PLANET OF BEER: A SMELL OF STEVE TREASURY

is the distillation of many years' worth of my weekly comic strip, Smell of Steve. The strip featured a rotating cast of “characters” such as Bougle Gluce, Bigfoot, Sammy Hagar…and, of course, the “Planet of Beer” guys.

(Click on the image for a few samples)

The Planet of Beer strips themselves were inspired by something called “The Ballad of the Planet of Beer,” the text of which I somehow managed to scribble down on filthy, butter-smeared napkins one night while hunched over in a bathroom stall of the Egyptian Theater (in Seattle, WA), making noises like a cat in heat and desperately trying not to throw up. (Or making noises like a cat in heat and desperately trying TO throw up…I forget which).

Anyway, below you’ll find “The Ballad of the Planet of Beer” (written all in one sitting – or all in one “hunching,” as the case may be) in its entirety.

Well, not in its entirety, actually, as many of the napkins I wrote it on were lost, illegible, and/or used-for-other-purposes-and-eventually-flushed. So we’ll have to consider this particular epic poem a fragmentary text: no beginning, really, and an abrupt and unsatisfying finish.

Not unlike many of my comic strips.

Okay? You’ve been warned. Click here to read "The Ballad of the Planet of Beer".