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.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith (1994) by Brian Walker and Billy DeBeck

This is printed in Kitchen Sink’s normal format for doing comic strip reprints, but it’s apparently published by Comicana and Ohio State University and distributed by Kitchen Sink. But let’s take a look at it anyway.

This is quite unlike most Kitchen Sink strip reprint books. It doesn’t reprint long stretches of strips, but instead gives an overview of DeBeck’s career, mostly.

So we get a whole bunch of early illustrations and stuff.

We do also get some actual strip reprints.

I’d guess about one third of the book is text? It’s a much more “scholarly” book than anything else, but that’s not really surprising — it’s co-published by a university.

My guess is that people that are interested in DeBeck (and Snuffy Smith) will find this book fascinating. I’m not, though, and I didn’t, and I did not finish reading the book.

And I’m not really much of a fan, either, even if there’s some good gags in here.

Ron Evry writes in The Comics Journal #181, page 54:

Even with its all too brief snippets, the
Walker book is a must have for anyone inter-
ested in the foundations of American comics.
Originally meant to be a catalog for a retrospec-
tive exhibition of Barney Google held at Ohio
State University, Walker’s forward explains
the conundrum of trying to squeeze so much
rich material into such a slim volume. He too
admits that morecomplete collections are sorely
needed. Interestingly enough, Walker found
that King Features’ archives of Barney Google
only went back to the late-’30s, and there is a
fascinating detective story explaining where
the source material for the book came from.
While much of the material had to be shot from
actual newspaper pages, there is a good deal Of
original De Beck art floating around, and col-
lectors were glad to provide photocopies. The
lack of actual contemporary written material on
the strip was another challenge Walker faced
with the contributions of a network of collec-
tors and the actual recollections of Fred Lasswell,
De Beck ‘ s former assistant, who has been doing
the strip since 1942.

This is the one hundred and seventieth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.

Maximum Volume (1994) by Siro

Like Eden, this was also originally published by Zenda in France, and then serialised in Heavy Metal before being published in this hardcover album volume.

And like Eden, it looks like it was done by a pretty young artist. But this time around, he’s not a Liberatore copy, but instead seems to be more influenced by American 80s comics, I think? I mean, I can see Scott Hampton, perhaps some Kaluta… Mark Schulz? Dave Stevens, definitely. And also influenced by generic Metal Hurlant stuff.

But there’s a lot of things here I can’t remember seeing anybody do in just this way. Like the way he’s drawn that guy’s suit with white lines over red. It looks great, and makes him stand out in a supernatural kind of way.

And the way that that guy’s hair is just a blank whiteness — it’s fun.

But if you actually try to read this, you’ll just get a headache. The dialogue above is pretty typical, and I think it can best be summed up as “what? whaa? whaaat?”

The plot revolves around retrieving a McGuffin that the guy with the red suit has put out into the world to destroy the world, because why not.

At least the annoying kid is killed in a gruesome way: By somebody playing metal.

The ending is ambiguous — did this end with the world ending, or is there going to be another album?

A second volume was released in France, but wasn’t published in the US. Zenda went under later the same year, so presumably their stuff didn’t sell there, either.

The French cover looks a lot more Pop Art than the US one, doesn’t it?

If I’m reading that web page correctly, these albums have never been reprinted in France, either, and you can pick up used copies cheap.

This is an even more puzzling thing for Kitchen Sink to be publishing than Eden. I mean, it looks like More Heavy Metal Than Heavy Metal, so it’s attractive in that way to a possibly large audience, but it’s pretty much unreadable. I think that perhaps Siro was going for an experience like reading Elaine Lee/William Kaluta’s Starstruck — a sensory overload drawing the reader in — but he just doesn’t have the storytelling chops here. (It’s Siro’s first album.)

This is the one hundred and sixty-ninth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.

Eden (1994) by Vince

Well, what’s immediately striking about this is that this looks like Maximum Heavy Metal. Or more precisely, like somebody trying to rip off Ranxerox. I mean, somebody very inspired by Liberatore.

The rendering is very slick, and immediately kinda exciting, right?

But Liberatore isn’t just slick, inhuman rendering: He’s a really accomplished artist. Vince, on the other hand, while aping the style pretty well,  isn’t actually that good at drawing people. Look at the face of that guy: It shifts from a narrow chin to a big chin, from a cheeks that are sharp to cheeks that are flabby. It’s like he had a bunch of difference pics he’s using as reference, and they aren’t the same guy. I think he may be using Elvis in one of the panels?

On the other hand, you can’t argue with his monsters. The monsters are monstrous.

And penis fingers? You don’t often see that many penis fingers in comics.

Oh, the story? It’s very Heavy Metal — it’s a sci-fi thing with mutants and a McGuffin everybody’s chasing. It’s… it’s actually not that bad? For this sort of thing, the story holds pretty well together, and it’s pretty inventive.

And there’s not any actual rapes, I think — only a couple ones threatened, which is also unusual for a 1992 Heavy Metal story.

This was originally published in France in 1992, and the album ends on this almost literal cliffhanger. A continuation was never published, so I guess it really was the end of the human race.

I’m not surprised to see that this was Vince’s first album, because it looks like the work of somebody young — who’s gotten good at rendering, but was still feeling his way around figure work. And the latter gets better as the album goes along.

What’s more surprising is that Vince seems to abandon his Liberatore style in his very next project, Vortex, and looking at some other, later projects, it never seems to come back? I’m not familiar at all with Vince, so I may be wrong. Did the publisher, Zenda (another unfamiliar entity) insist on the style?

Oh!:

Zenda is a French publishing house specializing in comics. It was in operation from 1987 to 1994, before being bought by Glénat.

So perhaps that explains why there was no second Eden volume — Zenda was shutting down? But that doesn’t explain, then, why Kitchen Sink would publish this single volume when they had to know that there would be no subsequent volumes, so the sales potential had to be pretty dire. Who’d buy something that just ends on that cliffhanger?

Huh. It was advertised (in 1993) as being 116 pages, but it’s just 46. Did they think they’d get Vince to complete the story for the US only? And… just $4? It was eventually published for $15.

Oh oh, I misread that ad — it’s an ad for a Heavy Metal issue. Duh.

You can still pick up copies of this album for below cover price, and (of course) it has never been reprinted.

Another mysterious Tundra/Kitchen Sink publication decision, I guess. Perhaps Kevin Eastman just liked it so much that he wanted to have it on his bookshelf?

This is the one hundred and sixty-eighth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.