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This is, without a doubt, one of my all-time favorite Phables. (I post this every year, so please accept my apologies if you’ve already read it.)
Phables was a series of full-page comics I produced for the Philadelphia Daily News. It featured stories about Philadelphia, often told by Philadelphians themselves.
This Phable features renegade botonist Constantine Rafinesque — a contemporary of James Audobon — who was caught sleeping with the wife of the dean of Transylvania University (yes, it really exists, and it’s in Kentucky). After the dean kicked Raf out for his dalliance, the botanist placed a curse on the university… and every seven years afterwards, something eeeeeeeevil has transpired at Transylvania U.
According to my math, next year is a Curse year.
Stay ‘tooned.
——
Aside for the cartoonists in the room… If you ever read Phables, you can see me teaching myself to break out of the grid in terms of panel layout. In comics such as this one, I struggled quite a bit. But it was the gestation of the approach I take to page design that I now apply to both Evil Inc and Evil Inc After Dark pages.