The Soddyssey and Other Tales of Supernatural Law, Volume 2 »

Cartoonist Batton Lash is the creator of the humor/horror series Supernatural Law (aka Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre). Batton studied cartooning and graphic arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where his instructors included Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman. In 1979 Brooklyn Paper Publications, asked Lash to create a comic strip, and he came up with "Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre," which ran weekly in The Brooklyn Paper until 1996 and in The National Law Journal from 1983 to 1997. Since May 1994, Wolff & Byrd have held court in their own comic book series from Exhibit A Press, which Lash established with his wife, Jackie Estrada. \tLasha€s other work has included writing for Archie Comics and the Radioactive Man (Simpsons Comics) series for Bongo Comics.

Beware the creatures of the night--they have lawyers! Attorneys Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd specialize in defending the supernatural--and the supernaturally afflicted! In this collection of eight issues from the popular comic book series, the lawyers handle the case of Sodd, The Thing Called It, a partman, partt-vegetation creature who is having his 15 minutes of fame. Other featured clients include a UFO fanatic, a guardian angel, a young woman who's carrying Satan's baby, a werewolf artist, Dracula, and more. This book is volume 2 in the Supernatural Law trade paperback series, following Tales of Supernatural Law.

Publishers Weekly

The second collection of author-illustrator Lash's Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre comic book is for those who like their horror-comedy with a healthy portion of camp. This book is amusing and clever-but sometimes too clever. Some of the cultural references might fly right over the head of anyone under 30, and if too many stories are read in one sitting, preciousness overload sets in (bad puns abound.) But the niche that Lash's work is aimed at will certainly appreciate Wolff & Byrd's adventures. These level-headed and calm lawyers (who have their own problematic lives to contend with) play straight men to a parade of hapless monsters and other supernatural types as they are guided through their often pathetic legal complaints. The collected stories reinforce each other and further flesh out this off-kilter world where Dracula needs legal assistance to get rid of squatters, and a "swamp thing," the Sodd of the title, is recruited by unscrupulous tree huggers as an unwitting spokesman. The art is a neat mashup of the styles of the romance and ghoul magazines the comics industry was pushing in the late 1960s, with an additional debt to the inking and shading of counterculture artist Spain Rodriguez. (Oct.)

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