[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Ebon ] [ Comic Covers ] [ Tribute To A Friend ] [ Once Upon A Time ] [ Some Grass and A Gallery ]

e-mail to lfuller@lanset.com

Once upon a time ...

I spent a lot of time writing, drawing, editing, and publishing comics, mostly underground comix and/or "adult comix".  Though I started out with aspirations of working for the Big Two (DC and Marvel), I never achieved what I then thought was a lofty goal.  Not that that goal was or is no longer lofty (well, maybe just not quite as lofty), but my perceptions and aspirations changed or transformed over time, partly because for years I didn't think I was good enough and partly because by the time it seemed I might be, I was no longer interested.

Working in comics is in large part a collaborative effort.  One nearly always works with multiple parties in creating any kind of comic book, i.e., publisher, editor, writer, artist, inker, letterer, and, if need be, colorist (also artists, but not always perceived as such, or so it seems), and that was and is true with me.  I did meet and benefit from the works of dozens of great artists and writers, all of whom I had to pay, which is as it should be.  When I first began publishing, though, it was with the understanding that a now deceased (and sorely missed) colleague, friend, and fellow fanatic and I would share publishing costs.  Having said that, I must say that throughout my underground publishing career, from a purely monetary standpoint, I found myself having to be a one man gang.  This is not a complaint.  Those days are long past.  It does answer a question I have been asked from time to time, i.e., "Why did your company change name so often?"  Simply put, because I felt it was necessary and, being the boss paying the costs, I felt no further explanation was necessary.  Besides, I was learning on the job and this was part of my education.

The first name was Spearhead Productions, which was the label on Ebon No.1 (and No. 2, which was never published).  Then FulHorne Productions, a combination of (Larry) Fuller and (Raye) Horne, but changed to Inkwell Ink and finally to Fuller Inkwell for the reason mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Still another label, Yentzler & Goniff, was the result of co-publishing efforts with Last Gasp, the long running publisher of stuff like Zap!, Zippy The Pinhead, Weirdo, etc., as well as a prominent distributor of alternative publications of all types.  These labels were used for the x-rated comix.  Concurrent with all this, there was also Larry Fuller Presents, which was used for The New Funny Book and other planned "clean"  titles for audiences other than the original true undergrounds (Both "types", between which the lines have long since blurred, are today called "independents".).   Also, after a devastating fire, in which a large quantity of unpublished pages were lost,  the "clean" titles, for all practical purposes, ceased to exist. The "true undergrounds" had always sold better, so they became the order of the day.  My intentions were, and to some degree still are, to revive, revise, and reissue much of that work, intermixed with completely new material.  We shall see.