Outlaw Comics Shopping List

So you want to read some Outlaw Comics and don’t know where to start. Don’t worry, your friendly neighborhood Sewer Mutant has you covered.

For better or worse, building an Outlaw Comics collection generally means haunting your local quarter bins or shelling out for back issues on sites like Lone Star Comics or eBay. But not everyone wants to do that. I was recently asked what Outlaw Comics I would recommend that are in print in trade paperback format. Fortunately, you have a few options:

• The Crow This is one of the “Big Three” of the original wave of Outlaw Comics, along with Faust and Cry for Dawn, and has long been the most accessible, both in terms of content and availability. The 2019 Special Edition, which features new pages by James O’Barr, is still in print so you can buy it wherever you buy books and comics. Despite serious flaws in the story and some inconsistent art, it remains a groundbreaking work. Every page radiates anguish and pain. It’s rare to see such raw emotion distilled into comic book form even today, and it was even rarer then. O’Barr also doesn’t get enough credit for his wild visual experimentation in this book.
• Gunfighters in Hell Written by David Barbour and drawn Joe Vigil. Vigil’s Dog gets most of the love these days, but I think Gunfighters is a much stronger work, both in terms of art and writing. Vigil leveled up after Dog and this features lots and lots of demons and monsters, which is where I think he really shines. It’s no Season of Mists, but Barbour knows how to spin a compelling yarn. I think The Crow is more important, more essential, but Gunfighters is probably a better representation of what we talk about when we talk about Outlaw Comics. Vigil doesn’t do much to promote this, but you can buy the Gunfighters and Dog TPBs directly from Vigil by emailing him at gunman08@aol.com. He also sells the one-shot Gunfighters prequel Original Sins and singles of the sequel series Sinbuck.
• Faust: Love of the Damned has finally been collected into a single omnibus edition! The hardcover sold out in a day but it’s not too late to ask your local comic shop to pre-order the paperback edition coming from Black Mask Studios in May 2024. Faust is pretty much the definitive Outlaw Comics work, even more so than the other Big Three, but it’s also the most difficult in terms of content. Buyer beware. Disclosure: The omnibus includes an essay by me.
• Angry Christ Comix I’m not actually sure this is in print, but used copies of the Image Comics edition of the TPB can always be found cheap (under $10). It reprints the Cry for Dawn stories that Joseph Linsner both wrote and drew (as opposed to the ones written by Jospeh Monks and drawn by Linsner). The writing in these stories REALLY didn’t age well, but CFD was one of the “Big Three” and this is the cheapest legal way to get a look at its contents these days. The stories are really pegged to the concerns and current events of the era, so they really evoke the mindset of that late 80s/early 90s period, which makes it a good way to understand the context of the rest of the Outlaw Comics movement.
• Poison Elves: The Mulehide Years Fans of Poison Elves are split between those who think this volume collecting the first few years of the series is the best starting point and those who think you should jump ahead to Sanctuary. I side with the former. Although Hayes’s skill as an illustrator improves over time, I think the first couple of years' worth of stories are his best. Whichever route you take, Sirius Entertainment publisher Robb Horan has kept the entire line of Poison Elves TPBs in print. You can buy directly from him (or from a certain online mega-retailer and probably other booksellers as well). Mulehide Years is not only one of the best books of the early '90s Outlaw Comics explosion, it’s also a nice representation of the '90s self-publishing explosion.
• Real Deal Comix Fantagraphics collected issues 1–7 of Real Deal Comix by RawDog and H.P. McElwee. Like everything else on this list, it’s very much a product of its time, specifically that period of the early 90s when gang violence and gangsta rap exploded into public consciousness. As I’ve mentioned it sits at the border of what I would consider an Outlaw Comic, but it’s something that both Cartoonist Kayfabe and Outlaw Comics patron Glen Hammonds cited as examples of Outlaw Comics, so who am I to disagree? It’s available from Silversprocket.

Ones to watch:

• John Bergin has been documenting the process of finishing the last few issues of Golgothika, which was originally published by Caliber Press in the mid-to-late 1990s, as well as restoring the original art for republication. I expect he’ll do a print-on-demand version of it, as he’s done with his other books on Amazon.