Radio Hepcats (1996)

The official soundtrack for Hepcats. What better way to compliment a cinematic comic book than with a soundtrack? This album was compiled by Hepcats creator Martin Wagner and was included with a special edition of issue zero. The CD and the accompanying album art were sealed in a plastic bag, BYO jewelcase. A pretty awesome concept.

The album features some awesome early 90s alt rock acts that I had zero exposure to prior. Sounds range from chill, to ethereal with some heavier stuff in the middle. All of the tracks are sure to delight, and accompany the comic perfectly. There's even a track of actual score for the album, "Erica/Kathryn's Decision" by William McGinny. Aside from the themesong to Nextwave, this is the only instance I can think of where music was composed for a comic. (If you can think of any other, please let us know.)

FILE: Radio Hepcats

01 Mistle Thrush - Wake Up (The Sleep Song)
02 An April March - The Red Dots
03 Curtain Society -Ferris Wheel
04 Soul Whirling Somewhere - Unhittable
05 No-Man - Infant Phenomenon
06 Visible Shivers - After Glory
07 William McGinny - Erica/Kathryn's Decision
08 Siddal - Secrets of the Blind
09 No-Man - Heaven Taste


A while back, spinning off of a discussion about Radio Hepcats on the YahooGroup, Wagner put together some new Radio Hepcats compilations for download on the iTunes store.

Check 'em out:
Radio Hepcats Chill
Radio Hepcats Rock

- Cap

Hepcats (1987-1998)

The late 80s and early 90s were a boon period for independent comics, particularly self published ones. The rise of the graphic novel with works such as Watchmen and Maus, cast comics in the public eye for the first time as a medium of powerful storytelling possibilities. Out of this particular phase, four major self-published bodies of work arose: Dave Sim's Cerebus, Jeff Smith's Bone, Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise, and Martin Wagner's Hepcats. Both Cerebus and Bone's finite stories concluded in 2004, Strangers in Paradise in 2007, all of them outlasting the self-publishing boom. Hepcats never concluded and ceased publishing with the second book of the first graphic novel, Snowblind, unpublished. Yet, even with only volume 1 of Snowblind (issues 2-10) having seen print, it's is still regarded as one of the greatest indy graphic novels of all time.

Hepcats began as a comic strip for The University of Texas' student newspaper. The characters all have cartoon animal heads, but regard one another and function as humans. The anthropomorphism is an aesthetic choice, a throwback from Wagner's earlier strip at the University of Huston, where the mascot was a cougar, and so were all the characters. Seldom (the comic strip) to never (the comic book) are the character's animal features referenced.

The series follows four friends: Arnie, Erica, Joey, and Gunther and their lives in and out of college. The strip grew in popularity and the characters grew in depth- in time the four panel comic strip format yielded less gags and more thought. By the time the comic book began, the charm and drama of the characters and stories were nothing but purely and realistically human. This was the driving force of Hepcats - real people and real problems told realistically. Unlike slice of life memoirs or most comics attuned to average life, Hepcats is told through a crisp cinematic story - too good for television, too complicated for movies.

I'm tempted to discuss the plot, but I don't want to spoil anything. Hepcats issues 0-10 are available for free online! Issues 11 and 12 are promised to be uploaded in the near future, and eventually The Collegiate Hepcats (the first collected Hepcats book, featuring all the strips) may be available. Be on the lookout for issue 11 - it's brutal, one of the most intense single issues of any comic ever. Once, I was loaning the series to a friend of mine and his mom picked that issue off the floor, though she's read a random comic, maybe connect with her son better... yeah, she was traumatized.

After a lag in Wagner's self-publishing, Antarctic Press picked up Hepcats in 1996 for a huge relaunch, including the brand new, full color issue zero. The series ran reprints of the previous issues and was intended to continue with new issues beginning at issue 13 (Snowblind part 2 begins with issues 11 & 12). Issue 12 came and nothing followed. Martin Wagner's withdrawal from the comics industry has been the subject of much drama and gossip but, suffice it to say, times were tough and the job just wasn't paying the bills any more.

Thanks to the internet, this was not the end of Hepcats. The fan community on Martin Wagner's YahooGroup provided encouragement and he's committed to finishing Snowblind for publication online. Currently, he's in the process of completing a minicomic set in 2008, post Snowblind. Though it was never intended for anyone other than the fan community, Image has asked to feature it in their Popgun Anthology.

After 20 years Hepcats hasn't aged. It's still rich with freshness and modernity. The characters are lovable, the story is heartrending, and the art is rendered with an architect's preciseness. It's a comic anyone can connect with, and everyone can fall in love with (just give mom a warning before she reads issue 11).

READ IT: Hepcats issuse 0-10
READ: The Minicomic

Also, you can score a hardcover copy of Snowblind direct from the artist (very limited quantities) here. AND you can also order original Hepcats art as well as other cool Hepcats items from him via the YahooGroup. Support the man and his craft.

BUY: Snowblind
BUY: Hepcats art etc.

- Cap

The Cereal Killings (1992-1995)

James Sturm's The Cereal Killings was a comic book mini series published between 1992 and 1995 by Fantagraphics Books.

I first encountered The Cereal Killings around 2003 in a bizarre and grimy news and book shop called Clark's Out of Town News in Fort Lauderdale. It had existed for many years with its entrance hidden from the road by the rising ramp of the Andrews Avenue draw bridge. Only when it became a part of Las Olas Riverfront, and upgraded its entrance to a dimly lit corridor leading to and from a parking garage, did I notice it. In addition to the newsstand essentials they stocked counterculture erotic art books, homebrew versions of radical texts such as The Anarchist Cookbook, and a porn section of ancient VHS tapes, a boxed male blow up doll at least two decades old, werewolf erotica, and swinger personals magazines. Very little product moved from Clark's once it had been entombed there. It was a strange land of mysteries and I mourn its passing.

The true and tangible gold of Clark's was their comics section. There were all manner of Kitchen Sink, Fantagraphics, and even smaller alternative press comics that had been there since the early nineties. They'd actually sealed some of them in plastic which had accumulated a fine layer of sticky dust. Among these wrapped comics were issues 2, 4, 5, and 6 of The Cereal Killings. I bought an issue out of curiosity and quickly returned for the rest.

In Cereal Killings cartoon mascots are actual people, working day-to-day in the real world. The cereal mascot life is similar to being an actor or sports player - the mighty can fall and the old is replaced with the new. A number of beloved mascots have died recently in seemingly unrelated and understandable ways; regardless the newspapers are making a spectacle of the deaths and calling them cereal killings. As a result of this bad press the industry is in a slump. Carbunkle, once one of the few human mascots, has become a cereal agent. He was the brainchild behind marshmallows and the sugarberry, but he, like may of his cerealebrity friends are becoming washed up. When Dougie the Sugar Duds frog dies from an obesity instigated heart attack, Carbunckle starts being visited by terrifying visions of his dead clients. These visions lead him toward a new approach: a healthy cereal. In the 50s Kelcog once produced a corn cereal whose mascot was a scarecrow. The line didn't last very long and the Scarecrow disappeared - Carbunckle thinks he's the industry's next big thing, but he has to find him first. The visions increase and he's starts to become obsessed.

Sturm's heavily shaded and simplified style gives the anthropomorphic cartoon characters a distinctly eerie look about them. The older mascots are becoming out of place and the 90s are frequently contrasted with the cereal heyday of the 50s through flashbacks. Sturm builds a commentary on how food products have become a part of American entertainment, like deities in some ways, and how cereal advertising manipulates consumers. He did heavy research on the bygone days of the cereal industry and the strange religious origins of the Kelloggs company. All these elements meld into the dark and affecting mystery of The Cereal Killings.

Cereal Killings was Sturm's first book. He's since become quite a presence in the indy comic world, best known for his Eisner Award-Winning books Golem's Mighty Swing and Fantastic Four: Unstable Molecules. In 2004 he co-founded The Center for Cartoon Studies. Cereal Killings ended with issue 8 (which was chapter 9 due to the previous book being a double-issue). Sturm considered collecting a revised Cereal Killings but has since decided against it. At his approval I am able to present you with issue 4, the first issue I read, and a prime example of the dynamic storycraft the series has to offer.


READ IT: The Cereal Killings Chapter 4
BUY IT: Mile High Comics, Mycomicshop.com

- Cap