BOGEYMAN COMICS
Vol. 1 No. 1
1969
San Francisco Comic Book Company
Editor: Gary Arlington
Cover: Rory Hayes
Pages: 32
Cover price: 35 cents
CONTENTS
"The Thing in the Room"
"Bits of Flesh"
"The Transformation of Dr. Cline"
"The Creatures in the Tunnels"
"The Old Man"
Story and art: Rory Hayes
"The Editor Reminisces" text story by Gary Arlington
I find it amusing and only vaguely ironic that the oftentimes crudely drawn, cheaply printed and irreverent character of the underground comix of the '60s and '70s are now considered "important" to our legacy of "popular art". Case in point: this 3-issue series edited and published by Gary Arlington (1938-2014) of the San Francisco Comic Book Company (acknowledged as America's first comic book store) has been saved from the dumpsters the Haight-Ashbury and re-purposed as relevant. This is due not only to Arlington's early dedication to offer a niche market for the dope-head cartoonists that populated the Bay Area, but also of the bizarre and paranoid artwork of Rory Hayes (1949-1983). Often described as "expressionistic" and "primitivist", Hayes' flat, fuzzy/squiggly art assaults the cortex like a two-dimensional nightmare. Twisted, perverse and with a tip of the undertaker's hat to EC Comics, the first issue of BOGEYMAN COMICS is offered here today.
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