#10 That’s All Folks!
#10 That’s All Folks!
Kitchen Sink February 1987
It took six years after the previous issue came out before Snarf was revived by Kitchen Sink and the 10th issue was published. In the early to mid 1980s, Kitchen Sink was publishing runs of multiple titles like Gay Comix, Dope Comix, Bizarre Sex, Death Rattle (volume 2), Harold Hedd in Hitler’s Cocaine, Megaton Man, and Border Worlds. But what really kept them busy was their work on books and magazines featuring Will Eisner and Milton Caniff that reprinted old comics like The Spirit and Steve Canyon, plus new material by the artists.
These projects took an enormous amount of time and effort from the small staff at Kitchen Sink (especially the jack-of-all-trades Peter Poplaski). On top of all that, in 1986 Denis Kitchen picked up a new title, Omaha the Cat Dancer, that became an instant best seller and would soon spin off multiple related projects and merchandise. For that matter, almost all of the other titles were much better sellers than Snarf had ever been.
This issue’s beautiful front cover artwork by Will Elder depicts the travails of an old and battered comix-book publisher, with both young and gray-haired veterans piled upon a makeshift life raft, hailing the promise of a rising sun while leaving their fractured and useless past behind. Snarf already had a tradition of great cover art, and in their first ten issues they’d secured Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman and Will Elder for their front covers (and that doesn’t even include personal faves of mine like Jay Lynch, John Pound and Denis Kitchen himself).
A three-pager by J.D. King, who’d worked with Peter Bagge on numerous other titles and projects. King’s story exemplifies Snarf’s transition to an alternative comic title, as it features two incorrigible teenage punks raising hell around town while they skip a school day. Mary Fleener appears with two of her earliest published works, “In Love” and “Madame X from Planet Sex.” If you’re not familiar with her, Fleener’s drawing style is unmistakably unique. It was inspired by Cubism (she even calls is Cubismo) but also influenced by ancient Egyptian art, Chester Gould, Otto Soglow (The Little King) and Al Capp.
Kate Worley, co-creator and writer for Reed Waller’s Omaha the Cat Dancer appears in Snarf #10 as well, with a five-page story that neatly cross-promotes the Omaha series Kitchen Sink had just picked up the previous year. Two midwestern natives, Marc Hansen and P.S. Mueller with a four-pager featuring a maniacal white-collar office boss raging with jealousy and high blood pressure, Mueller with a few pages of sparsely drawn, eccentric New Yorker-style cartoons.
Chester Brown has a one-pager about a gerbil and a voracious pet dog and Dennis Worden has a three-pager about a floating skull stand-up comedian (yes, literally) who hits the big time on the David Letterman show. Jay Lynch and Gary Whitney with Phoebe and the Pigeon People and Howard Cruse with a three-pager that is probably the most depraved and disgusting thing he’s ever done.
#10 That’s All Folks!
