Today in Comics History, February 23: Happy birthday, Tom Peyer!

Born on this very day in my own hometown of Syracuse, New York: comics writer, editor, and artist Tom Peyer, one of my favorite comics creators! He's written Hourman, Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires, L.E.G.I.O.N. and R.E.B.E.L.S., Cruel and Unusual, New Gods, Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up, Spider-Man: House of M, Bart Simpson, Magnus Robot Fighter, and been editor or assistant editor of some of the greatest Vertigo books: Animal Man, Doom Patrol, The Sandman, Shade the Changing Man, Swamp Thing, Hellblazer. And, that old Syracuse phrase: "many, many more!"


"On the Ledge" from DC/Vertigo Comics cover-dated June 1993
Yes, Vertigo! Where you knew you were somebody when your name appeared in the classic "Beard-Hunter" issue of Doom Patrol!


from Doom Patrol (1987 series) #45 (DC/Vertigo, July 1991), script by Grant Morrison, pencils by Vince Giarrano (who, I believe, is another Central New York guy!), inks by Malcolm Jones III, colors by Daniel Vozzo, letters by John Workman
Somebody needs to update Tom's Wikipedia article because it says nuthin' about the absolutely amazin' Ahoy Comics! Tom is a co-founder, editor, and writer of many Ahoy Comics, including the modern classic The Wrong Earth (and its sequels featuring Dragonfly and Dragonflyman), Hashtag Danger, High Heaven, Penultiman, and others. Not tryin to suck up here or anything (oh, maybe I am) but as far as I'm concerned, Ahoy is the best publisher debut of the past ten years, and I love a huge number of the titles they publish. Try one today! Tell 'em a little stuffed bull sent ya!

Here's an interview with Tom in an issue of the Peyer-scripted High Heaven (which also featured Peyer's Hashtag Danger). I'm only showing you one page of this because the whole interview is available on ComicsAhoy.com!


"Tom Peyer" from High Heaven #2 (Ahoy, October 2018)
And here's a fun rainy-day activity all about Tom from one of their recent new superhero multiverse series My Bad, which I also recommend highly. GEEZ JUST PICK IT UP ALREADY.


"Bad Libs: Tom and the No Good, Very Bad New Comic Book Day" in My Bad #1 (Ahoy, November 2021), text by Scott Morse, colors by Kelly Fitzpatrick, letters by Rob Steen (
But now I'm gonna show you some comic appearances of and comics by Tom Peyer that you probably have never seen before, unless you grew up in Syracuse or are stalking the man right now.


cover of Sideshow: Cartoons from the Syracuse New Times (Times-Advocate of New York, January 1982), by Tom Peyer
"Sideshow" was a comic strip written and drawn by Tom during the 1980s and published in the local indie free weekly The Syracuse New Times. I grew up on that newspaper and was influenced by a lot of its left-leaning, humanist and progressive editorial stance and stories, especially in a city where the two major daily newspapers, The Post-Standard (morning) and The Herald-Journal (evening) were well-chewed pablums of iffy, soft journalism, worth the subscription cost mostly only for the comics pages. Nancy and Peanuts and Rip Kirby, baby!

The New Times ceased publication relatively recently (2019) and it's a sad loss. I still have kept some back issues of the paper in the vast Bully Archives; I think you can tell why I saved this one.


The Sideshow book is apparently rare. There's zero copies of it available on Amazon.com (Amazon ad) right now, and no listings on most of the other major online book retailers. I don't know the print run, but it was distriubuted locally, so it probably only had Central New York regional distribution. But I recommend it highly: if you're ever in Syracuse, check used book stores (not that many left) to see if they have it. I've had my copy forty years (which is a neat trick when you're a seven-year-old little stuffed bull) and Tom's cartoons have been a constant inspiration to my own sense of humor and writing.

Here's a handful of my favorite strips from the New Times and the book collection. I've scanned and reproduced them much smaller than in the actual book (which is 11 inches wide) so that while they're readable, you really oughta go on a Duran Duran-style hunt for the book itself.


"Sideshow" was the first place I ever saw the "Conan the Librarian" gag, and as far as I'm concerned, Tom Peyer did it first (and best):


I can never hear a song by REO Speedwagon without thinking of this comic strip, from the days when the radio stations would play their music incessantly:

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Clark Kent goes to work for the Syracuse newspapers. Remember what I said about journalistic pablum? Yeah, that. (Please note the name Mike Sagert; we'll look at him a little later.)


This comic, about trickle-down economics (timely for today, even!) is one of my favorites, and whenever the subject comes up in conversation, I never resist replying the speech from the fourth and fifth panels.


As you can see from the cover of the book, then-President Reagan was a frequent target for satire by Tom. The strip played up Reagan's disconnection from reality and current events, and helped shape my left-wing political views in my own Republican family household. The other figure on the cover is Lee Alexander's Cat, the (fictional) pet of then-Mayor Lee Alexander, well-known for always travelling out of town rather than satying in Syracuse, and after that well-known for being indicted on 40 counts of extortion, income tax evasion, racketeering and conspiracy. He spent six years in prison. Syracuse politics! It's not as well-known as New York City or Chicago politics but it's just as grafty.

Anyway, Ronald Reagan:


I've also got to tip my hat to Tom for being fond of Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy and for helping me to appreciate the draftmanship and clever design of the strip.




Of course, there were occasional self-portraits of Peyer himself in the strips, which contributes nicely to my usual birthday theme of "where can I find this artist appeaaring inside a comics story?"



Going through old Syracuse New Times has not only provided me with inspiration for my Tom Peyer birthday post, but it's also unleashed a lake-effect, salt-potato, nostalgia for my early home in Syracuse and my first discovery and fandom of comics. That was definitely a Golden Age for me, and how could it not be: lookit how many comic book shops we had! My "usual" was downtown's Dream Days, but I also would shop at Twilight (just around the corner from a huge warehouse of used book where I could happily spend a whole afternoon) and I definitely remember buying Hellblazer #1 at Captain Comics. All of the stores in these ads are long out of business. Twilight's signage was still up as of a couple years ago, but it is now a head shop. (And not a good one that sold concert t-shirts like Liverpool's The Panhandler!)


Dream Days was owned and operated by the late great Mike Sagert, who always took time to talk to a nerdy young man bull starting out reading and collecting comics. I bought Avengers #197 there, my first Marvel superhero comic after I'd already been collecting Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and became intrigued by the Bullpen Bulletins news of their super-stuff. I bought X-Men #137 there, probably the single worst first X-Men comic anyone has ever bought, but Mike filled me in on the background of the story and I was there at his store the day follow-up ish #138 was released. He let me buy multiple copies of Daredevil #190, while warning me not to forget the true joy of comic books was the reading, not the investment. (Although I did make out pretty well re-selling those copies on eBay in the 2000s!)

Here's a few of the inexpertly cut-out clippings I still have about Mike Sagert.




In with those same clippings: I'd totally forgotten that Tom Peyer used to write a column for the Syracuse New Times (great title, too!), frequently focusing on the type of comics I wanted to read. His recommndations were gold.




"Recent Comic Books!" Featuring Sugar and Spike, Ronin, the early Alan Moore Swamp Thing, and The New Gods. In just a few years Tom would be editing Swamp Thing and writing New Gods.



Hey, Mike Sterling, check it out! ONE OF US! He's one of us!


So my point, and I do have one, is that I love the work of birthday boy Tom Peyer, and writing about him carries me along to quite a pleasant nostalgic memory lane of my love of comics. You're very much an influence on that love, Tom, and I wish you a happy birthday, and many more.

Besides: Tom Peyer taught me in nine easy steps how to draw for comics!


from Sideshow