Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics

This collects the macabre Playboy cartoonist s syndicated Sunday comic strip.

Gahan Wilson is probably best known for his macabre Playboy cartoons, filled with charming monsters, goofy mad scientists, and melting victims, and his cutting-edge work in the National Lampoon, but he s also one of the most versatile cartoonists alive whose work has appeared in a wide range of media venues. Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics is Wilson s assault from within: His little-known syndicated strip that appeared in America s newspapers between 1974 an 1976. Readers must have been startled to find Wilson s freaks, geeks, and weirdos nestled among family, funny-animal, and soap opera offerings. (The term zombie strip a strip that has long outlived its original creator takes on a whole new meaning in Wilson s hands.) While each strip, at first glance, appears to be a standard, color Sunday strip (albeit without panel borders), each Sunday Comic is a collection of one-panel gag cartoons, delineated in Wilson s brilliantly controlled wiggly-but-sophisticated pen line. The last gag cartoon on each Sunday is part of a recurring series, either Future Funnies or The Creep. Some Sundays are a freewheeling m lange of board meetings, monsters, and cavemen (with cameos by Wilson s Kid character from Nuts, his gimlet-eyed view of childhood, collected last year by Fantagraphics), while others riff on a topic or subject (clocks, plants, wallpaper, etc.). As is his wont, Wilson mines the blackest of black comedy in the banal horror of human nature. Gahan Wilson s Sunday Comics collects, for the first time, each and every one of these strips, luxuriating across a 12 x 6 landscape format, with Fantagraphics trademark high production values, innovative design, and succinct historical commentary. Full color comics throughout