Comics and Lafferty make a fascinating story, given the place comics occupy in his work as both an influence on his techniques and a subject in their own right. Think of the Toonerville Trolley and its influence on “Interurban Queen,” Rocky McCrocky, the cartooning of Enniscorthy Sweeny, Dorg and cave art as cartooning, and so on. There is an alternate universe in which Lafferty’s stories get adapted during the second flourishing of horror anthology comics in the 1960s and ea

Why have I been kept ignorant of a main thing in the popular arts that has been going on for several years at least? Asterix the Gaul has apparently had several of these adventures before. Everybody in France has known about him. Everybody of any moment in the world has known about him. And I was left out. As a quick follow-up to the post on silent slapstick and Lafferty, here is something on The Adventures of Asterix, which Lafferty reviewed in 1970. The comic was created in

James Gurney prelim for the cover of Annals of Klepsis "I suppose that I believe in another sort of a surreality or super-reality, but it would have to be on a wider basis than the encounters of Myself and me." Lafferty was notorious for not caring much about how he dressed, a detail frequently noted in convention reports and personal memories. I’ve often wondered if his general lack of interest in his book covers and illustrations was connected to this. In an interview, he s

“Then Paul went back to the town, climbed up the idol at midnight (it was five hundred feet high and sheer and slick as ice); he pried out the emerald eye and substituted the green kidney. It fit perfectly. ‘I knew it would,’ said Paul.” On the East of Laughter Facebook group, Brad Frank, a long-time Lafferty reader who knew the man, recently posted about finding a copy of Past Master at the Tulsa flea market: Frank's lucky find got me thinking about the original Past Master

Oh, as to details, the music of the opera, though rotten, is superbly rotten. The costuming and staging is splendid. And all the singing is powerful. The plot has all the unhinged unity of any shipwreck. And there is movement and force and power. Power above all! This is Destruction as pageant and presentation. One has the feeling that something very large will come out of all of this. Yes, like the destruction of the world. . . . The story lines, although the world is confor

What makes “Interurban Queen” so remarkable, though, is the incredible tonal balance with which Lafferty handles the two sides of this question: I cannot tell, even with inside knowledge of Lafferty's personal politics, where his sympathies lie — probably a historic first in s-f of this type. — Sheryl Smith, "Lafferty’s Short Stories: Some Mystagogic Goshwow" A few times in his work, Lafferty mentions the Toonerville Trolley from a wonderful comic strip that I wasn’t familiar