He's the best. He's the funniest. He's brilliant. And now, comic illustrator Michael Kupperman has a zine that YOU can buy.
Kupperman is my favorite artist working today. He's had several print successes with the trade paperback Snake 'N' Bacon's Cartoon Cabaret, the 8-issue Tales Designed To Thrizzle, the illustrated fantasy prose of Mark Twain's Autobiography 1910-2010 (a time-traveling team-up with Albert Einstein), and the biographical All the Answers about his father, a child trivia show prodigy. He's spent most of the last 10 years as an illustrator for hire, working on things like all the art for the They Might Be Giants album Long Tall Weekend. You may have seen animations of his on TV Fun House. His art style is thick black ink lines, a retro feeling to it all. His humor style is absolute chaos, perfect for wise people with a deep sense of cultural literacy.
Describing his humor is difficult and I'll never do it justice. Gangsters scheme to commit plagiarism. Roger Daltry from The Who looks for women but only finds a helpful ornithologist who tells him facts about birds. A child actress has to teach America to use the toilet, as it became fashionable to soil your clothes and jump into the nearest river to clean them off. Prostitution has become fully legal, but only aboard themed blimps, including the pirate-inspired "John John Silver's Party Sex Blimp", although they're soon to be replaced with safer "sex holes" which are just roomy holes dug into a field.
Like I said, he's brilliant and I probably failed to describe his work well enough. I discovered Snake 'N' Bacon in college and subsequently used photocopied panels for campus comedy show flyers. An original Michael Kupperman illustration of Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari dreaming is framed and proudly hangs next to my bed. I own a print advertising Long John Silver's Party Sex Blimp. I just bought one of the They Might Be Giants illustrations. He's absolutely my favorite.
And now, while we wait for the hinted-at next series of Tales Designed To Thrizzle, Michael Kupperman has a zine. Two issues have been produced so far, releasing on about a bi-weekly schedule. And it's amazing. The first issue was all about showbiz secrets, like how Taxi Driver started as a failed sketch on The Sonny and Cher Show. The second latched onto the current unwanted tech boom and advertised implants set to put nonhelpful voices in your head. You can even order two voices and have them argue with each other, pairing up Frida Kahlo with Don Rickles, and "Taunting Hillbilly" with "911 Operator". It's bonkers, it's creative, it zigs when you expect it to zag, and it makes me laugh out loud.
The zines are a tier in Kupperman's Patreon, at the $12 tier, but that also gets you a TON of sketches, new comics, updates, and more humor you can't get outside of Patreon. He ran an entire strip on Patreon that did a "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"-style team-up with Ebenezer Scrooge, Mrs. Butterworth, King Midas, and Peter Pan, who isn't the flying child adventurer but instead is a dapper secret agent who fights with a pan. Kupperman has a higher tier too, $60, that adds a signed, limited edition print to the shipment. Buy one for yourself and then gift a subscription to a friend for Christmas!
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