Ernie and His Uncle Sid (1992) #1 by Bud Grace

Of all the odd things Kitchen Sink was publishing around this time, this is one of them.

Because it seems like such a throwback book — it’s printed on newsprint, and the cover has a design that harkens back to the early Underground comix era. Perhaps that’s the point — it’s a nostalgic exercise?

It’s also odd that there’s only one issue of this, because Ernie was pretty popular at the time? It was really funny back then. It was really wild and strange and didn’t rely on the same repetetive schticks that it does these days. (Or did Grace finally stop doing the strip?)

That’s a solid joke.

This book has both dailies and Sunday pages, and the Sundays have better jokes, but the dailies have fun storylines.

Reprinting the strips this way may not make much economical sense, but it works well as a comic book. Since the strip is so dense, this is just about the right length for a collection of Ernie strips.

But I guess they came to the conclusion that it would be better to reprint the strip as real books, so that bookstores could carry them. And reading this book made me want to start reading the collections, and good news! Bud Grace has started self-publishing complete chronological collections! It looks like it’s print-on-demand from Amazon (boo!), but I think I’ll get the first collection, at least, and see what they’re like.

This is the one hundred and thirty-seventh post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.