PROFESSIONAL LIAR gets money for nothing, as the first COPPERHEAD KID adventure returns to comics shops

Your friendly neighborhood blogger and professional liar returns to comic book stores next Wednesday, April 15th, when AHOY Comics offers an encore presentation of my 2019 short story "The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid" in the pages of the latest AHOY funnybook, Toxic Crusaders # 5.

"The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid" is a Western. It was the third story I sold to AHOY, and the first one published (in the pages of Second Coming # 5). The good folks at AHOY paid me on acceptance, and they just paid me a reprint fee for its use in the new issue of Toxic Crusaders. And yeah, that means I get paid for, y'know, doing nothing. And I'm GOOD at that!

The Skeletons

Since my first freelance (nonfiction) writing sales in 1984, this is only the second time I've been paid twice for the same work, and that first time was not a reprint fee nor a royalty payment. In (I think) the early 2000s, I wrote an article about the great Springfield, Missouri band the Skeletons; I sold it to DISCoveries magazine, where it sat in inventory for many months before that magazine's editor John Koenig decided it had sat too long, so he paid me a kill fee and returned its rights to me. I then sold it to Goldmine. I'm pretty sure I had to update it a little bit, so I guess I can't call the Goldmine payment as money for nothing. Money for almost nothing!

(There was one point during my twenty years as a Goldmine freelancer when then-editor Jeff Tamarkin almost reprinted one of my articles in a GM special edition, which would have netted me an additional fee, but plans changed and the reprint didn't happen. And there was one time when GM accidentally used my review of a Suzi Quatro compilation in two different issues, but I was only paid once.)

"The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid" was written as a stand-alone tale, but its warm reception prompted me to write a series of additional stories about the hard-riding Kid's heroic descendants: A hard-boiled private eye, a masked vigilante, a secret agent, a punk chick, and a reluctant superhero. I intend to write more entries in this series, and to eventually pull them all together to serve as a novel about the Copperhead Kid's legacy. Meanwhile, "The Last Ride Of The Copperhead Kid" will also appear in my short story collection Guitars Vs. Rayguns!! Short Stories And Other White Lies, which I hope to transmogrify into book form by the end of May.

But right now, you can read the story that started the Copperhead chronicles by heading to your local comic book retailer and snagging your very own copy of Toxic Crusaders # 5. RIDE! The Copperhead Kid would have wanted it that way.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. You can also become a Boppin' booster on my Patreon page.

I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here.