By Gabriel Neeb
San Diego Comic Con and David Lynch are both perfectly suited for each other and wildly different. The late David Lynch is remembered for many things, films and television, but he often worked in other visual mediums, notably comic strips.
On Saturday, Jeff Trexler (Comic Book Legal Defense Fund), Professor Michael Dooley and Dan Barton (editor, Los Angeles Reader) gathered to discuss David Lynch and how his comic work reflected his filmed work and vice versa. Artist Matt Haley also sort of made an appearance.
Trexler began the panel by showing a Twin Peaks Log Lady intro, asking if a dog is Man’s Best Friend, before going through slideshow of some of Lynch’s artwork and a selection of Lynch’s strip, The Angriest Dog in the World.
The slideshow was made as a way of explaining The Angriest Dog in the World. In the 1980s through the 2010s, most major American cities had from one or more free newspapers which featured news articles about the area, music and movie reviews, and comic strips (this is how Matt Groening got his start). The Los Angeles Reader was fortunate enough to print the David Lynch strip The Angriest Dog in the World.
The strip was simple. A few panels of art which never changed, but with a text box that would change every week, usually with Lynch calling editor Barton and giving him the new words. The strip ran from 1983 to 1992.
Trexler showed a few of the strips where the text referenced something that reflected concerns and themes Lynch also showed in his movies and TV shows. One strip might feature text which said “Why do the birds go on singing?”, something characters in some of his films often wonder about, and the first shot of the intro for the show Twin Peaks featured… a bird. Trexler mentioned a couple other strips, one of which mentioned a “one-armed man,” a fixture of Twin Peaks during its run.
Trexler also showed a few slides where Lynch may have influenced comics and comics influenced Lynch. He noted the Grant Morrison run of Batman with the multiple interpretations of Batman reflecting Lynch’s use of doubles and “tulpas” across works like Lost Highway and Twin Peaks. Another visual from Twin Peaks: The Return, the green glove worn by Freddy, seems to have been based off a story from the series Tales of the Unexpected.
At this point, Dooley flashed a slide of his article about influences of comics on Lynch. The article, “David Lynch, Cartoon Detectives, and Crackpot Twin Peaks Theories,” is a piece where Dooley highlighted the influence of the strip The Fusco Brothers by J.C. Duffy. Again, Dooley refered to a few strips where Lynch may have been influenced and influenced back. Mostly about coffee and the curative powers of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Maybe. As Dooley stated, Lynch resists strict interpretation of his work and art.
Then, the panel took a strange turn. Matt Haley was scheduled to appear, but obligations to a convention in Oregon kept him from attending. In a move that Lynch would have approved of, Haley called in and discussed his comic work related to Lynch over the phone.
Haley is notable as he prepared, over six months, an elaborate pitch for a Twin Peaks Season 3 comic which would have continued from the cliffhanger of Season 2. Haley described the show as a desert island pick, and when he saw the first DVD set (which held the first seven episodes) he contacted the parent company (CBS) to see if they were open to a comic continuation. He went to work, and after six months of coordination and planning he submitted it to Lynch on a Friday… and subsequently had the longest weekend ever as he waited for a response. It was a “No,” but Lynch did express admiration for Haley’s work.
He also revealed to Haley some of his own plans for the third season of Twin Peaks had it not been canceled in 1991:
- There would have been a five year jump.
- Dale Cooper would have returned to the town as a pharmacist, still under the control of evil entity Bob.
- Ben and Audrey Horne would have been seen as being in comas for the last five years.
- Sheriff Truman would have figured out Cooper was not the real Cooper and would have backed his truck into the Black Lodge in an attempt to find the real Cooper.
- Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer) would have returned as another Palmer cousin, but this time as a redhead and she would have been killed too.
None of this was used in the eventual Season 3 we got.
Haley mentioned a few short films, Lumiere and Alphabet, that Lynch directed before the line was cut off.
Barton then told of his time when he regularly spoke with Lynch to take down the text for Angriest Dog in the World. It was a relationship that lasted about 18 months and usually began with Lynch saying, “I got another dog for you.”
This led to a series of conversations Barton and Lynch would share. For instance, Barton asked about a part in Dune, and what a black oily substance that was sprayed on Baron Harkonnen was… to which Lynch replied, “I don’t know.”
Barton also got to see Blue Velvet months before release, found it to be amazing, and asked Lynch what Dennis Hopper’s character was inhaling at various parts of the movie. “I don’t know.”
One time Lynch didn’t reply this way was when Barton’s boss told him to ask Lynch to do the strip for free, instead of for the $25 fee he got for every strip. Lynch just said, “No, you pay for it.”
At this point, Trexler gave a soft confirmation that a comprehensive blu-ray of David Lynch shorts was in the works. This information was told to him by Jennifer Lynch, David’s daughter.
(There was a report that Criterion is preparing a box set of David Lynch films for release in the future, but there was no indication given if this blu-ray would or would not be a part of it or even come from Criterion.)
Trexler then left the audience with a list of works the audience may want to explore if they wanted to see Lynch’s comic and animated work:
- Six Men Getting Sick
- Blue Velvet
- Dumbland
- Shot in the Back of the Head (music video for Moby)
- Pozar
- Snootworld, an animated piece Lynch was working on at the time of his death.
Does any of this make a lick of sense?
“I don’t know.”
As Trexler said, “May he live forever.”
Stay tuned to The Beat for more news from SDCC ’26.
