While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.
In the late eighties and early nineties, cyberpunk was all the rage. Not just in literature but as a lifestyle complete with it’s own fashions, language, and media. The mini-comic, kata sutra in Beyond Cyberpunk! was produced by Mark Frauenfelder & Gareth Branwyn to promote their Computer Lab production Beyond Cyberpunk: a Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future. This was 1991, long before the days of the World Wide Web or even cd-roms. Computer Lab offered their essential guide on four 800k floppies for $29.95! It came complete with this mini-comic and an intro booklet. Thankfully, the entire contents are now available for free online.
The comic itself is nothing special. More or less an advertisement for the far more interesting stack. Basically, our heroine kata sutra saves the day thanks to the vital info found within Beyond Cyberpunk: a Do-It-Yourself Guide to the Future.
Interiors of kata sutra in Beyond Cyberpunk!
Perhaps my favorite part of the comic is at the very end of the story that informs the purchaser that they "MUST lick this sticker before booting up the program." How Timothy Leary of them!
And let’s not forget the advertisement for the PRINT version of boing boing, the precursor of both the Boing Boing blog and Wired!