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.

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.

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!