buy my comic!



For the majority of you who do not read PREVIEWS every month, and may be interested in the behind-the-scenes world of Runaway Comic, here is the catalog listing (dingy white background) and my portion of Fantagraphics' full-page ad (pale pumpkin background). Remember, blogger will smash, but you can click the image and see it larger.

And now, a level of tedium previously unknown to any but TCJ message board devotees: My DVD-esque commentary on these listings. Thank you blogosphere, information age, 24-hour-news-cycle!

dingy white:
Wow, cover art looks pretty good reduced so teeny and printed on crap paper at 85dpi! I am pleased! Please note: my visuals are patented, and knock-offs will be prosecuted! And I want to personally thank whoever put the word "rambunctious" in there! THANKS!

pale pumpkin:
ARGH! I asked Gary not to mention Gnatrat! Oh well, it is legendary after all, so I guess they decided it would generate sales. Which is good, that's why I need a publisher and a promoter to make SOME decisions like this. I don't want to mention it because it feels so old, feels like I am resting on my laurels. I'm sick of being "the Gratrat guy", darn you, world, can't you see how multi-faceted I am?!? But that is silly ego. I guess. What the hell do I know, I just write funny stories. Actually, maybe Gary did not write this copy - maybe whoever wrote it did not get the memo. Anyway, it is okay, I am just rambling here, filling up blog space. I am more than thrilled with the copy under my cover art! And of course, they meant to say "20 Nude Dancers 20".

Thanks for listening. Go tell your comic book dealer to order my comic!

6 comments:

slatts said...

There's a part of that's really afraid to go into a COMIC SHOP!...I don't know the protocol and I would surely be the stranger in a strangeland!

So, I wonder if I could buy a copy from you! (It's also in the best interest of combating high fuel prices to walk to the next room to your cubicle vs. driving out to the....MALL!!!)....

I'd even be willing to pay an extra "Handling" charge....

BUT I understand if it's better that the comic dealers get dialed in so that the publisher see the true success story..blah, blah, blah...bottom-line...sales per capita...profit-sharing for the dealers, schemers and editors-in-cheifdom....

I understand...but I'll probably send my son, tho

Anonymous said...

He IS going to change "Live Nude Girls" to "20 Nude Dancers 20", isn't he? 'Cause that thing is a freakin' masterpiece, dammit.

eeTeeD said...

if the fabric guy did his thing, then carefully removed all the fabric, used it to make free clothes and bedding for the poor, and had an annual gross salary of around 30k...... i would say yay fabric guy, you are GREAT. but instead fabric guy drapes his fabric on islands. the lack of sun on the island wrecks the island’s ecosystem. some of the fabric blows loose and pollutes the water. some of the fabric remains on the island and pollutes the island. a lot of the fabric gets tossed in a land fill, and is nothing more than a total waste of our precious natural resources. AND the guy gets to be a millionaire, get lots of media attention and hob knob with the rich. it seems very wrong to me. if he wants to drape fabric, why doesn’t he get a job doing laundry for a nursing home? then he could drape their washed sheets on a laundry line ‘til his heart is content!!!

SRBissette said...

Mayhaps, in the pages of RUNAWAY COMICS, GnatRat should be offed once and for all. Crumb did it with Fritz, Trotsy-style, and I've no doubt you could come up with something far more devastatingly inventive, memorable, and irrevocable for fuckin' GNAT-fuckin'-RAT.

Excuse me, I've got to get Swamp Thing out of the aluminum foil I am baking him alive in, once and for all.

Steve "Swamp Thing" Bissette

Mark Martin said...

Oh, Steve, you are gonna say "D'OH!"

I killed Gnatrat at the end of The Ultimate Gnatrat. Sent him to hell too.

And you call yourself a "scholar"!

Chris - e-mail me.
lasagnalagna-at-yahoo-dot-com

SRBissette said...

No, no, I mean kill him AGAIN, Mark. I know you killed him -- kill him AGAIN. Once and for all. Maybe the Elmer McCurdy route would suffice...

(McCurdy was an Okie outlaw killed in a shootout with police in 1910; his body lay unclaimed for years, mummifying in the process, was shipped out west and displayed around the country as a carny attraction until 1949; packed into storage until 1971 when it was rejected in an estate state to the Hollywood Wax Museum as "not being life-like", and sold to an amusement park, where it was discovered in '76 when an episode of THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN was filmed at the park and a Universal Studios technician tried to 'adjust' the glow-in-the-dark painted 'dummy' hanging from a fake funhouse gallows and broke off its arm -- and realized it was a real corpse!)

Anyhow, GNATRAT died, but didn't. He deserves the same or worse fate as McCurdy's if you want to forever lay him to rest, amigo. If Gary's still referring to him as a benchmark, and you object in principle, you must burn the character to ashes and sow salt upon the torched ground forever.