One of the great Oddities to emerge from the classic days of
Heavy Metal magazine was the previously mentioned series,
Tex Arcana, and its mysterious creator,
John Findley.
I'd like to tell you a bit about Findley, but nobody seems to know anything. Tex Arcana is nearly his only known work
(there was something in Canine/Feline Classics #25, but i've never seen it and the Grand Comics Database doesn't know it exists), but clearly the man has done some other drawing in his life. The detailed inks on
(most of) Tex Arcana brought words like "insane" to the mind of my younger self when first viewing the work. A glorious, painstaking, and beautiful insane - the mind boggles at the thought of how much work went into some pages. But this work seems to have sprung fully formed from the aether. Even the
"Official Tex Arcana Website" lists nothing but the books, only acknowledging Findley's existence with a copyright notice.
As to the odd nature of the story...
Quite happily, the first several episodes which i had been prepping were on one of the data sticks when the system erupted and died, and so they're easily accessible. Here's the first dozen pages
(two 6 page chapters), including the previously seen page from last week's
Friday Fun & Games. Now with context, my comments on the page might make a bit more sense:
Some would say we haven't gotten to the odd bits yet.
the works by "John Findley" for Heavy Metal (March, April 1981)
