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Anyone who grew up in the ’80s is familiar with their unforgettable names and faces. The Garbage Pail Kids Topps trading cards and 1987 movie are embedded in the brains of a generation, and Indican Pictures' new documentary 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story explores the phenomenon like never before. In today's Horror Highlights, we also have details on the Hexploitation Film Festival, The Eyes home media release info, and the trailer for Brian Sepanzyk's Compulsion.

30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story: Press Release: "West Hollywood, California (Tuesday, August 8th) - Indican Pictures is set to release the pivotal documentary on the Garbage Pail Kids. Titled 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story, this documentary revisits the artists, who made these collectibles famous. Showing a rare glimpse into the corporate culture of Topps as they launched Garbage Pail Kids through the height of the cards fame,...

I believe the first comics convention I attended was in 1967. That means I’ve been chasing these puppies for 50 years. Indeed, it often feels my entire life has been one long, never-ending comicon. Talk about getting a life – or, at least, another act.

I continue to do ‘em because I enjoy seeing my friends a hell of a lot more than I enjoy eating vulcanized chicken fingers. Better still, I enjoy meeting the fans, talking about what they like and don’t like (this is not a good time to defend the event comic), discovering new trends and talent, and blathering on and on at panels. For the past, oh, maybe two dozen years that means I’ve vastly preferred the smaller comicons; it’s hard to have meaningful conversations at the overcrowded, underoxygenated megashows such as San Diego and New York. To tell you the truth, I avoid those...

Never Land will always be / The home of youth and joy / And liberty

I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up

Not me! Not me! No sir! Not me!

I just returned from a family reunion, and it was just about the only type I’d go to. It was a reunion of the various staff members of the Chicago Seed, the high-circulation “underground” newspaper published between and 1974.

This gathering of geriatric hippie revolutionary writers and artists was prompted by the recent deaths of two Seedlings: Snappy Skippy Williamson and Jayze Jay Lynch . I discussed the passing of my two long-time friends in this space; click on the above links if you missed those columns or if you have the desire to commit my words to memory.

Joining the Seed staff in January 1969 was the single most important step I have taken in my life, short of marrying Linda.

Skip Williamson (L), Jay Lynch

In this space two weeks ago, I wrote about the death of cartoonist and comix legend Jay Lynch. I noted his half-century friendship with Skip Williamson; despite their physical distance, I don’t think two people could have been closer.

As fate would have it, Skip died eleven days after Jay. Each was 72 years old. For long-time friends of the pair, for long-time fans of the pair – and I count myself among both groups – the timing was crippling. Skip long had heart problems so even though it was shocking, it wasn’t totally unexpected. However, there’s a kind of appropriateness about that timing that makes complete sense.

I won’t repeat their mutual history other than to mention the first comic book they pioneered was Bijou Funnies. Both had contributed to Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! Magazine and, later, to Playboy. Skip’s most revered character was Snappy Sammy Smoot,...

Death has been everywhere lately this March of 2017. Actor Bill Paxton. Rock and Roll pioneer Chuck Berry. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Jimmy Breslin. The great artist Bernie Wrightson. Underground comics’ Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson. ComicMix’s Tweeks Maddy and Anya Ernst’s grandmother. Fellow columnist Marc Alan Fishman’s college friend. My dad.

As Martha Thomases said last week, although in an entirely different context – Too Much! Too Much!

Radiolab, which airs on NPR – check your local station – is a show that features issues both philosophical and scientific. In its 15th year, I was listening on Saturday as the hosts, Jay Abrumrad and Robert Kulwich, discussed a case brought to their attention by reporter Ike Siskandarajah. It was called “Mutant Rights.”

Two international tariff lawyers, Sherry Singer and Indie Singh, discovered that the legal classification of “doll” were taxed at a higher rate – 12% – than the legal classification of “toy,...

Jay Lynch, the artist who made the iconic parody Garbage Pail Kids, has passed away at age 72. Bloody Disgusting tells us Lynch died following a battle with lung cancer. His art was featured on Topps Cards and were quickly snatched up by children of the '80s. Lynch would also have his art featured in Playboy as well as comic books. 

There was even a Garbage Pail Kids movie...

Rest easy Jay Lynch, and know that your parody outlasted the the Cabbage Patch Kids in the realm of pop culture. Did you collect these cards growing up?...

It is with a heavy heart that we must announce that artist Jay Lynch passed away on March 5th, according to Nyt. The supposed cause of death, per his cousin, was lung cancer. Lynch was a historian of underground comics,… Continue Reading →

The post R.I.P. Garbage Pail Kids Artist Jay Lynch Passes Away at 72 appeared first on Dread Central.

Every town must have a place / Where phony hippies meet / Psychedelic dungeons / Popping up on every street • Frank Zappa, “Who Needs The Peace Corps?”

The late Sixties really did live up to its reputation. In my home town of Chicago hippie central was the Lincoln Park neighborhood around the iconic Biograph Theater, where, 34 years earlier, the FBI allegedly shot John Dillinger to death. Today, hippies can’t even afford to drive down Lincoln Avenue.

The area sported many blues and folk bars, giving such local talent as Steve Goodman, John Prine, Hound Dog Taylor and Harvey Mandel a place to strut their stuff. It was Mecca to the storefront theater movement, creating world-renown companies such as the Steppenwolf and the Organic Theater a home for newcomer writers and actors like David Mamet, Joe Mantegna, Laurie Metcalf, John Malkovich, and John Ostrander. A mile down the street was The Second City,...

Jay Lynch, one of the fathers of underground comix and creator/writer and/or artist of such treasures as Bijou Comix, Phoebe and the Pigeon People, Nard n Pat, and Garbage Pail Kids, died of cancer this afternoon at age 72. His most recent work was providing the cover art for Fantagraphics’ new book, The Realist Cartoons. He will be missed by his many, many friends and fans.

I’d known Jay for almost a half-century, and I’ll be taking the liberty of commenting on a man I regard as one of the most important cartoonists of the post WWII period in my usual space here Wednesday.

Attention comedy geeks everywhere! To paraphrase a literary classic, this new documentary feature lets us all “look back in laughter” at one of the most influential humor magazines of the last fifty years. Actually its legacy reaches on past its newstand existence. Yes, it’s been absent from newsstands (there’s still a few of them left) for nearly twenty years. But, to paraphrase again, we’ve come “not to bury this magazine, but to praise it”. And to recall the chuckles and the mini-empire it spawned. Of course, this wasn’t the first humor publication. Puck paved the way decades before. Then Mad magazine shook up the staid 1950’s. But by 1970, that mag had somewhat settled into a (still entertaining) routine, poking fun at suburbia, and wasn’t connecting with the “counter-culture”. Younger “baby boomers” wanted their humor to have a sharper edge, to reflect the “hippie” spirit, and...

Feature Ryan Lambie 29 Nov 2013 - 06:15

This week's Crowdfunding Friday features a Garbage Pail Kids documentary, a British stop-motion drama, and much more...

Is there a scientific formula for crowdfunding success? We haven't learned of one yet, but if there's one thing we've learned over the past few weeks, it's that a good-quality board game or miniature project will have donations flooding in.

Just look at the hugely warm response to Gamezone Miniatures' 25th anniversary revival of the classic fantasy board game project, HeroQuest, which has managed to garner almost 10 times its minimum funding goal within 24 hours of its launch. Then there's Prados Games' Aliens Vs Predator: The Miniatures Game, which made  more than £270,000 more than its £35,000 target - no doubt thanks to the spectacular-looking Alien and Predator models that come packed into its handsome box.

The moral appears to be: if you offer a tangible and desirable reward for your target audience,...

Chances are if you grew up creepy, you owned a fair share of Garbage Pail Kids cards. I know I had a ton of these, and most of my childhood belongings were also covered in their stickers. I never got into baseball cards or the various other attempts to lure kids to collect cardboard as if they were tiny squares of heroin. However, anytime I went out shopping with my Mom and my eye spotted a box of Garbage Pail Kids, my collection would grow a little larger. If you share such fond memories of this franchise as I do, then I have the kickstarter of your dreams!

30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story, is a documentary showcasing the history of the franchise with interviews with the original creators, artists, and fans. Including but not limited to interviews with Art Spiegelman, Len Brown, Mark Newgarden, John Pound, Tom Bunk,...

Mars Attacks • Abrams ComicArt • hardcover $19.95, also available in electronic format. Publication date: October 1, 2012

There’s a seminal moment in every weirdo’s life where we experience something so outrageous our worldview is altered severely and forever. For Ray Bradbury and Michael Moorcock, it was Edgar Rice Burroughs. For nascent Nasa scientists, it was Ray Bradbury and Buck Rogers. EC Comics begat a generation of filmmakers, satirists, and cartoonists. I have no doubt we will be appreciating the influence of The Simpsons and South Park as its early adopters enter the creative workplaces.

For me, it was Mars Attacks.

I love to collect things. I suspect if comic books were unnumbered I wouldn’t have made it to the Marvel Age. So I would dutifully check out the counter-spaces at my local drug stores to see what the Bazooka Joe boys at Topps were offering in the realm of what we now call “non-sports cards.

In the commercial arts there’s always been a fine line between tribute and theft, even when it’s called homage. These days, that’s a word that gets lawyers excited. But we are free to imitate the underlying concept or genre. When Harvey Kurtzman produced Mad #1, he didn’t invent humor, nor did he invent satire or parody. Anybody can try to be funny, and let’s be honest: comics publishers, then and now, aren’t trying to imitate somebody else’s comic book – they’re trying to imitate somebody else’s comic book success.

This rarely happens.

After EC knocked one out of the park with Mad, just about every publisher with an eye to staying in business (except DC and Quality; Fawcett had pretty much given up on comics by this time) came out with their own Mad clone… including EC. And EC was hip enough to satirize both of these facts.

Michel Choquette's The Someday Funnies is to be published by Abrams ComicsArt. Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner initiated the project 40 years ago when he approached Choquette with the idea to create an illustrated history of the 1960s. The contributors' list features a host of legendary names including mainstream greats like Jack Kirby and C.C. Beck, underground pioneers Jay Lynch and Art Spiegelman, European cartoonist Rene Goscinny and individuals from outside the industry including Red Grooms, Tom Wolfe, William Burroughs, Federico Fellini and Frank Zappa. In three years, Choquette's project developed from a supplement in Rolling Stone into a book of 129 comics strips. When Wenner abandoned the project, its creator sought a publishing deal with Harper which eventually fell through. The Someday Funnies was all but forgotten until an (more)...

"American Splendor" writer Harvey Pekar, whose life and long-running autobiographical comic inspired a 2003 film starring Paul Giamatti, has never been known for his tech savvy. Famously avoiding computers and the online world whenever possible, Pekar surprised many fans with his latest project: an ongoing webcomic series.

Titled "The Pekar Project," the ongoing series hosted by Smith Magazine kicked off its run this week with four new comics written by Pekar and illustrated by a quartet of artists. New comics will appear every two weeks, with various interviews, lists and other types of content produced by Pekar appearing in alternate weeks. (Check out Pekar's list of recommended jazz albums that appeared last week for a taste of things to come).

I spoke with the veteran writer about this new project, his relationship with technology, and what to expect from both the series and the team of artists involved with the project.