In October of 1999 I was in an odd place. I was 21, which isn't that big of a deal when you don't drink alcohol, I was living with my parents, working full time at the family sawmill, and I had graduated in the Spring from the local community college with a completely useless Associates in General Studies. In short, my life was going nowhere, and I was well aware of that fact. Early in the month, Fate stepped in. I was at the comic shop in Effingham (a mere 45 minutes from my house. Obviously it would be closed within a month or two, never to reopen) when I discovered and immediately purchased a "Create Your Own Comic" Kit. At that moment, I gave myself an Ultimatum. I would actually make a comic for Realsies and get it printed in some form, before the end of the month, or I would bury my dream of making comics forever and do something else with my life. It took the whole month, but in the end I had finished "Pulp Horrorshow" Volume 1 #1, and I got it printed at a Kinkos in Carbondale, two hours from my house.
The first Pulp Horrorshow was an ugly, crude, poorly written, poorly drawn comic book. But it was mine, and I loved it. I had defeated my Ultimatum and found out what I knew all along. I really, really loved making comics. So, I continued making comics. I drove 2 hours to Carbondale every time I finished a book, and I worked to improve my art and writing. Pulp Horrorshow was a 24 page, Black and White Anthology comic that featured two to three strips about my "SlasherHero" characters (That was my own weird little genre, which were Superheroes mish-mashed with 80s Horror film Monsters) and usually one Silly Cartoon strip. Cactus Joe the Clown made his official debut in issue 1. I gave copies of the book away to friends and family. Pulp Horrorshow went for 6 issues from Oct 99 until around July of 2000. I stopped producing the book after I went to Wizard World Chicago looking for someone else to publish me, and everyone telling me I sucked. I got a little depressed and dropped every book I was working on. I eventually started back up, making a new comic called "Truth or Consequences Monthly" (which wasn't monthly, at all). My insane quest continued, with Pulp Horrorshow buried in a shallow grave.
Time passed. I bought a house. I printed comics for Realsies at a Real Printer (in Evansville, STILL a two hour drive away. Sigh.). I started attending comic book conventions across America, and believe it or not, sold comics to people that weren't related to me. My book at the time was SDF, which was a series of One Shot 48 page Anthologies. Me being me, I wanted to make more comics. I had started a silly comic called "New Super Duper Fun Comix", and I wanted to do an Adults Only comic to kinda balance things out. So it was time to resurrect "Pulp Horrorshow".
"Pulp Horrorshow" vol. 2 #1 popped up in the Fall of 2007. It was a 24 page Black and White comic with two stories and the first full color cover in TORC Press History (wellll, some of the early Xerox comics had really crude color covers, but this was the first Professionally Printed comic with a color cover). It was also the first comic I got printed through the online printer Ka-Blam (which I suppose marks the beginning of TORC Press's "Bronze Age", if you wanna stick random labels on this nonsense, which of course I love to do). The book was my first experiment with an Adults Only book, so it mostly had some boobs and cursing and a little foul language (well, and lotsa violence, but I was already doing that in all my books anyway). Thematically, I was inspired by Ditko's Charlton work, so the two stories were "Doom Eagle" (recently resurrected in the new SDF, small world) which was an incredibly warped version of Ditko's Blue Beetle, and "El Exclamation Point!" which was an obvious homage to Ditko's Question. The book was weird. Really, really, really weird. There was a spaceship that looked like a fetus (seriously, what is wrong with me), a two headed naked goddess, a man with a crescent moon for a head, violence addicted sex fairies, a robot shark, and a guy with a giant bird head coming out of his neck. I did another issue a few months later which featured the debut of Xipe Topec and the Vermin Angels (who appear prominently in "Skull Mob"). And that was that. I'm not sure why I dropped the book. I think I got my heart broke sometime around them and dropped all of my books. Of course, that led to the original incarnation of the "Hot Fudge Sundae Adventure Club", so it wasn't all bad.
Last year I revived Pulp Horrorshow again. This time around, I was experimenting with creating a comic that was fast and crude, sorta like the Underground Comics I was into at the time (I'm not really into that stuff now. That was a short-lived, very odd phase). I also wanted to show what life was like on Earth for the people that live in the cities under the rule of Ortex ("Clown & Penguin" took place in outer space, "Death Moth" was about the Death Moth's battle with Dr. Dendull, which precluded any conflicts with Ortex, and "SDF" was about refugees living in a forest outside of Ortex's control). The new volume of Pulp Horrorshow lasted for 4 issues and introduced some new characters, most notably the Chupacabra (currently appearing in SDF) and Renee K-9 (who's a member of the Skull Mob). It was black and white, which used to be my thing, but nowadays it just seems drab. It wasn't a bad series, but I wasn't thrilled with it, and it was kind of a mess.
So, anyway, I had the idea that as a celebration of my anniversary, every October I would start a new edition of Pulp Horrorshow that would run for 2 to 4 issues. So that's where we are now. We'll be introducing some new characters, and I'm gonna be doing a Black, White, and Red thing as a slightly more colorful version of the classic B&W that is a Pulp Horrorshow tradition. It'll update on Sundays. So there you go.
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