Again, everyone did what they could on it. But, I always thought it was just MANTICORE #2 with black splats; that only the outside, (though there are nice contributions inside, too, in the general sense), fulfilled our initial vision of it. Not because mine is the back cover. I also had a text story I wrote, inside, usually rightfully ignored, (my response to an illo by Fred Greenburg that I loved. One he already had about, someplace); it 'belongs' in an sf fanzine of the day. Steve (Bissette) and probly Larry (Loc) and I were the ones first stirred up to have the thing, once Fred had generously offered to print it. He was never critical of any of us when, perhaps, he could have been. We all put a little money in on it, I think, to defray the costs for Fred. So, none of us were about to loom over anyone to do their part our way. I wouldn't've had the nerve.

I thought of the title, in that initial talk the few of us had with Fred when we thought it up. (I had at one time wanted to call a comic Zoo Parade which had already been used years before). No one knew this later. I remember them or us having art all over trying to get some page flow out of the thing. And wagging boxes of them to 'the city', (New York), the convention for the expected minor avoidance and dismay of anyone willing to touch it.

Glancing through it again today, it really isn't any worse than similar things, such early work. What it would've taken to be crazier enough to suit me then I wouldn't and didn't know. Guess, the covers seemed like false advertising. Not enough 'gore' inside. Too much leaning on fantasy pin ups! Had forgotten alot of what's in it, even (John) Totleben's fine centrespread and Larry's 'acid troll' (no doubt back from recent bloodshed) - both were pages they'd been working on anyway, 'for' class.

My back cover, (named after the partly visible label of a jelly jar), I believe I'd actually already done that summer before the second class came. Quieter. Not at my usual board. It had nothing to do with anything or anyone but putting the ugly headed, 'warning' thing on paper. All very purifying. Remember Joe (Kubert) saw it. And Ernie (Pasanen) and his girlfriend. It didn't even bother me like it might've once.

The sick demonic head with its cat whiskers and baline 'teeth' harks back to some really disturbing creature on a Marvel Monster magazine cover painting, possibly year or two before PARADE OF GORE or Kubert school in their monster boom of the mid seventies. I don't have the magazine anymore because it bothered me! This big hell beast with a really nasty, soul-snuffing leer. (See:  Monsters Unleashed #10, February 1975. Art by Jose Antonio Domingo).

Always liked Bissette's GORE cover creature, chewing at its leg - worthy of any wire rack in a public restroom. Loved (Rick) Veitch's marching logo but I always wished they'd left the zipatone off. I saw it when he was working on it, inking it, I guess. It was much snappier that way.

My text story called "The Seed of Shock" (one-plus pages), with Fred's illo, (actually from '76), was inspired, if that's not overstating my result, by the picture's two overlapping aliens, the largest, more 'faded', seeming to interpenetrate the other being as it falls from a run. Still think it's a fine picture. One Fred contrived from two separate pieces, in printing. If I recall right.

Rick Taylor was good enough to do the lettering, uncredited; but mistakenly one of the small, note pages of my writing was copied back instead of front, or vice versa. The funny thing is, tho' it can be read understandably either way. May have improved it! Was about altering realities, too!

One more thing, to clarify on Bissette's intro of the "Elly" reprint. I asked him, then, to point out the demon's similarity to Clive Barker's sketch (in TABOO #1) not to emphasize my supposed originality, but that independently of each other, over a span of some years and no awareness of each other we both drew what looks to me to be the same demon. A slight tweak of Steve's wording then - probably needed because I wasn't quite clear myself.

OMNIBUS #1 came out in March of '78. I gave my only copy to some guy overwhelmed with it, who went on to color my page in it, with color pencils, like a coloring book! Haven't any notion or memory when I trashed or lost its original; and have therefore not laid eyes on it in thirty years!

#2 came out that summer, I guess, after my return to Shreveport. I still have its main parts, tho' pulled apart with some pages possibly missing.

The books are much saner, if that's the word, than PARADE OF GORE; perhaps Fred's way of stepping back again from that. Never asked him that, or absorbed the books as I should have. I was 'otherwise occupied'.

I always liked Ernie Pasanen's 'fisherman' painting in #2; (another class cull, from our 'grey wash' assignment)?

Also, in #2, on the letters page some guy described my page in #1 as an "N.E.V.", which he then 'helpfully', and inevitably, defined for us all as "No Entertainment Value".