(Continued from COLEY: Wild In The Street, Pt. 3)
The 3rd self-published Coley book by John Blackburn was a 147-page graphic novel broken down into 4 chapters (the other 3 titles being "The Atomic Blonde", "Voodoo Dancer" and "Flowers of Evil", the latter also being the title of Coley's
epic "art film"). It was a very complex soap-opera detailing the
adventures and interactions and relationships of a dazzling and
sometimes confusing number of characters, all of whom seem to get
involved with Coley in one way or the other.
Of the early Coley stories, I got the impression that this was the one that Blackburn was most proud of. It remains utterly baffling to me that Eros Comix (the now-defunct subsidiary of Fantagraphics) chose not to publish the first 3 books. This left readers of the 4th book, "RETURN TO VOODOO ISLAND", mostly unaware and/or confused about all the events that led up to it.
As I stressed with the earlier books, I don't own this work, and I'm cleaning up and coloring these
stories purely FOR FUN. But if circumstances present themselves where I
am able to re-publish this work at some time, the FIRST thing I'd do
would be to contact Blackburn's estate, find whoever it is that
owns the Copyrights, and strike a deal to SPLIT any potential profits
from such an undertaking.
In the meantime... ENJOY!
BREATHLESS
cover by JOHN BLACKBURN (John Blackburn / 1991)
Intro Page 1 / Signature
Intro Page 3 / Copyright
Intro Page 4 / Pin-Up
Intro Page 5 / Introduction
Intro Page 6 / Title Page & Pin-Up
Intro Page 7 / Pin-Up
Intro Page 8 / Pin-Up
"BREATHLESS" / Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
Page 17
Page 18
Page 19
Page 20
Page 21
Page 22
Page 23
Don't go away! Our story will continue...
Well, this seemed like the appropriate time to take a break before the next part of the story. Anyone who's been reading here probably noticed that pages 14-22 were reprinted from the previous book, "WILD IN THE STREET", although there were substantial changes made to page 14. This gave me a chance to compare the printed artwork, and as I suspected, ALL of the lines in "BREATHLESS" had thickened up compared to the earlier printing, where, by comparison, many of the lines "broke up". I decided to just re-post the earlier pages AS-IS, as I thought they looked better, and saved me having to clean and color the same pages twice.
It then became just a choice of where to put the break, after page 22 or 23, and as 23 finished up the scene of Coley relating the earlier incident, while 24 begins the next major sequence, I decided to put it here. There's so many pages in this book, that at this point, I haven't decided how many blog pages I'm going to spread it out over, but I'll just figure it out as I go.
Copyright (C) 1991 JOHN BLACKBURN.
New COLOR Copyright (C) 2022 HENRY R. KUJAWA.
Scans from MY collection!
Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa
For more:
Read about John Blackburn at the Prism Comics site.
Read about "Coley Running Wild" at the Graphic Novels Info site.
See my detailed indexes of these books at the GCD site.
See my COLEY overview at this very blog!
Read GreyIrish' review of "Dagger Of Blood" at the
Deep Cuts In A Lovecraftian Vein blog.
Read COLEY ON VOODOO ISLAND in COLOR!
Read COLEY: WILD IN THE STREET in COLOR!
Read COLEY: BREATHLESS in COLOR!
Don't miss the 2nd PART of this... coming up next!!!
(Continued in COLEY: Breathless, Pt. 2)
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