About Funny Paper

Funny Paper

Funny Paper was a self-published newave comix. The first issue was published in 1978. The cover was a cartoon with a realistically-rendered brick building in the background. The linework was drawn on bond paper in black ink with technical pens. This was photographed by a graphic arts camera to produce a full size film positive and a PMT (photo-mechanical transfer). The PMT was painted with acrylic photo retouch grays (which covered most of the black line work). The printer shot the painting and combined it with the film positive to bring back the black line work. I guess you could call this working in layers, manually, before Photoshop. I used the same painting technique for issue 3, with Tom Fisher's wonderful artwork.

Funny Paper's main promotional push was a single ad for each issue in Alan Light's The Buyer's Guide. I assume the first issue was advertised there as well, but if it was, I no longer have a record of it. Above and below are the ads for the second and third issues respectively. The ad for issue three shows Tom Fisher's cover without the gray tones of the final, published cover.

Artwork © R.Krauss, Bob Vojtko, and Tom Fisher

Each issue of Funny Paper was an 8 page, digest-size zine printed on an offset press at a small commercial print shop. The first issue had a print run of only 100 copies.

The second and third issues increased the print runs to 250 copies each. Although I was the sole contributor to the first issue, I was able to enlist the help of several of my favorite newave artists for the next two. I was thrilled to be able to publish work by Bob Vojtko, Brad W. Foster, Gary Whitney, and Tom Fisher.