The Someday Funnies – an exclusive Boing Boing preview

Mark Frauenfelder

3:42 pm Fri, Oct 21, 2011

Forty years in the making, The Someday Funnies is a 12″ x 16″, 215-page book containing color comic strips about the 1960s. They were created by famous cartoonists in the early 1970s for a Rolling Stone project that never materialized. Finally, these comics are seeing the light of day!

The Someday Funnies is the long-awaited collection of comic strips created in the early 1970s by world-famous artists and writers. What started out as a special insert for Rolling Stone took on a life — and mythology — of its own as writer/editor Michel Choquette traveled across two continents, commissioning this visual chronicle of the 1960s, only to find himself without a publishing partner or the financial support to continue — until now.
Among the contributors Choquette commissioned are cartoonists and comic book luminaries such as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Harvey Kurtzman, R.O. Blechman, Jack Kirby, Ralph Steadman, Sergio Aragones, C. C. Beck, Vaughn Bode, Moebius, Jean-Claude Forest, Gahan Wilson, Barry Windsor-Smith and Wally Wood; notable writers William S. Burroughs, Harlan Ellison, Michael O’Donoghue, and Tom Wolfe; celebrated film director Federico Fellini; artists Red Grooms and Allen Jones; as well as renowned musicians Pete Townsend and Frank Zappa.
Comics historian Jeet Heer says it all in his foreword, “The possibility that such an amazing anthology of original strips was being compiled seemed too good to be true… that this fabled collection failed to materialize as planned in the early 1970s only reinforced its status as an enticing dream rather than an imminent reality.”
Forty years later, readers finally get to experience this legendary anthology as Choquette celebrates the birth, death, and resurrection of The Someday Funnies–129 previously unpublished strips by 169 writers and artists from 15 countries.