Preview: DAL TOKYO by Gary Panter

The one and only Gary Panter, quintessential punk illustrator and the highly accoladed set designer of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, envisions a mind-bending sci-fi/punk fusion in a new release with Fantagraphics. Originating in 1983, this is first time Panter’s DAL TOKYO will be collected into one epic volume, exhibiting the surreal “cultural and temporal collision” of a futuristic Mars that is terraformed by Texas and Japan. This one is going to be a real trip

Panter first birthed DAL TOKYO as a monthly comic strip in his trailblazing “ratty line” style when the L.A. Reader published the first 63 strips nearly thirty years ago. Although Panter continued the saga of DAL TOKYO for more than a decade, this is the first time ever for Panter’s space-based Japanese and Texan fused world to be compiled into a hardbound masterpiece.

Dubbed as the “King of punk art,” Panter has done so much for the punk/art/comics community that it’s nearly impossible to neatly sum up his accomplishments. His flyers for definitive punk bands like The Germs have cemented his place in punk history, and his work has continuously had references to all things quirky, from old Japanese monsters to cameos from Bruce Lee. It could be said that through contributing to Art Spiegelman’s comics anthology Raw, he developed the ever-recurring science fiction  luminated world in DAL TOKYO.

Keep an eye out for this one when this when Fantagraphics releases DAL TOKYO in September!