Hey Kids! Upcoming Comic Books …And Other Awkward Truths
Skip to comments
Paul Noth Collected
Paul Noth, newly crowned Cartoonist Laureate of Wisconsin, has collection of his cartoons coming out in October and we now have the cover of I Am Going to Eat You and the opportunity to pre-order it.
The Complete Zap Comix
A month earlier, in September 2026, comes The Complete Zap Comix Box Set, a new softcover edition of The Complete Zap. Steven Heller at Print gives an advance review of the Zap Comix series.
Zap was a co-mix of artists with collective contempt for imposed mores. Yet each individual had personal fetishes and obsessions. Zap’s earliest contributors included (the creator) R. Crumb, whose ribald and racy repertory starred Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, Angelfood McSpade, Dirty Dog and Schuman the Human; Victor Moscoso and Rick Griffin, the masters of pulsating psychedelic rock concert posters; and S. Clay Wilson, known for living out his perverse fantasies through darkly fantastical comic sceneria. These were the real comics superheroes.
I recall Zap #1 like I remember my first view of The Beatles and first listen to Bob Dylan…
Before Zap #1 Rick Griffin had done a concert poster that inspired Robert Crumb.
Moscoso recalls. “Crumb asked us to join [Zap Comix], because he admired Griffin’s cartoon poster. In fact, Crumb did a comic strip in Zap #1 which was a direct bounce off that poster.
Above is the 1967 Rick Griffin poster for The Avalon Ballroom concert, below is the three page Robert Crumb comix story Abstract Expressionist Ultra Super Modernistic Comics! it inspired for Zap #1 (1968).
Society is Nix
I don’t know if this was a common knowledge type of information but Tom Michael at The Library of American Comics Newspaper Strip Appreciation [Facebook] Group shows the difference between the original Sunday Press edition of Society is Nix (2013) and the Fantagraphics reissue (2025):
The first edition Sunday Press release of the magnificent Society is Nix was 21”x16.5”, while the recent release is 16.75”x13.25”.
I haven’t checked all of the new releases closely, but I believe all have followed suit. Certainly the Krazy Kat Sundays in color was reduced in its second release.
Sunday Press publisher Peter Maresca, who is now in a partnership with Fantagraphics, explained:
The decision to reduce the size on the second NIX edition was both economic and practical. With the increase in printing costs and shipping, a book at the same size of the original would cost $150-$175. Even at $100, because of the small print run, Fantagraphics is operating with a lower profit margin. One goal since the beginning was to have these high-quality reproductions available to all through libraries. The shelf size and cost of the large books gave librarians pause, and likewise bookstores. The newer edition allowed for more comic strips, advanced restoration and coloring techniques, yet still with a large-enough format to appreciate the works and be manageable by human hands. AND the ability to reach a larger audience. Later Sunday Press volumes printed strips from the 1920s and 1930s, most of which were fully legible at this smaller size and often originally appeared in tabloid format (11×15). So for consistency, convenience and economics, the new 13×17 became the standard.
The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug Library
June and July will bring us the last two volumes of The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug.
For the past five years, Clover Press and I have been working on the multi-volume COMPLETE TOM THE DANCING BUG book program. There were eight books planned, each book containing every single Tom the Dancing Bug comic published over a four or five year span. And we worked sort of backwards, starting with Volume 7, covering the years 2016-2019, working our way back to Volume 3 (1999-2002), and then catching up last year with Volume 8 (2020-2023).
- Volume 7, Tom the Dancing Bug: Into the Trumpverse (2016-2019), published August 2020.
- Volume 6, Tom the Dancing Bug Awakens (2012-2015), published December 2021.
- Volume 5, Tom the Dancing Bug: Eat the Poor (2007-2011), published June 2022.
- Volume 4, Tom the Dancing Bug: All-Mighty Comics (2003-2006), published October 2022.
- Volume 3, On the Trail of Tom the Dancing Bug (1999-2002), published June 2023
- Volume 8, “It’s the Great Storm, Tom the Dancing Bug” (2020-2023), published July 2024
Well, in celebration of the 35th anniversary of the birth of Tom the Dancing Bug, Clover Press and I are finishing the program in one fell swoop, publishing Volumes 1 and 2 simultaneously, in time for the holidays.
- Volume 1, Tom the Dancing Bug: Secret Origins (1990-1994)
- Volume 2, Sex, Tom the Dancing Bug, & Rock ‘n’ Roll (1995-1998)
Coming Next Week: Our May 2026 Hey Kids! Comics! list.
Comments 2