The Soddyssey (Paperback)

~ Batton Lash (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The second collection of author-illustrator Lash's Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre comic book is for those who like their horror-comedy with a healthy portion of camp. This book is amusing and clever—but sometimes too clever. Some of the cultural references might fly right over the head of anyone under 30, and if too many stories are read in one sitting, preciousness overload sets in (bad puns abound.) But the niche that Lashs work is aimed at will certainly appreciate Wolff & Byrds adventures. These level-headed and calm lawyers (who have their own problematic lives to contend with) play straight men to a parade of hapless monsters and other supernatural types as they are guided through their often pathetic legal complaints. The collected stories reinforce each other and further flesh out this off-kilter world where Dracula needs legal assistance to get rid of squatters, and a swamp thing, the Sodd of the title, is recruited by unscrupulous tree huggers as an unwitting spokesman. The art is a neat mashup of the styles of the romance and ghoul magazines the comics industry was pushing in the late 1960s, with an additional debt to the inking and shading of counterculture artist Spain Rodriguez. (Oct.)
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From Booklist

Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd are big-deal lawyers in the Big Apple—they call themselves Counselors of the Macabre. As longtime patrons of Lash’s comic strip of that name (which later became Supernatural Law and then went from strip to comic-book format) know, that’s because their clientele consists exclusively of the likes of Sodd, the Thing Called It. Sodd’s continued case frames and irregularly interrupts those of an alien kidnapping (in a baggy-pantsed parody called “The * Files”), a surrogate-mother deal with the devil, a (human) blob, an accursed stand-up (non)comic, an incompetent guardian angel, a real-estate fight between “Ayn Wrice” and Dracula, a revenant corpse’s IRS bill, an occasionally living statue, and a werewolf’s intellectual property. The frame neatly wraps up what might have been only a story collection into a kind of novel-in-stories that Lash’s broad and punny humor and Archie-meets-Tales of the Crypt art keeps consistently light and frothy, a little like whipped slime, perhaps. Ludicrous fun in the key of the old Addams Family TV show. --Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Exhibit A Press (October 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0981551904
• ISBN-13: 978-0981551906
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #726,942 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A new spin on horror, fantasy, and the courtroom drama, January 9, 2009

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Swamp Monsters have legal troubles too. "The Soddyssey: And Other Tales of Supernatural Law" delves into the one thing effective against all supernatural creatures, at least in these regards, lawyers. Laugh out loud funny, it's a reprint of several issues of the comic book series 'Wolff & Byrd', a legal team specializing in the supernatural. A new spin on horror, fantasy, and the courtroom drama, "The Soddyssey" is an enthusiastically recommended pick for humor and graphic novel fans.