1994: Kitchen Sink Classics

Kitchen Sink Classics (1994) #1-3 by Reed Waller, R. Crumb and Mark Schultz

To celebrate the 25th anniversary, Kitchen Sink is re-presenting three classic books. Curiously enough, two of them are anthology issues — but this was how Kitchen cautiously introduced Kitchen’s biggest two biggest hits: Omaha the Cat Dancer as a special Bizarre Sex issue, and Xenozoic Tales in Death Rattle. (This was either a very smart approach, or just happened to work well by some kind of fluke.)

The main portion of each book reprints the original work in full.

But there’s also a bunch of stuff to give some context to the work, like this look at the very first appearance of Omaha in the Vootie fanzine.

And also a strip Waller did while waiting for Kitchen Sink to publish that first Omaha issue of Bizarre Sex. It’s fun, and makes for a real anniversary edition.

The People’s Comix (by R. Crumb), on the other hand, just reprints the original book — nothing more, nothing less (I think).

So that’s perhaps a curious choice, but perhaps they couldn’t get Crumb’s approval to extend add some context to it? Or something?

The Xenozoic Tales issue is the one with the most extras — but that’s because it’s not reprinting all of the Death Rattle issue this was printed in, but just the Xenozoic story.

That leaves more than half of the issue to do something else, so we get a long essay about Schulz’ influences and stuff.

It’s pretty interesting if you’re interested in Schulz and EC Comics in general.

The most bizarre padding, I mean fun extra, is this Savage World! story by Al Williamson and friends that they’re including. The rationale given is that this features just about all of Schulz influences in a single story.

It’s a much-reprinted story, but here they’ve tried to pick out just who did what on which panel, which is fun.

So… it’s a pretty neat little series of reprints.

This is the one hundred and seventy-first post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.

2 thoughts on “1994: Kitchen Sink Classics”

  1. Kitchen Sink Classics #1 is confusing me.
    Let me see if I have this right. This book is the
    8th Printing of Bizarre Sex #9
    2nd Printing of Omaha The Cat Dancer #0
    and its also,
    1st Printing of Kitchen Sink Classics #1

    On top of all that, Ive read that Bizarre Sex #9 is her first appearance, but other places have it as her 2nd appearance. So after doing a little research her actual 1st appearance is in a zine called Vootie, that no one has a copy of or has even seen anywhere. Apparently there was only a handful of copies made. But that first appearance is finally printed officially in a comic book, in Kitchen Sink Classics #1.

    So if Bizarre Sex #9 is actually her 2nd appearance, doesn’t that make Kitchen Sink Classics #1
    8th Printing of her 2nd appearance, and also
    1st Printing of her 1st appearance in an actual comic, or is it
    2nd Printing of her 1st appearance?

    Asking for a friend.

    1. Well, Classics #1 is a new edition, not a new printing, so it’s the third edition, first printing of her 2nd appearance and the second edition of her 1st appearance. Or… something!

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