Posted in: Ahoy, Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News | Tagged: alex segura, Audrey Ryer, Bryce Ingman, Carol Lay, Carrie Harris, grant morrison, Hanna Bahedry, kek-w, Kirk Vanderbeek, Lisa Jonte, Mark Russell, Project: Cryptid, stuart moore, Torunn Grønbekk

Grant Morrison's Second Part Of Partially Naked Came The Corpse

Ahoy Comics recently announced the thirteen part Partially Naked Came The Corpse that began with a first instalment by Grant Morrison.

Ahoy Comics recently announced that, as part of their gala fifth anniversary, thirteen comics book industry writers would be turning to prose for an exquisite corpse of a story, The All-Star Annually Convening Cozy Detectives Club In Partially Naked Came The Corpse is a thirteen-part epic that kicks off with an extra-long first instalment by Grant Morrison. That serial just debuted yesterday in Project: Cryptid #1, the first of Ahoy's new fall titles, and artist Jon Proctor's artwork will illustrate each instalment. Other writers include Mark Russell, Alex Segura, Torunn Grønbekk, Bryce Ingman, Carol Lay, Carrie Harris, Hanna Bahedry, Audrey Ryer, Kirk Vanderbeek, Lisa Jonte, Stuart Moore, and Kek-w.

Morrison also wrote six "sub-chapters" to their instalment. Gizmodo published the first sub-chapter last week, and now Bleeding Cool has been asked if we would be interested in publishing the second… And why not? I am happy to play ball…. and I'm picking up a copy of Project Cryptid #1 from Gosh Comics later today. Part two below, and part one below that…

PARTIALLY NAKED CAME THE CORPSE!

AN AHOY COMICS FIFTH ANNIVERSARY EPIC SERIAL

PART TWO  by GRANT MORRISON

2. Slim Jim vs Irrelevance

Slim Jim Toledo raised his glass to one eye and peered through it reflectively. Seen from the far side, Slim Jim's distorted, pale blue peeper resembled a ghastly new species of goldfish, swollen and debauched, cyanotic with nausea in its cramped and Bourbon-filled shot glass aquarium.

That's how I got my start. Quit the Force that day and set off in the direction of cozy crime. Got myself some spurs and a drawl. Found my niche with the likes of Death Rides the Rodeo, Death Dons a Stetson, Death Stalks the Grand Ole Opry. I had the genre all to myself! Then this global shit, this damn warming . . .

Turned out thanks to all the global warming there were now so many honkytonk tunes swirling up there in the whatthef-ckosphere it had begun to have a measurable, some might say catastrophic, effect on climate and the ozone and what have you.

Enormous rotating masses of moist country and western music meeting cold fronts moving on down from Canada and Toyland were responsible for some of the most self- pitying musico-meteorological storms the midwestern USA had ever had to suffer through.

The immediate aftermath brought a nationwide shortage of shoulders to cry on, hearts to break and tissues to handle the torrent of tears and for the first time, the tide of public opinion in the USA was 100% in favor of a moratorium on new country music while emergency services dealt with the horrific consequences of its release into the atmosphere.

Even the reigning Queen of Nashville renounced her back catalogue and moved onto troubling musique concrete and weird avant jazz that was about as far away from Blue Ridge Mountain Boy as Dollywood is from the innermost D-ring of Saturn.

For Slim Jim Toledo, the Rhinestone Detective, life on the wrong side of the climate debate was the kiss of death. Country-themed cozies came rarer than good ole boys without serious convictions these days. Truth to tell, it got so bad, he was only 24 hours from squeezing his outsize balding head in the microwave oven, dialing the timer to 10 minutes, and rolling the dice, when a most unexpected invitation arrived to disturb the cobwebs in his mailbox.

It was a guest invite to the prestigious All-Star Annually Convening Cozy Detectives Club that saved Slim Jim's life as he prepared to cook his own head from within. This exclusive group of well-known married or divorced sleuthing duos, ex-policemen and various gifted amateurs who tended to make regular fools of the 'so-called professionals' was considering him for membership!

That gift of grace brung him whistling all the way up from Tennessee and all the rest of the way here to the Nightview Hotel in North Dakota's forbidding Backlot Mountains where he vowed to prove to the assembled Kings and Queens of comfy crime that Slim Jim Toledo still had what it took to live up to their inexplicable faith in him.

Joining that exalted court and solving a relaxing, bloodless murder mystery would be just the ticket for Slim Jim's flaking self-esteem!

That's what Slim Jim Toledo thought.

And here was part one…

THE ALL-STAR ANNUALLY CONVENING COZY DETECTIVES CLUB IN

PARTIALLY NAKED CAME THE CORPSE!

AN AHOY COMICS FIFTH ANNIVERSARY EPIC SERIAL

PART ONE by GRANT MORRISON

1. Try Stopping Me Now!

The facts in the case were all too obvious; Murder had strolled in like it owned the joint, pulled up a chair and made itself very much at home.

Some of the sweeping swathes of blood on the walls seemed so suggestive of a secret assassins' alphabet they were crazy dead ringers for graffiti tags, thought Detective Jim "James" Toledowski. He'd already thrown up once into a cheery, accommodating trash can and would do so five more times until only dry retch and stringy bile acids remained to vex him.

Say, does that look like "I2LUVu2"? said Special Detective Rince Cormoran in charge of Violent Crime. How the hell do I explain something like that to the DA's office, let alone my wife and mistress?

Your wife and your mistress are one and the same? Police Sergeant Emo Verbiage interjected in that broad ham and pastrami accent he had no control over, emphasizing his point with a bright jagged clash of the brass cymbals he kept for such occasions. That's crazy talk, chief! We're looking at a psycho who likes to vandalize living human meat with specialist tools! There's no getting away from it, this poor dismantled asshole's blood and brains got swiped across the wall by a wiper as long as, or most likely longer than, Betty Grable's fabled legs.

Now that was the kind of image that could stick in "James"Toledowski's brain like a thorn in his big paw and because of that it did. All the damage was done that day, his first on the job in the Big Apple, as Fort Wayne, Indiana was known long before New York. At least as far as he was concerned.

"James" hadn't known then who the hell Betty Fable was, and he didn't care to know now neither. All he knew for certain was he'd been thinking about those damn grabled legs of hers for decades since that day when the Osiris Killer's gory work had motivated the queasy lawman to display for inspection his radically deconstructed lunch with its parmesan stink of butyric acid.

Why the Osiris Killer? Something to do with how the god Set cut his brother Osiris's body into pieces was all Toledowski could separate out from a steaming mess of speculation.

The shot glass rattled nervously in his hand the way the anxious bell above the door of a General Store does. How long had he been talking to himself anyways?

Legs shuttling and back and forth, the 30-denier of her expensive sheer stockings squeaking and sweeping a rainbow of brief clarity through a windscreen wet with Missouri raindrops, the kind that fell salt blue with all the tears of all those tender-hearted cowboys like him who rode a lonesome rig on a rhinestone highway!

Try as he might to put it out of his mind, the insistent mental picture of those multiplying lady limbs working in vain to clear an accumulating glass bead dazzle on his windshield would only kick its spurs and dig in deeper, throbbing, until his thoughts were left to limp along distracted as his mind grew feebler by degrees.

He wished some kindly Androcles would one day come along, take pity, and bring the whole damn attenuated metaphor to a merciful end by extracting it completely from his memory, then disinfecting the puncture wound it left with an injection of positive affirmation before PTSD found its way in . . .

• Part 1 • Grant Morrison • PROJECT: CRYPTID #1 • September 6, 2023
• Part 2 • Bryce Ingman • CON & ON #3 • September 13, 2023
• Part 3 • Carrie Harris • BLACK'S MYTH: THE KEY TO HIS HEART #4 • September 20, 2023
• Part 4 • Kirk Vanderbeek • SECOND COMING: TRINITY #6 • September 27, 2023
• Part 5 • Mark Russell • PROJECT: CRYPTID #2 • October 11, 2023
• Part 6 • Carol Lay • CON & ON #4 • October 18, 2023
• Part 7 • Lisa Jonté • BLACK'S MYTH: THE KEY TO HIS HEART #5 • October 25, 2023
• Part 8 • Audrey Ryer • THE WRONG EARTH: WE COULD BE HEROES #1 • October 25, 2023
• Part 9 • Alex Segura • CAPTAIN GINGER: THE LAST FEEDER #1 • November 8, 2023
• Part 10 • Torunn Grønbekk • PROJECT: CRYPTID #3 • November 15, 2023
• Part 11 • Hanna Bahedry • CON & ON #5 • November 22, 2023
• Part 12 • Stuart Moore • THE WRONG EARTH: WE COULD BE HEROES #2 • December 6, 2023
• Part 13 • Kek-w • CAPTAIN GINGER: THE LAST FEEDER #2 • December 13, 2023

PROJECT CRYPTID #1 (OF 6) CVR A HOLDEN & PEREZ (MR)
AHOY COMICS
JUL231299
(W) Grant Morrison, Mark Russell, Paul Cornell (A/CA) P. J. Holden, Jordi Perez
New AHOY anthology series, featuring Bigfoot, Yetis, Nessies, Jersey Devils, and more! AHOY presents a deep dive into all things cryptid, legendary, tall tale, and fanciful, written by some of your favorite writers. Issue 1 features Mark Russell's Yeti and Paul Cornell's Mongolian Death Worm. Also: to celebrate AHOY's fifth anniversary, all books from Sep-Nov feature an epic multi-writer prose story-starting here, with a 7-page opening chapter by Grant Morrison!In Shops: Sep 06, 2023
SRP: $3.99

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