Vault is re-introducing Kid Maroon, a captivating new neo-noir comic series inspired by the famous 1940s comic strip created by the renowned cartoonist, Pep Shepard. The upcoming Kid Maroon series will be written by Christopher Cantwell (known for his work on Halt and Catch Fire, Iron Man, Doctor Doom), illustrated by Victor Santos (noted for Polar and Violent Love), colored by Mattia Iacono (renowned for Kid Venom and The Dead Lucky), lettered by Andworld Design (acknowledged for The Many Deaths of Laila Starr), and designed by Adam Cahoon (known for The Nasty).
The Kid Maroon comic strip was originally created by Shepard in 1944. It focused on a hard-boiled boy detective who investigated crimes in his hometown of “Crimeville”. The series quickly attracted significant controversy due to the stories drawing on Shepard’s nihilistic outlook, penchant for violence, and obsession with bathtub laudanum. The backlash against the series, combined with the rising influence of the Comics Code, led to the strip’s cancellation after just 216 episodes. This caused Shepard to become completely disaffected with the comic book medium, and he then buried all his original art in a field in South Dakota, the exact location of which is unknown. Despite this, Kid Maroon became a tremendous cult hit that has inspired underground and independent comics ever since.
Christopher Cantwell said:
“I’ve been wanting to write a Kid Maroon story for years upon years now. Because Kid Maroon feels like me. It’s funny because I remember being a kid and how I couldn’t wait to grow up. Every day I feel like I grew up too fast. I often wish I could go back. Kid faces that same struggle in our book. Sure, his world is laden with pulp gangsters and killers, but he’s very much a child. This was always the undercurrent of the original Kid Maroon strips that Pep Shepard did. Sure, sometimes Pep occasionally had Kid rail against characters like Captain Pinko and write diatribes against Sales Tax, but at his best, those stories were always about a boy caught between worlds, his innocence always fragile, at risk of being shattered. That is the core of our book through and through.”
Kid Maroon will debut with a double-length first issue that will hit store shelves in November 2024. The full synopsis for Kid Maroon #1 can be read below:
Back in print for the first time in over 75 years in a stunning double-length issue #1… the world’s only hard-boiled boy detective – KID MAROON. From Christopher Cantwell (Iron Man, Doctor Doom, The Blue Flame, Halt and Catch Fire) and Victor Santos (Polar, Violent Love)!
Two years ago, Walden Maroon outgrew his small town, his loving parents, and the low stakes mysteries involving missing butterflies and stolen cookies. Since then, he’s dwelled within the cesspit of Crimeville, where murders, vice, and corruption are the city’s bread and butter. But at 12 years old, Kid is weary. When a string of horrific killings and arsons spring up in the streets, can he crack the case with his quick wits and slingshot? Or does Kid Maroon secretly yearn for what he’s never gotten to be… a kid?
Readers can learn more about Pep Shepard at www.rememberingpep.com.
The bizarre story of Pep Shepard’s Kid Maroon
Pep Shepard began his comics career as an apprentice with newspaper strip legend Irvin Batch in Pittsburgh, guest inking on several Sunday strips in the final years of Batch’s famed “How ‘Bout That?” But once “How ‘Bout That?” was canceled (after the apocryphal “Let’s poison Tommy” story), Shepard found himself without work and enlisted in the Merchant Marines.
A dishonorable discharge in ‘39 for public intoxication left Pep out of active service during the war effort and without a job. Shepard soon found himself working for the printing press of the Baltimore Companion in the early 40’s. There in the later hours before the morning edition ran off the slate, Pep began crafting a child detective character loosely inspired by his memories of his brother Alva, but also informed by his growing bitterness toward government services, urban planning in general, and the entire American Idea itself, but also paradoxically, his own paranoid delusions regarding communism.
Shortly after, Shepard was hired as an assistant in the Funnies Department of the Companion. He worked under Hal Furtcher and Matthias Lieb, as they worked on forgettable works such as “Corn in the Morning” and “Two Way Meat.” It was in 1944 that Shepard started creating artwork and sketches for what would eventually become “Kid Maroon,” his most well-known (and notorious) comic strip.
In 1948, after Furtcher & Lieb ended their partnership due to an accidental shooting during a card game, Shepard gained quick approval for his own comic strip, “Kid Maroon.” The strip was influenced by Shepard’s nihilistic outlook, his struggles as a father to two sons born in ’45 and ’46 (named Grover and Tris), and his obsessive belief that a slingshot could be a deadly weapon in the wrong (or right) hands. During his six-month run, Shepard introduced several iconic villains, including Blockhead, Ratfink, Crap Cop (originally printed as Ratfuck and Shit Cop), Egghead, Woody Gunk, Freddie Flames, and the less-used Mister Kill. The most famous character, reflecting Shepard himself, was Billy Beans, an innocent orphan who saw the world in a beatific way, mirroring Shepard’s aspirations despite his growing addiction to codeine and “bathtub laudanum.”
Shepard introduced a slew of iconic villains in his six month run, including Blockhead, Ratfuck (printed as Ratfink at the time), Shit Cop (printed as Crap Cop at the time), Egghead, Woody Gunk, Freddie Flames, and the less-used Mister Kill. Perhaps most famous of them all is the one character created to reflect Pep himself—that of Billy Beans, the hapless but guileless orphan who saw the world in an almost beatific way, much like how Pep aspired to be, despite his growing addiction to codeine and what he referred to as “bathtub laudanum.”
The Kid Maroon comic strip was published daily. It was written, drawn, and lettered by Pep, who worked six days a week at his drawing board. This led to him neglecting his family, which they later argued was better for them in the long run. Pep had a preference for loud opera records, corporal punishment, and sudden outbursts of tears. In total, he produced 216 Kid Maroon strips printed in the Baltimore Companion from the spring to fall of 1948.
Kid Maroon became a cult hit, though it was largely ignored by the broader readership at the time — save for reader complaints about its depictions of violence. This perception worsened when it was made public that Shepard kept detailed anatomy books by his work desk to make sure injuries were correctly depicted down to the organs, viscera and muscular tissue shown.
After facing criticism, Shepard quickly became disenchanted with the work. Things took a turn for the worse when a cola factory next to the Companion printing press exploded. The explosion damaged the archives of primary print work and caused a subsequent fire, resulting in the destruction of nearly all of Shepard’s printed works. Only 12 printed strips survived.
Shepard stubbornly refused to sell his original artwork, despite his wife’s pleas, because he didn’t think it would have sold for much due to the Comics Code and public criticism of the medium. In the end, he supposedly buried all his original art boards in an unknown location in a field in South Dakota around 1951 or 1952. Shortly after that, he disappeared.
Fragments of one to two panels from Baltimore Companion strips of Kid Maroon have been sold for as much as $275,000 in recent auctions. In 2006, a complete strip, albeit color-stained and burned, was auctioned off for $1.4 million. Unofficial digital scans of this strip can be found on the internet. There are no original art pieces available. It is believed that a map indicating the art’s burial location is kept in a safety deposit box in Livingston, Montana, but this has not been confirmed.
Legend tells us that Pep Shepard is believed to have died of exposure somewhere in Northern New Mexico, perhaps near Taos, in the early 70’s.
