Read Your Vegetables

As you likely already noticed if you came in through the 'front door' of the main blog, while i have made mention of my favorite underground artist team - the Overland Vegetable Stagecoach - it recently hurt my brain to realize that we've only had a single feature on Dave Sheridan, and only a single page of Fred Schrier's work.

Let us fix that, shall we?

Note: While typically the back room post here on The Other Voice Of ODD! includes all of the material presented in the main room, that is not the case today. I decided i could use more material if we didn't duplicate unless needed this time out. This includes text as well as stories.

Let's kick off with Dave Sheridan's tale, The Fun House, which provided the teaser panels for the main post -

Ah, the '70s. Been there, dug that. There was no alchemist upstairs, but there was a chemist at U.C.R., the local university. I knew that last panel well.

Meanwhile...  Here's Fred's tale presented in the front room, without the ugly black censorship bars on page 4 -

Following up on the recent presentation of Sympathy For The Devil, here's another sonic/graphic intersection coming to us from Dave Sheridan. You'll probably want to substitute the word 'download' for 'borrow' to modernize the instructions, and while step 2 certainly helps with mood & experience, viability will be a individual decision of preference and circumstance. (Personally, i found some Chocolate Covered Strawberries (THC 27.5%) frosted with a bit of 3x Crazy SF Sugar (THC 78.4%) to be effective. Your mileage may vary.)
Also - consider headphones instead of full blast stereo unless you live in an isolated cave.Try not to throw more wood on the bonfire of civilization, eh?

And to wrap it up with a splash of colour, here's the cover to Mother's Oats #3 -

Next time we visit, more Dope.
Dealer McDope.
(And Father Guido Sarducci, and 20,000 Kilos Beneath The Sea)

pages from Mother's Oats #s 2 & 3 (1971, 1977) and Slow Death #2 (1970)

The Road To Wakanda

The Black Panther, like T'Challa, is King these days - ruling the box-office world. While he made his debut in 1966, it wasn't until 1977 that he finally got his own title. That slow start is fairly indicative of the rough ride getting here to mass market star. If we had over 8000 folks so intimidated by the idea of a black hero that they were voting against the film before they could even have seen it, just imagine what it was like a half century back. It was a struggle to even get the idea of a black hero out there, in any form.

There were other attempts to do a black hero in comics - some savage social parody, some straight-up heroes, and some a mix of both. But - damn. It's been a bumpy road...

With the way of underground comics of the time, one often could expect to find conventions subverted and cultural norms toppled. It wasn't too surprising to find the "hero" of a story (or comic) to be more villain in perception, and so our hero in the second issue of Captain Guts appears as the villain -

Their main confrontation occurs in chapter two -

It was his comic, however, so he eventually drank more beer, got over it, and came back to screw her white. (seriously)

On very rare occasion, a black hero even got his own book. Back in 1972, the same year Luke Cage became the first black hero to headline his own book at Marvel, strange things were afoot over at Kitchen Sink -

This one was quite the odd mix. It's parody, sort of, with an underpining of dark social commentary - but not all outwardly directed. Richard "Grass" Green had a unique blend here that's tightly bound to the time of its creation.

Despite any proclamations above, nobody on this page was ever seen again to my knowledge.

Next post, we'll look at a few heroes more serious in tone.

Ace Of Spades from Up Your Nose #1, Afro Boy from Pervert Comix #1, other strips from the comics indicated in the provided covers (1969-1972)