddiness gave way to a dark cloud, yet Tom and I, and I think most everyone who knew him, had so much faith in who he was and what he represented, there was light in that dark cloud as we all believed he'd make it...because we needed him to make it. The news came in toward the end of the first day of SPX that Dylan had died. What occurs to me in pondering his passing, is that, because of who he was, there is still light amongst the dark clouds.

Perhaps the oddest aspect of Dylan's death to me is that I never met him in person (I've spent most of my life "land locked" in Kentucky, far away from the centers of zine and comics culture). Yet, knowing him from a distance, as far as I can remember, began with the issue of Destroy All Comics which featured an interview with John Porcellino and Dylan's article on Bill Blackbeard. I wore that issue out in the 90s, reading and re-reading it. It caused me to take note any time I saw Dylan's name in print connected to comics. As Sparkplug developed throughout the oughts, I followed its progress and came to see that I admired Dylan's work as a publisher more than anything in comics besides simply the work of individual artists.

I kept up a correspondence with Dylan via mail, email, and Facebook. I treasured Dylan's Facebook postings so much I remember being upset when he'd get taciturn about it and disable his account for a while. If I never got to meet Dylan in person, I certainly treasured our correspondence. Whether it was bonding over obscure zines from the 90s we'd both read, or whether it was discussing horror movies and Dylan saying he'd repeated my musings at his store, Bad Apple, and jokingly confessing he didn't give me credit when "stealing" my ideas, or whether it was a discussion of the metal band Flotsam & Jetsam spiraling out into long autobiographical digressions into metal and music that devolved into statements of shared personal philosophies, Dylan, six years older than me, was like an older brother whom I much admired so that when we got on the same page, it gave me great joy.

When I started to do comics reviews in the past year, I ordered some Sparkplug books. When Dylan realized what I was up to, he sent me a huge box of books for free, which I did not want him to do. Even as I explained to him it was my intent to pay for all the books I reviewed, he wouldn't listen to me. Even as an arch critic of comic book culture, in microcosm, and the culture at large in macrocosm, Dylan always struggled to be big-hearted, inclusive, and generous, instead of giving in to cynicism. When Dylan went on record to say nice things about my work, it meant more to me than any review or any other sort of accolade (and even when he had criticism or disagreed with my approach, it always resonated). Did I tell him this? I don't think I did. I should have. I thought I would have a decade, two, or three to get to spend time with him in person; it didn't work out that way. The tragedy of untimely death.

On Sunday evening after SPX sitting outside with a group of folks, I remarked to Tom Neely that it was apparent that in 41 years Dylan had done a life's work. "More than a life's work," Tom corrected me.

To aspire and to be inspired to be more like he was, we can bring the chilling use of the past tense next to his name out of the past and into the present tense. Dylan did what he was born to do. The burden to do and be better, following his example, is on us.

Everything I will do in comics...the memory of Dylan Williams will be close to my heart.

Independence Day

by J.S. Holland

Happy 4th of July!

In no particular order and off the top of my head, these are some of the things I'm working on for the future, goals for the next few years:

First and foremost, more books. Lots of them. Over the last year, the requests I've received for e-books has increased exponentially. I've not been a fan of e-books myself, but there's no denying that this is the way things are headed. And though I lament the death of paper, if people tell me they want e-books, I listen. I'm talking to several different publishers right now, assessing my options, trying to decide if I want to go through them or if there's any reason not to just start my own e-publishing imprint and cut out the middlemen. I continue to welcome your opinions on the subject of e-books and e-readers.

There are a lot of writing projects cluttering up my desk these days - a couple of crime-detective-noir novels I've been working on, plus projects devoted to specific local subjects like Springheel Jack, The Pope Lick Monster, and Kentucky artists. Theoretically Weird Cemeteries for Sterling is still a go, but it seems to be held up in Development Hell for reasons known only to my editors and publisher. My cemeteries book will see the light of day, however, in the next two years one way or another.

I'm still very excited about working for KyForward, a news website focusing on the Bluegrass area (Lexington and surrounding counties) with a consciously positive, upward-toned sense of civil discourse. Which, as you must know, is all too rare on the internet these days. If you'd like to support such a venture, potential advertisers, please contact them and inquire about ad rates! We're also kicking around the idea of doing video content, including an interview show hosted by yours truly.

And I still love Kentucky Monthly magazine! You can find my column, Commonwealth Curiosities in each issue. If you don't see it at your local newstand or bookstore, bug 'em till they stock it! (Having said that, though, it's a hugely popular magazine and getting more popular all the time; I don't think I've ever seen a reputable store that didn't carry it.)


I'm still a painter first and foremost, although hyping my primitive neo-expressionist outsider-folk-art flavored canvases has taken a back seat in the last couple years to everything else. I aim to rectify that in the weeks and months ahead, with a renewed drive to get these paintings in the hands of as many people as possible, by any means necessary. Do you want a JSH original in your home or office? Talk to me. It's so doable. I offer interest-free payment plans for every budget. (And my Happy & Froggie painting that was featured in the film When Happy Met Froggie is still available, although its price has gone up since the movie was released.)

Something else I've been slowly putting together over the years is material for an Unusual Kentucky museum - something that would be not only a legitimate educational and historical museum, but also take a truly "Weird Kentucky" spin on the whole thing, showing cultural artifacts of the Commonwealth that might be a little - okay, a lot - fringier than what you might see at the Frazier. There have been some nibbles of interest in the concept from parties in both Louisville and Lexington, but I'm holding out until I get a guaranteed deal that gives me control over the place if it's going to be using my name. There are some recent rumblings that give me hope this thing will actually happen, and sooner than later. Keep your fingers crossed with me; it's gonna be a lot of fun.


Those are the primary projects on my front burners, but there's plenty more still bubbling under. My interest in Kentucky's horse industry is going to manifest in some way sooner or later, we'll see. A couple more goals I have: I intend to operate a Steampunk-themed bar and a hillbilly/exotica miniature golf course (the crazy over-the-top kind with giant statues and weird gimmicks like you see down in Pigeon Forge) before I die. All in time. Wait and see. (And when that retro bar does come to life, my bartending blog Transmissions from Agent J will be pressed back into service.)

There's still more. A lot more. This'll do for now though. Stay tuned to JSH News for the latest updates on my dreams and schemes! And remember, I can always be reached, by anyone on the planet, at jshpaint@gmail.com. You can also text me on Twitter or just pick up the phone and call me at 502.649.3378. Find me.

That Was Then, This Is Now

by J.S. Holland

Tomorrow, July 4th, will be my last post on any of my blogs, for some time to come. I'm increasingly busy with a lot of exciting real-world projects that demand my full attention, and I just don't have as much time to devote to the internet.

That may sound odd, since my internet presence has always been rather over-the-top. But the fact is, this is not the same Internet I originally signed on for. In recent years, it's morphed into something that I no longer am sure I want to be associated with. I was all for the digital revolution like everyone else, but that was before it destroyed newspapers, pay phones, the music industry, the book publishing industry, the antique mall/flea market business, the art of letter writing, the right to privacy, and any and all semblance of enforced Copyright laws. Most important of all, the internet has brought about a real end to basic civility. The term "flamewar" has even gone out of style now, because bickering, sniping, arguing and negativity has literally become the norm.

I've been mocked for my refusal to take part in social networking. Someone recently said to me that people who say "I am not on Facebook" are the new "I don't watch television" people, not realizing that I am one of those annoying anti-Facebook, anti-TV nuts. Well, now I'm going to really give 'em something to snark about, because now that Facebook and Google have essentially taken over the entire net and dumbed it down, I want off the carousel. Mostly.

I'll still be online plenty, of course, checking email and doing research. But as of tomorrow, my contribution to Victorian Squares will diminish severely but not entirely. My blogs Unusual Kentucky, Voraxical Theatre, Revelation Awaits An Appointed Time, Krampus the Cat, Whitewashed Windows and Vacant Stores, Creeps Records, and JSHNYC are going into cryogenic sleep.

The JSH Combo blog will probably return if and when that twice-aborted musical project reaches fruition. The Catclaw Theatre Diaries will also be updated when there's relevant news to report. Transylvania Gentlemen will eventually be retooled for the purposes of that organization, but by someone other than myself. I'm still looking forward to cranking out more fiber batts for the Etsy crowd soon, but the exploits will probably not be followed on my Appalachian Voodoo Fiber blog in the foreseeable.

Rebecca and friends over at the Telecrylic Foundation will continue operating my official JSH News blog (with my direct input, of course. I'm too much of a control freak), so that is now more than ever the place to go for the latest "News flash! JSH eats a turkey sandwich!" breaking news. I'm not sure what's up with the actual Telecrylic blog, but I suspect it's dead in the water since it's going to be superceded by another online archive of my paintings and comics.

I already saw all this writing on the wall back in the winter, when I got rid of all my dot-com websites, including jeffreyscottholland.com, jshnyc.com, jshdc.com, jshla.com, superfrothco.com, catclawtheatre.com, voraxica.com, voraxium.com, and more that I'm probably forgetting. I thought I would miss them all dearly the moment they went offline. I don't.

So what is surviving the purge? After tomorrow, other than JSH News, the best place to keep up with what I'm up to will be:

* My Twitter feed (I don't use it as a social network and you don't have to be a member; in fact, 99.9% of my friends are not on it, they just read it directly on the web same as any other of my blogs)

* My photo blog will also continue for the time being. The mundane details of my day-to-day life will still be over-exposed amply for the handful of people on Earth who care, so between this and my Twitter feed, my stalkers shouldn't feel shut out in the cold.

* My writing blog will still continue to exist. More details about this tomorrow.

Tomorrow, on the fourth of July, we'll get into the good news - all the fun things that I'm working on that'll be better than blogging, and things that I want you, dear reader, to feel free to get involved in! As Jack Lord used to say, "Be here! Aloha!"

The Kellerweis Device

by J.S. Holland

It took a few years of me and other fans of Duvel-style bottle-conditioned ales to keep yapping and jawing and hammering our cause home, but finally it's starting to pay off. Check out how Sierra Nevada, a brewer I've never particularly had strong opinions about one way or another, now offers this here Kellerweis Hefeweizen with copious yeast right in the bottle, and with that Duvel quality through and through. (Previous supermarket-level hefeweizens I've tried have been OK, but lack that certain Ommegang charm.) It's less hoppy than Duvel, but retains that golden cloudy carbonated manna quality. I adore it. Nevada, to both your brewery and to your sierra, I say Bravo.

I got some of this the other night while pondering the life and times of intrepid landfaring heroes like Daniel Boone, and equally intrepid seafaring villains like Black Sam. I started out at Ernesto's but soon my usual Ern-buddies tipped back their last glass and went home to their wives and TV sets. Me, I stuck around a little longer and found myself soon surrounded by some tremendously hostile losers trying to play the bar's electronic trivia game. You learn a lot about your fellow man playing Trivial Pursuit, or some equivalent, with them.

And ignorance isn't bliss: these people were bitter, self-absorbed, filled with anger, filled with hatred, highly toxic and unpleasant to be around. In between trivia questions, they spent most of their time griping about their exes and insulting the celebrities on the TV screens. I heard them rage with acidic bile against all manner of stars (and for reasons totally unfathomable to me) but when the whole bar erupted into a transparently racially-charged hate-fest against my pal Tiger Woods, I downed my drink, tossed a bill on the bar and didn't stick around for my change. Call me an asshole, but everywhere I go now it seems, more and more people these days are psychic vampires, and when they walk in, I walk out. I used to think it was only about 2½ percent of the population, but I do believe the statistic is now much higher. And the more I feel their invisible tendrils of negativity sniffing out toward me, the more I prefer the company of dogs. (And cats.)

By chance I grabbed a six-pack of this Kellerweis, which my eyes had never beheld before, at a licka stow on my own back to the plantation, and went back to writing another Great American Novel (currently working on a crime-detective-noir novel called The Bartender, all about a solitary loner beer-puller who has a high sense of moral and ethical principles but finds himself tempted by an opportunity for larceny due in part to the perks of his profession.)


According to their website, "Kellerweis is one of the only American Hefeweizens made using the traditional Bavarian style of open fermentation. This difficult and labor-intensive technique adds uncommon depth and flavor complexity. Our hazy-golden hefeweizen is deeply flavorful, refreshing and perfect for a sunny day. To serve, pour two-thirds into a glass, swirl and pour the rest." I generally prefer to drink my froth from the bottle (stays cold longer) but yes, pouring a bottle-conditioned beer out into a glass is a must. Some like to painstakingly pour such brews down to the last quarter inch and then discard that last bit, choosing to avoid the yeast sediment. Me, I drink it all, the yeast, everything. I think Dan'l Boone and Black Sam would expect no less, and even now, I hear them calling my name.

(And if you think I'm just blowin' smoke with all my negativity about the negativists, tune in this here blog tonight sometime after midnight, cause ol' Jeffy has a big announcement to make.)

The Ubiquitous Dr. Graves

by J.S. Holland

Hi there ho there, fellow travelers. You've dropped into the old Crap-Keeper's Vault of Unintended Horror at an opportune time; another specimen from the Inner Inner Inner Sanctum of my comic book collection has just been dug up for you to dig.

For you Ditkological devotees, I bring you The Many Ghosts of Doctor Graves #22, October 1970, brought to you by those wonderful hacks at Charlatan - er, I mean Charlton - comics.


Dr. Graves, like Benway, Caligari, and Acula before him, may be a self-styled Doctor who got his degree conferred on him by unconvential means (perhaps from Johnson-Smith) but he's my kinda Doc. Unlike some horror hosts who are content to bookend a story with brief comments at its outset and finish, Graves just can't stay out of his own stories.


Almost every page has multiple panels in which Graves appears right in the midst of the story - sometimes hiding subtly like a "Where's Waldo?", sometimes lurking in the background or even the foreground, and sometimes just plain tromping around on the set in the middle of the action, making a total goddamn mess of everything. "CUT! Graves, get OFF THE SET!"



It's like someone pointed out to him that Hitchcock made a secret appearance in every one of his films, and Dr. Graves felt the need to keep up with the Joneses. And the really mentally ill thing (mental illness? Ditko? Naw!) about it all is the frequent insertion of panels that have NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE STORY and are usually just depictions of floating heads. (Ohhhh, okay, now the disembodied head panel in Hunk #5 starts to make sense - could it really be a Ditkonian homage?)




But is the comic any good? Frankly, I can't tell; it's too damn distracting trying to follow the plot when you've got this mustachioed bargain-basement Vincent Price hamming it up and mugging every other panel. The most normal and conventional horror story in this issue is the one that Ditko didn't do (and of course it has the fewest appearances of the floating head of Doctor Graves.) The others are, well, kinda wacky and convoluted, and in typical Ditkoic style one of them is heavy on rants about medical ethics and suggests that ghosts can be put to sleep by spraying them with knockout gas. The man had a certain reality principle.



However, if we take a look at the comic's debut issue, which some enterprising upstart has posted online in its entirety, we see that Dr. Graves was not only a Rod Serling-esque narrator, he also was originally an actual character in some of the stories, brought in as an expert in the paranormal to solve some of the mysteries. By the time we got to #22 it would seem that Graves' direct involvement in the plots was no more, and he was relegated to haunting his own comic like a ghost himself.

"Just Look Over Your Shoulder"

KISS - "Stand"


The Jackson 5 - "I'll Be There"


Jimmy & David Ruffin - "Stand By Me"


The Monkees - "Hey Hey, We're the Monkees"

Blender is the Night

by J.S. Holland

Last night I was at Ernesto's sippin' Blue Moon with my usual crew of East-end oddfellows. The lively bar-talk included such topics as Zachary Taylor, Zachary Taylor's daughter who married Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis' Inn, Pass-a-Grille, Valkyrie vs. Inglourious Basterds, and Steve Nunn avoiding the death penalty. Finally I wandered out into the night, and decided to confer with my friend Drew Estate under the starry skies. I slapped my shirt's breast pocket; it was empty. I'd forgotten to tuck a cigar into it when I left the house.

It wasn't that late, but it was late enough that Cox's was closed. I didn't feel like tootling all over the city looking for a noctural tobacconist, so I ducked into Walgreen's. I'm less picky about my cigars than my pipe tobacco - some of the drugstore junk I've discussed here, like Red Cap and Prince Albert and Middleton's Cherry, were so nasty I won't even smoke them. (You want them? Contact me, I'll give them to you. Only one briar bowl smoked from each.) But cigars? Eh. I'm easy. The only stogies I've really crushed out and walked away from are ones that are stale and taste cardboardy, and ones that were rolled so tightly it's like trying to smoke a roll of electrical tape.

Which brings us to last night's drunken drugstore selection: It's called Blender's Gold, and I got a 4-pack of 'em for a mere $9.99. Now, I firmly believe you get what you pay for, so I had every right to expect a $2.50 cigar to be a disaster, right? But me and the Blender had a real good time, and I daresay I'll invest in another pack of these after I exhaust my supply here. They're leathery, simple and no-nonsense, like something a boxer would smoke in 1921, or maybe like the boxer himself. Oscuro addicts would call these things unsmokeably mild; bland even. There's a disconcerting rubberiness to the texture, and there is a certain sensation at first that you're actually smoking cabbage or lambskin or something, but this passes quickly. The bulk of the cigar was fairly consistently tasty all the way through.

I know you'll probably never buy one, at least not in a 4-pack and at least not after I said "lambskin". C'mon over to the plantation and you can bum one of mine. You'll see. It ain't that bad. Check it, it really is gold. Especially for the price. As my bud Tom says:

This was an OK low to mid medium bodied cigar. Sure, it was one dimensional and this particular cigar had some burn issues, but as a whole they give you your $2.00 worth. It’s not like every one you smoke will have issues. If you are on a budget, I say give these a try.

I did, in fact, suffer the same burn issues he spoke of. Although I lit it precisely and evenly and it burned just fine for the first half, it began to get drastically sidegoggledy and falling apart in my hand by the end (as you can see in the photo.) Weird thing is, though, the ad copy on the packaging says "The rich maduro wrappers have been selected for consistency of taste and area found only in the best of the world's fine cigars." Maduro? Really? Uh.... guys, these wrappers are pale as Chai tea, what're you talkin' about Maduros?

Hunk!

by J.S. Holland

Greetings once again, my friends. Close the giant creaking door behind you, pull up a cobwebbed chair, and make yourselves comfortable while I, the Crap-Keeper, fix a pot of spidermint tea and blow the dust off the cover of another entry in my deep, dark, labyinthine dregs of comicdom archive in my Vault of Unintended Horror.

I keep trying to find the most jaw-droppingly awful comic book from my files, to exemplify just how bad it can get out there in the hairy world of forgotten off-brand funny-books of a bygone age. Problem is, even when I'm certain I've hit upon the worst comic book in the world, I start feeling sorry for it as one would for the dumbest kid in school and then I start developing a working aesthetic for it against my will. I'm just too soft hearted for my own good.


Charlton's Hunk is one of those comics that you find yourself rooting for out of sympathy, like a special-needs little brother. As you turn the pages, you find parts of your brain lamenting that God ever allowed it to exist, and other parts of your brain respecting it for persisting in existing. These are comics that make you feel embarrassed for everybody involved - not only embarrassed yourself for even viewing it, but feeling pangs of the shame that the Charlton guys must have endured when their friends, lovers, and family members saw a copy of Hunk and leafed briefly through it before looking up with an expression that telegraphed, "You made this? This is what you do for a living?"

I don't even remember how this copy of Hunk #5 (May 1962) came into my possession. I probably lost a lot of I.Q. points and brain cells, including the ones meant to retain that information, on contact with it. Imagine a Flintstones kinda deal, with an anachronistically civilized caveman society, except that the focus is on two little Cro-magnon kids - Freckle-faced red-headed "Hunk" and his shaggy-haired best friend, er, what is his name? I don't remember and I already filed the comic back down in the JSH wine cellar and comics crypt. Oh well. Drink your tea.


Almost every page in this comic has at least one panel rendered completely in silhouette - a sure sign of a burned-out hack trying to finish entire issues of a comic in one sitting, racing a grueling schedule and facing a deadline.

I felt like I was tripping when I saw this panel:


The context of the story is that Hunk and his buddy have been implausibly nominated Chiefs of the fire department, and they're riding around on a dinosaur putting out fires - as you can see from the panel shown at the top of this post. But in the panel shown here, the artist just drew their floating body-less HEADS sitting atop the dinosaur! The hell? Is this some sort of deliberate motif, a heretofore unmined storytelling technique we're seeing here? Or was the artist just ripped on Rye and driven half demented by the sound of his screaming kids in his one-room coldwater flat in Milwaukee?


And yet, is it really that far removed from the works of modern-day scribblers like Ron Rege, Jr.? Is a man better off living today where one can make a comic like this that makes a big hit on the internet and in hipster galleries, or have we lost something by no longer living in an era where a brain-damaged comic like this got to be in supermarkets, drugstores, grocery stores and department stores all over, placed directly in the sticky grasp of virtually every kid in North America?