Plug Time: Bourdeaux, Aushenker, S.Toth, Standfest, Espey

A few requests for project publicity have come my way, so I thought I'd run a little clearing-house here.

First, cartoonist pal Michael Aushenker is working on the comics end of an overall revival of The Human Fly. Billed as "The Wildest Super-Hero Ever -- Because he's REAL!", the Human Fly was a costumed 70s daredevil who had a short-lived Marvel Comics series. There's going to be a movie based on his life as well as the comic. This is about as obscure a 70s revival I can imagine, but the premise is so agreeably strange (as was the 70s Marvel Comic, written by Bill Mantlo and drawn by Golden Age legend Lee Elias) that I can't wait to see what it looks like.

This isn't strictly comics, but I was enormously excited to have received a bag of cookies from the Golden Age Bakery in Chapel Hill, NC from a friend. It's starting to make the rounds that baker Sylvia Toth is creating cookies containing panels from public domain golden Age comics, including a batch that's nothing but Fletcher Hanks' Stardust the Super-Wizard. Toth recently quit her day job to bake cookies full time, and they are delicious and beautiful.

Ryan Standfest has just opened a Kickstarter fund for his second issue of Black Eye, his intriguing comics/essay publication dealing with satire and black humor. This issue will feature comics from Michael DeForge, S.Gross, Ben Marra, Brecht Evens and many more. The first volume was excellent and ambitious, so I'll be curious to see how Standfest refines his ideas for #2.

I haven't yet had a chance to review it in full, but the puppet show adaptation of Eamon Espey's Songs Of The Abyss looks fascinating. Espey and his wife, Lisa Krause, co-created the show. Check out details and a schedule here.

My old pal Steve Lafler has a video up about his Dog Boy series and its recent revival on the web: 

Finally, I wanted to point readers to the fine job Robyn Chapman did collecting Ariel Bourdeaux's Deep Girl series. Full disclosure: I interviewed Ariel for this book.That said, I recommend her comics unreservedly.