Newton The Rabbit Wonder

For what was basically a piece of fluff that seemed made up as it went along, Newton The Rabbit Wonder sure had some heavyweight talent behind it. Newton was Steve Leialoha's contribution to Quack! and later Eclipse Magazine, and was generally about whatever Steve wanted it to be about.
Each episode follows the previous one only in the vaguest sense, as Newton hips-hops through sci-fi, sword & sorcery and, in this example, western parodies, but each strip is an absolute belter.
Drafting in Sergio Aragones for The Rabbit Wonder, and Alex Nino for The Rabbit Wonder Meets The Barbarian Bunny, by the time of this piece, Leialoha's going it solo, but it's actually the best piece. Check out pgs. 6 & 7 to see how a master cartoonist uses negative space. And how a horse called Smega can steal your strip right out from under you if you're not paying attention.

On The Skids!

What's that you say? You wanna read something really obscure? Well, ok, then. On The Skids appeared in Mike Freidrich's Quack!, was by Howard Chaykin & Alan Kupperberg, and starred the pair as funny animal versions of themselves. ( I've always read it that Howie is the taller one there, while Kupperberg is the minutely less caustic, and smaller one ).
In On The Skids, Chaykin & Kupperberg spend their time going from comic book publishers to pick-up bars and back again, trying a) to get published and b) get laid, in whichever order. Living, as they say, a Disney existence in a Robert Crumb world.
The strip is so full of in-jokes and of-the-time cultural references, it's almost impenetrable, certainly to me, but it's also such a great evocation of a specific time and place, that I just have to post it. In this, the 2nd and 3rd episodes, Kupperberg gets sole credit, but Chaykin is very definitely involved with some of that dialogue.
I particularly like the last episode, where the pair have their series stolen out from under them by the homespun Ding Dog Daddy ( and Daisy ) because: 'Freidrich likes me better! '

The Wraith

Quack! was Mike Friedrich's short-lived adult funny animal book, ostensibly begun in order to put Frank Brunner's mallard based strip Duckaneer into print. Frank had just left Marvel, one of his issues at the time being what he saw as a lack of credit in the success of Howard The Duck, and Duckaneer being his riposte to the nay-sayers. Quack! pretty obviously rode in on Howard's coattails, and was never gonna last long, but did produce some great strips in it's 6 issues, including regular character The Wraith. This was Michael T. Gilbert's loving homage to The Spirit, and like it's template, flitted between laugh out loud humour and serious drama in it's short run. Here's one of the funny ones, a scattershot satire of big business and the publishing industry, with some instantly recognizable ( and pulse-pounding ) guest stars.














And finally...