1978: Hello from San Diego

The Complete Pacific Comics Re-Reading Blog Series presents:

Hello from San Diego

by Rick Geary

You thought this blog series was over now, right? So did I!

But then William Schanes mentioned that they’d published a couple of books by Rick Geary. I had never heard of these books, and I love Rick Geary, so off I went to ebay, and now here we are.

These weren’t published by Pacific Comics proper, but by Schanes and Schanes, their other publishing arm.

And what a strange book this is. I initially assumed that it was a book of Gearyish (non-)gags…

… but it’s much weirder than that. Sure, it has some pages of normal Geary off-kilter non-sequiturs..

But there’s a substantial number of pages where he just gives straight-up facts about San Diego without a chuckle in sight. And then some drawings of birds.

But Rick Geary’s Rick Geary, and that’s why we love him.

With cheese.

Nobody draws anything like Rick Geary. I could look at his artwork for days.

Oh, wobblies. I like them.

“Organized crime in San Diego.”

So… what is this book? Was it meant as something they’d push heavily in San Diego? It’s not really funny funny, but it’s witty and contains a lot of San Diego facts. The market potential for this book outside of San Diego seems a bit vague.

Very odd.

Well, that’s a strange publishing strategy? The Schaneseses published both of these books at the same time?

As they didn’t publish anything else in this format later, I’m going to guess that it wasn’t a resounding commercial success, but then again; I know nothing.

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