The Human Beings

1st edition, 1985, Garfield heights, Ohio : Joe Zabel. Published in two versions. One was on unfolded yellow letter size slightly heavy paper and stapled on the margins, another in enlarged digest size, white paper.

2nd edition, 1994, McCleary, Washington, published in regular digest form and available as a print-on-demand title for a couple years.

Special Fandom House edition, 20 copies were printed for Fandom House in 1994.

In going through my correspondence to get some background on this book, I was reminded that Joe Zabel was one of the most thoughtful of my correspondents when it came to the process of comic art creation. When he asked me to draw his story I was at first hesitant. Our styles of writing and drawing seemed too different to really blend well. He appeared to work from the cranium, I work from the gut. Also he was disciplined and I, well, let's face it, am sort of slovenly at the drawing board.

But he talked me into it.

This was a much different situation than the later writing/art collaboration I had with Maximum Traffic in Flying. In that book, the tone was already playful in the script, and Max had a good idea of how the thing should be laid out.

In The Human Beings, Joe gave me a serious and dramatic story. The actual script, which I apparently returned to him, was written like a play as I recall. He gave me a comix carte blanche and asked that I ad-lib some corn into the tale and could lay it out any way I wanted.

The result was one of the more unusual comix I've drawn. I can't say I've ever felt comfortable about how this book turned out, but working Joe himself was fun.