Funnybook is yet another one-shot from a comic creator who never worked in the business again, but that's not why it holds a special place in the pantheon of adult comics. Funnybook will always be remembered because it features a story that launched one of the most successful female characters in adult comics.

Rick Pflug, the editor of Funnybook, was probably tickled to get established underground luminaries Larry Welz, Gilbert Shelton and Trina Robbins to contribute pages to his comic book. Pflug, who wrote and drew 19 of the 28 pages in this book, clearly set out to produce a perverse comic that would ruffle the feathers of church-going blue noses, as his own comics reference pornography, necrophilia, homosexuality, and God reading underground comics.

The benign comics Pflug got from the legendary Shelton and Robbins don't help him accomplish his objective, but the story from Larry Welz, best known for his Captain Guts comics, was so raunchy that Pflug opened the book with it. "Cherry Poptart in Rock 'n Roll Hootchie Koo" features the teen-age Cherry in a drug and sex infused tale that features, in order, cussing at parents, kidnapping and drugging, breaking and entering, petty theft, gang rape, and out-of-control drug parties. In these six pages, Cherry is even sluttier than she is in her own comic book serial that was a best seller throughout the '80s and '90s.

As for Rick Pflug's contributions, he can definitely write well and his page layouts and panel compositions are pretty good, too, but he's a mediocre illustrator. But as the editor of Funnybook, I admire his embrace of the provocative aspect of underground comics. It's too bad he didn't surface somewhere else after publishing this book; America can always use another voice challenging the status quo of mainstream society.



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
It is currently unknown how many copies of this comic book were printed. It has not been reprinted.

COMIC CREATORS:
Rick Scott Pflug - (editor) 1, 2, 10-15, 18-28
Gilbert Shelton - 2, 9
Larry Welz - 3-8
Trina Robbins - 16-17