Last
updated 7 February 2006. The latest version of this document can always be
found at www.enjolrasworld.com. See last page for legal & © information.
Additions?
Corrections? Contact Richard J. Arndt: rarndt39@hotmail.com.
Spider-Baby
Graphix
1. cover: Steve Bissette/back cover: Rolf
Stark (Fall 1988)
1) Introduction [Clive Barker]
3p [text article]
2) Censortivity Pin-Up [Steve
Bissette] 1p
3) S. Clay Wilson Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
4) The Kitty Killer Kids [S.
Clay Wilson] 2p
5) Alan Moore/Bill Wray Profile
[Steve Bissette] 2p [text article]
6) Come On Down [Alan Moore/Bill
Wray] 9p
7) Charles Vess Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
8) Scarecrow [Charles Vess] 5p
9) Tom Sniegoski/Mike Hoffman
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
10) Tooth Decay [Tom
Sniegoski/Mike Hoffman] 10p
11) Charles Burns Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
12) Contagious [Charles Burns]
4p
13) Bernie Mireault Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Cable [Bernie Mireault] 13p
15) Jack Butterworth/Cam Kennedy
Profile [Steve Bissette/various] 2p
[text article, art from
various 1950s horror comics]
16) Eyes Without A Face [Jack
Butterworth/
17) Tim Lucas/Mike Hoffman
Profile [Steve Bissette] 2p [text
article]
18) Throat Sprockets [Tim
Lucas/Mike Hoffman] 12p
19) Eddie Campbell Profile
[Steve Bissette] 2p [text article]
20) The Pyjama Girl [Eddie Campbell]
4p
21) Introduction [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
22) Cottonmouth [Steve Bissette]
5p
23) Chigger And The Man [Keith
Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming/Keith Giffen] 10p
24) Chester Brown Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
25) Dirk The Gerbil [Chester
Brown] 2p reprinted from Escape #7 (?)
26) A Late Night Snack [
27) Pin-Up [Greg Irons] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: Publishers & editors:
Steve Bissette & Nancy O’Connor.
$9.95 for 112 pages, published in trade paperback form. This issue is dedicated to underground artist
Greg Irons. Taboo was an ambitious
attempt to expand past the 1950s EC foundations and rewrite the 1960s/1970s
Warren templates for graphic horror, as well as meld the style & sensibility
of the early underground horror comics with that of the more mainstream writers
and artists of the 1980s. Did it
succeed? Perhaps not completely but
still better than anyone had any right to expect at the time. By 1988, when Taboo premiered, prose horror
was boiling hot. Spurred by the enormous
financial and literacy success of Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker and
others, horror fiction was experiencing one of its biggest {even if
short-lived} booms ever. Yet in the
comic field, where horror had been a strong seller for at least two decades,
times were hard. All of the B&W
horror magazines were gone. None of the
major companies’ mystery books were still in print and the independents’ color
& black and white comics were either gone or going as well. Swamp Thing was still in print but it was in
the process of being neutered by DC.
Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was still a year away from seeing its first issue. Taboo looked much like the last stand and in
some way, perhaps it was. It was certainly
an ambitious and impressive looking magazine.
Printed in trade paperback form and running 100+ pages for each issue,
there was room for a number of different styles and story lengths. Artists and writers certainly made use of
that fact with stories that ranged from 1 pagers to {in future issues} 30 pages
and more in length. The quality of the
stories were generally high too. Rarely
did you see filler. For this first
issue, the stories themselves tended not to be as extreme as what appeared in
later issues but the quality was still quite high. Some of the stories {the Vess effort, for
one} could easily have appeared in other horror or fantasy titles but the
majority here {and almost entire issues, as time went by} could probably only
have only appeared in this magazine. The
proof of that is how very few of these stories have been reprinted, regardless
of their quality. To my certain
knowledge, only the Vess, Burns, Brown & Campbell stories have been
reprinted from this issue, and only in collections of their own works. Best art here would be from Charles Vess on
his solo tale and Mike Hoffman’s superior effort on ‘Throat Sprockets’. The best story is Tim Lucas’ gritty and
disturbing ‘Throat Sprockets’ as well.
Superior work also appeared from Chester Brown, whose ‘A Late Night
Snack’ is particularly good; S. Clay Wilson; Robert Loren Fleming/Keith Giffen;
Charles Burns & Bissette himself.
The Alan Moore/Bill Wray story was originally intended for the Harris
revival of Creepy and was done in 1985. A nice touch by editor Bissette was an
introduction page for nearly every story that profiled the creator, gave a
short essay on the story itself and provided a bibliographic entry on other
work the creator or creators had produced.
A fine way to spotlight the artists and writers, give the fan something
more to look for and an inexpensive way to fill pages with useful information
without resorting to dreary filler material.
An impressive debut, followed by even more impressive issues. Check out the end of the checklist for an
interview with Taboo editor, Steve Bissette.
2. cover: John Totleben/back cover: Charles
Lang (1989)
1) The Droolies [Clive Barker]
1p [frontis]
2) Eddie Campbell Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
3) The Pyjama Girl’s Big Night
Out [Eddie Campbell] 2p
4) Dave Marshall Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
5) Encore [Dave Marshall] 11p
6) Tim Lucas/Simonida Perica-Uth
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
7) Sweet Nothings [Tim
Lucas/Simonida Perica-Uth] 16p
8) James Robert Smith/Mike
Hoffman Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
9) Wet [James Robert Smith/Mike
Hoffman] 8p
10) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
11) Hell’s Toupee [Rick Grimes]
6p
12) Sick Animal Pin-Up [Rick
Grimes] 1p reprinted from Parade of
Gore #1 (1977)
13) Tom Marnick Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Check-Out Time [Tom Marnick]
6p
15) Saying Grace Introduction
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
16) Saying Grace [Steve
Bissette] 4p
17) Mark Askwith/Rick Taylor
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
18) Sharks [Mark Askwith/Richard
G. Taylor] 7p
19) Cara Sherman Tereno Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
20) Life With The Vampire [Cara
Sherman Tereno] 25p
21) S. Clay Wilson Profile [Tom
Veitch] 2p [text article]
22) Black Pages [S. Clay Wilson]
4p [pin-ups]
23) Oh, Baby! Our Love Is Taboo
[Bernie Mireault] 1p
24) Michael Zulli Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
25) Mercy [Michael Zulli] 6p
26) Richard Sala Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
27) Hate Mail [Richard Sala] 5p
28) From Hell Introduction [Alan
Moore] 2p [text article]
29) From Hell: Prologue: The Old
Men On The Shore [Alan Moore/Eddie
30) From Hell, Chapter One: The
Affections Of Young Mr. S [Alan Moore/Eddie
31) Concrete Reads Taboo [Paul
Chadwick] 1p
32) From Hell Pin-Up [Alan
Moore] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $9.95 for 144 pages. This magazine had to exist, if only to
provide a home for ‘From Hell’, certainly the most impressive story/serial that
Taboo would run. And that’s saying
something since Taboo ran an extremely high number of high-quality stories in
its lifetime. ‘From Hell’ gave many
readers {including myself} reason to return to Taboo, even after long delays in
publication might have caused attention to the title to drift. This lack of a timely appearance, coupled
with stories or artwork that were extremely offensive to some and pretty much
disturbing to everybody, probably hurt the magazine more than the format or
cost. For the first installment,
3. cover: Michael Zulli/frontis: Rolf
Stark/back cover: Simonida Perica-Uth (1989)
1) The Maternity Ward [Jack Venooker/Steve Bissette]
½p
2) Santa Sangre Pin-Up [Moebius] 1p
3) Bernie Mireault Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
4) Poker Face [Bernie Mireault] 11p
5) Rick Veitch Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
6) A Touch Of Vinyl [Rick Veitch & Jack
Weiner/Rick Veitch] 10p
7) Phil Elliott/Glenn Dakin Profile [Steve Bissette]
1p [text article]
8) Vulnerable [Glenn Dakin/Phil Elliott] 3p
9) Jim Wheelock Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) One Good Trick [Jim Wheelock] 6p
11) Tim Lucas/Mike Hoffman Profile [Steve Bissette]
1p [text article]
12)
13) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Cactus Water [Rick Grimes] 10p
15) Rolf Stark /Marlene Stevens Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
16) Love In The Afternoon… [Rolf Stark & Marlene
Stevens/Rolf Stark] 15p
17) From Hell, Chapter 2: A State Of
18) From Hell Pin-Up [Alan Moore] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $9.95 for 128 pages. Bissette & O’Connor are actually listed
as co-editors for the first time. Best
story is the new installment of ‘From Hell’.
Best art is Rolf Stark’s work from the haunting ‘Love In The
Afternoon…’. Good work also appeared
from Rick Veitch and Bernie Mireault while Tim Lucas & Mike Hoffman gave us
an excellent follow-up to #1’s ‘Throat Sprockets’. Strong, striking issue.
4. cover: Moebius/frontis: Nancy
O’Connor/back cover: Brian Sendelbach (1990)
1) Dreaming And The Law [Phillip
Hester] 2p
2) Phil Hester/Dave Sim Profiles
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
3) 1963 [Dave Sim] 1p [pin-up]
4) untitled [Charles Burn] 2p
5) Charles Burns/Neil Gaiman
& Michael Zulli Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
6) Babycakes [Neil
Gaiman/Michael Zulli] 4p
7) Matt Brooker aka D’Israeli
Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
8) Cholesterol [D’Israeli] 6p
9) Mark Askwith & Rick
Taylor Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
10) Davey’s Dream [Mark
Askwith/Rick Taylor] 11p
11) Moebius Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article w/photo]
12) Alejandro Jodorowsky Profile
[Steve Bissette/Moebius] 1p [text
article w/photo]
13) Eyes Of The Cat aka Les Yeux
Du Chat [Alejandro Jodorowsky/Moebius] 50p
originally
printed in
14) A History Of Alejandro
Jodorowsky [Steve Bissette/Moebius] 2p
[text article w/photos]
15) The Creators Of Les Yeux Du
Chat Discuss The Story’s Origin, Its Execution, And Their
Thoughts On
Today, Twelve Years Later [Jean-Marc Lofficier, Steve Bissette, Moebius
& Alejandro Jodorowsky]
4p [text article w/photos]
16) El Topo [Alejandro
Jodorowsky/Spain Rodriguez] 4p
originally printed in
17) S. Clay Wilson Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
18) Retinal Worm [S. Clay
Wilson] 5p
19) P. Foerster Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
20) La Fugue {The Escape} [P.
Foerster] 5p
21) Tim Lucas/Steve White
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
22) Blue Angel [Tim Lucas/Steve
White] 5p
23) Charles Vess Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
24) Morrigan Tales [Elaine
Lee/Charles Vess] 18p
25) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
26) These Things Happen [Rick
Grimes] 5p
27) L. Roy Aiken/Mike Hoffman
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
28) Neither Seen Nor Heard [L.
Roy Aiken/Mike Hoffman] 11p
29) From Hell, Chapter Three:
Blackmail or Mrs. Barrett [Alan Moore/Eddie
30) From Hell Pin-Up [Alan
Moore] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $14.95 for 168 pages. Tundra Publishing is credited with
co-production. All of the Moebius pages
were printed on yellow paper. Charles
Vess’ ‘Morrigan Tales’ is a redrawn, rewritten and greatly expanded version of
the story originally published in Sabre #1 (Aug. 1982). The best artwork here is easily from the
French master Moebius. Steve White,
Charles Vess, Mike Hoffman & Michael Zulli also provided high quality
work. Best story is Alan Moore’s latest
chapter of ‘From Hell’, with Tim Lucas, Elaine Lee, Neil Gaiman, Phil Hester
and Alejandro Jodorowsky also delivering excellent stories. I find myself really disliking the work of
Rick Grimes and P. Foerster. Their
stories & art seemed like arid dead zones that blunted the appeal of the
stories that book ended them.
5. cover: Jeff Jones/frontis: Melinda
Gebbe/back cover: Michael Zulli (1991)
1) Seeing Is Not Believing
[Douglas E. Winter] 3p [text article]
2) Introduction [James Ellroy]
1p [text article]
3) 39th And Norton
[Tom Foxmarnick/Dennis Ellefson] 11p
4) Pin-Up [Jeff Nicholson] 1p
5) Jeff Nicholson Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
6) Through The Habitrails: It’s
Not Your Juice [Jeff Nicholson] 1p
7) Through The Habitrails:
Increasing the Gerbils [Jeff Nicholson] 4p
8) Through The Habitrails: Jar
Head [Jeff Nicholson] 8p
9) Lost Girls Introduction
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) Lost Girls [Alan
Moore/Melinda Gebbe] 8p [color]
11) Jeff Jones Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
12) Better Things To Do [Jeff
Jones] 2p [text story]
13) Matt Howarth Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text story]
14) Baby’s On Fire [Matt
Howarth] 6p
15) Rick Grimes Profile/Michael
H. Price-Adrian Martinez Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
16) Akimbo [Rick Grimes] 6p
17) Verse From A Viscera Vase II
[Michael H. Price/Adrian Martinez] 1p
[poem]
18) Michael Zulli/Ramsey
Campbell Profile [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
19) Again [Michael Zulli]
27p from the story by Ramsey Campbell
20) S. Clay Wilson Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
21) This Is Dynamite [S. Clay
Wilson] 2p
22) From Hell Introduction [Alan
Moore] 1p [text article]
23) From Hell, Chapter Four:
“What Doth The Lord Require Of Thee?” [Alan Moore/Eddie
24) Dawn At The Crematorium #28
[Rolf Stark] 1p [color painting, on inside
back cover]
Notes: Steve Bissette now listed as
sole editor. $14.95 for 130 pages. The frontispiece depicts the ‘Lost
Girls’. The focus this issue was on erotic
horror stories and the reader wasn’t spared much in the way of twisted, kinky
and often disgusting horror fare. This
also was a particularly strong issue in terms of story, with even the most
disturbing tales being disturbing more for the quality of the story itself and
not for the shocks contained within. S.
Clay Wilson’s little two pager was nearly as controversial as his earlier
pin-ups from #2. Alan Moore &
Melinda Gebbie uncovered the first chapter of their strikingly beautiful sex
novel, ‘Lost Girls’, which depicted the grown-up escapades of literary
characters Dorothy Gale {The Wizard Of Oz}, Wendy Darling {Peter Pan} and Alice
Lindell {Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland & Through The Looking-Glass},
years before The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen appeared. Although Jeff Nicolson is probably an
acquired taste, the first chapters of his serial ‘Through The Habitrails’ were
quirky and interesting, a trait that lasted throughout the serial. Matt Howarth delivered a fine short story as
did the team of Tom Foxmarnick and Dennis Ellefson. Another lengthy and
well-done chapter of ‘From Hell’ appeared.
However, the best story and art belong to Michael Zulli’s superb
adaptation of Ramsey Campbell’s damn creepy short story ‘Again’. Don’t read this one just before dropping off
to sleep. I’d like to make special note
of Rolf Stark’s back cover painting and his work in general. Stark’s interests may have focused solely on
the Holocaust but his work was powerful and, while extremely grim and
disturbing, beautiful in its intentions.
1. cover & back cover: J. K. Potter/frontis:
Moebius (1991)
1) “I’ll Have A Zombie.” A Pit
Stop At Bissette’s Bar [Philip Nutman/Howard Cruse] 2p [text
article]
2) Let’s Go Shopping Pin-Up
[Mark Martin] 1½p
3) Mark Martin/Eddie Campbell
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
4) Horror Story [Eddie Campbell]
1p
5) Glenn L. Barr Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article w/photo]
6) Cliff’s Wild Life [Glenn L.
Barr] 23p
7) Rick Grime Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
8) Glycerous Aquarium Footstool
[Rick Grimes] 3p
9) Wendy Snow-Lang Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) Want [Wendy Snow-Lang] 14p
11) Through The Habitrails
Introduction [Steve Bissette & Jeff Nicholson] 1p [text article]
12) Through The Habitrails: The
Doomed One [Jeff Nicholson] 8p
13) Rick McCollum Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
14) Fin de Salome [Rick
McCollum] 14p
15) Mark Bode Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
16) I Have A Dream [Mark Bode]
12p
17) Scott McCloud Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
18) A Day’s Work [Scott McCloud]
25p
19) Dick Foreman Profiles [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
20) Suburban Autopsies… [Dick
Foreman/Pete Williamson] 6p
21) Noel Tuazon Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
22) Obese Obsessor [Noel Tuazon]
8p
23) Jussi Tuomola Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
24) Neon Spring [Jussi Tuomola]
22p
25) Pin-Up [S. Clay Wilson] 1p
26) ‘Want’ cover [Wendy
Snow-Lang] 1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: While this was technically a
special and not a regular issue of Taboo, I’m including in the regular
numbering just ‘cause I want to. $14.95
for 152 pages. This issue was dedicated
to the then recently deceased actor Klaus Kinski while the frontispiece depicts
Kinski as Jack The Ripper. This issue
came with an insert ad featuring art by Steve Bissette & Michael Zulli from
which you could order Taboo #4-6 & the Taboo Especial from Tundra
Publishing. Scott McCloud’s work was the
first published result of the artists’ contest to write, draw & complete a
24 page comic in 24 hours. Best art here
is Wendy Snow-Lang’s elegant effort yet, while the stories are generally good,
there isn’t any I’d pick out as a superior effort. I also like Rick McCollum’s artwork. This is one of the milder issues of Taboo
{which means it’s still probably grosser than almost any other horror comic
ever published}. ‘Neon Spring’ is
printed sideways.
6. cover: Cru Zen/frontis: Mark A.
Nelson/titlepage: Steve Bissette/back cover: Mark Martin (1991)
1) Blood Monster [Neil Gaiman/Nancy O’Connor] 4p
2) Through The Habitrails Introduction [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
3) Through The Habitrails: Escape #1: “El Muerte”
[Jeff Nicholson] 8p
4) Through The Habitrails: Futile Love [Jeff
Nicholson] 11p
5) Charles Burns Profile [Steve Bissette] 2p [text article]
6) The Cat Woman Returns [Charles Burns] 20p
7) Lost Girls Introduction/Alan Moore & Melinda
Gebbe Profiles [Steve Bissette] 2p
8) Lost Girls, Chapters 2 &3 [Alan Moore/Melinda
Gebbe] 16p [color]
9) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve Bissette/Rick Grimes]
1p [text article]
10) Dolly & Withtina [Rick Grimes] 6p
11) From Hell Prologue/The Nemesis of Neglect Ad
[various] 1p [text article]
12) From Hell, Chapter Five: The Nemesis Of Neglect
[Alan Moore/Eddie
13) Holly Gaiman/Michael Zulli Profile [Michael
Zulli & Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
14) Holly’s Story [Holly Gaiman/Michael Zulli] 6p
15) Pin-Ups [S. Clay Wilson] 2p [2nd pin-up on inside back cover]
Notes: $14.95 for 122 pages. Charles Burns’ disturbing ‘The Cat Woman
Returns’ is a fumetti strip and was done in 1979. Holly Gaiman, Neil Gaiman’s daughter, was 5
years old when she wrote ‘Holly’s Story’.
The latest chapter of ‘From Hell’ is the best story, although ‘Blood
Monster’, ‘Lost Girls’ and ‘The Cat Woman Returns’ are also very good. Best art is Melinda Gebbe’s beautiful, lush
color work on ‘Lost Girls’ with good work also appearing from Michael Zulli,
Nancy O’Connor and Eddie Campbell. A
Sweeney Todd sampler pamphlet was included with this issue. This 16 page pamphlet provided an historical
and artistic overview of the legend of Sweeney Todd, the infamous “Demon Barber
Of Fleet Street” and was written by Neil Gaiman & illustrated by Michael
Zulli. As with the Taboo Especial, an
insert card/ad with artwork by Steve Bissette & Michael Zulli was also
included. The Bissette art is repeated
from the previous insert card but Zulli’s is a partial reprint of the Sweeney
Todd pamphlet’s cover. A special offer
for pre-ordering Taboo 7 was the intended inclusion of SpiderBaby Comix #0
which was to feature Steve Bissette’s entry into the 24 pages in 24 hours
contest, to be entitled ‘A Life In Black & White’. As it turned out, that Bissette tale was
included in the issue itself. {see the
Bissette interview for more details}
7. cover: Joe Coleman/frontis &
titlepage: Paul Komoda/back cover: Brian Sendelbach (1992)
1) Phil Elliott & Paul Grist
Profiles [Steve Bissette] ½p [text
article]
2) Monsters [Phil Elliott &
Paul Grist] 2p
3) Kenneth Smith Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
4) Odradek [Kenneth Smith]
5p from the story by Franz Kafka
5) From Hell Prologue [various]
1p [text article]
6) From Hell, Chapter Six:
September [Alan Moore/Eddie
7) Joe Coleman Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
8) A Good Christian [Joe
Coleman] 4p
9) P. Foerster Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
10) The Music-Loving Spider aka
L’Araignee Melomane [P. Foerster] 7p
[translated by R & J.
M. Lofficier]
11) Jeff Nicholson Profile
[Steve Bissette] 1p [text article]
12) Through The Habitrails: Be
Creative [Jeff Nicholson] 7p
13) Through The Habitrails:
Escape #2: The Dry Creek Bed [Jeff Nicholson] 6p
14) Lost Girls Introduction [Steve
Bissette] 3p [text article]
15) Lost Girls, Chapters 4 &
5 [Alan Moore/Melinda Gebbie] 16p
[color]
16) Rick Grimes Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
17) Breathing Is For Sissies
[Rick Grimes] 2p
18) Jack Butterworth/Eric
Vincent Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p
[text article]
19) Bad Things [Jack
Butterworth/Eric Vincent] 13p
20) Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli
Profiles [Steve Bissette] 1p [text
article]
21) Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber Of Fleet Street: Prologue [Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli]
26p [story never concluded]
22) Aidan Potts Profile [Steve
Bissette] 1p [text article]
23) After Life [Aidan Potts] 3p
24) SpiderBaby Comix No. O: A
Life In Black And White [Steve Bissette] 26p
25) Those Wacky Cartoonists
[Steve Bissette/Matt Howarth, Jeff Nicholson, Mark Martin, Jim
Woodring & Kenneth
Smith] 1p [ad for various independent
comics & mini-comics]
26) Pin-Up [Tony Salmons]
1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: $14.95 for 158 pages. This was the last issue of Taboo in its
original format. Between this issue and
the next, years would pass and the biggest selling points of Taboo, the serials
by Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell & Neil Gaiman/Michael Zulli, would either move
on to their own series or simply go uncompleted. Only early orders had the Bissette
‘SpiderBaby Comix No. O’ included in the issue.
The ‘Sweeny Todd’ prologue is gorgeous in both story and art but the
story proper never actually appeared.
8. cover: Charles J. Lang/frontis:
Moebius/back cover: Michael Zulli (1995)
1) Introduction [Steve Bissette] 3p [text article]
2) All She Does Is Eat! [Jack
Butterworth/Greg Capullo] 10p
3) Satan And The Savior [David
Sexton/David Sexton & P. Craig Russell] 15p
4) President ‘Doosh’ Quimby
[Rick Grimes] 6p
5) The Disaster Area [Tim
Lucas/David Lloyd] 12p
6) Revenge [Matt Howarth] 30p
7) Johnny 23 [Al Columbia] 4p
8) Through The Habitrails: Cat
Lover [Jeff Nicholson] 29p
9) Twilight [Wladyslaw
Reymont/Alec Stevens] 6p
10) Bid Return [Jeff Jones]
1p [on inside back cover]
Notes: Now published by Kitchen
Sink Press. $14.95 for 128 pages. These stories were left over after Taboo
ceased “regular” publication in 1992.
{see the Bissette interview for more details}. ‘Through The Habitrails’ finally concluded
its run. The best story here is ‘Satan
And The Savior’ while the best artwork belongs to David Lloyd. However I also liked the work by Nicholson,
Butterworth/Capullo, Tim Lucas, & Al Columbia. Some high quality material appears here.
9. cover & back cover: Alan M.
Clarke/frontis: Paul Komada/inside back cover: Kenneth Smith (1995)
1) Introduction [Dave Sim]
1p [text article]
2) Taboo: A Chronology [various]
2p
3) The Vampire [Alec Stevens]
6p from the story by Jan Neruda
4) ‘Gator Bait: The Crimes Of
Joe D. Ball [Michael H. Price/Lamberto Alvarez] 12p
5) Dr. Miro’s Masterpieces [Jeff
Dickinson] 6p
6) …In The Garden [Stephen Blue]
4p
7) The
8) Grue Love [Rick Grimes] 3p
9) The New Ecology Of Death
[James Roberts Smith/Mike Hoffman] 10p
10) One Day In Hell, God Spoke
[Tony Salmons] 4p
11) After Life [Dave
Thorpe/Aidan Potts] 25p
12) The
13) Hunting And Gathering
[Phillip Hester] 5p
14) The Joys Of Childhood
[Angela Bocage] 4p
15) Circumcision [Phillip
Hester] 8p
16) Taboo Is Taboo [Steve
Bissette] 6p [text article] reprinted from Gauntlet (1990)
17) From Hell [Alan Moore]
1p [text article] reprinted from a 1989 Fantaco Enterprises
catalog
Steve Bissette entered the
comic field in 1976. He’s appeared in
Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, Bizarre Adventures, Scholastic Magazines’ Weird
Worlds and Bananas {illustrating stories written by R. L. Stine}, collaborated
with Rick Veitch on the adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s motion picture 1941
and is probably best known for his award-winning work with Alan Moore &
John Totleben on DC Comics’ ‘Saga Of The Swamp Thing’ from 1983-1987, where he
co-created the character of John Constantine.
From 1988-1995, he
co-founded, edited, published & co-published the controversial horror
B&W magazine Taboo. In the early
1990s he self-published his own comic Tyrant, a rigorously-researched portrait
of the birth and life of a Tyrannosaurus Rex in the late Cretaceous period of
Following the 1999
publication of a final “Swamp Thing” story, authored by Neil Gaiman &
co-illustrated by John Totleben, Bissette retired from the comic field and
pursued his writing and work in the video industry. His interviews, film criticism and articles
have appeared in Rutherford, Gadfly, Comics Interview, The Video Watchdog, Film
Threat, Animation Planet, Fangoria, GoreZone, Deep Red, Gauntlet, Ecco, Animato,
Vmag, and others as well as in special edition DVD sets. His video review column “Video Views” has
been published monthly in Vmag (1998-present) and weekly (Aug. 1999-Oct. 2001)
in various
His short stories have
appeared in Words Without Pictures (1990), Hellboy: Odd Jobs (1999), Working
For The Man (2002), Sex Crimes (2003) and elsewhere. His original novella ‘Aliens: Tribes’ won the
Bram Stoker Award for best horror novella in 1992. He continues to work as an illustrator within
the book field, illustrating special edition novels, novellas and short stories.
He has recently joined the
faculty of the Center for Comics Studies in White River Junction, VT {opening
in the fall of 2005}. He is currently
editing, packing, and writing for Green Mountain Cinema, a periodical dedicated
to the study of Vermont films and filmmakers, and writing ‘Moving Mountains’, a
book-length study of Vermont films.
Mr. Bissette lives with his
wife Marjory and son Daniel in southern
You can locate more
information at his personal website www.comiccon.com/bissette;
his Special Collection at
RA:
Let’s talk about Taboo. Where did the
idea for Taboo come from?
SB: The idea for Taboo came from for the latter days of
doing ‘Saga Of The Swamp Thing’. John
Totleben and I were frustrated over the fact that a boom period for horror was
occurring, but comics seemed uninvolved in this renaissance. From the end of the ‘70s and into the ‘80s as
we were doing Swamp Thing, there were amazing horror novels coming out. Clive Barker surfaced in
And in films,
there was an evolution in the genre, with some amazing work from directors like
John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, George Romero--but it wasn’t happening in
comics! The direct sale market had
reinvented the comics market and here’s Bruce Jones, over at Pacific
originally, then later Eclipse, doing his horror comic anthology Twisted
Tales--but it was all neutered. Anything
goes in the direct market but when Bruce Jones was doing Twisted Tales, it was
entirely imitative of EC’s style. I love
the EC comics but what worked in 1953, 1954 was pretty old hat by 1984.
RA: Yeah, I liked the books but one of the frustrations
in reading them was “Man! Do something
with the endings!” Those EC style twist
endings…
SB: Yeah, he was working with some of the best artists in
the field—Mike Ploog, Berni Wrightson, Richard Corben. Bruce Jones’ work in the
RA: Don’t forget his work with Russ Heath. That was pretty spectacular.
SB: Oh, yeah! And why did those stories work? Because Bruce Jones was writing…love stories. They’re all love stories, twisted love stories, and he was using the horror genre to push these powerful emotional wellsprings to their furthest extremes. They are among the most beautiful stories in the medium! They break your heart because of what would happen to the characters; Jones was getting himself [and the reader] invested in what they were doing. And then when he had his head with Twisted Tales, when he was able to run with it as editor and writer, he just fell back into that old, tired mold of what the EC comics had set out as the template. I love those EC comics but, again, what worked in the early 1950s was weak tea three decades later.
RA: And it’s noticeable that those stories that did work
in Twisted Tales and its companion SF anthology Alien Worlds were those stories
that didn’t go the EC route.
SB: Well, the best story he ran in Twisted Tales was the one that Libertore illustrated {‘Shut-In’ from Twisted Tales #7 (Mar. 1984)} in which an old paralyzed man, a baby-sitter and an overgrown boy are involved in a weird sadomasochistic trip which is all taking place internally, it’s just the old guy’s fantasy.
RA: Oh, that was a good
story. Just brilliant!
SB: Single most perverse story he ever ran in Twisted Tales and it worked!
RA: Yeah, it really was on the edge. Great story, though.
SB: And the fact that it was Libertore, the guy who did Ranxerox [in Frigidaire, translated and censored for US publication in Heavy Metal], took it completely out of the EC mold that was dominating Twisted Tales. When Pacific went under and Eclipse Comics picked it up, I knew from hard experience that it was going to be all downhill from there. Cat Yronwode, whom I worked with a couple of times…Cat HATED horror comics. She loathed the genre. She abhorred horror comics. She thought they were a baaad thing.
RA: Well, that’s
bizarre. She edited or was involved in
some capacity in at least three different horror anthologies while she was at
Eclipse and the Moore/Totleben series of Miracleman issues contained a heavy
dose of horror.
SB: I know. That
was one of the perversions of Eclipse at that time. I was never friends with Cat or Dean {Mullaney—Publisher
of Eclipse}, I mean, I liked them. I
always got along well with them but I
really butted heads with them and ended up on their shit list at the end,
primarily over missing a deadline on Tim Truman’s Scout. Cat wrote me a letter that would make you
think that I had arranged a gangbanging of a child. It was that extreme. I still have the letter in my files somewhere
[now in the Stephen Bissette collection at
Let me go back in time a bit—when Clifford Neal’s Dr. Wirthem’s Comix & Stories came out with my story ‘Cell Food’ in it, Cat was writing her regular column ‘Fit To Print’ for The Comic Buyer’s Guide. Cat reviewed that issue and ‘Cell Food’ and that column was written around [the idea] that she was tearing the book up and feeding the pages to her fireplace. It amounted to a review in which she said, and I’m paraphrasing from memory, “What kind of people can do things like this?” It was a judgment of our humanity, or lack of it, that we chose to work in the horror genre--and that we were not fit to be in her household, either personally or through our work. So I knew that Cat had an axe to grind with the genre as a whole. Fine! That’s her business.
But once Eclipse saw that there was money to be made, they changed their tune. I always had a problem with that because Eclipse very aggressively went after Steve Niles. Steve was doing the Arcane Publishing venture and they basically took from his control the rights to all the Clive Barker material.
RA: Oh, right, Eclipse
did ‘Tapping The Vein’, adapting Barker’s short stories into comics.
SB: Yeah, Marvel did the Hellraiser stuff, while Eclipse’s
‘Tapping The Vein’ adapted stories from The Books Of Blood. I remember a conversation with Dean Mullaney
at that time. Dean contacted me right
after their ‘acquisition’ or ‘absorption’ or Archane, and I knew Steve
Niles. He was a friend of mine. Steve was a very young guy at that time, 19
or 20 years old. Arcane Publishing went
under because he hired a business management team from the
Well, what happened was that Steve had the rights for a year to two years…it was a finite window that he had with Clive’s material. During that period of time, he ended up working with Eclipse. Eclipse kind of promised him an umbrella arrangement but what they did was basically push Steve out of the position of power and “acquired” the Barker material. Steve went along with it and I’m sure he put the best face on it that he could. But what ended up happening was that I got a call out of the blue one night from Dean Mullaney, asking me if I was interested in doing one of the Barker stories for them. Now I was doing Taboo at that time and I said “Dean, I know what you guys have done up there with Steve and Arcane. I mean, I’m familiar with what your publishing history, I’ve worked with you, I know what you’ve done and that you really have no affection for horror.” But for the sake of conversation, we danced around possibilities. Dean specifically asked me what Book Of Blood story I was interested in and I cited ‘Jacqueline S’. It’s the one about a prostitute and her lover, a good man who truly loves her. She has the ability to change her body on a cellular level , making her the most desirable of prostitutes--she can bring the greatest pleasure to her clients. Dean said that’s great, that they had the rights to that story. I told him “Dean, you would not publish what I would do with that story.” He said, “What do you mean?” I read him one of the concluding paragraphs of the story in which Jacqueline literally folds her body from the vagina, inside-out, to envelope her dead lover so that they will become one being: the ultimate consummation. This is her way of being one with him after he’s been needlessly killed under tragic circumstances. I said “Dean, I would draw that.” {laughter} He said “Well, couldn’t you just excerpt some of the text, have these blacked out shapes in the corner of the room?” I said, “Dean, why are you adapting Clive Barker material if you’re fundamentally afraid of the material?” The whole power of Barker, in the mid 1980s, was that he was pushing the envelope further than anyone else. He wasn’t doing it just for gore’s sake, like Shawn Hudson would. He was writing stories that had strong emotional contexts and substance. The horror element brought that emotional context to a threshold in a forthright manner that hadn’t been indulged before. He was making explicit what would traditionally remain implicit, thus reorienting completely what was possible in the genre--and he was doing it in a way that was just brilliant. All [Dean] saw was that Clive was a name, box office, MONEY. The Hellraiser movie was making money at the box office and they wanted a piece of the action. And they were chickenshit. They didn’t want to do the stories justice.
I remember a couple of years later, P. Craig Russell telling me his experience with one of the adaptations he did that Eclipse refused to publish. He showed me just a couple of pages, photocopies, and it was brilliant, just brilliant what he had done! They didn’t get that either. They were just afraid of the material. That was, of course, the point, [that the material should be frightening].
RA: That’s odd, since
Russell has the ability to make the most heinous things look ok in the context
of the story that he’s doing, simply because his art is so beautiful.
SB: It was a story about a man who lives in fast motion. He realizes he can consummate his sexual desires with anyone he wants to before they even realize what’s happened to them. It had a very aggressive gay component, as many of Clive’s best stories did, and [Craig] really brought that to the fore. He did a brilliant graphic adaptation of the story; based on just the few, two or three pages, that I saw photocopies of, it was a classic, really potent and ravishing work. And it scared Eclipse.
Don’t forget, I wrote the lead story for Eclipse’s first
issue of Tales Of Terror {which replace Bruce Jones’ Twisted Tales}. I had done a couple of pieces for
Eclipse. The one I’m fondest of is
‘Remembering Renee’, which David Lloyd illustrated. I remember Cat calling me one night, saying
they loved ‘Remembering Renee’. It was a
love story, a reflection of my own state of mind at that time as my first
marriage was dissolving. I took a card
from Bruce Jones’
RA: But that’s the best
kind of horror story! The kind that
gives you the creeps hours, days, years after you’ve read them. Not the gore stories but the ones that
unsettle you in ways that may take you years to figure out exactly why.
SB: Well, of course. Anyway, that’s my roundabout way of telling you where Taboo came from. Out of all that frustration. Because of Swamp Thing, every publisher was hitting up John Totleben and I to do horror stories for them. We were in demand. We had won awards for four years in a row for Swamp Thing and every publisher out there was making calls and overtures to us. Yet they’d send us wretched scripts, or whenever we’d hit them with something we wanted to do, if it scared them or freaked them out, they’d say “no, you’re going too far”. Well, we’d go, “what’s the fucking point?” Is there going to be a second act after Swamp Thing? That’s were Taboo came from.
Then Dave Sim approached John and I at one of the Mid-Ohio
Conventions--we always went to the Mid-Ohio cons every November--and offered us
carte blanche to finance and publish anything we wanted to do, a budget and
publishing venue for our own pet project.
That was during Dave’s experiment with Aardvark-One International. Steve Murphy and Michael Zulli’s Puma Blues
came out of that period, as did Taboo.
John and I said we wanted to do Taboo, although we didn’t have a name at
that point. We were calling it “The
October Project” for a time. My friend
Mark Askwith, who lived in
Taboo was going to provide a venue for everything that no one else in comics would touch. We had a manifesto, the Taboo Manifesto, which stated our intent, and specified that we wanted only the material “that disturbs you. If what you come up with doesn’t disturb or frighten or scare you in any way we not even interested in looking at it. We want the deepest, darkest stuff we can come up with. We want you to—to paraphrase David Cronenberg—‘to speak the unspeakable and show the unshowable’.” We wanted it to be able to go off the deep end by its very nature—an anthology in which anything goes. We really wanted to put between two covers, issue by issue, the cutting edge genre material. We wanted to smash the EC formula, that codified template.
RA: Geez. That’s almost exactly what I wrote down in my
notes for #1! The template stuff that
primarily EC--and to some extent--
SB: Well, it was said and done with great love and respect. We loved what EC had done, because they had done the same thing we were setting out to do when they started out. They had broken every template that existed before them, and we knew that had to be done for the 1990s. We had to see in comics the same disruption and eruption that was revitalizing horror novels, horror short stories, horror film, the genre’s permutations in music, in every other media. We were seeing this renaissance, this revolution, but we weren’t seeing it in comics. Taboo was going to be the venue for that.
RA: What happened to Dave
Sim in publishing the book? He seemed to
have vanished before the first issue had even come out.
SB: Well, Dave pulled out before #1 of Taboo and that is an amazing story. In the parameters of the comics industry, Dave was more generous to me in comics than anyone else has been since Joe Kubert. Joe Kubert was my first mentor, and Dave Sim was my second. When I came out of my years of working with DC on Swamp Thing, I was just destroyed. I mean, I had no sense of ethics left. I had been so reamed on a personal and business level by DC that I literally didn’t know up from down, left from right, for a number of months. It was such a disorienting and demeaning and degrading experience at the end that I ceased to enjoy drawing. It just disgusted me.
Dave really opened my eyes and the eyes of many of my
friends as to what was possible. That we
could make a living as cartoonists, but that we did not necessarily have to
prostitute ourselves to the highest bidder.
That it was possible to carve out your own body of work, to own it and
build and maintain a real autonomy. Dave
is the first person ever {at a Mid-Ohio Con} to say to John and I, “Dude, you
guys deserve to ride in a limousine.” {laughs} And silly as that sounds now,
we’d never had that. Every time we got
called into
Dave said “This isn’t right. You guys are winning awards for the company. You’ve turned this character around from nothing to one of their key titles and you’re not reaping any of the benefits.”
Now, it’s not just about the material levels. That’s not all it was about. He was really trying to impress on us that we could strike out on our own path, creatively. We could go our own way and have a real chance of making it work. And at that time, in the direct sales market, it was absolutely true. Dave was incredibly disappointed when he made the offer to us and we came back with this “We want to do an anthology title”. Dave was hoping we would do our own work. In the best of all worlds, I would have done ‘Tyrant’ at that time. But I wasn’t mature enough. I wasn’t thinking of it at that time.
But Dave supported Taboo every step of the way. He was a very generous benefactor. He bankrolled the entire first issue and much of the second. We had the full support of Aardvark Vanaheim and Aardvark-One International’s offices and contacts with printing houses. Karen McKiel was the secretary and bookkeeper up there at the time, and between her and Gerhard I really was taught the ropes of how the comics business works. Karen was instrumental in much of this learning curve, by the way, in terms of the nuts-and-bolts organizing of bookkeeping, etc. By the time I was done with that crash course and my first wife Nancy {who soon after this changed her name to Marlene} and I got out Taboo #1 & #2, I had gotten a fully rounded education in comics. I had worked every side of the bench. There were no more mysteries for me after that. No publisher could pull the wool over my eyes after that. Because I know how it works. There’s no magic to the business of comics. It’s just a business.
What happened to Dave is—everybody forgets this now—Dave reinvented the graphic novel. He is the great hero of the graphic novel form. Prior to the first Cerebus ‘phonebook’ edition—the expansive 500 page format--the largest graphic publication that any distributor would handle was a square bound book, that was about 100 pages, maybe a little more than that. This was before ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, mind you.
[Addendum: I recently found and filed the 1986 paperwork
relevant to this period for my collection of papers at Henderson State
University; there is no date on the document itself, but it was included with
material from Aardvark-One International and Aardvark-Vanaheim, Inc. dated late
1986. It’s interesting to note in a
comparative cost breakdown Dave had Karen McKeil send my first wife Nancy and I
at the time, Swords Of Cerebus, Vol. 5 from 1983 was 104 pages and cost $1.51
per unit for a print run of 10,000; CHURCH AND STATE, Vol. 1 was 592 pages, at
a cost span of $3.41 per unit {for 3000 copies} to $2.32 each {for 12,000
copies}. If anyone is interested, this
document is now in the Stephen Bissette Special Collection files,
RA: Usually it was considerably less, about 64 pages on
average. Basically an expensive annual.
SB: You got it, man. Everybody forgets, but I remember the chronology very clearly. Dave broke the glass ceiling and the first major book to come out after he did that was ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, collecting all four volumes of the series into one book. Dave’s the one who not only went out on the point but he fought all the battles with the distributors that broke that glass ceiling. And because he was a self publisher, those battles were ugly, very personalized, as I recall. The way it blew up in Dave’s face, it brought down Aardvark-One International, the spin-off of his own self publishing venture.
Diamond was pissed at Dave for putting out the first Cerebus ‘phonebook’. It wasn’t just Diamond, it was all the distributors, ‘cause there were a lot of them at the time, and most of the retailers. As I remember it, Dave had proposed the format to distribution, and they refused to carry the book—they decided “no, this is too expensive.”. Dave said, “Look, I’m putting out the first Cerebus collection. It’s going to run 500 pages and that’s how I’m going to collect the series.” And Dave was looking far enough ahead, fifteen years down the road, that he knew that when he got to Cerebus #300, that 64 page collections weren’t going to work to present Cerebus as the novel or series of novels that it was. He had to go with this more expensive format. He also said “Look, those little graphic novels you’re putting out from Marvel. Those aren’t novels.” They were short stories, a minor inflation of the ‘Giant Annual’ format. The density of content, a richness and depth of material, is what distinguishes a novel from a short story. A novel needs a larger canvas to exist on or it wasn’t going to breathe. We weren’t going to see the graphic novel realize its potential [in the format that existed for it at that time]. So step one--Dave announces he’s going to do the first 500 pages of a Cerebus collection. Step two—everyone ridicules him. Step three—the business people involved, the distributors and most of the retailers, say we don’t want it. You can’t do it. Step four—Dave, being a self publisher, with a printer, who owns all his own material, and has a subscription list and via Cerebus monthly a means of advertising directly to his readers, says you can’t tell me what I can or can’t do. If you don’t want it, I will advertise it in Cerebus and I will sell it directly to the individual buyer and it will cost $25.00. The first ad came out in Cerebus saying the first collection will be $25.00 postpaid and can be paid to this 800 number. He sat up a corporate number and account at Aaadvark Vanaheim for this new venture. It was an incredible windfall of income, too, sans the discounts to the middle-men who’d opted out. It was also the first 500 page format graphic novel. It had real weight, heft, an expansive read. Amazing.
The backlash against Dave was unbelievable. I was up in Kitchner at that time, visiting Dave. I used to go up there every year and spend a couple of days to a week with Dave and Gerhard. And if you were visiting Dave and Gerhard, you were drawing the same time as they were drawing. I’d bring up my work with me. And I remember Dave and I went out for dinner one night, and then went over to the local comic retailer in Kitchner, a very sweet guy who had been Dave’s first supporter. While we were there, a young couple, a man and a woman, were there dropping off books from a distributor. An idle backhand verbal swipe from one of them provoked Dave, and he responded in kind. It got ugly, fast. They got into such a violent argument with Dave that they were cursing him from a block away. At the top of their lungs. {chuckles} It was amazing to me. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. The anger that was suddenly being directed at Dave Sim, purely over a business decision he had made—it was as if he had betrayed everyone in the business. Mind you, this was well before the whole “Reads” gender issue backlash. This was all over Dave doing his own thing, his own way.
Dave was having a hard time coping with all this. He was not going to sway from his decision. Dave is nothing if not an absolutist. He makes a decision. He decides which way he’s going and then he’s going that way and nothing is going to stop him. But it was getting really painful for him, personally. I remember Dave calling me up drunk in the middle of the night. He was still a drinker at that time. At two or three in the morning and just ramble and rant, though it was all focused—all on the key issue of distribution. He just had to vent and I was one of the people he trusted enough to call. I remember him saying “Steve, repeat after me! A distributor is just a functionary.” {laughs} I didn’t really understand what he was talking about at this time. I hadn’t learned the ropes yet. In due time, I learned.
Well, Dave put out that first Cerebus book and the sales were tremendous. He sold out the first print run very qui