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Cud
Fanatagraphics Books,
1992-'94
In 1992, frustrated by
lackluster sales and longing to do something a
little wilder and crazier than Unsupervised
Existence, I started a new comic book series
with Fantagraphics called Cud. Patterned
after books like Eightball and the old
underground warhorse Zap, Cud
featured a continuing story called "You Can't Spank
the Monkey If It's On Your Back", which followed
the rise and fall of a performance artist named Bob
Cudd. Bob himself was lifted more-or-less wholesale
from Unsupervised Existence, but he was a
different character in the new series. At the time
I thought of it as having a sort of ensemble cast
in my head, but it caused some reader confusion.
The rest of each issue featured whatever random
stuff I came up with, a real grab bag out of my
psyche. Several of these features went on to appear
in other places at other times--"Muktuk
Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman", for instance,
became a DC miniseries.
Cud was raunchy, explicit
and unabashadly funny. It gained me a whole new
audience and a lot of opportunities in the comics
industry. It also foreclosed any hopes I will ever
have of running for office.Unfortunately, none of
it has ever been collected in paperback. The sample
stories posted here are made available for the
first time, in any form, since their original
publication.
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