A Russ Heath Surprise (Plus Neal Adams)

I ordered Drunk Stone Brilliant Dead without knowing more about it than that the book presented a history of the creators responsible for National Lampoon magazine a few decades back. I try to quench my scholarly thirst for knowledge regarding pop culture topics about which I know little; I was not thinking at all about comic books when I placed the order.

I had expected the tome to be a standard-sized volume featuring text only, so imagine my surprise when the mailman delivered a fairly massive coffee table book that consists of roughly 20% comics material reprinted from the magazine! The beautiful sample above is by Russ Heath from a mid-1970s issue, and other comics artists represented in DSBD include Frank Thorne and Frank Springer.

There is exactly one panel in the book from a semi-regular strip that was drawn by Neal Adams. Many National Lampoon subscriptions were canceled because of the strip's blasphemousness, says the book; a statement like that is enough to pique anyone's curiosity, so I looked it up. Over here you can read this strip as well as read about it. Below is one image to give you a taste.