Excerpt from my tribute, “The Creative Works of Joe Wehrle, Jr.” from The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, June 2018:

Cartoon Trader was monthly from October to December 1989. The fourth issue, dated March 1990, was the last I’ve seen. In addition to Joe’s covers, it included Classic Cartoonist Cards, paper dolls, and a page of comic strips with Joe’s Cat Burglar, Stovepipe, Night Radio, and Karen’s Litter Lane.

Night Radio

Night Radio offered a peek into another great interest of Joe’s—classic jazz. He collected 78s and played the saxophone, clarinet, and guitar. ‘I have fond memories of those few months we produced the Cartoon Trader, and still in my collection is a handful of very charming strips I prize which Karen drew for the zine about a feline couple living a zany suburban life. There will never be any more of those.’ In 2014, Joe published a 16-page mini comic collecting The Unknown Comic Art of Karen Wilson Wehrle. It includes her Litter Lane comic strips and eight color cartoons she drew fora proposed children’s book.”

Litter Lane

Joe’s bibliography appears on the Larque Press website.

Contents Pages Essa Hansen “Save, Salve, Shelter” Matthew Hughes “Air of the Overworld” Michael Cassutt “Banshee” Charles de Lint: Books to Look For —Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs —The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson…

Contents Page William Burton McCormick “Fast Forward” Ken Teutsch “The Beresford Case” Christie Cochrell “A Siege of Herons” John H. Dromey “When the Circus Almost Came to Town” Bruce Harris “Murder in the Workplace” John Grant…

Contents Page Sheila Williams’ Editorial: Happy Birthday, Isaac Asimov! Robert Silverberg’s Reflections: The Pharaoh’s Trachea James Patrick Kelly’s On the Net: Live Long and Whatever Robert Frazier “Your Clone, the Mirror Clone” (verse) Neal Asher “An…

Contents Page Dave Brzeki: Editorial John Linwood Grant’s In Memoriam: Sam Gafford (1962–2019) Melanie Atherton Allen “The Rending Veil” art by Autumn Barlow Tade Thompson “Komolafe” Matthew Willis “The Way of All Fresh” Cliff Biggers “Blindsider”…

Contents Page Matthew Wilson “The Wretched Strangers” art by Mark Evan Walker Andrew Welsh-Huggins “Home for the Holidays” Kristopher Zgorski: Blog Bytes Fei Wu “Beijingle All the Way” (Passport to Crime) translated from the Chinese by…

Contents Page Gary Lovisi: Paperback Talk Richard Greene “Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emshwiller” Gary Lovisi “Lila Lynn: Paperback Cover Model” Richard L. Kellogg “Revisiting Peyton Place” Gary Lovisi “The Hard-Boiled Paperbacks of Al Fray”…

The newly designed Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine is now on sale at Barnes & Noble and other select newsstands. Contents Page Happy Holidays from AHMM Linda Landrigan: A Cup of Crime Yet for Auld Lang Syne…

Analog kicks off its year-long celebration of its 90th year of publication with Victoria Green’s retro cover design. Managing Editor Emily Hockaday shared a preview of the Mar/Apr cover, which appears in The Digest Enthusiast No.…

I’m taking a short holiday hiatus from blogging to focus on friends and family, and wrap up the final stages of work on The Digest Enthusiast No. 11, which is due early in January 2020. When…