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APF 3000

E.C was great at two things: ghastly horror and downright stupid comedy. granted, horror and comedy are two faces of the same mongoloid stepchild, but man, E.C. was aces at both. At RawStudios, we dig the dark. The dark is where everything good happens. We don’t have to tell you.

But you know what they say: there ain’t no dark without the light. The lux.

So when Todd Farmer pitched us a story about a family of Kentucky pig farmers whose moonshining operation uncovers a million year old alien spaceship, with hibernating aliens inside, who wake up hungry and just a wee bit horny, we said all right. Let there be light.

We were lucky to find DON MARQUEZ to do the honors, artwise.  Don comes from the world of underground California comix, and he was a peach. Our in-house spectral wizard, Grant Goleash did the honors, colorwise. The results were on the button. Sweet spot.

(click for more detail)

AlienPigFarm#1p22small

We were even luckier when our old pals from the baddest of planets threw down for what turned into a comic book cover shoot-out. It wasn’t planned, it just shook out that way, like if Mickey Mantle was watching Willie Mays during BP. Watching Mays crack ’em over the left field wall, it gets the juices flowing. When Mickey gets up to the plate, Mays isn’t gonna head back to the locker room for a little pre-game nap. No. It’s going to be a showdown.

A Home Run Derby.

Bill Stout was first to throw down and it was good one: a very solid “first issue” kick off cover: dinos and spaceships. Kinda hard to leave that on the shelf, if you’re of a certain persuasion.

APF3000_COVER_ISSUE_1_TAKE_

 

Mark Schultz  saw Bill’s space-dino play and raised. Raised him big. Schultz cracked it so hard, my teeth are still rattling.

 

APF.TPB.Cover copy

As man in the middle, I had the honors of being the guy who forwarded covers back and forth between these two giants. I kept it simple. I would just copy and paste that bad boy and throw a caption on there like Re: issue 2.   Then I would say,

 

Bill,

Check it out.

TJ

 

I showed ol’ Bill that cover and then I’d throw in a little

ps: ish 3 cover is due in four weeks.

I didn’t hear from Stout for a month. Not a peep. Then, one morning (that’s afternoon to you) I crack open the digit box and find this

 

APF3000-ISSUE_3_FINAL copy

Stout had knocked a duster all the way onto Main St. You could practically see the fire trailing that ball. Just look at the grin on that guys face. That’s a grin that says, “What do you say to that, Schultz?”

I was grinning myself when I folded that beauty up and sent it through the electric pipes, over to Mark. Same simple message:

 

Mark,

Check out ish 3 from Stout.

T

ps: I’d say you’ve got about a month before we’ll need to get Grant coloring # 4.

 

yup. Sometimes all you gotta do is kick back and let the thunder roll.

Sure as kittens make red paint if you hold them against the asphalt doing 105, Mark proceeded to knock the living tar out of ish 4.

APF4.cover copy

Knocked the cover right off the ball.

I folded that up and airmailed it off to Bill, A terrible thought occurred to me. Alien Pig Farm 3000 was a four issue run.    And we had run out of issues.

The home run derby was over. And just like Mantle and Mays, there was no clear winner. You gotta wonder though, if we had one more round – six issues instead of 4 – what would have happened.