Wonder Wart-Hog is an underground comic book

Underground comix

Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence...

 character, a porcine parody of Superman

Superman

Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...

, created by Gilbert Shelton

Gilbert Shelton

Gilbert Shelton is an American cartoonist and underground comix artist. He is the creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, Wonder Wart-Hog, Philbert Desanex, Not Quite Dead, and the cover art to The Grateful Dead's 1978 album Shakedown Street.He graduated from Lamar High...

 and Tony Bell.

His secret identity is the mild-mannered reporter Philbert Desanex. (Occasionally, however, Shelton has depicted Wonder Wart-Hog and Desanex as two distinct individuals, with Wonder possessing the ability to reside inside the reporter's body.)

Origin and history

The idea for Wonder Wart-Hog came to Gilbert Shelton in 1961, while he was living in New York. The following year, Shelton moved back to Texas to enroll in graduate school and get student deferment from the draft. He then collaborated with Tony Bell. The first two Wonder Wart-Hog stories appeared in Bacchanal, a short-lived college humor magazine, in the spring of 1962. Shelton then became editor of The Texas Ranger and published more Wonder Wart-Hog stories (but his first art in Texas Ranger was printed in the February 1959 issue).

Shelton moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s, and founded Rip Off Press with four friends from Texas (fellow UG cartoonist Jack Jackson

Jaxon

Jaxon was the pen name of Jack Jackson , an American cartoonist. Many consider him the first underground comix artist. He co-founded the seminal Rip Off Press.-Career:Jack Jackson was born in 1941 in Pandora, Texas...

, Fred Todd, and Dave Moriaty) in 1969. In 1976, Rip Off Press was located at 1250 17th Street at the foot of Potrero Hill in San Francisco, CA. A group of ex-Texans had migrated to the Haight-Ashbury in the 70's. Gilbert Shelton later moved to Paris, France. Fellow Underground Comix artist pioneer Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb

Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...

 also lives in France with his wife (but they do not live near Paris).

Drag Cartoons

The first professional publication of Wonder Wart-Hog was in Pete Millar's Drag Cartoons in the early 1960s. Many of these were reprinted in 1968, when Millar Publishing Company brought out two issues of Wonder Wart-Hog Quarterly. 140,000 copies of each were printed, but distributors did not pick up the magazine and only 40,000 of each were sold.

The following stories from Drag Cartoons have never been reprinted:

• 26 Wheelie (1966)
• 27 Vietnam
• 29 Masked Meanie 4
• 30 Parakeet
• 31 Marine
• 32 Brain-bender
• 33 Funny Car
• 34 Nazi
• 35 Jail (1967)
• 36 Dreamcar
• 37 Fiends
• 38 Meanie Fuel
• 40 Weevel
• 41 Photogrampher
• 42 Flame Suit
• 47 Highway Tragedy (1968)

Drag Cartoons 43-46 had work by Gilbert Shelton, but no Wonder Wart-Hog.

Underground comics

Wonder Wart-Hog also appeared in the following one-shot underground comics:

• Feds 'N' Heads (1968). (Note that there are two versions of this comic, one with a 35 cent cover price and one with a 50 cent cover price, with slightly different contents, but the same WWH story.)
• Radical America Komiks (1969) (volume III, Number 1 of Radical America, an SDS
  Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)
  Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...
  
   magazine) (WWH story reprinted in Nurds of November trade paperback)
• Philbert Desanex' Dreams (1993).
• Underground Classics #12: Gilbert Shelton in 3D (1990).

Wonder Wart-Hog's adventures were serialized in comic strip

Comic strip

A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....

 form in many underground newspapers and college newspapers from the mid-1960s through 1977.

Rip Off Press

Wonder Wart-Hog appeared in Rip Off Comix #1-10 and in several of the magazine sized issues of Rip Off. His last new appearance in Rip Off Comix was in the 20th anniversary issue (#21) 1988.

Many of these Wonder Wart-Hog stories were collected in three comic books from Rip Off Press

Rip Off Press

Rip Off Press, Inc. is a seminal publishing company that specializes in adult-themed literature and graphic novels, mostly in a specific comic book format known as underground comix.-Overview:...

in the mid 1970's (Not only) The Best of Wonder Wart-Hog. These three issues reprint all of the Rip Off stories (but not all of the covers and single page appearances) except for the following:

• Battle of the Titans Chapters 3, 4, and 5 (Rip Off 10 - 12) (also released as a stand-alone comic; a collaboration among Shelton, Bell, and Joe Brown that spanned 20 years from the start to the finish of the story)
• Philbert Dessanex and the Street Entertainer (Rip Off 14)

Rip Off also produced a trade paperback collection in 1980. It included the title "Wonder Wart-Hog and the Nurds of November" story in addition to a large collection of earlier material. That story was also released as a stand-alone comic book version in 1988.

Three stories about Philbert Desanex from the trade paperback collection were released as a stand-alone comic, "Philbert Desanex' Dreams." The stories center almost entirely around WWH's alter ego, with only a brief appearance by the Hog.

The most recent story of the Hog of Steel appears in Zap Comix (#15).

External links

• The Hog of Steel, a complete bibliography of Wonder Wart-Hog.