That's the cover of a small collection of stories from the early issues of A.L to commemorate the 25th anniversary. Yes, it has been that long. No, I haven't really mentioned much about that... I'm not really in the mood these days for looking back nostalgically. But, I do know I'll be salty later if I don't make some big deal about it. I'll keep you posted.
I decided against doing some giant collection because...it's vexing. In the first place, I don't even know how many times I've reprinted this stuff at this point...8 times? 9? I figured a nice introductory "best of" will get the job done for new readers and if they want more...there's copies out there somewhere. I mean...I've got new work to get published, and constantly reprinting older stuff for each new wave of readers is becoming like trying to drain a lake with a bucket.
AND_..._as history has taught me, every time you print something is an opportunity for it to get f-cked up, misprinted...printed poorly, printed with pages in the wrong order, printed late...damaged...shipped to the wrong place...ect ect. It's Russian roulette at a certain point, and the only one playing is me. A print run of a giant all encompassing collection would cost about 25,000 and the shipping weight would be around an actual ton and a half. That's not a round I really feel like putting into a revolver and pressing against my temple.
Especially when I'm focused on new work-
So there's that. Then there's this- it's a comedy book, and I had to go through and try to assess how much of that material actually still holds up? There's a lot of great comedians out there, and I don't know many who are still focused on growing, who'd be interested in re-issuing their stand up specials from two decades ago. Comedy isn't unlike music, in that eras of music have a sound that are products of their time, and eras of comedy have a tone/style of delivery that are products of their time.
Comedy is a bit more constant but you can still see changes. The 70/80s were a lot about observational humor and storytelling ( Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy,) Prior to that stand up was a guy just...telling jokes/one liners, one after the next. As a new generation and tone of the culture came along, telling stories and jokes that flowed into one another connected better and was a more effective delivery system.
Then you had the late 80s/ early 90s where a lot had been done before and the culture had seen it all, so what made a connection and became an effective joke delivery system was the weird abstract jarring personality of the comedian...your Sam Kinisons, your Emo Phillips-es, your Judy Tenudas. The jokes themselves were less "observational" or standard stories, than they were an abstract view and creation of an abstract world.
Time and the culture moved on again, in no small part due to 9-11 and a whimsical overblown caricature of a personality wasn't what comics where interested in doing. So, then you got the rise of your Bill Burrs, Doug Stanhopes, Patrice O Neils and the like, where it was observational humor, bolstered by the personality...but the personality was less abstract and more aggressive and biting.
There's crossover, overlaps of time, and shades of gray to all of this, but you get my meaning. All of those people are still funny, but if you had a time machine and had them do their same routines in different eras, not as established comedians but unknown and trying to build an audience...would it work as well? I dunno.
Funny is funny, but things can have a feeling of being "dated" by the delivery system itself. Comedy needs to connect to the era in which you are telling the joke, BUT the double edged sword is that it also needs to be genuine. If George Carlin screamed into a microphone like Sam Kinison...that would not work, because that's not who he is.
The only guy I can think of who could do his routine in any era of the past 100 years and not have to change anything is this guy...
Everyone else's work is, to one degree or another, a product of their time...funny though they all are. Jack Benny shows from the 40s crack me up, but I am letting it live on nostalgia. I don't pause and moan when a tired old "he's a cheapskate" joke is told, I marvel at it, because I know these are the original "he's a cheapskate" jokes.
Armed Mugger- You're money or you're life! (long pause) Hey mister... I said, your money or your life.
Jack Benny- I heard you...I'm thinking it over.
I'm too close to the material to say, but probably older A.L. has some "of it's era" charm to it. But that's not what I'm interested in. I'm here to make with the funny. Funny, to the person reading right now.
Arsenic Lullaby, has a tone and feel, but I've also been able to use a lot of different delivery systems for different jokes. This is because it isn't a single person, it's many stories about many characters. And each delivery system is genuine to who that character is. Voodoo Joe would go off on a cynical observational rant, because that's who he is. Baron Von Donut would be butt of physical humor, his boss would have dry1950s style retorts, because that's who they are and the world they live in. It is one of the many advantages to writing comedy in comic book form, you have more leeway and a bigger tool box.
So...there's plenty of material that will still work, some that'll fall flat and some that may actually work better now. The trick is sorting that out, without letting nostalgia interfere.
Some jokes can be outdated not just in tone/style, but in a way that diminishes the joke or makes it unclear...i.e. not actually make sense to someone in 2024. I'll give you an example. There's a Baron Von Donut in Nazi Germany story. Now...I certainly don't GAF about political correctness, and do love a good nazi joke, BUT the initial premise is him bursting through wall like "Kool-Aid Man".......Let's all try to think back on the last time we actually saw Kool Aid man at all, much less doing his -burst through a wall- shtick. That whole beginning of the story is likely to make zero sense at all to anyone under 30.
Hell, I did a Twinkie the kid 2pg story not THAT long ago, and a college age kid at my booth at a con put it down and checked on his phone for who Twinkie the kid was...That hurt.
So, if you don't know that Baron Von Donut bursting through a wall is a take off on old advertising shtick, then all you are seeing is a character powerful enough to burst through the wall and everything that happens from there on out makes no sense. What would be a dark string of events evoking laughs, is just confusing.
I'll point out also, that it was rather hard to not let my base vanity as an illustrator make decisions for me...some really funny stories were done when I wasn't nearly as skilled at drawing. Funny is the point, so they stay, like this one-
I really love that one...mostly because it is such a great example of an Arsenic Lullaby gag, in that it's barely even a joke from a technical standpoint, it's just a really funny thing that happened. I do lament that I was not as skilled at drawing when I did that one, as when I did this one...
It's got more clutter and paraphernalia, texture, it's just overall more well illustrated. But truth be told, none of that would matter much in the boogie man gag as far as being funny or not funny. Definitely helps the monkey one for the lab to look like a lab, and have lab stuff that looks like lab stuff.
Some of the stories held up ok as far as technically funny...but didn't hold up well, as in, the world in general is too far upfield now. Dottie and Liquid Sam ,for example, were written to be outdated and the comedic foundation was the contrast of an outdated newspaper strip world with a batsh*t weird scenario going on. But we're so far upfield now that, ironically, readers might not see it as outdated, because they were never around to read lame newspaper cartoons in the first place. It'd maybe look like an interesting style but it would have no context attached to it for them.
I whittled it down to 100 or so pages of what I felt was going to be funny now, and/or what really needed to be in a book commemorating A.L. With the latter being more important than the former. The only story that's in there solely because I liked it, is the Teddy Roosevelt/Fairy story. The rest is all in their on merit alone. We got the first appearance of Voodoo Joe and of cartoon fetuses, plenty of both of those. Alien centaurs, Baron Von Donut, the Clot is in there, lots of shorter stuff as well.
t's a good solid collection. I'll have some with me at C2E2
...and...I'd be surprised if I had any left after that.
They have blank back covers for sketches...such as these.
FIRST though...I will put some up on the A.L. online store. WHICH will be back up, for only a short time. as in temporarily...very temporarily.
It has not been up for a very long time, several years I believe, because I suck at shipping things on time and it only served to piss people off. I know pros who can manage shipping out boxes of orders everymonth with no problem at all...me not so much. My friend calls that "reaching the level of your own incompetance". I could continue to let people down and piss them off, or simple only distribute my books through stores and at cons. I chose the latter.
There's another saying " the Lord doesn't give with both hands". People ask "wtf..why can't you just be organized and remember to ship things on time, it's not that hard"...well...why can't you draw a cartoon? As far as I'm concerned, that's not that hard. You have the same amount of fingers and finger knuckles I do, no physical reason you can't draw a line I can draw. It's just the gray matter doing the steering.
Your gray matter can do what it does, and mine can do what it does...and that's all we can do. Lest I spend a fortune on therapy to reveal and deal with whatever childhood trauma I may have blocked out that gives me an aversion to completing a trip to the post office.
I'll pack orders, throw them in the backseat and head to the post office...only to forget wtf I was doing and end up on some other errand and the packages will sit in the car for weeks or months. I will eventually see them and think "AW FCKY FCK FUCK!". take them out of the car, repack them with extras to make up for the lateness, throw them in the car to go to the post office and...repeat cycle. Either something tragic happened to me at a post office as a child, or I'm just an idiot. I'm not interested in learning the truth in either scenario.
SO...I will have someone who does not have my specific mental deficiencies, helping me for a short time, and for that short time the online store will be open. starting......NOW!
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