BLESSED BE HC

Small-town weirdness scales new comedic heights
in Altergott's long-awaited graphic novel.
When Tom "The Acid King" Cottonwood is sentenced to prison
for dealing, he vows to exact revenge on the judge and all of Flowertown,
U.S.A. One year later, when hillbilly Henry Hotchkiss
violates the single principle binding the members of the local
men's group, the 40 Acres Club - preserving his virginity - he
proactively excommunicates himself to the woods in shame,
prompting his distraught best friend, Doofus Anderssen (he of
straw boater and Beatle haircut over a permanent five-o'clock
shadow), to organize a community search. But little does he
know that Cottonwood has been paroled and is making plans in
those same woods to fulfill his destiny as "The Acid King" - in
the form of a deadly act of terrorism he calls "Scorpio Rising."
Altergott's farcical earnest cast of smalltown bums, outlaws,
hippies, bikers, and babes - with names like Father John
Beggarweed, Stink Hair Stu, Rubberneck Nelson, Muttonchop
O'Rourke, et. al. - intertwine in a web of crime and mystery involving satanic ritual,
religious tracts curiously popping up around town, naked fishermen, and psychedelic
drugs, driving the narrative to ever-greater depths of hilarity (even though
none of his characters are in on the jokes).
Blessed Be reads like an R-rated Mad magazine parody of Our Town written by
John Waters and drawn by Mort Drucker and Wally Wood. Altergott both skewers
and celebrates an eerie realm of '70s men's magazines and small-town conservatism.
A cult favorite since the 1990s amongst intellectuals and philistines alike for his
impeccably crafted brand of lowbrow humor, cartoonist Rick Altergott has never
crafted a full-length graphic novel - until now.
Rick Altergott lives in Rhode Island with his wife and son.