Bad Times For Good Cats

I'm a bit too depressed from watching how evil our government can get when they have a good crisis to exploit. Not surprised that the scum also rises, but depressed.
So no words just now.

Here's the continuation of yesterday's post and the ongoing tale of Xal-Kor, The Human Cat from Grass Green -

That's all for now.

Do try to watch what they're doing while you're hunkered down, eh? And remember that they spend many millions of dollars on what to say to get you to go along with their evils. 
Forrest Gump it - Evil Is As Evil Does. 

The rest is all excuses to cover guilt, shame, prying-eyes, profits, and prosecution.

page art by Richard 'Grass' Green from Star Studded Comics #s 7 & 8 (1965, 1966)

The Grass Cat

If i've managed to get through the week without losing complete track of time (again), then we've reached Saturday. This weekend, let's return to an old favorite once more - This Guy:

You may recall Grass Green's early work in fandom on strips like the Bestest League of America, the Frantic Four, and the Scavengers. Or perhaps from those Far-Out Fairy Tales he drew for Charlton. Or maybe from The Shape, Superella, or his Super Soul Comix with Eric Private, The Black Eye and Soul Brother American. Not to mention his library of Blue Works.

Somehow along the way, i don't believe we've talked about arguably his greatest creation - Xal-Kor, The Human Cat. Like the photo above, Xal-Kor comes out of a semi-mythical fan publication from Texas - Star Studded Comics. Between 1963 and 1972, the Texas Trio published 18 issues (the final three under the truncated Star Studded title). The semi-mythical status derives from some of the people who worked on it and the low distribution. 

Contributors included folks like Dave Cockrum, Jim Starlin, Ronn Foss, Rich Buckler, Biljo White, George R.R. Martin, Al Milgrom, Bill Dubay, Alan Weiss, D. Bruce Berry, and Dennis Fujitake. (How have we not looked at Fujitake's lovely works yet?)

Originally only 250 copies were printed. By the end of the run, circulation had doubled. But that's still not a lot of copies out there, so the book was rarely seen even among collectors.

Add to the scarcity the fact that the early issues were mimeographed...

...and that's what it looks like after major clean-ups & restoration on the scan of the severely faded original. Even when copies survive, reprinting from faded mimeos is not often contemplated. Some are so faded that text cannot be read - it must be laboriously deciphered. Large areas of some pages are faded to pure white. Some pages, however, are still quite readable. 

I thought about doing a black&white conversion for this story, but let's stick with the original purple mimeo. Note that the other colours were usually added by hand - another reason for those low copy counts per issue.

Fortunately for us, with issue #4 they upgraded to offset printing and black ink. Later Grass Green stories are much easier to read -

And the switch to better printing was just in time. With issue #5, Green's Xal-Kor crashed onto the scene -

Here's his debut tale from that issue -

Xal-Kor appeared in another half dozen issues of Star Studded Comics. Fortunately, they're all sitting here, so we'll be diving in deeper this weekend.

page art by Richard 'Grass' Green from Star Studded Comics #s 1, 2, 5, & 15 (1963, 1964, 1969)