About Bobu Leene

Bobu Leene is a splash page that got out of hand.

Yep, the initial splash page in the first issue depicting a vaguely Disney-ish samurai-looking guy with the tribal tats and varicose titties striking a pose while in the middle of ripping apart a couple of ne'er'dowells somehow turned into a comic book series that stretched to 10 issues.

The plot, as far as I can tell: Reformed bad guy thinks he can make things up to society by taking out other bad guys. Cop whose brother was offed by reformed bad guy is chasing reformed bad guy, but must suppress his urge to take revenge on reformed bad guy. This was all supposed to get real psychological, but it never happened. I had imagined 20 issues, but only got to the midpoint.

This was the mid to late 90's. I started drawing a couple of pages of a comic whose plot, even then, I only barely understood; the artwork was heavily indebted to Sam Kieth's The Maxx, which was the dopest thing going at the time, though it also incorporated my love of Carl Barks, Floyd Gottfredson, and Benito Jacovitti. I took those pages to my buddy Mark at Middle Earth comics in Montclair, New Jersey. He encourage me to go the independent route--print up a couple, put 'em on shelves, see where it went.

I ended up printing these giant magazine-sized issues, Xeroxing them at a local Staples. They still have wanted posters up there for me: Dead or alive, for abusing the black ink from numerous Xerox machines. Anyways, they sold pretty good, I guess, and Mark gave me the number of a very patient guy (whose name I cannot recall) at Diamond comic distributors.

I send the giant Xeroxed issues to this gent, who said Diamond would give us a crack at distribution. I'd just have to get them printed up real-like. Staples around North Jersey breathed a sigh of relief. Back to random tax forms, huzzah!

After I got my first order, I knew I was in trouble. The cost of printing these things up at my local Clifton print shop was astronomical. I had given up the idea long before that I'd make money on this, but here I was, a teenager with a low-paying job and no business sense at all, who'd be losing money hand over fist in a vanity project. So what did I do?

I went cheapo, of course.

I struck a deal with the local print place, who saved me a couple hundred by printing up digest-sized versions of the issue. So we went from giant-sized comics to dwarf. The poor comic shops on the ordering side of this lousy gambit where, I'm sure, not too enthused to get a product so different from the one promised. Naturally, orders for subsequent issues declined.

I had taken huge inspiration from Dave Sim, who amazed me by putting out a monthly comic book, Cerebus, of tremendous quality. I aspired to do this, but there was no way in hell it was going to happen. The quality of my work declined, along with the print quality. Eventually, it was as if I had another job besides my crappy retail one, only more grueling and less rewarding. I began to hate the thought of having to draw.

And so the saga of Bobu Leene, through both a lack of orders due to my business savvy and my own disgust at the chore, came to a premature conclusion. I don't regret stopping while I was behind. A man can only go so far down a blind alley.

What I do regret, though, was the shitty printing job. Although my art wasn't gonna win any awards, it wasn't helped by the fact that I couldn't afford a print job that would let the pages bleed, even! So this here is my chance to sort of rectify all that, as well a collect the complete--rather, ultimately incomplete--Bobu Leene story in one place.

I'd just like to thank Mark Berman from Middle Earth for all his enthusiasm for the product and artwork. I'd also like to thank that guy, whoever he was, from Diamond who actually considered distributing this beast (I like to pride myself in thinking that I'm the reason they upped their standards for distributing independent titles.) And here's to the likes of Jim Woodring and Dave Sim, and any other great independent comic creators whom I harassed with copies of the junk.

The Bobu Leene saga was not meant to end as it did. There's still some miles to go before Bobu sleeps. He's out there somewhere, getting that lame ponytail taken care of, hopefully getting the tattoos lasered off. Maybe one day I'll feel like telling the rest of that story.

Pete Prochilo
2010