Dark Horse Presents is going to be presenting some wild and crazy madness come March.
On the heels of their publication of their omnibus collection of everything Milk and Cheese: Dairy Products Gone Bad, writer Evan Dorkin has announced that his long-dormant anthology series Dork will be returning within the pages of DHP, under the new name of House of Fun.
“While we were working on the Milk and Cheese collection with Scott Allie and Daniel Chabon, I pitched the idea to do new material for Dark Horse so I could revive some of my old characters,” Dorkin said. “This dovetailed nicely with the revival of Dark Horse Presents, since most of my humor comics originally ran in various anthologies including several from DHC like Instant Piano, Deadline USA, and the first run of Dark Horse Presents.
“The idea was to bring back as many of my old characters and concepts from Milk and Cheese and Dork as possible, grouping it all under the new House of Fun name,” he explained. “I decided not to use Dork as a catchall title for these comics. I got sick of the name a long time ago and this relaunch felt a good opportunity to finally retire it.
“So, what I’m doing is twenty-four pages of comics to be spread over three issues of DHP, with each eight-page anchored by a new Milk and Cheese strip. The other features will include a new Murder Family episode; several pages of Fun gag strips, as well as the return of The Eltingville Comic Book, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Role-Playing Club. If all goes according to plan I’ll also be doing a one-page Fisher-Price Theater adaptation of Fahrenheit 451 and a short Devil Puppet story.”
These are all the classic elements of Dork, returning under the name Dorkin and his “long-suffering” wife and collaborator Sarah Dyer have called their website (and, appropos of nothing and entirely coincidentally, it is also what I called the house I lived in during my senior year of college, but you really didn’t need to know that). Dyer will be handling all the coloring for these new pages as well.
“This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now,” Dorkin said. “The last issue of Dork came out in 2006 and it’s been even longer since I worked on an Eltingville or Murder Family strip. I’m excited to be working on my own stuff again, I’m having a lot of fun making these comics, and I hope folks will have fun reading them. If not they can go suck an egg.”
Check out the latest Book Report podcast to hear Iann Robinson and I discuss the Milk & Cheese collection. And, to give you a taste of what Dorkin does, take a look at this preview image of his beloved Murder Family strip.
