This book was published by Fantagraphics in 2012, and features Mahler’s savage take on the superhero genre.

“When I’m reading, I write tons of marginalia—again as much for sense-making as for retrieval. When reading in PDF format, I either use Acrobat Professional on my desktop or iAnnotate PDF on my iPad. My book reading is split probably 50/50 between paper and digital books. For digital books, I mostly read in Kindle or Stanza on my iPad or phone and export the notes and highlights locally. I use Project Gutenberg and Google Books a ton for reading out-of-copyright digital books; indeed, my reading probably has a huge pre-1923 bias because so much amazing stuff is so easily available before copyright laws tightened up.”

“For a long time, Dial H for Hero and its successors have been my comics obsessions. No other title, I’ve long explained to any of my poor friends who’ll listen, combines childlike joy in superhero-creation, a neo-surrealist faith in the aleatory, a post-Vertigo focus on the erosion of identity, and an opening into one of the few utter mysteries left in the history of the DCU.”

This is the cover of the US edition, published by Top Shelf. As you can guess, the stories in this volume parody the classic horror archetypes, in Mahler’s wholly unique manner.

In episode #7, indie comic creators interview Columbus’ own Jeff Smith.

There’s a wealth of great material here, including talking about business plans, selling to retailers, and much more. I like his stories about how much resistance there was in the early days toward trade paperback collections and graphic novels from the likes of Wizard magazine and retailers. Well worth your time, especially if you’re interested in the business side of comics and comics history.

There is no way I could even begin to explain the simple joy of this comic, so instead, here’s the link to a 9 page preview of the book on Top Shelf’s website.

Keown, of course, would go on to fame and riches as the artist on The Incredible Hulk for Marvel, and then his own creator-owned series, Pitt, before the bottom fell out of the comic book market and he disappeared for a long time. These days you can find him contributing an occasional variant cover or short story to marvel and DC books.

comiXology purchases can be read on your PC or Mac, or any tablet of smart phone, including iPad, iPhone, and Android based devices.

Art by Guang Yap, 1987.

Published in 1987, cover by Guang Yap.