Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Recombinant Timmy

While rummaging through my disorganized "filing system," I ran across the pasteup for Recombinant Timmy, an experimental dada/cutup comic I published in 1989 as a "secret publication." These were oddball books that I distributed to friends, but never advertised or sold. This one was one of my favorites from that group.

To produce the comic, I dismantled a copy of Timmy #715, a Dell children's comic published in 1956. I cut about half the pages into individual panels, and then cut out the word balloons from the remaining pages. I put the panels and balloons into separate bags, shook them up and pulled enough to make a minicomic. I pasted up the balloons and panels in the order that I pulled them, and printed up the resulting mess.

Surprisingly, it produced a nearly linear story, complete with what could almost be a punchline at the end.

The cover is an "intentional" collage made from the original comic's cover.

Here's the front of Recombinant Timmy:



...and here's the cover of the source material:


The minicomic was simply Xeroxed onto colored bond paper, but the original pasteup was, of course, full halftone-dotted color. After twenty years, it's aged and yellowed quite nicely. It's pretty fragile, and I'm going to scan it for my archives.

I'm considering doing a 20th anniversary laserjet reissue, in color. It would probably be very limited, and would be signed and numbered. If there's enough interest, I'll look into it seriously.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Alter(c)ations

I recently found a small stash of my old self-published minicomix, including this one from 1988.









Alter(c)ations was one of my "secret" publications. These were printed in editions of 50 copies and were never advertised or sold. I gave them away to friends or sometimes threw them in with an order of other comix.

The images were made from magazine pages (and one "McHale's Navy" bubblegum card). I defaced the source material with white-out, X-acto blades, correction tape and ink. That's a little rubber stamp image of Hedorah (the Smog Monster) in the corner of the next-to-last page, and it looks like the background on the final page is an enlarged photocopy of a Pep Boys ad.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Bizarro Meets Wayno

Today's Bizarro comic is a collaboration between the artist Dan Piraro and me. I recently wrote a few gags that Dan liked enough to use in his panel, and this is the first to be published.

Dan's one of my favorite cartoonists, and it's a kick to see my joke rendered in his style.

Thanks, DP!