Black Heart Billy, the absurdist action satire by Rick Remender and Kieron Dwyer, is returning to comic book stores for its 25th anniversary, as Image will release a Deluxe Hardcover of the series.
“Rick was an integral part of my raunchy adult humor comic LCD: Lowest Comic Denominator, so when he showed me his drawing of Black Heart Billy and asked me to work with him on developing the character into a full blown comic series, it seemed like the natural (d)evolution of my comics career, and a perfect vehicle for our mutual love of absurd, balls-to-the-wall, black humor,” said Dwyer via press release. “Like the strips we both did in LCD, there were no sacred cows and no red lines not to be crossed in BHB. We never really knew how anyone else would receive what we did, but we made each other laugh out loud any time we concocted new (mis)adventures for young Billy Black. Those were the golden days. Enjoy!”
In the series, readers met Black Billy, a skate-punk with a robot head, who comes in conflict with a “deranged Nazi scientist” who decides to bring Adolf Hitler back to life in the corpse of Jerry Garcia. The Black Heart Billy 25th Anniversary hardcover will collect the whole run alongside bonus content and a new afterword written by Remender.
Added Remender, “No character holds as much personal weight for me as Black Heart Billy. In 1999, I was a broke kid who’d just moved to San Francisco chasing a stupid dream to make independent comics. Skateboarding and punk rock had shaped my life and I wanted to create a book that lived in that world. Something absurd and unhinged and true to the scene that gave me a home. While sharing an office with Kieron Dwyer, I showed him a sketch I did of BHB. We immediately started riffing and cooking up a story that made us laugh so hard we couldn’t not make it. My longtime collaborator Harper Jaten jumped in, and we were set for a ton of free work! We never made a single dime off it, but that didn’t matter. What we got was unfiltered, ridiculous, joy. The kind you only get when you’re going nuts trying to make your friends laugh. Even 25 years later, Black Heart Billy lives close to my heart. Bringing him to life remains one of the purest, best times of my life.”
Black Heart Billy 25th Anniversary hardcover will hit comic book shops on December 17, and bookstores on December 30.
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