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Pre-Weekend Comics Check

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D. D. Degg Updated: July 25, 2025 at 5:56 pm EDT 2 minutes 0 comments

From the deepest darkest parts of the comics page comes Wallace the Brave, The Argyle Sweater, Rip Haywire, Over the Hedge, Prickly City, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Rubes, Thatababy, Tarzan, Zorro, Prince Valiant, and Tom the Dancing Bug.

From Giggles to Gruesome

Got a seven-year-old in my life who complains that her Dad takes naps in the middle of the afternoon on weekends! So I got a laugh out of Tuesday’s Wallace the Brave (and then took a nap myself).

While I didn’t grow up on a chicken farm I was around them and witnessed (and occasionally took part in) the slaughtering of chickens. But Wednesday’s The Argyle Sweater struck me as EC horror comic book grisly.

For Crying Out Loud

I totally get the Harley references made by commenters with Thursday’s Rip Haywire, even so I was surprised no one made a Bat Out of Hell comparison.

From Bill McCool at Print:

Designed by the late illustrator and comic book artist Richard Corben, the cover for Bat Out of Hell is an orgiastic ode to fantasy and sci-fi pulp paperbacks, a fever dream blown up to LP-size in hulking, Conan the Barbarian-style proportions, and a beloved piece of rock and roll iconography.

Synchronicity and Disharmony

Over the Hedge and Prickly City follow pretty closely on my GoComics feed so the egotism stood out.

That was Tuesday. On Thursday came Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Rubes, which follow even closer on the GoComics feed, struck me as some sort of anti-synchronization.

Comics Covering Comics

Having a much shorter lead time than Paul Trap we covered this last month.

When I first read it my mind saw a seemly bargain-priced $249 for the Thatababy strip, only on the reread did I see the nonsensical 249¢. But then I don’t know if Paul does his strip with pen and paper or100% digital.

By the way this week Thatababy has been comics oriented since Tuesday. San Diego Comic-Con effect?

Book ‘Em Deggo

Thomas Yeates, who drew a couple years of Zorro for daily newspapers and has drawn the Prince Valiant Sunday page since 2012, takes the spotlight in TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Creator #39.

Yeates worked on a number of comic books over the years including Swamp Thing, Timespirits, Jonah Hex, and many others including Zorro and Tarzan. Did mention he did a Tarzan Sunday page?

For something completely different…

From Ruben Bolling:

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).

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)

More information about The Complete Tom the Dancing Bug here.