This is a somewhat peculiar talking-animal underground from the early era. Featuring Bill Crawford's plainly illustrated comics about Rufus, the Radical Reptile, who seems more like an anti-radical to me. Rufus is a pet-shop baby alligator who gets bought by a mother for her son, but some time later, when Rufus bites the boy they flush him down the toilet, leading to his new life as a sewer gator. Cold, frightened and alone, Rufus seeks help from the ASPCA, but is frightened by an alligator-skin bag on a secretary's desk and rushes back to his sewer. After conducting research, he discovers that the ASPCA is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which holds controlling interest in an alligator bag factory in Alabama. This makes him angry and inspires him to become an armed "revolutionary" who is "dedicated to the overthrow of the established order!"

The first story whets the appetite for some high-action adventure with our "Radical Reptile." In the pages that follow, however, Rufus does absolutely nothing revolutionary nor lifts a finger to overthrow the established order. The most radical thing he does is attend an anti-war rally during lunch and threaten to beat up an anti-war speaker (whose primary offense appears to be the fact that he is a pig). But otherwise Rufus only plods his way through a series of mostly unamusing strips with mostly meaningless payoffs. In other words, for a gator with some bite, he's in a lot of stories with no real bite in them.

High-Flyin' Funnies is yet another example that The Print Mint would publish anything with a remote chance of succeeding, right alongside some of the most brilliant underground comic books in history. At least High-Flyin' Funnies isn't abjectly stupid as well as boring, which would have garnered it an even lower score.



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
It is currently unknown how many copies were printed of this comic book. It has not been reprinted.