Edited by Tom Neely

Cover and back cover paintings by Tom Neely

Title pago artwork by Ed Luce

End paper illustrations by Dave Davenport and Gin Stevens

All art © 2012,2013,2014 the respective creators. All Rights Reserved.

Permission to reproduce material must be obtained from the artist or publisher.

Joe Biel and Tom Neely, publishers.

Printed in USA,

This is a work of fiction and parody

Any resemblance to characters living or dead is, uh… coincidental.

Microcosm Publishing

2752 N. Williams Ave

Portland, OR 97227

www.microcosmpubIishing.com

I Will Destroy You Comics

Los Angeles, CA

www.iwilldestroyyou.com

ISBN: 978-1-62106-718-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

“Igloo Tornado Must Diet!” by Kyoshi Nakazawa

Foreword by Rob Halford

“Hendry & Glenn in Buried Secrets” by Tom Neely

“Hendry & Glenn vs. Wuvable Oaf” by Ed luce and Tom neely

“The Neely Strip” by M. Moseley Smith and Reuben Storey

“Henry” by Andrew Cox

“How the Chores Thrill” by Mark Rudolph

“Evil Lives” by Max Clotfelter and Marc J. Palm

“Spaghetti Night” by Megan Hutchison

“Same Time Next Year” by Josh Bayer

“Avenger Adventure” by Benjamin Marra

“Me Too” by Scot Nobles

“D.I.Y.” by Gabrielle Gamboa

“Footsies” by J.T. Dockery

“Henry & Glenn Go to the Pharmacy” by MariNaomi

“Collabortion” by Michael DeForge

“Henry & Glenn for Five More Minutes” by Ed Luce

“Henry & Glenn Go to Hole Foods” by Champoy

“Face to Face” by Marc J. Palm

“Hybrid Moment” by Max Clotfelter

“Henry & Glenn in Space #4” by Keenan Marshall Keller

“Fuck You Motherfucker” by Aaron Conley and Matthew Allison

“Glenn’s Psychic Voyage” by J. Bennett and Bruno Guerreiro

“The Tarot of Henry & Glenn” by Jeremy Baum

“Record Store Day” by Geoff Vasile

“Scowl War” by Bobby Madness

“Henry & Glenn vs. Lizards” by Noah Van Sciver

“Mark & Gary Forever” by Jonny Ryan

“Cosplay” by Crom of Finland

“I Had a Dream, Joe” by Josh Bayer

“Going to Gaydes” by Justin Hall

“The Final Blow” by Tom Neely and J. Bennett

With Pin-ups by:

Gabe Martinez, Sean Stepanoff, Katie Skelly, Willow Dawson, Rafer Roberts, Zak Sally, Tom Forget, Alex Chiu, Beth Dean, Matt Crabe, Keenan Marshall Keller, Mikey Wetzei, Nate Powell, Chuck BB, Grant Reynolds, Dennis Halbritter, Tim Sievert, Trevor Alixopulos, Ed Luce, Eric Yahnker, Coop, Jeff Ward, Tom Neely, Ken Garduno

“The Secret History of Henry & Glenn Comics” by Nick Green

Gallery of Covers and Fine Arts by Various Artists

Including: Andy Bellanger, Clayton Brothers, Kristina Collantes, Beth Dean, Faul Hornschemeier, Levon Jihanian. Shaky Kane, Ed Luce, Tom Neely, Scot Nobles, Fred Noland, Jeremy Owen, Jim Rugg, Tom Scioli, Reuben Splatterbeast, James Stanton, Mark Todd, Dalton Webb and Eric Yahnker lind paper illustrations by Dave Davenport and Gin Stevens With special limited edition dust-jackets by Kristina Collantes, Ed Luce, Tom Neely, Mark Rudolph and Dan Zettwoch.

ROB HALFORD

LEANS FOREWORD

Oh, how transparent of you Tom Neely… you deluded fool… thinking you can reel me in on some ruse about: “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could get Rob Halford to foreword this collection of Henry and Glenn Forever and Ever?!” HA!

I know how your sick and twisted mind works… laying awake at night in your hovel… sweating and gasping as you rewind me one more time off of your so-called hidden VHS collection that displays the full oasis of my male masculinity on stage! You even have the nerve to half heartedly ink me in at some sex boutique when you full well know I worked at a porno shop. Was your hand trembling with the urge to go further? I know it was. Yet somehow your mad plan just about held together. You thought that just because you had heard a so-called rumor that I was already sucked into the (cough) genius of your work and by using your “talent” of combining satire… pathos… wit… absurdity… and other variables on a theme so… OUT THERE MAN… that I would jump at the chance to give you a moment of my mind to grovel at your twinky feet! Then you go one step further and rope in other people convincing them to use their gifts to amp up your sham and making it all even more addictive…

Well, now it crumbles around you! Like a boy on a beach whose sand castle gets swept away by the unforgiving tide of truth of exposure. I expose you Tom Neely! Yes, I expose myself to you that this Henry and Glenn thing is really about… Tom and Rob! There! It’s out in the open for all the world to see at last… I’m doing this for you Tom. I’m setting you free from the shame and the guilt of your dirty closet. No, no don’t thank me… You just keep thinking and inking your way into the hall of what ever it is you guys go into… by your… fuck you world aesthetic!

But listen… Hear me now Tom Neely! One day our paths will cross… not in your vivid imaginings… it will be a bar or diner or bathhouse… and then… THEN THE SPARKS WILL FLY!

- Rob Halford

April, 2014

For Mother,

who will never “get it,”
but bless her for trying.

Thank you to the Igloo Tornado
Matthew, Levon and Scot

Special thanks to Joe, Ed, J. and Mark
for encouraging me to beat this dead horse
a few more times.

The Secret History of Henry & Glenn Comics

by Nick Green

In World War II America, able-bodied men joined the armed forces, their wives went to work in torpedo factories and wide-eyed children thrilled to the ten cent adventures of the ultimate defenders of truth and justice, pulp heroes like Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel. And, of course, Henry & Glenn: The characters’ humble origins were spotlighted in 1939s American Comics #1, where the 98-pound flat-footed 4H weaklings were approached by Uncle Sam to join an experimental training program for the U.S. Army. After receiving injections of irradiated super serum, Henry grew into a lantern-jawed strongman and Glenn became a barrel-chested fighter. These sensitive souls would be bullied no more; from that point on, they vowed to kick sand in the face of Americas enemies.

Henry & Glenn’s contributions to America’s wartime efforts cannot be understated. As U.S. forces entered the European theatre of operations, Henry & Glenn were on the frontlines, smashing fascism and upholding the American way. The now-iconic cover of American Comics #27 features Henry bending Benito Mussolini and Emperor Tojo into a human pretzel, while Glenn punches Adolf Hitler so hard that the dictator flies out of his jackboots and lands on the Moon (although, in a surprise twist, Hitler boards a rocket back to Earth and lives to fight another day). Kids everywhere were captivated by the four-color chronicles of Henry & Glenn, but as Allied forces beat back the Axis threat, victory gardens went fallow and interest in hyper-realistic depictions of war waned.

In an effort to reflect an appetite for more wholesome entertainment, comics imprint Hourly recast Henry & Glenn as a pair of fresh-faced teenagers. The first issue of the new series (1950s Henry & Glenn at Lodi High #1) followed the pair painting posters for a pep rally and hanging out with their best friends, a hirsute jock named Bear and the cool greaser Leather Daddy-O. Subsequent issues depicted Henry & Glenn eating hamburgers at the malt shop, helping old ladies across the street and rescuing cats from trees. The content was undoubtedly wholesome, though the series began to draw fire from moral crusader Dr. Frederick Wertham, who railed against Henry & Glenn’s close-knit relationship as “a wish-dream of two homosexuals living together.”

The success of Henry & Glenn at Lodi High enabled Hourly to expand its line with romance titles, Westerns, and most notably, the horror anthology series Horror Hotel, “hosted” by a pair of creepy cultists named “Daryl” and “John.” Dr. Wertham responded by lambasting Hourly’s entire line, particularly a lurid 1952 story from Horror Hotel called “Twist of Cain,” where Daryl and John command their followers to worship Satan and plunge knives deep into their brothers’ hearts. After a wave of negative publicity following the release of Dr. Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, Hourly was forced to file for bankruptcy and sell off its entire line to creditors.

Flash forward ten years later: An irascible huckster named Tom Neely takes over his father’s publishing empire and decides to channel the public’s renewed fascination with superheroes by branching out into comics. Neely assembles a Murderer’s Row of veteran artists for the fledgling enterprise and dubs the frigid bullpen the “Igloo Tornado.” Joining Neely is Gulpin Gin Stevens, who originally created Henry & Glenn and illustrated some of the pair’s greatest Nazi-fighting adventures in American Comics; Leapin’ Levon Jihanian, a publicity-shy dreamer known for his angular lines and flair for the macabre; Sensational Scot Nobles, a superb draftsman who had honed his craft on romance and genre books a decade earlier.

For the company’s flagship title, the Igloo Tornado bullpen decides to re-launch Henry & Glenn and restore the iconic everymen as larger-than-life superheroes. In Henry & Glenn Adventures #1, Henry & Glenn are thawed from a block of ice in the Arctic Circle and returned to America, where they struggle to adjust to the new realities of a very different society. With the Axis powers in shambles and the House Un-American Activities Committee on the wane, Henry & Glenn team up to strike fear in the hearts of petty criminals everywhere. The new series was a smashing success, and soon, all four Igloo Tornado members were working in tandem to meet the public’s demand.

“A Murderers Row of veteran artists” The early years of the Igloo Tornado Clockwise from top left: Tom Neely, Gin Stevens Scot Nobles, Levon Jihanian

The offical crest of the Igloo Tornado

By the fourth issue of the new series, Igloo Tornado caved to public demand for an updated origin story by depicting Henry declining an invitation to a family dinner in order to cash in on his newfound abilities as a masked Luchador, before returning home to find his parents slaughtered. As the series continued, the Igloo Tornado team toyed with notions of time and space and took Henry & Glenn on fantastical adventures below the Earth’s surface, in outer space and into alternate dimensions. A three-part epic (issues #48-50) introducing the irritating and litigious devourer of ideas Ginnlactus and his herald Robo remains a favorite amongst comics scholars for its use of dramatic splash pages and is considered to be the pinnacle of the entire Henry & Glenn Adventures run.

Tensions rose between the Igloo Tornado as Neely became increasingly paranoid and greedy.

At the height of his career, it was said Gulpin’ Gin Stevens could draw as many as 10 pages of comics per day.

But the honeymoon period was short-lived. In fanzine interviews from that era, Neely began to assume credit for the creation of these characters and constantly belittled the work of his collaborators, thumbing his nose at the bizarre objectivist tone of Ayn Rand devotee Jihanian’s work and Stevens’ seeming preference for fantastical tales about gods and monsters. Jihanian responded by destroying his own original art pages and quitting the industry entirely. “The art is what is important,” sniffed Jihanian in his final interview with The Comics Chronicle in 1972. “Not the artist. Like the ‘artist’ minus the ‘ist.’ It rhymes with ‘fart.’ The A-R-T.” Meanwhile, Stevens moved to a rival publisher and eventually spearheaded a lawsuit against Igloo Tornado for creator’s rights. Nobles, a consummate company man, begrudgingly took on an increased workload in an effort to continuing flooding the market with Henry & Glenn product.

As the popular media of the 1970s reveled in social realism, the illustrated adventures of Henry & Glenn followed with the times and the pair became vigilantes for hire. In a seminal issue of Henry/Glenn: Hard-Travelling Heroes, Glenn discovers that one of his closest associates is a junkie; the cover of #76 depicts Glenn’s ward Doyle with a needle in his arm and was one of the first single issues of a series to be published without the approval of the Comics Code Authority. During the same era, Igloo Tornado caught lightning in a bottle once again with the oversized newsstand black and white publication The Savage Steel of Henry and Glenn, a bare-chested barbarian saga that outsold special interest magazines Ball Club and Just Men by a wide margin.

Interest in Henry & Glenn waned somewhat in the 1980s, as Igloo Tornado shamelessly milked trends by transforming Glenn into a jeet kune do master and Henry as his Zen sensei. During the indie comics explosion, the market was suddenly flooded with blatant anthropomorphic rip-offs, including turtles, rabbits, and hamsters. Sales flagged throughout the decade, until Igloo Tornado buried the hatchet with former company linchpin Gin Stevens, who revived Henry & Glenn as cybernetic warriors in the cubic zirconium-encrusted Xtreme H&G Force#1. The issue was an instant hit with collectors, who hoarded millions of copies from specialty shops with the promise of paying for their children’s college educations.

Unfortunately, when Stevens took four months to deliver the artwork for the following issue and submitted a series of inexplicable sideways layouts, Neely fired Stevens and replaced him with Nobles, who decided to draw every character in the series with Asian features. Within months, both Stevens and Nobles had each formed their own company and erased Igloo Tornado’s stranglehold on the direct market. Neely successfully recruited a group of younger artists with no sense of anatomy and an inability to draw feet, and the Henry & Glenn brand was diluted by an endless array of excruciating gimmicks like holograms, skull-shaped covers, and leather-bound “bondage” editions.

In particular, the yearlong “Death of Henry & Glenn” storyline met with controversey, when the editors made the crass marketing ploy to put the fate or our heroes in the hands of the comic audience, A toll free number was printed at the end of issue #11 asking fans to vote on who would die: Henry or Glenn? When issue #12 hit the stands, Glenn’s fate was sealed. Riots broke out in comic shops across the country as nerds clashed over the results. Now known as “Black Wednesday,” it is still considered one of the bloodiest days in comic fandom. At the tail end of the decade, a now bitter and alcoholic Neely was forced to sell off the entire line to Microcosm publisher Joe Biel, who had made iris first million in the disposal of literal garbage, and was looking to build a “punk rock” empire (and purchase more yachts).

In early 2014—the 75th anniversary of Henry & Glenn’s fabulous introduction—a near-mint copy of American Comics #1 sold at public auction for $666,666. Interest in rare issues from the early run has soared amongst Henry & Glenn collectors, but die series speaks as much to novice readers as it does to the die-hards with neck beards that still live in their mommies and daddies’ basements. The artistry and writing informing the pair’s ongoing saga remains intricate and accomplished, and the sense of discovery that accompanies cracking the spine of a Henry & Glenn comic and drawing in the “macho” smell of the fresh pages is as potent as ever. These comics are meant to be treasured, displayed as proudly as Henry’s weightlifting equipment or Glenn’s voluminous book collection, not encased in mylar sheaths—as the dynamic duo can attest, it’s a shame to keep anything you love in a closet.