MANZINE cover, September 1962

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The Whereabouts of Waldo: Chief Inspector David Kay Speaking to a Senate Sub Committee Regarding the Possibility of a Non-Existent Waldo

The following is a satirical piece I did several years back, before people were twittering all over the place, and monkeys had yet to be fused to the back of carnival midgets; when all we cared about was finding those pesky WMDs. 

 

Well, I guess we all have egg on our faces, some more than others. It’s clear to me now that the probability of Waldo ever being found is fairly slim. The Waldo Inspection Team and I naively assumed that finding this particular “white whale” would be a reasonably simple task. The red and white striped hat and shirt, and those glasses- they’re such a dead give away. I mean, he dresses like a moron! He’s got no fashion sense whatsoever and he looks like a cross between Harry Potter and a barber pole. Or a candy cane. Personally, I thought he would stick out like a sore thumb.

 

I’m not sure who’s to blame for this failure. Surely not the White House. They were merely acting on the information that those in the intelligence community were feeding them. For example, one report stated that he had, “been spotted at an Ozzy Osbourne concert” while another claimed that he was, “at a nude beach in Italy” and still another declared, “I think I just saw him coming out of the White House’s 3rd floor Presidential toilet.” The information was all over the map, literally.

 

Some of the responsibility for this whole mess falls to the Waldo Inspection Team. I was convinced that crazy bastard would eventually turn up somewhere. You can hide out only so long before some upstanding citizen turns you in for a fat reward. However, most of the culpability should rest squarely on the shoulders of the analysts in the CIA. Faulty intelligence was being recycled through that joint like a blocked-up sewer line. And just between you, me and those six TV cameras, they don’t know their heads from their asses most of the time.

 

Surprisingly, even with all of the misleading intelligence, we did come across many other subjects of interest that were thought to be MIA. Jimmy Hoffa for instance. He’s a cabaret dancer in Paris, currently in a musical version of Baudelaire’s “The Flowers of Evil”. And FYI, he’s got a great pair of legs.

 

We helped the 1960’s locate its virginity; it was stashed away in Abbie Hoffman’s tool shed behind his house, along with a stockpile of books from the New York Public Library. I guess it’s always the last place you look.

 

We informed U2’s Bono that we had finallyfound what he was looking for, which was, incidentally, himself, the Inner Bono, not the Outer Bono, the one who wares those big, goofy fly-looking glasses and the leather pants and certainly not the singing, political grandstanding extrovert that everyone knows, but the shy kid from a small town in Ireland, the one with big dreams of owning his own Mr. Potato Head factory and the simple wish not to be confused with the guy who married Cher.

 

In addition, we recently discovered Janet Jackson’s breast-covering-thingies in the dumpster outside of her dressing room at the Super Bowl. Boy, she must have felt silly going on stage without those!

 

Indeed, the Waldo Inspection Team recovered many missing items; wallets, misplaced childhood pets, mustaches from 70’s cop shows, and several million ball point pens, but, unfortunately, no Waldo. As it stands now, there’s a strong likelihood that there never was any Waldo to begin with, and that we made a serious lapse in judgment believing those intelligence reports. And if you cannot rely on accurate intelligence, then you might as well pack up the barbecue and the all the weenies and go home because who knows what could happen out there. It could piss cats and dogs and crap bricks and then where would the American public be without the portable tarp that is the intelligence community? Anyhow, I felt it was best that I resign from my post and return to the private sector where there are no Waldos to dog my existence.

 

Oh, and you might be interested to know that our investigation also turned up the left black dress sock that one of our team members, Joe, lost in 1978. Apparently, at the time he thought his then long term girlfriend, Brenda, had hid it from him in retaliation for a prank he pulled on her involving a rattle snake. According to Joe, he “completely lost it and proceeded to throw a chair through a window, tell her it was over, pack his bags and leave”. What a loon that guy is! Anyhow, we found it, along with many other lost socks in a black hole near the edge of our galaxy. So, Brenda, if you’re watching, on behalf of Joe, he apologizes for any misunderstanding and will send you some money for the broken window.

 

 

Previously unpublished

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Freedom Lad 76!

It seemed like in comic books from the 70s, everyone was obsessed with America, especially around the bicentennial. But it wasn’t the kind of knee-jerk patriotism of recent memory that informs nut jobs with too much time and too many guns. It was the campy, naive, over-the-top Technicolor silliness of Captain America, Wonder Woman, Evil Knievel and the Freedom Fighters.

Freedom Lad 76! is in that same vein. He is a superhero that loves freedom, that is a lad and that happens to run around in the mid-seventies eating fruit pies and buying mail-order Sea Monkeys.

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Ed Benedict, Juggernaut of Design!

I’ve posted a few times about Ed Benedict and his amazing body of work, but I thought I post again because, well, each time a look at more of his designs I become inspired all over again.

 

 

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More Stubbs

Another version of Stubbs the Cat.

 

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Life In These United States

Here are a few icons of the average joe, the working slob that goes about their business without recognition or celebrity; they are the backbone, the very spleen of society: The hobo, the painter, the cowgirl and the gangster (hey, that sounds like a Peter Greenaway film!)

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