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LENNY of LAREDO by Joel Beck. FIRST Printing (pale
green cover) 1965.
VERY SCARCE ITEM.
Either 100 were printed (according to printer
Phil Howe or 500 copies (according to Joel Beck).
In either case, exceptionally few have survived since it is a
slim (14 pages) hand-stapled publication with a fragile self-cover
and it was published well before such ephemera was seriously
collected. This particularly rare 1st edition simply never
shows up for sale. It was valued at $500 in Jay Kennedy's
Underground Comix Price Guide way back in 1982! By most
accounts this is the second underground comic book (preceded
only by Jaxon's God Nose).
To put this in perspective, Joel Beck
created Lenny of Laredo a full two
years before R. Crumb's first Zap hit the scene.
The potty-mouthed "Lenny" in Lenny of Laredo
is inspired by '50s stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, whose
monologues sprinkled with four-letter words shocked middle America.
Beck, living in the San Francisco Bay area, was also inspired
by Mario Savio's Free Speech Movement at the University
of California--Berkeley in the mid-sixties. This is a cornerstone
item in any serious underground comix collection.
Condition:
Very Good+. As the scan indicates, there is sun bleaching around
the edges of the front cover and, to a lesser extent, the back
cover. The cover's upper left corner has a quarter-inch tear
and is creased about 1/2 inch diagonally, affecting other pages
to a lesser extent. The original price (".50") is pencilled
in the upper right corner. The internal pages are bright white.
Dimensions: 8.5 x 11 inches.
Provenance: Certified
to be from the collection of a childhood friend of Joel
Beck.
One copy in stock. Adults
only.
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