I think all collectors of any hobby get like this from time to time. You have something on your wish list that's been there seemingly forever, until one day you decide to pull the trigger and complete your set or run. That's what I've been doing with Batton Lash's Wolff & Byrd Counselors of the Macabre/Supernatural Law books lately. I just got the hankering for some never before read Supernatural Law and decided to cash in some trade credit via Amazon to get it.
Batton Lash got the idea for Wolff & Byrd in the early late 70s when he was a courtroom artist for the New York Judicial System. Lash thought it would be hilarious to have a monster like the Wolfman or Dracula having to go to court for howling at the moon or turning someone into a vampire. Lash managed to convince the small weekly publication, The Brooklyn Paper to run a strip about the spooky courtroom team of Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd. In 1983, The Counselors of the Macabre were picked up by the prestigious National Law Journal.
In 1993, Batton Lash and his wife, San Diego Comic-Con legend Jackie Estrada, started their own independent publishing company, the aptly named Exhibit A Press. After a couple of collections of the strips, Lash decided to start a regular series based on Wolff & Byrd while ending the strip runs.
The first issue of Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre hit stores with a May, 1994 cover date. The series did great with those who were already fans of the series from the other publications. But Lash found it hard to gain new readership due to the title. For one thing, Wolff and Byrd were often misspelled by fans, stores and reviewers. Plus, it seems that the word MACABRE is just impossible to say. A running joke throughout the later issues is the pronunciation of macabre as 'Mack-A-Bree!'
Trying to curb the confusion, Lash changed the name of the series to Supernatural Law with issue #24. The series ran infrequently at that point up to issue #45 (July, 2008) with a story that saw both the Toxic Avenger and Troma filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman starring as themselves!
The crossover wasn't the end of Wolff & Byrd. Batton Lash ran a couple of Kickstarter campaigns to publish graphic two novel length stories and to complete the trade paperback run of the comic series. The last Supernatural Law story completely finished was 'Grandfathered In' which was released in 2018 just a few short months before Lash's death in January 2019. The story of a ghost who refuses to leave his domicle serves as a bittersweet ending to the series. But I wonder if we'll see the counselors return to court with a new creative team as the last page of the story promises more to come.
The issue I chose for this task in the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge was issue #25. It's the lone holiday issue of the series. Though whether this takes place during Christmas or New Year's Eve isn't quite clear. It's snowing during the story and lots of champagne is drunk. But the only holiday actually mentioned in the story is Bacchanalia which occurs in March.
With many of their accounts in arrears, the law firm decides to host an open house for past and prospective clients. Alanna is just about to join the festivities when she is approached by a time traveler who claims he's a client from the future. Seeking a patent on his time machine, the scientist went back in time to see how things are going on the case. Only, nobody in the firm knows who this guy is!
Issue #25 is not an issue for casual fans. There's either a cameo or a mention of every character to have appeared in the comic book thus far. If you haven't followed the series in some order, you probably will miss a couple of those references. But for an established fan- and for someone who is reading every issue in order- this floppie is a treasure trove of Supernatural Law history.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.
Completing this review completes Task #4 (Part of a Series) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
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