Drowned Town Press

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Tales of the Ling Master (Set)

Blaster Al Ackerman's Tales of the Ling Master — Complete Set

Three digest-sized (5 ½" x 8 ½") comic books, 28 interior pages each. Black and white ink line art with digital toning and cardstock covers.

Unavailable—Sorry!

This item is no longer available due to Tales of the Ling Master #1 and Tales of the Ling Master #2 being available only for download, and Tales of the Ling Master #3 being out of print.

Set includes all three volumes of the authorized adaptation of the Ling Master stories by Blaster Al Ackerman, with art by E. J. Barnes, each volume containing three complete stories:

Who is the Ling Master?

Over the past three decades, mail-art master "Blaster" Al Ackerman has created, for a small but avid small-press audience, a parade of unforgettable characters — Eel Leonard, Brother Larv, Ringold Whorson, not to mention Plopman, inventor of the Vienna sausage suit. None, however, has been as popular across the "'Zine Scene" in which they were spawned — despite his lingering mystery, or perhaps because of it — as the Ling Master.

Described by various reviewers as "a combination Sherlock Holmes, Alastair [sic] Crowley and Pere Ubu" (John Strausbaugh) and, "what the Shadow would have been if the Shadow had...worn a pillowcase and been sort of funny looking, mildly alcoholic, broke most of the time and agoraphobic" (Conklin's Sideshow Reporter), the Ling Master sits ready to answer the questions of any bedeviled unfortunate who has a fiver to spare. The Ling Master, often known simply as Ling, exists at the crossroads between multiple pulp traditions, establishing a territory that is all his own.

How to explain the charm that is Ling? How to explain any mystery wrapped in an enigma who lives in a ratty third-floor walkup? Perhaps it is his secret identity, hidden beneath his mystic, wine-stained pillowcase hood with its single mystic eyehole. Perhaps it is his mist-shrouded origin: How did he acquire his esoteric knowledge and wisdom? Why is he a sworn enemy of the menacing Vug-Randolphs and the dread Araby Society? Perhaps it is nothing so much as the colorful parade of grifters, eccentrics, and ne'er-do-wells that seek out his services.

Parental Warning: Contains partial nudity, violence, alcohol abuse, clinical insanity, coarse language, sexual situations and references, occult references, paganism, flatulence, Nazi punks, food wastage and decay, bribery, references to pop-culture ethnic stereotypes, tobacco use, animal cruelty, squalor, bad science, rotten hygiene, references to solvent and narcotic abuse, disrespect for military authority, arson, and shambling eldritch horrors. Although if you expect each story to contain all of these, you will be disappointed.

Recommended for readers age 14 and up.