Vancouver's finest, Dexter Cockburn, recently launched an advance preorder sale for his November titles. The timing was incredible, since Post Canada first went on a full scale strike in early October, until it rather rapidly settled for a rotating strike. Cockburn himself was dealing with a residential loss at the time. In fact, while dealing with this, he had to close his online store for the rest of 2025. It seemed as if the universe wanted to impede the release of these packages. But there was a relatively stable window of time in which Cockburn was able to push through against all odds and deliver these books to the true scholars of this world.
I'm happy to consider myself as part of this most esteemed fanbase. I have a tendancy to track anything Cockburn works on, no matter how far away from Canada the publication is. As a die-hard fan, I pledged for the highest tier, the fourth one. It included the books mentionned in this blog post and a package of curated original pages.
Stuff Buns Funnies
Remember Hot Biscuits? A collection of naughty funnies around the theme of desserts. In this book, each page is a pinup. It’s always a treat to see Cockburn’s art up close.
Goofy Funnies #20
Having any series hit an issue number that's multiple of ten is always something worth celebrating. This one is for the UK readers, especially with the first two stories. In the first one, Dr Hawley Harvey is fleeing Scotland Yard(destination Canada) with his assistant, Ethel Le Neve. Ethel, who is 27 years old, is dressed as a young lad, and in their loving affairs plenty of naval word plays to be added. Readers who have consumed the UK version of Hoopla will be familiar with lil’ Tuff Stuff, who makes a brief two page appearance here. The highlight of this issue, however, has to be the continuation of the Mloff with chapter 10. The crew is still victim to a strange arousing dust and a corpse walks the halls…
Whore Comix
Commission work is part of the life of an artist. With Whore Comix, we can get a look at 18 Cockburn commission pieces. This book also works as an artist catalog for those interested in having a commission piece of their own. The book was offered for free with any order placed in July.
Hoopla Comix
A lovely purple octopus on this cover. A good deal of previously seen funnies that were thoroughly enjoyed, such as the three ducks playing with Bert the raccoon’s insides, Squirrel Girl being initiated into the Teen Titans, and a Pippa Creme story. This issue was exclusive to the C0ckstarter crowdfund campaign.
Undercover Funnies
What would a Cockburn book, or any book for that matter, be without a striking cover? Detective Cornelius opens the Cockburn file, a gallery of mostly black and white covers Cockburn did for other anthologies or one offs. This book shows Cockburn’s contribution to the greater underground art world and is a great look at some titles old and new; Black Guard, ButtRag Mag, Spread Love Comix, Too Blur, and of course Zine-Tail. His work has certainly been places.
Wurst Comics
Caveman Clod returns in this issue. In his last appearance, the caveman was busy inventing things. Now, he has become a true artist.Though he’s known to be fairly creative, he’s at a loss for inspiration. Fortunately it won’t take long for Clod to find some just around the corner… Goatsy returns for a reprinted adventure. The story around Goatsy is quite simple: there was one Goatsy story with three different endings, and each ending appeared in a different publication. This was an incredible idea and made me discover new publications too. I hope Cockburn reconsiders this idea.
Oh and Tuff Stuff also appears here; she’s lovely, but too strong for this world’s men. The reader finally gets to have some fun with Pippa. Reprinted page from a Pus zine contribution. This book, overall, is a good mix of new content and previously published but incredibly hard to find material.
In the same spirit as Hot Biscuits, except the theme here is women with more folds. Ubermensch is the hero of this series, as he satisfies all these lovely women. Intermixed with commission pieces and anthropomorphic content.
Caramba! Comix and Go Tijuana
These are reprints for those that missed out on the previous print. The second book is particularly interesting, as it is about half the height of the first book, with one panel per page. I’m sure Dan Parent would love those.
Packing Heat - Final Thoughts
With several hundreds of high quality adult entertainment pages, the C0ckstarter campaign was an incredible offer. It gives a great overview of Cockburn's work, old and current. It also enables collectors to finally get their hands on very hard to find material, such as what was published in Pus zine, the three Goatsy stories and other publications that are lost to time and genuinely hard to come across out of the blue. Though I would usually not advice new readers to spend more than $50 to simply discover an artist's catalog (not even Moebius!), I would for Cockburn.
