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Guts #3 (Lafler Publications, 1982).

§ July 5th, 2023 § Filed under doog boog, from the vast Mikester comic archives Comments Off on Guts #3 (Lafler Publications, 1982).


So a long time ago I related the story of a collection obtained at the previous place of employment that contained two rare-ish Steve Lafler comic magazines…a copy of Guts #3 and a copy of Mean Cat. As both coworker Rob and I were big Lafter fans, we split the find, with Rob taking Guts and me acquiring Mean Cat.

Over the years, I’ve thought about that Guts #3, particularly since finding out it was the first appearance of the beloved Dog Boy (not to be confused with Dog Man or, um, Dog Boy — ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES). I even wondered, as I said in that post about Mean Cat, if former coworker Rob still had it and was willing to give it up.

Now, I didn’t really need a Guts #3, as that Dog Boy story (along with every other then-extant DB story) was in this Kickstartered hardcover I got (egads) almost exactly 10 years ago. But I’ve been in this weird urge to pick up original copies of comics I already had in reprint form, like the first 25 Cerebus or the first couple of the black and white Nexus magazines.

And as it turned out, I discovered when placing some orders from Last Gasp that they had Guts #3 in stock. For cheap. Very cheap. And plenty of them, because I just got a second order of them in on Tuesday. And needless to say, I now have a Guts #3 in my possession. Turns out I made the right choice way back when picking Mean Cat to take, since as far as I know that has never been reprinted anywhere.

(By the way, I mention in those older linked posts that I’m still missing a couple of the Fantagraphics Dog Boy issues…I have those now too.)

Now my Dog Boy collection is, more or less, I’m pretty sure, complete. But my Guts collection is not complete, as there remains a #1 and a #2 to track down. Not to mention this Benb & Gerald book, there’s gotta be one out there somewhere.

He’ll always be Doog Boog to me.

§ October 18th, 2019 § Filed under doog boog Comments Off on He’ll always be Doog Boog to me.

As you may remember, I was a proud supporter of the Kickstarter for Steve Lafler’s Complete Dog Boy hardcover (which you can see here, along with the sketch inside). Well, that Lafler fella is looking to relaunch his Cat-Head Comics publishing concern with some new paperback collection. Check in at that link for multiple contribution levels, each with its own publication that you’d receive (including a softcover of the Complete Dog Boy), or, if you’re flush with extra coin of the realm, you can spring for the “Gimme Everything” level.

I’m an old fan of the output from Cat-Head, so I’m glad to see it (hopefully) coming back!

• • •

Okay, planned to answer more questions, but your pal Mike has had a long day and I’m hitting the sack. And also going to bed. I’ll be back with more stuff next week. Thanks for reading, pals.

Just throwing the phrase “comics blogosphere” out there like it’s still 2006.

§ January 23rd, 2017 § Filed under doog boog, harvey, pal plugging, richie rich, swamp thing § 2 Comments

Okay, so that was a couple of weeks of prediction coverage…hope you all enjoyed the last few posts while I took care of that. I’m still taking 2017 industry predictions in this post here, but we’re nearing the end of January, so I’m probably going to shut down comments there shortly. Get them in while you can! …I’m not sure if I’m going to take 2018 predictions after the next new year, but I still have some time to think about it. Your thoughts could sway this vital decision.

Let me catch up on a few things, here:

A couple or three weeks ago twitter pal Dan put up a picture of the cutest darn Swamp Thing that you ever did see, and one “uh, how much do you want for that?” DM later, I have it in my hot little hands:


Look at how adorable that is. …Dan also designed my Twitter icon, and you can see more of his swell art here.

Recently, I was pricing up a bunch of comics that, um, I may have acquired a while ago and am only getting around to processing now, when I came across this Richie Rich cover and the following thought got stuck in my head and I had to let it out:


…Well, I mean, he is hangin’ out with Casper and all. Also, I had to create the letters “T” and “H” by altering other letters in the same balloon. This is a dumb amount of effort, but now this exists so…um, there it is, I guess.

My blogging sister Tegan just celebrated her lucky thirteenth anniversary of her blog about a week ago, and I certainly wanted to point you in her direction for more of her great writing. Tegan said a few very kind words about me in said post, for which I am most appreciative and flattered. She’s always been one of the comics blogosphere’s (if I may still use the term) foremost essayists on the topic of funnybooks and the industry that mostly supports them, and is always worth reading. (And you can help fund her work via her Patreon.)

Speaking of Patreons, Dog Boy creator Steve Lafler just started one up to support a new series of political cartoons. I do like Steve Lafler comics, so I signed up, and maybe you can, too. I mean, yes, it is political in nature, so you may not see eye-to-eye with him, and that’s okay. However, if you do like his work, Patreon makes it easy to throw a dollar or two his way to directly support his efforts.

But one thing we can all agree on is that Nazis are terrible, and Bully, the Little Bull Stuffed with Patriotism, brings us another of his Ten of a Kind posts featuring those lousy Ratzis getting what-for, and how.

Miscellaneous Cat-Head Comics (1987 – 1992).

§ March 17th, 2014 § Filed under doog boog, from the vast Mikester comic archives § 4 Comments

So I was looking at this little stack of Cat-Head Comics from the Vast Mikester Comic Archives, trying to decide which one to talk about, when I decided “ah, heck, let’s throw them all up there.”

Duck & Cover #1 (1988)

 

Duck & Cover #2 (1989)

Satire and poetry written by Stephen Beaupre and Steve Lafler, taking on politics, religion, big business, and more. A special appearance from Dog Boy in #1, putting the bite on Rupert Murdoch!
 

Femme Noire #1 (1989)

 

Femme Noire #2 (1989)

Mystical detective shenanigans by Lafler, with Maria (the title character) and her occasional love interest, Dog Boy’s pal BenB (the hollow-eyed fella on the cover of #1). Dog Boy makes appearances here and there over the course of the story.
 

Out the Next #1 (1987)

A Beaupre solo book, more or less, with “ART • DESIGN” and a cover by Lafler. Mostly text/poems by Beaupre with accompanying photos and drawings. The condition of this copy is a little rough, having found in a quarter box sometime in ’88/’89. You can see the tears at the top of the cover caused by careless box-thumbing. JUST SAY NO TO CARELESS BOX-THUMBING. No Dog Boy appearances aside from the back cover ad.
 

Prometheus’ Gift #1 (1992)

A couple of short stories, including the Jack Kirby-esque “Snakes!” Tiny Dog Boy cameos in a two-page art/text collage and on the cover, as well as two unpublished Dog Boy covers rounding out the book (as a “sleazy way to fill up space,” Lafler himself admits in the introduction).
 
Those Dog Boy appearances aren’t in the Doggie Style collection (unless I missed something), since that was primarily reprinting his solo stories from his own titles and Buzzard. Most of the above would have been out of place there.

Anyway, there’s some fine and strange comic-booking in the above publications, some of which I suspect are pretty difficult to find at this point (the indicia for Prometheus’ Gift includes the note “first printing October 1992, barely two thousand copies if we’re lucky”). Poking through all these again makes me want to go back and try Bughouse one more time, since that was the one Lafler project that never really grabbed me. I do own the first issue…I’ll give it another go and let you know what I think.

You can keep up with what Lafler is up to at his official site.

“Aieee! My head!”

§ August 2nd, 2013 § Filed under doog boog Comments Off on “Aieee! My head!”

So a while back I contributed to Steve Lafler’s Kickstarter for Doggie Style: The Complete Dog Boy, a collection of, as you might have already guessed, Lafler’s Dog Boy comics. The original Cathead Comics series, the Fantagraphics series, his first appearance in Guts #3, even the later appearances in Buzzard, the whole shebang. Now, I already have most of this stuff, aside from the Guts and that Fantagraphics #9, but I had a hard time resisting the temptation of having it all under one cover, with an original sketch inside to boot, as one of the Kickstarter incentives.

Anyway, just yesterday, my hardcover copy of Doggie Style arrived in the mail:


…and right on the first page, the very first thing I saw when I cracked open the cover, is this full-page original drawing of ol’ Doog Boog lookin’ right at me:


It’s a goodly-sized volume at over 11 inches tall and about an inch thick. Covers are reproduced (in black and white), and the actual reproduction of the artwork is nice and clean. And, of course, the comics themselves are hilarious, and I look forward to reading them yet again in this handsome tome.

As I understand it, this book will be eventually distributed through some of the normal funnybook channels, but I am very happy to have had the chance to put my mitts on this thing as soon as it was available.

Here is Mr. Lafler’s official site, and here is the site for co2 Comics, the publisher of the book (and you can also find free online Dog Boy comics there as well).

Not every post can be about Swamp Thing.

§ May 24th, 2011 § Filed under doog boog, sir-links-a-lot, swamp thing § 2 Comments

Steve Lafler’s Dog Boy is back in all-new stories over at CO2 Comics, and you can read more about it here, or just jump straight to the new stuff. (And be sure to clicky-clicky in the sidebar there for some Lafler classics, including more Dog Boy!)

Hey, I love Dog Boy…what can I say?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Oh, okay, here’s a little bit about Swamp Thing: “Do you agree with Swamp Thing being earth savior in Brightest Day?” Dude really wanted it to be Abin Sur. I didn’t even know that was an option.

Mean Cat (Steve Lafler, 1981).

§ January 29th, 2010 § Filed under doog boog, from the vast Mikester comic archives Comments Off on Mean Cat (Steve Lafler, 1981).


This 24-page, magazine-sized, black and white comic is Steve Lafler’s second publication, as per his introduction on the first page. Our titular aggressive feline is featured in a couple of stories within…here he is in action:


…though half of the book is devoted to other characters and features, such as “Angry Young Carrot,” “Crazy Eddie,” and “Naked Avenger,” as well as a page of poems by Steve Beaupre.

I spent a lot of the eighties and the early nineties being a Steve Lafler completist, or at least as best as I was able. I think I’m still missing a couple of the Dog Boy comics he published under his Cat Head imprint, but I’ve got his short-run and one-shot books like Femme Noire and Out the Next and a complete run of his Buzzard magazine, and so on. When Bughouse came out in the mid 1990s, it didn’t really do anything for me and, for whatever reason, I just sort of fell out of following his work after that. But I still have fond memories of getting big laffs from Dog Boy and Benb and his other crazy comics, so thank you for that, Mr. Lafler. And the man is still producing plenty of comics, which you can learn about at his official website.

This copy of Mean Cat turned up in a very large collection we acquired at the shop in the late ’80s, from a collector who didn’t do very much to protect his comics from the elements. For example, by not bothering to invest a couple of bucks in some comic bags, his entire run of Iron Man had a half-inch of water damage at the bottom of each issue. You can probably see the water spotting in my scan above, though the paper of the cover is heavily tanned as well, particularly on the inside. There was a copy of Guts (another early Lafler book) in this collection, but seeing as then-coworker Rob was also a Lafler fan, he and I split the acquisitions and he took the Guts, and I took this goodie. (Come to think of it, Rob’s kind of been out of the comics world for a while…I wonder if I can get it back from him? If he even still has it.) (This is a terribly selfish geek-thing to think, by the way.)


I’ll be taking another weekend break from my journey through my collection, but I’ll be picking up again on Monday if nobody objects or shows up on my doorstep with rakes and torches. Thank you all for reading and, hopefully, enjoying my show-and-tell.