How to stuff a wild beach towel.
And now, for no good reason whatsoever, a couple of Kitchen Sink-produced beach towels from the early 1990s, still solidly sealed into their original packaging and rescued from the previous place of employment:
Cherry (née Poptart) by Larry Welz:
…and Omaha the Cat Dancer by Reed Waller and Kate Worley:
Here’s a shot of the tag included with each towel:
Since these were sealed, I “borrowed” these images I found elsewhere to show you the full pics on the blankets…I’ll try to find a better Cherry one at some point:
Neat, huh? And yes, before you ask, they’ve already sold.
I was looking in Diamond’s online catalog to see what other beach towels were offered over the years. Along with the expected (Bettie Page) and the on-point (toss-up between “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “Yellow Submarine”) and the “sure let’s sell this in the comic book marketplace” (an Orange County Choppers towel?), was this sadly-cancelled item from 2001:
Well, that would have certainly lived up the church’s beach picnic social.
Oh boy, Omaha. Talk about a forgotten series. I was really into that title once upon a time and I still have most of, if not all, of the issues. Oh, early 80s, we hardly knew ye.
I used to own an Omaha necktie and still own the picture disc of music that she might have danced to. Only other adults only comic that was that easy to introduce to age-appropriate customers was XXXenophile by Phil Foglio. Do you remember that one?
Wow! Cherry and Omaha! I had 1 issue of Cherry sold to me by a vendor at a small comics show in Louisville around 1986. I was buying several Freak Brothers comics, and the guy recommended issue 3 of Cherry to me. I was 15. I’m not saying he shouldn’t have sold it to me, just pointing out how the world was then.
Man, you sure can bring up memories of the LCS I worked at pre-Turok. Not just Cherry, but Omaha. I bought an Omaha t-shirt from the Previews book, and we had two more for subscribers.
JohnJ: I do remember XXXenophile. I worked alone on Sundays and I would call a store Hepcats (changed to Haley’s Comics for some reason), and I’d trade books with the owner. Always whatever XXXenophiles we had, as well as Chaykin’s Black Kiss. The owner would give us 10 copies of a book for every one of ours, including manga. It worked out.
DC had Flex Mentallo: Hero of the Beach towels for Young Animal at SDCC one year. I don’t think they sold any, just gave them out to journalists and stuff. I will forever be jealous of anyone who got one.
I would love one of those Flex Mentallo towels.
Also, I loved Omaha — such a great soap opera. And so sexy. A little something for everyone.
I also bought only one issue of Cherry Poptart. It was the Cherry Deluxe issue with a story written by Neil Gaiman. I used to buy anything with a Gaiman story.
Omaha, on the other hand, was worth owning.
Imagine a Venn diagram whose overlapping circles are: funny-animal comics, underground comix, and the then-nascent ‘furry fandom’. Omaha, quite apart from still being an entertaining read, is one of the few comics positioned at the centre.
“XXXenophile by Phil Foglio. Do you remember that one?”
I have one of those, that I still haven’t read! And two “Cherry”s.
Dammit, don’t think I’d heard this:
https://www.tcj.com/ian-gibson-1946-2023/
“IAN GIBSON, 1946-2023”
I can only imagine the day at the Pop-Tarts company when someone introduced them to the Cherry Poptarts comics. Absolutely no work was gone that day and all the office doors were closed.
The next day they threatened to sue.