Lordy, Lordy, Where's Mr. Morty?

Phantasy Press of Lakewood, Colorado was known for having slightly higher production values than most other minicomic publishers. Back in an era when doing so was more problematic for us independent photocopy guys, they printed many of their comix with color covers. Including Lordy, Lordy, Where's Mr. Morty?

Publisher Bob Conway printed 500 of these puppies (get it?) in 1984. 50 of them were signed and numbered. Bob paid his contributors with copies, so at one time I had a whole ton of these to give away or trade. Apparently the one copy I kept for myself has grown legs and ran away, but I found an image of the cover elsewhere to display the color for you.

However, you collectors will get to see something rarer than that. I've scanned the black and white proof copy Bob sent to me a few months before the big printing. Compare it to the color version and notice the lack of background texture, Phantasy logo, and price on the cover. There can't be too many of these floating around.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. had 5 copies in June 2005. All had yellow covers but two had green guts, three had yellow guts.

The entire comic, along with the color cover, was reprinted this year in Fantagraphics Newave book.

Detective Arnie Wormwood was a character who occasionally popped up as Morty's sidekick. He was the way I imagined myself looking 30 years later. And I wasn't too far off!

The sidewalk hammering is based on a true story. One of my relatives back in Kentucky or Virginia suffered this fate. Or so I'm told.

The Daily Lump O' Pain is what I call our local Daily Olympian, but they changed their title to merely Olympian in the 1980s. Most locals just it The Daily Zero.

"Another widow in Commie-Land tonight!" was a real line I had read in an Eisenhower-JFK era war comic and the intensity of it stuck with me. Of course in 1984 the Cold War was still going on and this was my little jab at it.

The big reptile in the story is a dark sign of things to come in Century 21. But we'll cross that bridge when get to it as I dig out more comix and talk about them.