Steve Lafler Comics & Illustration

Cat Head Comics is pleased to announce Steve Lafler’s new comics collection, Dog Boy Choice Cuts & Happy Endings for a July 2023 release. The 328-page oversize volume collects the best of Lafler’s pioneering 1980’s alternative comics magazine title Dog Boy, known for its undulating psychedelic twists, coupled with low-brow tropes that border on slapstick.

Get your signed pre-publication copy via Kickstarter!

The date is 1982—early dawn in the alternative comics movement. Steve Lafler, bohemian cartoonist, taps into his unconscious mind and finds his inner Dog Boy: An unruly man-child equipped with a Golden Retriever head. 

Reared on the incandescent comic book innovations of Jack Kirby, coming of age in the subsequent explosion of Underground Comix, Lafler sets out to chart his own inky journey.

Marked by a shattering ego-death experience behind psilocybin on the cusp of adulthood, the artist roots around in his psyche, utilizing an improvisational, unscripted cartooning method. Pumping out page after page of comics penciled in a thick non-photo blue line, he furiously swings at a vision of the simultaneity of all action, reaching for the gold ring deep inside.

Readers encounter a critique of wage slavery, plenty of strong coffee, a bit of beer guzzling, inner probings from the id to the unconscious, and a healthy dose of comedic cul-de-sacs on this cartoon roller coaster ride. Lafler’s early career improvisations soar, and at turns fall flat, but it’s well worth the coin to join him on these good natured spelunking expeditions of the heart.

This title ships to the book trade and comic shops summer 2023.

The first Dog Boy story came to me in a flash in the winter of 1982–I cut up a bunch of bristol board, sharpened my Prismacolor non-photo blue pencil and, and blasted out an 11-page story as fast as I could draw. I tapped into a rushing stream of ideation and pulled it into comic form over a couple days. I published the results that July in Guts #3, and managed to get Last Gasp and Capital City to distribute, and I was off on a five-year arc that resulted in 17 issues of Dog Boy.

Eventually, I drew a good 500 pages of Dog Boy comics, and compiled a 488-page oversized collection of these early indy comics. Today, you can score a copy of this giant brick of Dog Boy comics for a mere $39.99 + postage, from my store at Lulu.

Here’s a description of the whole Dog Boy experience:

Imagine, if you will, a young man with a penchant for strong coffee, cheap beer and blotter acid (not necessarily in that order) who happens to be outfitted with a big fuzzy Golden Retriever head. This irascible “Dog Boy” is given to bursts of enthusiasm—we find him expounding on everything from socialism to earth-shattering transcendent epiphanies. Well, sometimes we just find him stealing cars.

I published seventeen issues of Dog Boy in the eighties, first with my own Cat-Head Comics label and then with Fantagraphics. I was a young cartoonist at the dawn of the independent/alternative comics movement pushing myself, riding my brush & ink as hard as I could, exploring the nature of reality. 

Trusting my process, I opened himself up to the deep muse, fishing for “the other”, mining for gold that lies deep in the heart of us all. Sure, I fell on my face time & again, but often enough I was amply rewarded for my journeys inside, returning jewel-laden with Dog Boy comix that shined.

Dog Boy is the elephant in the room, as regards my back-catalog of graphic novels. My Complete BugHouse collection is there, along with a bunch of other tasty & weird titles, all of which are available via comic shops, bookstores and distributors. But this monster Dog Boy book is only available from my Lulu store at present. The economics of distribution are such that, the cover price of this deluxe oversize volume would need to be around $75 to feed all the players in the distribution system.

That being the case, I intend to break the Dog Boy material into two separate volumes of around 250 pages each, and sell them through both comic book, and the book trade distribution systems. This will take me awhile–at present I’m drawing a project written by Paul Theroux to be published by Fantagraphics. In the background I’ll chip away at this vision of finding a larger audience for Dog Boy.

In the meanwhile, I invite you to grab existing oversize Doggie Style: Complete Dog Boy and dig in!

Stephen Beaupre has released his first album, Smoke the Tapes, an amalgam of punk power chords, incandescent rant and improvised hilarity. This tour-de-force socio-political commentary is unrivaled in it’s spontaneous lyricism and piercing witticisms, lobbed at the Reagan eighties writ large. In fact, these recordings hark from that era, emerging now as a sonic masterwork.

With Smoke the Tapes, we get 25 tracks of Mr. Beaupre, haggling with a variety of 80s archetypes from TV preachers to Jazzercize icons–well, in some cases he inhabits the character, in lieu of bantering with these Reagan era scoundrels.

In the track Tinted Glass, Wide Tires, Beaupre barks his observations on a Reagan-era dupe in his giant pick-up truck in a mock hysterical tone, over an undulating punk guitar drone. Yes, the pitched cultural critique applies to today’s class of giant pick-up truck enthusiasts, and indeed to contemporary manipulation of the masses by cynical politicians, media and corporate consumer hucksters.

Included on Smoke the Tapes are snippets recorded from the TV of Reagan himself, along with various con artists selling their dance moves, diet pills and prayer cloths, sometimes including off-the-cuff comic dialog with Beaupre.

My favorite track just might be Fleas on a Donkey. Imagine William Burroughs doing his cryptic spoken word bit, only filtered through Robin Williams riffing on a donkey. It’s hard to explain, but it never fails to induce hilarity in me, modulating through bursts of guitar modulations and voices, to a crescendo where we meet the central problem: Fleas on a Donkey! Beaupre is a talented wordsmith, carefully crafting through his humorous lens that is part Frank Zappa, part Bugs Bunny.

Interested parties can stream Smoke the Tapes for free. A download cost $7, now that’s a real value kids! Individual tracks cost a buck.

Steve Beaupre and I were the co-publishers of the Buzzard comics anthology in the 90s (he was editor, I was “art director”), and we also collaborated on his classic graphic novel, Forty Hour Man.

Steve Lafler

Greetings! I’ve been messing around with cover ideas for my upcoming graphic novella Movie Star 1956. This is what I’ve got so far, below. OK, I like it. Maybe I’ll add some color to the line art here. I’ll come up with a couple more ideas, trusting the muse to stick a some engaging images in my head.

I’m excited about Movie Star 1956, this title marks a new approach to my graphic storytelling. I’ve employed a lot of research and reference in creating the look of Manhattan in 1956, much more than in the past. I’m hardly going “realistic” as my drawings retain a sort of rubbery cartoon realism. That being said, I’ve really enjoyed capturing the look and feel of a particular time and place in mid-20th century New York City.

I’m a month out from starting a Kickstarter campaign to launch the book (running from Oct. 11 through Halloween.) I’ll be inviting you to order the book via the campaign, and will be offering some nicely priced original artwork, as well as a key title from my back-catalog, the hilarious 40 Hour Man (with writer Stephen Beaupre.)

Best to ya,

Steve