I'm In The Cut-Out Bins

I found this on the Intertube while I was trying to find copies of some old comics that I wrote. Note: I was able to find myself by googling (w/") "Dark Fantasies Comics" , which was the name of my publisher. The books are being sold in bulk lots on eBay, 10 books for 4 bucks...sigh...anyway, it's a weird feeling reading a review that mentions oneself by name.

This spinoff from Dark Fantasies tells the strange (and sometimes hard to follow) tale of an immortal woman/goddess/angel and her immortal husband/god/demon who is trying to kill her—or maybe just trap her on an astral plane. Allan Coberly’s story is more than a little convoluted, and he isn’t helped much by Ben Fogletto’s art or sense of page layout, which makes word balloon placement haphazard at best. If you’re a fan of Dark Fantasy Productions, though, then you’ve probably already cracked the verbal/visual code and shouldn’t have any trouble figuring out just who or what a “destiny angel” is, and why anyone would want to destroy such a gorgeous and powerful celestial babe as she.

It's an honest and fair review, although the site lists publication as 1986- it was 1996. And there was no "code" that I was aware of- it was just a mess. A train wreck of monumental insignificance.

I wrote the script and I had a hard time following the art... I remember getting a test copy of the book in the mail. It followed my script for a while and then it changed... my lead character was wet, nearly naked and carrying a gun. What the?...in the margin you can see my angry scrawl :" She doesn't bathe with firearms!"

What the hell?

"Holy Mackerel?" Nobody says that.

I called the publisher, who was also a close friend of mine.

"Man, have you seen the art for #1? It's totally off-script! It doesn't look like the thumbs at all! What happened to my dialogue?"

"Well, you have to live with it. I need you to re-write #2 and #3 and take out all the occult references and sex scenes."

"Uh...it's a vampire comic- for 'mature readers'- haven't you read it? You paid me to write about lesbian vampires and that is what you got."

"Well, now I'm paying you to re-write it without the vampires and lesbians. If you don't, I will."

"Why the change?"

"My wife won't let me publish the tittie vampire books anymore."

"What? You have a wife? Since last month?"

"Yeah, I met her at a Star Trek convention- I was drinking with her and her fiance, and he got hammered and went into their suite to pass out. While he was conked out in the next room , I fucked her and the next day she dumped him. Now she is pregnant , so we had to get married."

"Dude. Please tell me you just made all of that up."

"No, it's true. Her name is xxxxxx. Now she has my last name."

"Uh...um...Dude. You probably shouldn't be making lifetime commitments with someone who will fuck around while they are engaged. Like, with her man sleeping next door and all. It's a bad sign. "

"Screw you. Just rewrite the book, I'll pay you again."

"Uh...OK. Why, though?"

"She is a Jehovah's Witness and the vampire stuff is Satan worship and the nude parts are pornography, which is also Satanic. Or something."

"Uh...lessee...you met this Jehovah's Witness chick at a Star Trek Con, got drunk with her and her man; ditched the dude, knocked her up in a hotel - now you are married and she thinks you are a Satanic pornographer? I didn't know Jeeho's even drank, much less do Con parties...
You are making this up, aren't you?"

"No. She went back to her faith after we got married. No more vampires. No more boobies. It has to be rated PG or G now."

"Um...so, like what do you want? I suddenly have a hundred pages to rewrite."

"I dunno. Whatever. Just follow the art. Keep it clean."

"Great. How soon?"

"Now."

Anyway, the new wife was OK with the gun and the not-quite naked woman. In fact, she didn't bat a lash when I inserted a deux ex machina gunfight that killed some of the characters that were important to the first version of the story but meaningless in the second version.

Hmmm...scantily-clad women and gun violence is OK, vampires and sexuality is not... so I wrote a lot of scenes like these below, lots of guns and bathing- feel free to insert your own captions.

Let's make it a contest:
I'll send a prize to the best entry- in other words, if you enter, you'll probably win. A cash prize!
Anyone still awake?
Here are a couple pages with the original dialogue removed. Fill in the blanks any way you want.

These scenes are from issue #3, which was never published. I never wrote another comic book but I'd like to someday ...who knows? Can you draw?

UPDATE: Contest ends like, whenever. Number of winners dependent on how many bags of cash I can scrounge up.