Albedo NR 2 Silk Screen Cover

So my comic book renaissance geek period continues, and I thought I'd share something that is truly scarce.  As many of you know, I love the independent comic book Albedo, created and published by Steven Gallacci in the mid 1980s through the early 2000s.  And many of you also know that this comic is famous for issue #2, which introduced Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo.  But what many of you may not know, is that issue was supposed to have a silk-screened cover!  That's right SAG was pushing the boundaries of not only comic content, but publishing style and format too.  Sadly, the process did not work and the cover ended up being standard offset printed, but during the initial production process SAG printed some copies on card stock as a test.  Again most did not turn out, but those that did he offered to collectors.  And this is one of them.

You can see the problems with registration and spattering (and this is a GOOD one),  What's neat about this copy, is that SAG wrote a note on the back detailing what happened,

So there you have it, Albedo NR 2 almost had a very different cover, see below what a cropped final cover would have looked like.  At least some of these survive so that the dozen or so hard-core Albedo fans know what they looked like ;-)

Albedo Anthropomorphics

In 1979 Steve Gallacci published a small fanzine titled Huzzah!, which featured a 4-page story Erma Felna.  Five years later he would launch his own independent comic book featuring this story, Albedo Anthropomorphics.  Copies of Huzzah! are extremely difficult to find.

The first issue of Albedo was originally printed with a 5-color cover.  Only 500 copies were printed in this way, making this one of the smallest print runs for a first printing of a comic book ever.

The second issue of Albedo features the first appearance of a character that has survived to this day, and is still being published - Usagi Yojimbo.

Only 2000 copies of this issue in the world, but very few of those have a sketch signed by Stan Sakai on the first page!