AFTERDEAD 1.3 (see AFTERDEAD black-and-white 1 and 1.2 at Lulu is nearly finished. A lot of the pages are in color and will be appearing at Webcomicsnation.
It includes a story that ran in Gay City, Volume One, about difficulties Pfirsich faces -- with his accustomed aplomb -- as a postman on the frontier.
The longest story, "Little Man," combines my recent longing to see a roller derby match and the discovery on an academic film site of a peculiar trade in home-made films that occurred within the Afrika Korps. I wish I could still find the site; the utter goofiness of the history, written in serene, dry academese, had the disaffected historical tone of the narrator in The Hallelujah Trail. "Little Man" includes a flashback to Pfirsich's Afrika Korps days; how could I not use Winzig and Udo to represent our own culture's black and white vision of adult representations of sexuality?
Here is a sample page from "Stalkers:"
Every cook I know is interested in this question. After recently reading hunting magazines, I realized what it was every hunter wanted to hunt. If you don't believe me, check out the t-shirts in any hunting store, and their language in their mags. It is thinly disguised. "Stalkers" provides the usual practical solution to an historical problem. The Reichers, I sometimes think, reflect that practicality that is an inheritance of my French background -- the provencal version. The only nobility in my blood comes from a gang of very minor English baronettes, near Nottingham. We retain a small carpet, an inlaid table, and a geneology. If I killed many, many English people, I could inherit the throne (then again, who couldn't?).
The final book version of Musswolf is included. It's on a traditional theme, from Pfirsich's viewpoint.
As soon as I've finished AFTERDEAD 1.4, it will be collected with 1.2 to 1.4 -- with color inserts -- at Booksurge (available through Amazon and http://www.donnabarr.com/) and then the smaller versions will be pulled off the site.
Because Lulu prints books differently, the collected AFTERDEAD II will have to be in black and white.
