Hoo-Be-Boo edited by Will Amato (168×260 cmmm)
I finally managed to score a copy of this 1983 anthology, so let’s have a look at it.
The book doesn’t say who the editor or publishers are, and a quick googling doesn’t reveal anything, either. But the address is in Torrance, California.
Hm… This ebay page claims that Will Amato is the editor, so let’s go with that.
The book starts off with four pages of Big Daddy Roth-esque creatures in space, courtesy of Rick Potts and Gary Panter.
The aesthetics in this book seem to lie somewhere between punk comics expressionism and mini-comix lack of ambition. (Christopher Lissner above.)
Most of the contributors are totally unknown to me, like B. Ehringer. But that’s certainly a quite attractive art style… And googling the name give me nothing.
The most mainstream-ey thing here is this from Vincent-Michael Edwards. I’m not able to google him, either, and I’m wondering whether this anthology has some connection to an art school or something? Most of these pieces don’t really go anywhere, but many look graphically interesting.
Wow. That’s like a better version of what Benjamin Marra is doing three decades later.
That’s odd. (By Kent Moorman.)
Anyway, here’s the reason I wanted to read this book: A five page strip by The Fuk Boys, aka. Gary Panter and Matt Groening. It’s possibly the most straightforward narrative in the book — it’s about picking up a hitchhiker with a hook for a hand.
It looks great!
So there you go.
This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.
Hoo-Be-Boo was the brain child of James Contner and Will Amato. Will was the driving force of putting the authors together. I printed it in the place I used to work, the now out of business Dingman’s Printing Co. in Venice CA. I only personally knew a couple of the contributors. Vincent Edwards went into animation. Kent Moorman went into dog training. There was a Hoo-Be-Boo 2 that I also printed but was prematurely cut before binding and was never distributed as far as I know.
When I was an angry punk kid I thought I wanted to be a comic book artist. Turns out I wanted to be an animator and film maker.