COLEY, Part 3

(Continued from Part 2)

Sometime in 1993, MEATMEN Vol.15 featured its first "exclusive" Coley story, a 10-pager with sci-fi overtones, "Dimension X".  With its anthology format, the series tended to have a wide variety of material and quality (or lack thereof), with Blackburn's stories usually being among, if not the, highlight of each collection. By my count, there's 173 pages worth of Blackburn material spaced out over some 11 issues (including at least 23 pages' worth that Leyland never published), which would make a great collection one of these days.

The 3rd Eros mini took Coley to a small Louisiana town to investigate a series of murders made against homosexuals.  As I said in my GCD index, "Though never revealed in the story, the fact that Douglas & Maggie have the same last name as Sammy O'Hara, the photo-journalist from IDOL OF FLESH #1, suggests Coley came to Palmettoville deliberately to investigate the killings, based on info from Sammy (who turns up in THE DEATHSNAKE #3-- perhaps too much of a coincidence to be one)."  It wasn't an important or crucial detail in the story, but the kind of thing a decent editor would have noticed, and which could have been at least mentioned somewhere (if only in one of the text-heavy introduction pages that Blackburn was so fond of including at the start of any given issue).

Ironically, the single hottest page in WEB OF EVIL #1 somehow got left out of the initial printing, and only turned up when it was reprinted in the 2nd COLEY RUNING WILD collection! 

WEB OF EVIL  1   (November 1993)

Going against sterrotype, Blackburn introduces a southern sheriff who turns out to be one of the most intelligent people in town.  I find their initial discussion here hilarious!

Believe it or not, this WASN'T the hottest page in the issue. Close, though.

The hottest cover yet? 

WEB OF EVIL  2   (February 1994)

I could have easily posted any of 5 CONSECUTIVE pages from this one scene, which may be in the running for HOTTEST scene in the entire SERIES... but I decided to just narrow it down to just this one, partly because it featured Kit as well as the guys.

The events of WEB OF EVIL brought the story's murderer to justice, but to protect his friend Kit, Coley agreed to do time in jail. The result was it and the sequel mini together effectively formed one big 5-part storyline.  Also, and it took a long time for this to come out in the reading, but it seems Coley had another reason for what he did, as the local corruption went much higher than imagined. Before he was through, ALL the evil-doers were brought down, though the path to getting there involved more shocking violence than ever before... as well as more steaming HHHOT sex (but, no surprise there, eh?).

I think there's something hilarious about the text placement on this cover...

THE DEATHSNAKE  1   (August 1994)

In the tradition of Gold Key, the back cover was the same as the front,
only without the text.

Yep, even in prison there's no stopping Coley...

THE DEATHSNAKE  2   (October 1994)

Although both the warden and his daughter are hopelessly corrupt (in more ways than one), Coley finds one of the guards isn't, and turns out to be a sympathetic character who realizes Coley has no business being incarcerated in a hell-hole like the one he's in.

THE DEATHSNAKE  3   (February 1995)

The grand finale of this story leaned more toward violence than sex...
so I'm just going to include the inside-front cover pin-up.

Okay, maybe ONE more panel...

Art (C) JOHN BLACKBURN.

All prominent characters are Trademarks of JOHN BLACKBURN.

For more:

Read about John Blackburn at the Prism Comics site.

See my detailed indexes of these books at the GCD site.

See my detailed indexes of RETURN TO VOODOO ISLAND at the GCD site.

See my detailed indexes of IDOL OF FLESH at the GCD site.
See my detailed indexes of WEB OF EVIL at the GCD site.
See my detailed indexes of THE DEATHSNAKE at the GCD site.

Read GreyIrish' review of "Dagger Of Blood" at the
     Deep Cuts In A Lovecraftian Vein blog.

(Continued in Part 4)