Equine the Uncivilized

Equine the Uncivilized began as a gag cartoon parodying Conan the Barbarian drawn by artist Richard Konkle.

It might have ended there, but Konkle's friend Jim Groat began coming up with ideas for stories revolving around the character. He began batting these ideas around with his other friends, who pitched in, and finally Groat approached Konkle to do a black-and-white independent comic aimed at butchering the barbarian-action genre. At the time, the success of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in publishing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had made black-and-white comics into a rampant speculation market, so Konkle agreed and the two set out to cash in on the phenomena while the iron was hot, using the company name GraphXPress (the company name was created earlier by Richard Konkle, Jim Babcock, and Mike Kelly for Babcock's attempt to start a comic publishing business, which had failed less than a year earlier without actually printing anything — Groat had attended a few of the meetings they held among themselves).

The first issue hit it off well, selling over 10,000 copies. It was a send-up of everything Conan — Equine was from "Summarily", went to school to learn Pillaging 101, falls in with a Thieves' Guild whose entire membership turns out to be undercover city guardsmen, escapes pursuit through a crowd by promoting a pancake breakfast when shouts of "Fire!" and "Purple plague!" fail to do the trick, and every other rotten joke Groat and Konkle could conceive of to cram onto the pages.

The next five issues followed largely the same theme, exploiting the foibles of barbarian comics as well as breaking the fourth wall when called on for humor value. In issue #6, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themselves make a rare authorized appearance courtesy of Eastman and Laird, throwing Equine (whose body has been possessed by a comedian/wizard named Larry) out of various bars.

The series ended with issue #9 due to flagging sales, themselves caused by the implosion of the speculation market. The Black-and-White Boom/Bust of the 1980s took many good comics with it as well as the dross. By this time, GraphXPress had expanded into producing several miniseries, one-shots, and a few other regular titles, including a companion comic to Equine the Uncivilized. Various calendars and other Equine-related merchandise were also created, much of which is still available for sale — along with the comics — from various websites including Rabbit Valley and Second Ed.