Editor’s Note: The fictional story of “Inky” Grant and his comic strip has appeared here every week or two (or sometimes three), and this week reaches its conclusion. Read the whole saga from the beginning, if you wish. 

In 1924, his “comic book” (or “comic strip novel”) complete, Henry R. (“Inky”) Grant scouted out print shops to take on the job, only to discover that his publishing endeavor was prohibitively expensive.

“Self-publishing wasn’t as easy back then as it is today,” says the indie author known professionally as Geeky-Pop Zoom. “Today, I can write fifteen pages of my Starguards fan comic and publish it on Webtoon instantly. But Inky had some trouble.”

He calculated that he should sell each issue for ten cents, the going rate for a cheap pulp magazine, and absolutely no more than fifteen cents — “otherwise, no one will buy the damned thing!” he wrote in his diary —, but he had a hard time finding a print shop that would run a thousand copies for less than $150, which would result in a massive loss for Inky, even if he sold every copy. 

Finally, he found a print shop called Greenpoint Press, located in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, an industrial area in the early 20th century and known for small manufacturing businesses, which offered to print a thousand copies of Starguards for just a hundred dollars, subject to certain restrictions, two-color printing, rather than four, and only on a few key pages. 

Thus, the best he could hope for, if he sold out his initial run, would be to lose two-and-a-half cents on actual sales, and recoup nothing for promotional costs. So Inky determined that he would “invest in future sales,” a term he picked up reading the Wall Street Journal — once. It seemed to make sense. Isn’t that what his entire project was all about: investing in the future? 

So off he went, bringing samples to newsstands and bookshops in New York city, even in New Jersey, and a few just over the border into Connecticut, which he found to be very strange country. He had to agree to leave his comic books on consignment, no money down, payment only if sold. He stood at subways and street corners, where he did his best to hand out flyers to anyone who would take one. 

Within a few days, he had managed to sell, or leave on consignment, two hundred copies, which netted him fifteen dollars, and orders for another eight hundred copies, which exhausted the rest of his initial print run. 

The media took notice. The New York Times interviewed him and ran a small item mid-paper. He began feverishly sketching images for his second issue, vast alien vistas in Sheik Caerulus Susurrus’s incorporeal Unreality. 

The Daily Worker attacked him as a die-hard, and The New York Call called him a people’s champion.

He sketched wild images of Mary Luna battling Hell-men in a variety of scanty outfits.

He sketched Nick Orion tied up, half-naked and dazed, surrounded by furry wombats.

The Union News syndicate and the American News syndicate made offers, he signed a deal with both (one national, one local) and cashed a check, and he drew intricate images of armies on the march.

He sketched images of rocket ships exploding into a swirling void. He spent all night in a speak, downing gin and cocaine. All night, he wrote in his diary. Gin. Cocaine. All night. Have never been so happy. Rocket ships explode into a void. Mary Luna, naked, swords, guns. So happy. Naked killing death happy. She visits me in dreams, naked Mary Luna, killing me, shooting me, strangle-death, happiness.

Paramount called to see if he’d be interested in creating a starring vehicle for Wallace Reid and Bebe Daniels, an offer he accepted while drunk, and he cashed Paramount’s check. Barbara La Marr called to invite him for a drink at the Oak Lounge, and he drew a picture of a technologically impossible city rising from the oceans of Neptune. 

He had money to keep himself in cocaine and booze for months, with a little left over for food and ladies. And he wrote and wrote and wrote in his journal, page after page of vaguely incriminating statements, but only vaguely. Who was this Inky Grant — a murderer, a hero of the people, a totalitarian fascist — and what would his legacy be? 

“I first saw a copy of Starguards in my uncle’s rare book shop, when I was fourteen,” says science fiction novelist, Mark Laporta. “He pulled me aside and laid it across my palms like it was contraband. ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ he whispered, and right away I knew why. It wasn’t just the sexy drawings, but the whole insane vision of the future. Later I learned the author had been accused of murder, but  it didn’t add up. Based on Starguards, I’m pretty sure that rumor was his crazy idea of self-promotion. But who knows? His comic books brand him as an anarchist through and through. He might have done just about anything.”

Laporta offers an intriguing theory, that Inky put ambiguous hints in his text and his diary suggesting the possibility of murder solely to burnish his legend. Was the murder mere fiction, with legacy in mind?

“He was finally right on the verge of the sweeping recognition he truly deserved,” said comics historian Eugene Kovalenko (1930-1985), in his Boogernose fanzine interview.  “Anyone paying attention in mid-1924 would have predicted that Inky would simultaneously conquer the art, publishing and film industries by the end of the year.

“Anyway,” Kovalenko added, with the glint of a tear in his eye. “We all know what happened next.” 

^^^

Thus concludes the first volume of Starguards.

Model for Mary Luna: Kalyee Srithnam.