Arsenic Lullaby

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Arsenic Lullaby is a comic book series written and illustrated by Douglas Paszkiewicz, was proclaimed "King of Dark Humor" by Previews magazine. Numerous reviewers and readers concured that it's dark content is in a class by itself. The underground success of Arsenic Lullaby can be attributed to its extremely bleak outlook on life, its patronizing of Middle America, and its dark humor.^{[citation needed]} It's original run of 18 issues has garnered Paszkiewicz a Harvey Award nomination in the Best New Talent category in 2000.

Paszkiewicz continues to publish Arsenic Lullaby sporadically while working on cartoon storyboards and contributing to Mad magazine, Mad Kids, and various other publications. The quality of this magazine is also recognized overseas, and has been reprinted and circulated by Greek publisher Jemma Press.

Paszkiewicz often uses phonetic spelling in his dialogue to convey the flavor of different regional caloquialisms, eras, and nationalities.

[edit] Characters

• Voodoo Joe, a man cursed to help ordinary people get revenge
• The Clot, a man who was diagnosed with a deadly skin bacteria and had to get all of his skin removed
• Baron Von Donut, an immortal alcoholic mascot who's magical powers bring him back to life to give donuts to children, no matter what happens to him the previous day.
• a dozen zombie fetuses that Voodoo Joe had liberated from an abortion clinic dumpster

[edit] Related works

It has sparked four spin off series by Paszkiewicz, which are Laughter Of The Damned (3 issues), Misery A Go Go (2 issues), Arsenic Lullabies (2 issues), The Thousand Deaths of Baron Von Donut (1 issue), and Arsenic Lullaby Pulp Edition (Magazine size)-Summer 2007.

Paszkiewicz has gone on to do work on a reprint of The Gift #1, in which there is an Arsenic Lullaby-like story in the last seven pages, and Pete the P.O.'d postal worker.