Wednesday, August 25, 2021

The Wraith!

A cool taste of Michael T. Gilbert fun from his early underground comic days, more specifically, the July 1976 issue of Quack #1, where we shockingly discover that The Spirit-- errr-- I mean, "The Wraith" is a dog detective and taking on the baddies to save an innocently sexy sex kitten from-- errr-- sex! Great artwork and probably my favorite story in this dynamically ducky debut issue. Michael is probably best known for his superb run of magnificent 80's Mr. Monster comics.

4 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the Eisner parody with all its spot-on details.
    Do the characters on the cover actual,y appear inside?
    If so, does You-all Gibbon endorse Ape-nuts?

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  2. A dog detective?
    Maybe this was the inspiration for the '90's failed pilot 'Poochinski', which features a dead police officer reincarnated as a talking bulldog.
    Really! :)

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  3. I have that issue in a box somewhere. Man, I totally forgot about this, but in seventh or eighth grade, I had a friend who incessantly drew canine detective types, aping this story's style. Not an Eisner spoof, but an Eisner spoof spoof. Also: This kind of underground stuff was pretty potent catnip for thirteen year old artists like ourselves. The fact that real professionals churned-out this kind of funny animal cartooning--and then blew the top off the comics industry with it a few years later--made it seem like an iron-clad game plan to us. I mean, who couldn't draw a Ninja Turtle? We were all going to strike it rich with our own brilliant [adjective] [animal] [genre] characters. Anybody could do it!

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  4. "Duckaneer"???

    That's a great Frank Brunner cover!

    This is a pretty good Eisner parody, and it really follows the formula. The title embedded in the splash, page 2 is really great, and at first I didn't notice some of the fun details like the rat Solly actually turning into a real chicken at the end!

    First panel of the last page, with the knife in the hat and the chain around the neck is a great cartoon image.

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