Thursday, March 23, 2023

Another one that won't fit in the scanner, but I didn't think I would ever have: I wasn't even positive it ever came out! From 1991, Badger Bedlam #1, written by Mike Baron, pencils by Steven Butler, inks by Ken Branch. Cover by Jay Geldhof. 

Badger is legitimately crazy, and on occasion would make poor choices. Multiple poor choices, in succession: trying to outrun the cops when they try to stop him for speeding, then fighting the cops after ditching his motorcycle in the river, then fighting the judge at his arraignment! He gets sent to the "Reich Center for Phobic Disorders," and it's pretty obvious nothing good happens there. Badger cycles through his various personalities while Dr. Reich schedules his lobotomy; but an old bad guy (who I hadn't seen before!) is there as well...A fair chunk of this issue is flashbacks, to Norbert's time as a POW in Vietnam. 

This was intended to be the first quarterly issue of First Comics new publishing scheme; moving away from traditional monthly floppies to squarebound "prestige" format books. They did not get a lot of them out before the company folded; and in all those years I don't think I'd ever seen a copy of this one! I just got a mountain of cheap books recently from Midtown Comics, and lucked into it. (A tip I hadda figure out myself: I had a Legion flight ring and a store-branded marker in my cart, but they would've DQ'd my order from free shipping!)

1 comment:

Mr. Morbid's House Of Fun said...

Just finished reading it. Damn that was a good read! Almost feel kinda bad for the Roach Wrangler though. Oh well, like Badger says at the end, I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than frontal lobotomy."