"Loathesome and disgusting."
— M.R. Hopkins

Cartoonist

Blaster Al Ackerman's Tales of the Ling Master

Hiding his identity under a yellowed, wine-stained pillowcase with a single eye-hole...dimly lit by the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling of his one-room apartment... the Ling Master fights occult evils, aids his neighbors in their struggles with sinister forces, and dispenses timeless secret wisdom. He’ll also answer your questions about tawdry personal problems at $5 a pop.

Blaster Al Ackerman's Tales of the Ling Master is a planned three-issue, full-sized comic-book mini-series adapting nine of the "Ling Master" short stories by "Blaster" Al Ackerman. Artist E.J. Barnes has obtained permission from, and worked with, Dr. Ackerman to develop this mini-series, each 32-page issue of which contains three complete stories. The art will be in black and white, with color covers.

Each of the stories that appear in Blaster Al Ackerman's Tales of the Ling Master has been published in its prose form in earlier publications: Zines Popular Reality, Meshuggah, and Shattered Wig Review, and anthologies The Ask Ling Collection (1986), Blaster! The Blaster Al Ackerman Omnibus (1994), and I Taught My Dog to Shoot a Gun (2001).

Who is the Ling Master?

Over the past quarter-century, mail-art master "Blaster" Al Ackerman has created, for a small but avid small-press audience, an array 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 Strasburgh) 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 traditional pulp genres, 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.

The Tales

Parental Advisory: Blaster Al Ackerman's Tales of the Ling Master is a humor comic. It contains partial nudity, violence, alcohol abuse, clinical insanity, coarse language, sexual references, occult references, 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.

The following Ling Master tales have been completed and are available to the public ("Digest-sized" means 5 ½" x 8 ½"):

	Confessions of an American Ling Master — An 8-page digest-sized black-and-white mini-comic. Ling's "origin story" — the first Ling Master story from Blaster's pen! Click for a sample page.	8pp b&w. OUT OF PRINT
	"Jimmy," or, The Bread-Doll Fancier — A 12-page digest-sized black-and-white mini-comic. The Miracle of Life in a suitcase. Click for a sample page.	12pp b&w. $1.00 postpaid
	"I, The Stallion!" — An 8-page digest-sized black-and-white mini-comic. Ling uses the Ancient Wisdom of Tibet to help a beleaguered soul. Click for a sample page.	8pp b&w. $1.00 postpaid
	The Squid Boys of Terre Haute — A 12-page digest-sized black-and-white mini-comic. Close Encounters of the Third Grade: Do the Old Ones have their own comics? Click for a sample page.	12pp b&w. $1.00 postpaid

SPECIAL DISCOUNT: $3.00 postpaid for ALL FOUR minis! ($2.50 postpaid for 3)

Please contact E. J. to discuss purchases. All prices are in U.S. Dollars. Individual issues of comic books, regardless of frequency, are "periodicals" under Massachusetts law and are therefore sales-tax exempt.

To sign up for E. J. Barnes's Comics newsletter (formerly Friends of the Ling Master), click here.