"Doom to anyone who steals me gold!"
So a customer recently unloaded his collection of funnybooks on us, as he’s moving, and isn’t taking the books with him. As is usually the case when we receive collections in bulk like this, the vast majority of the books is going straight to the bargain bins, but a few items are being kept aside. An Albedo #2 (the first appearance of Usagi Yojimbo), a couple copies of Tales from the Tube (the comic-sized edition and the one from the surfing magazine), and not just one, but two New Mutants #87, second printings, signed by the man himself, Rob Liefeld.
However, also in this collection was three copies of this bit of horror film history, about which I was previously unaware:
It’s a magazine-sized promo for the film’s release, only twelve pages long, and in color…sort of. I’ll explain that in the moment.
In what will likely come as a shock to most of you, I’ve never actually seen any of the Leprechaun films, despite my love for cheesy-yet-great horror films. I mean, I’ve even seen The Gingerdead Man (starring Gary Busey as an executed killer who comes back in the form of a murderous animated gingerbread man cookie), and yet I’ve never seen a Leprechaun film? Not even Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Tha Hood. Ah, well…Netflix, here I come, I guess.
Anyway, here are a few samples from the book, such as this panel with the Leprechaun in question:
As the Leprechaun zips through these few pages seeking his lost gold, he spends some time causing mischief and delivering ironic, or at least rhyming, punishments:
The artwork for the most part is a tad on the amateurish side, but serviceably cartoonish. There’s at least one terrifying full-page image of the Leprechaun’s face, which reminded me a bit of the heavily photo-referenced pin-up pages from the old Partridge Family comics.
And there are a couple bizarrely creepy panels like this in the mag:
Those two panels along the bottom there show the Leprechaun’s hand reaching out for the lady in the first panel, and the second panel shows the woman, presumably stripped of her clothing and her hair, in case you couldn’t see what was going on in the scan. Geez, Lep, what’d that lady ever do to you?
I mentioned the book was “sort of” in color a few sentences back, and that’s because this is some of the worst printing I’ve ever seen. Dark, muddy, blurry…here’s a sample of what the art looked like without my fiddling around with brightness and contrast:
The inside covers were both full-page ads…one was for the Sci-Fi Channel, and the other was for this frightening thing. Rick Dees! AIIIIIIEEEEE:
The back cover was a reproduction of the movie poster, with the blurb “LOOK FOR THE ‘LEPRECHAUN’ BOARD GAME” at the bottom. I did a brief Googling, and looked at Boardgamegeek.com, but couldn’t spot it. I hope it does exist. I’m picturing a Monopoly-type board, where every square, and every Chance and Community Chest card, has the Leprechaun’s face on it, with a word balloon that reads “WHERE’S ME GOLD?”
Anyway, for some good scans of the entire story, this Angelfire site has full-color images donated by the artist himself, and unencumbered by the horrible printing job. (And since it is an Angelfire site, it’ll likely have pop-ups and bandwidth issues, so if it’s down, check again later.) The main page is located here, last updated eight years ago. There’s a link to what is apparently a more up-to-date Leprechaun page by the same person, but I couldn’t get it to load. Well, it has been since 1999 when that link was presumably posted.
Because I know some of you wouldn’t believe me…here’s the trailer for The Gingerdead Man. Some dialogue Not Safe for Work:
