Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics

Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics

<p><strong>This collects the macabre <em>Playboy</em> cartoonist’s syndicated Sunday comic strip.</strong></p> Gahan Wilson is probably best known for his macabre <em>Playboy</em> cartoons, filled with charming monsters, goofy mad scientists, and melting victims, and his cutting-edge work in the <em>National Lampoon</em>, but he’s also one of the most versatile cartoonists alive whose work has appeared in a wide range of media venues. <em>Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics</em> 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 <em>Sunday Comic</em> 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 mélange of board meetings, monsters, and cavemen (with cameos by Wilson’s Kid character from <em>Nuts</em>, 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. <em>Gahan Wilson’s Sunday Comics</em> 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