The Complete Pertwillaby Papers (Preview) by dani books

Classics

The Complete

Pertwillaby Papers

dani books

Title page: The only illustration in which Lance Pertwillaby and his friends ever appeared together with Captain Kentucky. It was meant as a cover for the first issue of a Don Rosa magazine series that was planned to be published in 1980, but never happened due to various reasons.

Don Rosa Classics The Complete Pertwillaby Papers © 1971 – 2012 Don Rosa For this Edition: © 2ß012 dani books Series Editor and Publisher: Jano Rohleder Introductions by Don ROsa, Roger Stern and Ron Weinberg Bonus features from the archives of Don Rosa and Håkon Hagelund, additional contributions by Anders Christian Sivebæk and Thomas Schrøder Book Design by Jano Rohleder Cover design by Rachel Spoon | rachelspoon.com Additional Screentoning by Fernando Ventura Digital Edition 2012 Published by dani books | Verlag Jano Rohleder Elisabethenstr. 23 | 64521 Großßss-Gerau | Germany www.danibooks.de www.donrosaclassics.com ISBN (Digital Edition) 978-3-944077-03-1

Fair use notice: This book contains historic newspaper and fanzine articles, the use of which has in some, but not all cases, been specifically authorized by the copyright owners. We are making these articles available to advance understanding of historic, cultural and aesthetic issues. We believe this constitutes a “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law.

Contents Introductions

Bonus Features

A Word Before We Start by Jano Rohleder

Preface by Don Rosa

My Pal Don: The Amazing Story of How We Met (& Some Stuff About the Pertwillaby Papers) by Roger Stern

The Origins of Lance Pertwillaby by Ron Weinberg

The Pertwillaby Papers Chronicle #1: Untitled (Episodes 1 – 65)

Lost in the Andes: An Introduction of Sorts by Roger Stern

Chronicle #2: Lost in (an Alternate Section of) the Andes (Episodes 66 – 127)

The Pertwillaby Papers: An Introduction by Don Rosa

Once Upon a Time by Roger Stern

Preface to Sub-Zero by Don Rosa

Chronicle #3: Sub-Zero (Episodes 128 – 133)

Preface to Vortex! by Don Rosa

112

Chronicle #4: Vortex! (Episodes 134 – 138)

113

Chronicle #5: Knighttime (Episodes 139 – 141)

168

Index by Sigvald Grøsfjeld jr.

198

Advertising episode

200

Pin-up

201

Artist Profile: Don Rosa

202

Illustrations and articles

204

Ads

206

A Don Rosa Classics Interview by Mathias DeRider

208

Illustrations and articles

210

Introduction: Sword and Sorcery and Rings and Things by Don Rosa

212

Bonus comic: Khulan

213

Bonus comic: Tagdenah #1

222

Bonus comic: Tagdenah #2

226

Curiouser & Curiouser: The Keno Don Rosa Interview by David Campiti

230

Illustrations and articles

233

Early versions of the Pertwillaby adventures

234

Cover gallery

236

Acknowledgments

240

A Word Before We Start By Jano Rohleder

Hey everyone, this is Jano, this book’s editor and publisher speaking … or writing, for that matter. I just want to give you a little background information before we dig into the good stuff. The idea to the Don Rosa Classics (i.e. this book and its companion, “The Complete Captain Kentucky”) came up quite spontaneously and this series was originally planned to be a kind of “special collector’s item” to be sold during Don’s 2012 German signing tour only. However, to help finance the printing, I put up a crowdfunding campaign over at Indiegogo, and was overwhelmed by the popularity it reached with Rosa fans from all countries just within a few days. So, instead of being a “limited Germany tour” thing, this is really an “international” edition now, and I hope the books have turned out to be what everyone was looking forward to (or even more). Thanks to everyone who helped realizing this edition with their contribution! There’s a special acknowledgment segment on page 240 where all their names are listed. Even though it’s not mentioned in the title, my intention was to make this the “ultimate” edition of these classic Rosas, and I think the final result comes pretty darn close. This book contains absolutely everything that was ever officially drawn of these characters (but I’m sure there are some more private fandrawings that I couldn’t get hold of), which means not only the actual episodes themselves, but also a number of ads and other illustrations, like a pin-up etc. I’ve also included all original introductions that were written by Don for previous editions. In some cases this means that the content is slightly repetitive, which you’ll especially notice while reading pages 43 and 45. However, I still chose to use the full original wording of these texts and show them the way they were published. There’s also a number of interesting old articles, interviews and other stuff that Don dug up from his personal archive or that Rosa-pre-Duck expert Håkon Hagelund provided me with. (My very special thanks go out to both of them, as well as to Roger Stern, Ron Weinberg, Ray Foushee and Don Murphy for their introductions! [Ray’s and Don M.’s appear in the CK book.]) Now … those (probably few) of you who own the original versions of these old texts from the 70s and 80s will notice slight differences. While I kept the full contents, I chose to “remaster” them, which means I used scans of the originals and did a new typesetting for delivering the best possible reading experience. They are still as close to the originals as possible, and while I reformatted them a bit, I always kept their original style in regards of special fonts or photos etc. And talking about remastering, Don’s art was also partly corrected in cases where there were errors caused by the original printing process. However, this always represents Don’s original intention. (No “Noooo!” screaming Darth Vaders here. Promise!)

I should also mention that while most of you might know Don because of his work on Donald Duck and Uncle $crooge comics, this is a book set about his classic works. Therefore, I chose not to include articles or features that deal with comparisons between both. We do present the occasional information regarding later Duck stories that were inspired by the old comics, but this is limited to an absolute minimum to leave more room for features dealing with the strips this edition is all about. Well, I think this is all I have to say, so now just sit back and (hopefully) enjoy the ride! I’m looking forward to hearing what you think of the books, so whether praise or criticism, please drop me a message after reading at jano.rohleder@gmx.de or tweet me @janoroh. For information on future comic books (mostly in German, though), please visit www.danibooks.de and follow @dani_books on Twitter. All best,

Jano Rohleder August 24, 2012

Right: Don in his comic vault at his home in Louisville, Kentucky.

Preface By Don Rosa

I created The Pertwillaby Papers for the University of Kentucky newspaper while I was there studying civil engineering. The first episode appeared on September 9, 1971! My God … was I alive that long ago? (Yes, and then some!) My intention during the first weeks of the strip was to establish a cast of characters based on a college campus who would then go on globe-trotting adventures in search of lost treasures. I was not trying to imitate the adventures of the college-based adventurer Indiana Jones – he would not exist for nearly another 10 years. My intent was (as any Rosa readers already know) to imitatethe spirit of the Carl Barks Duck adventures I had grown up reading during the previous 20 years. I planned to use no superheroes or funny-animals, as most other American cartoonists were doing in those days (or make politically radical statements like I think my typical-1971-collegepaper-editor wanted). But I intended my characters to be normal humans in fantastic circumstances, since, as any real Barks fan knows, that’s what Donald and $crooge were. (They were certainly not mere funny-animal ducks like Warner Bros.’ Daffy – their personalities were too real for that to be the case. They were simply drawn that way for reasons I never bothered to figure out.) You can see my love for the Old Master’s stories in that first series – notice the university records vault – looks kinda’ like a certain Money Bin, eh? This was done as a purely private joke to myself, as was the fact that my vault is even built by the “OSO Safe Company,” the company name seen on the safes in Barks’ tales. But my true plans were not revealed to my editor until the second series when I sent my cast of characters off in search of the lost gold of the Incan Empire! I had dreamt of this plot as a $crooge story for many years, and I figured this was as close a chance to do a Barks-style story as I’d ever get. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would get a chance to actually write and draw a $crooge McDuck adventure 15 years later. Duck-fans will recognize the plot and even some of the art in this Pertwillaby Papers adventure – it’s the same plot that I used in “The Son of the Sun,” the very first Duck story I ever did in 1987!

After graduating from engineering college, I continued to draw comics as a hobby for comic “fanzines”. In these magazines I now turned The Pertwillaby Papers into comic-book style stories rather than the daily-newspaper-strip it had been. These three adventures were printed in the foremost comic fanzine of the day, the Rocket’s Blast Comicollector, in 1976 – 1978. Gosh, I wish I would have had as many pages to develop Duck stories as I used on my stories in those fanzines! These adventures are 60+ pages long. There are a few characters here that I feel I should mention. My hero’s girlfriend is designed to be a stereotypical “dizzy blonde,” which was not yet “politicallyincorrect” in 1971. I started trying to change her character by the late 70s, trying to show that she had more common sense than my hero, whom I depict as well educated but actually pretty dense. And then there’s my main villain – a fugitive Nazi scientist! I imagine that this was the sort of character that will naturally be less amusing to a European reader than to an American teenager who grew up on Hogan’s Heroes like the 1971 me. I fully realized the horrors of World War II, but that all took place before I was born and far from Kentucky! To me, Nazis were just really cool movie villains! Anyway, I don’t know what European sensibilities are on this subject, but I hope my funny-Nazi-fugitive doesn’t offend anyone (except old Nazis). I should also apologize in advance that the last Pertwillaby adventure in this volume (Knighttime) has no ending! I never finished that one for the fanzines – sorry! (If you want to know how it might have ended, read pages 208 – 209.) I must mention two college chums who helped me with gags and dialogue on the early Pertwillaby Papers strips. Ron Weinberg helped write the first sequence of episodes #1 – 65 (see “The Origins of Lance Pertwillaby” on page 8). And Ray Foushee, whom I’d known since high school (or perhaps even earlier as we were both born on the same day in the same hospital maternityward) helped with the first portion of the Incan treasure adventure. Don Rosa

My Pal Don: The Amazing Story of How We Met

(& some stuff about the Pertwillaby Papers) By Roger Stern

Don Rosa is a man of many talents. Writer and artist, cartoonist and raconteur, Rosa is a storyteller of international renown, and for good reason. His Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge stories have thrilled and entertained readers around the globe, and earned him awards in over half-a-dozen countries. But before Don was a teller of duck tales, he created what I consider to be one of the great lost treasures of American comics: The Pertwillaby Papers. It was as a student at the University of Kentucky that the Young Master Rosa first began chronicling the saga of Lance Pertwillaby: college student, adventurer, world traveler. Lance began appearing in the pages of the Kentucky Kernel on September of 1971. And I myself was drawn into Lance’s world – figuratively, not literally – the following summer, when I first made the acquaintance of his creator. Wait a minute. That would mean … that I have now known Don Rosa for forty years! Is that possible? That’s nearly two-thirds of my life. That’s longer than I’ve known anyone at Marvel or DC … or anyone else in comics. Longer than I’ve known my wife. But I guess it’s true. I’ve known Don since we were both in our early twenties. You can read about our first meeting elsewhere in this collection.1 I can assure you that everything happened just as recounted. But, of course, there’s more to the story than that. For one thing, I might never have met Don Rosa, if not for Bob Shreve. Robert Gerald Shreve was a Cincinnati, Ohio, television personality. In the early days of Ohio television, Shreve worked as an announcer, a singer, a dancer, and a comedian, doing whatever was necessary to hold an audience’s attention. But it was Bob’s talent as a movie host that lead to my first meeting with Don. From 1963 through the early 1970s, Shreve hosted latenight programs – first, The Schoenling All Night Theater on WCPO, and later The Schoenling Nite People Theater on WLWT – screening old movies from 1:30 A.M. to 6:00 A.M. on Sunday mornings. During the commercial breaks, Bob would acknowledge cards and letters from his viewers. And among those viewers was a young Don Rosa. Don was such a fan of those shows that, each week – virtually without fail – he would illustrate an ersatz comic book cover featuring the talented Mr. Shreve. In fact, he drew two series of covers: Schoenling Beer-Man and Uncle Bob’s Funnies. And briefly, when Bob had an additional late-night show originating from Dayton, Don drew an additional series: Robert G. Shreve’s Comics and Stories (see page 7). Showing an eye for detail that would become a hallmark of his later comics work, Rosa maintained a regular sequential number system for these series.2 Naturally, Mr. Shreve often held these covers up to the camera so that all his many viewers could enjoy them. Unfortunately, I was not among them, as I lived much too far north to receive the signal from those Cincinnati stations. But there were comics fans in southern Indiana who were part of Bob’s viewership, and seeing those covers led to their contacting Don.

Not long afterward, I was drawn into the orbit of those fans, and not long after that I wound up transporting them overnight to Don’s Louisville home. It fell upon me to play driver because 1) I was the oldest of that motley gang of fans – and was therefore, presumably, the most responsible3 – and 2) I had a car. And so, thanks to Bob Shreve and a bunch of insomniac comics fans, I met Don Rosa. It was, to quote Humphrey Bogart, “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”4 I would have gladly hung out at Don’s house every day, if not for the fact that – at the time – I lived about 150 miles away. But we began a correspondence of sorts. In those days before the Internet and cheap long distance service, we kept in touch via audio cassettes sent back and forth through the mail. I definitely got the better end of that deal because Don has a much more melodious voice than I. Plus, often included in Don’s mailings were clippings of his Pertwillaby Papers strips. So I got to see them long before most other comics fans. And whenever possible, I would motor down to Louisville to visit Don for a weekend of comics, food, fun, and (of course) staying up much too late to watch Bob Shreve host old movies. After I moved east and became ridiculously busy writing comic books, our correspondence sort of fell by the wayside.5 But over the years we still managed to get together at conventions in New York and Chicago, in Ohio and California. In the 1990s, it was my extreme pleasure to be in the audience at San Diego, when Don was presented with one of his Eisner Awards. That well-deserved award was, of course, for his work on the ducks. But I knew him when he was still a titianhaired youth, treating me to the globe-trotting tales of Lance Pertwillaby, Feather Fluffnuthin, and occasionally Freddy Kegg, with our heroes often in the company of the diabolical Professor Viktor Dimitrius Smyte and the only-slightly-less-despicable Schuyler Roatch III. And now, those adventures are at your fingertips. Enjoy! Roger Stern June 22, 2012 Roger Stern once went to a Halloween Party dressed as one of those terrible, terrible Beagle Boys. In 1975, he sold a story to Charlton Comics; they never printed it. He later wrote stories for Marvel, DC, Valiant, Dynamic Forces, Egmont, and Panini UK; most of those were printed. 1 2

3 4 5

See “Once Upon a Time,” page 44. True Story: I once ran into Don in the middle of New York’s Grand Central Station, as he searched for a copy center. He was hoping to photocopy the latest Uncle Bob’s Funnies cover that he had somehow found time to draw during the comic book convention being held in the nearby Commodore Hotel. Alas, he was unsuccessful, and that cover is one of the few missing from his files. This is still a matter of some debate. I’ll let Don decide which one of us is Claude Raines. Mea culpa.

One of the illustrations from the Robert G. Shreveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Comics and Stories series. In this 10th illo, we see a very special guest star.

The Origins Of Lance Pertwillaby By Ron Weinberg

One very special night in the Fall of 1971, Lance Pertwillaby came to life in Don Rosa’s high rise dorm room, illuminated by the light of the only personal color TV in the whole University of Kentucky Campus in Lexington. Within a few short hours, Don and I had a story outline along with many of the characters that appeared in the strip. Many were drawn from our personal experiences on campus, while others were strictly productions of that mysterious thing called the creative process. Friday nights were special. Don and I would get together for dinner in the cafeteria and begin sketching out the evening’s work. Excitedly we would try ideas on each other with quick-witted remarks, or just plain far out creative process insanity. Then it was up to Don’s room where the tools of artistic conception were already laid out as though readied for major surgery. Usually Don knew what he wanted, so many times I faced an uphill battle in determining the exact direction of the plot. No matter – we were having fun. But I was great with the character names, most based on personal experience: a past girlfriend, a difficult roommate, a neighborhood security guard; even a joke we heard modified by what I called the Rosa touch. And what a touch it was. One of the first times I met Don was right after he had been selected as collegiate editorial cartoonist of the year: not just for Kentucky but for the entire U.S. Wow, I thought. Wouldn’t it be great collaborating with this guy! And collaborate we did … TV theme music collections, Pertwillaby and later on a series of memorial trivia bowls with some of the best questions and contestants in the world – long before Alex Trebec was ever even heard of (the correct answer is Art Fleming). The weeks flew by and soon we had our 65 episodes and a pink slip for Pertwillaby. Politics again had trumped art. But guess what: I got to be in the last episode with Don. It was scary getting into those small frames, but we eventually prevailed. And Don prevailed as well, getting a coveted Engineering Degree. While I went off to continue my studies in the Atomic City of Oak Ridge, Tennessee (yes, that part’s very real), Don found another father for Lance and continued forth for many years, neatly getting his ducks in a row. Don and I stayed in touch over the years, visiting Disney World together in 1976 or so. We also got together once a month in Louisville to take in a movie and dinner – all you can eat! Eventually we married (but not to each other) and would exchange updates and ideas. I eventually retired and moved to Hawaii, where I keep an eye on Don every so often. He visited Cathy and me in 2008. Some day we’ll visit the Rosa estate in Kentucky. And now you know. Hatching Pertwillaby was a two man job. But it was special because of Don. And when

the movie comes out, perhaps we’ll walk the red carpet together! Or we can all walk the red carpet … or if you don’t like red … anyway go see an Emma Stone movie or something … the beach is calling … Ron Weinberg Co-Creator of The Pertwillaby Papers Waimanalo, Hawaii July 2, 2012

A recent August 2012 issue of the Kentucky Kernel, the daily student newspaper of the University of Kentucky. The first episode of the Pertwillaby Papers was published in the Kernel on September 9, 1971.

ARTIST PROFILE DON ROSA

202

My life and times shouldn’t make very interesting reading. Once upon a time, a quarter of a century ago, I got borned, red hair and all. The glasses came a bit later, I believe as a result of sitting too near Howdy Doody and Winky Dink. I had two parents … and one sibling (a sister by profession) who was eleven years my senior and who read funny books. Ergo, from the moment I was brought home from the hospital, I was surrounded by comics … stacks of comics! And during the next ten years I aged a corresponding number of same, reading Dells (my favorites were Duck comics by that good artist, and “Little Lulus”) and watching TV (as I said, a tad too near the set; I recall they first noticed I needed specs by the greasy noseprints on the screen). Also during this time, I drew many dozens of comic strip novels up to 365 panels long (using old calendar record-ledgers) few of which anyone other than myself has ever seen. It seems that due to my extremely early exposure to comic books, I “outgrew” them on the first intellectual level at a young age, about ten, when most lil’ kids are just getting interested in the things … and I got rid of the whole bunch. Later on, around 1963, after I achieved the 2nd intellectual level, I began reading the “Superman Family” comics (a series and time I still greatly admire), and around 1968 I discovered comics fandom and collecting everything else, too. I’m not kidding – everything other than Archie’s, Love or Funny Animals besides Dell’s. Collecting in this scatter-brained manner prevents me from ever affording a really outstanding collection of anything … I still have relatively little in the way of pre-1948 comics. But that suits me – the quality of art & story of the “Golden Age” doesn’t appeal to me, and I’m quite happy to concentrate on the last 30 years. Besides, I have such a fervent love and insatiable lust for comics – the lovely, pure art-form of comic books – that I’d infinitely rather have three or four thousand Dells or DCs or Atlas in “good” condition than a “mint” Action #1. Actually, I think I’d rather have a mere few hundred other newer comics

Don’s artist profile from RBCC #136 (1977).

ABOVE: Don Rosa discusses I.C. questions with two of his consultants.

than something like Action #1, since Action #1 would mean little to me personally … and having no plans of ever selling a single one of my comics, their “value” means little to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I finally made it through grade school, high school and college, procuring a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering … and all the while working on the various and sundry school papers as editorial cartoonist. However, being the chronically facetious and terminally silly person I am, political or editorial matters never really interested me, even though many of my cartoons were nationally syndicated and some fools referred to me as the foremost college cartoonist. No, I didn’t care much for that college stuff

until I did something during my junior year of college, a daily strip which is one of the very few things I’ve ever done that I’m genuinely proud of, “The Pertwillaby Papers.” But every mother loves her child, and with those very words the editor dropped me from the staff due to the inane and pointless quality of “P.P.” Few people at college seemed to care for “P.P.,” not being able to comprehend why a supposedly mature college-man would waste his time drawing a strip that had no political satire, social relevance or dirty words. So for the remainder of my time at college, I did little other than winning and subsequently running the annual Trivia Bowl. At any rate, I finally got out of school, decided the last thing I wanted to be was something as dry and unimaginative as an engineer, and went to work as an assistant construction laborer for the small family tile and terrazzo company. “Unfortunately” moron labor is greatly overpaid due to union extortion tactics, thus I am robbed of any initiative to find lower-paying work as a cartoonist or media-critic or wot-not. Besides, I found that I can rise at 6:30, put in my eight hours of well-paid labor, take a three hour nap till around 8 P.M. and then unleash my creative juices till 3:30 A.M. each night on RBCC or TBG matters. On the subject of this “fan activity,” if you’re an RBCC subscriber of about three years, and of TBG for about one and a half, you’ve seen most of the extent of my work. Taking over Ray Miller’s I.C. was a fantastic opportunity for me; it’s an outlet for my imagination and creativity, and puts me in contact with so many, many fans of so many, many varied aspects of the glorious world of fantasy. I cannot emphasize enough how much I value the readers who are thoughtful enough to stimulate me with their questions or fascinate me with their comments. I thank you one & all. As for my personal opinions about modern comic fandom – I try not to put much editorializing in I.C. where I don’t feel it belongs (though I know a lot of it slips through, nonetheless). Like a lot of folks, I am very distressed by the emphasis on $ that now dominates fandom. I’m personally quite convinced that this has been caused, at least in part, by the “PRICE GUIDE.” An annual “PRICE GUIDE” does NOT serve the FAN … it only facilitates the less scrupulous dealers’ manipulation of the market, and enables the public to misunderstand the point of the hobby

as well as the proper use of the GUIDE (as evidenced by the fact that casual flea-market dealers, who used to sell a $5 comic for 10¢, now sell a $5 comic for $10). I’ve also witnessed an entire generation of new collectors who, because of the “event” of an annual “PRICE GUIDE” as well as other $ minded aspects of this hobby, seem to be convinced that $ is the point of the hobby! They accept the “PRICE GUIDE” value as hard fact instead of opinion; they allow themselves to be controlled by the dealers, when it should be entirely the OTHER WAY ROUND. No dealer can argue any longer about this “rule of supply and demand” now that they’ve exposed themselves with this disgusting HOWARD THE DUCK #1 scandal. At any rate, a polite letter on this subject to the compiler of the “PRICE GUIDE” did nothing other than precipitating the removal of all vestige of my name from the acknowledgments; while I can’t really object to having my name removed from a work that I object to in principle, I do see that such is the price of good ol’ righteous indignation. My only reaction to all this is probably pretty idiotic, I suppose. But I flatly refuse to make a single penny profit off of my hobbies! I’ve gone out of my way to ensure that I either just break even or LOSE money on my fan activities. Now this doesn’t for a moment mean that I dislike seeing honest, fair dealers make an honest, fair profit off my hobby – I just hope that a few people might sometime see the way I approach it, and realize that the SOLE point of the hobby is the intellectual pleasure one derives from it – not how much one’s collection is “worth” by an annual “PRICE GUIDE,” or what sort of profit one can make off his fellow collectors by buying three copies of HOWARD THE DUCK #9. Now you see how depressing this all is, and why I prefer not to laden I.C. with it! So that’s all I can imagine anyone would care to hear of my life and opinions – in fact probably a bit MORE. All I can say in closing is that I hope that anything I draw or write within this hobby-fandom will be enjoyed by those whose interests I share in the realms of imagination.

203

Newsletter masthead for Louisville comic store “On the Way” (1983). The newsletter itself announced a signing session Don would do there on July 30th in support of his recently published first issue of Don Rosa’s Comics and Stories.

NEWSWATCH

204

Promo announcement from The Comics Journal #82 (1983).

Fantagraphics Books Announces Two Projects Fantagraphics Books has announced two projects for Summer release. One is a new comics magazine, the other a one-shot catalogue project. The Comic Art Show is a 74page volume that will serve as the catalogue tor a show put on by the New York Whitney Museum of American Art. Subtitled Cartoons in Painting and Popular Culture, the show proposes to examine the relationship between comics and fine art, and includes samples both of the best of comics art and of paintings incorporating comics motifs. The catalogue features several articles, written by Gary Groth, J. Hoberman, Richard Marschall, Jerry Robinson, Kim Thompson, as well as by the organizers of the show, John Carlin and Sheena Wagstaff. The articles cover subjects ranging from the origin of comic strips to undergrounds and animation, and are profusely illustrated with both selections from the show and other representative artwork. The cover is an Andy Warhol Dick Tracy painting,

the back cover a vintage Krazy Kat Sunday page, printed in full color. The Comic Art Show will take place at the Downtown branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art, from late July through August, and the catalogue will be on sale there; it will also be distributed through

direct-sales outlets, beginning in early July, with a cover price of $2.95. Pertwillaby Papers: Fanta graphics Books’ other project is Don Rosa’s Comics and Stories, which will be presenting Don Rosa’s Pertwillaby Papers strip. A humorous adventure series, Pertwillaby Papers began as

a weekly strip in Rosa’s college paper; later, it was serialized in 10- to 15-page chapters in the fanzine RBCC. Rosa completed two stories and had begun a third one before devoting himself fulltime to Captain Kentucky, a spin-off comic strip he developed for a local paper. Don Rosa’s Comics and Stories will run three issues, with each issue containing one of the three stories. (Rosa will complete the long-dormant third story, “Knighttime,” for the third issue.) If these three volumes sell well, Rosa and FB plan to start up a series of new material from Rosa, possibly in a different format. Don Rosa’s Comics and Stories will run between 60 and 68 pages, black-and- white with color covers. Each issue will sell for $2.95. The first issue, on sale in July, will contain an introduction by Marvel writer Roger Stern. Other Fantagraphics Books releases planned for the summer include the third issues of NEMO: The Classic Comics Library and Love and Rockets. –KT–

205 Ad from The Comic Reader 218 (1984).

“I created this parody ad based on the cover of Superboy #1 where Superman is telling kid fans that this new magazine tells stories of him before he became Superman. So I have Captain Kentucky telling fans that the new Fantagraphics magazine tells stories of him before he became Captain Kentucky.”

Illustration from The Comics Journal #43 (1978) for the story “A Writing Man of Mars” by Dwight R. Decker.