Forlorn Funnies Vol. 1 Panels

Here are a few panels from this fall's inaugural Forlorn Funnies Volume 1, from various stories in that collection. Above is an excerpt from "Huge Suit and The Sea," and below are panels from "Obvious Amenities" and "True Luxury."

Now bring the urine pants!

The Third Host Option

There's been endless drama between NBC, Jay Leno, and Conan O'Brien about the future of The Tonight Show's host, time, and tradition. But isn't the choice obvious? It's all spelled out here. Here between two ferns.

Stephen Worth on Boing Boing

Stephen Worth, who has a wealth of animation knowledge and is the director of the always great ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, is guest-blogging on Boing Boing currently. And he's posting an absolute treasure trove of information, clips, and articles. I wanted to be sure to post a few of my favorites thus far:

This video of Ralph Bakshi talking about being an artist and surviving in tough times should be required viewing for anyone in the creative arts, in any field. That he said all of this without preparation goes to show what a phenomenal mind he has, because it's inspirational, hilarious, and right on the mark:



Gustaf Tenggren's gorgeous Golden Book art is something I've seen a million times, but never attached to a name. Thank you, Mr. Worth, for righting that wrong.


And Mr. Worth points us to one of the weirdest Max Fleischer cartoons ever made. To say it was ahead of its time doesn't do it justice.

Forlorn Funnies Vol. 1

Here are the original scan and final colored art for the cover of Forlorn Funnies Volume One, due out this fall from Fantagraphics Books.



As for what's in the first book, here are a few teasers/descriptions:

Our principal concern of this volume, “Obvious Amenities,” is Act One of the story of Edward Molson, salesman. After the untimely osprey-induced death of a co-worker, Molson is thrust into a cross-country speaking engagement, a chance to revisit youthful diversions, and a potential extra-marital love affair. But for now, he has to walk his wife’s dog. Again.

In “Huge Suit and The Sea.” the deity/fate/ deus ex machina Huge Suit – who first appeared in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – returns to his intervening ways, prodding and poking at the destiny of a relentlessly smiley boatman. The boatman travels from island to doomed island until taking on employment pulling ghosts into a basket. Soon enough the basket of ghosts is overflowing, and the locals send him, still smiling, back to the waters, where Huge Suit waits.

The prose offering for this inaugural issue “Whither Mountain Man?,” joins a nameless protagonist on his search for a mythological beast sighted in the hills of an early 1900’s Montana. But the neighboring hunters and mining interests have other plans, punctuated with rifles.

“The Epistemics” (the beginning of what will be an ongoing serial) follows a team of military specialists and scientists in their role in the colonization of the planet Themis IV. In this first adventure, Tech Sgt. Artemis Tol is undergoing a bizarre ritual, the separation of the myriad creatures of which he is a composite, when The Epistemics must respond to a call of distress in one of the outlying camps. What they find in that camp is unlike anything they – a team made of clones, aliens, and grizzled space war veterans – have ever encountered. And Tol’s absence proves unimaginably costly.

Forlorn Funnies Vol. 1 Preparation

Here is a test panel from "The Epistemics," a recurring science fiction story (concerning a team of military scientists and explorers helping to colonizing the planet Themis IV) that will appear in the new Forlorn Funnies series of books. I'll post more about the series (including the cover) this afternoon.