Two great tastes that went great together! Combined by publisher Mirthful Masterpieces to bolster sales, this joint book became an unexpected hit. We're very happy to re-publish the entirety of this riotous romp through America in the written word!

Issue 1: The Sincerest Form Of Fowlery

It all started about 65 million years ago (give or take). Whatever sort of eternal being there was for the overnight shift concocted the universe from what was left over from the cosmic bakery (probably lumpy crusts of bread and tap water). The land, the sea, the air, plants, marine life, and animals came soon afterwards as some sort of natural occurrence.

I was born probably a good dozen light years away on a place called Tuune' (yes two u's, don't make such a fuss about it, I don't), where all the little cartoon characters live and act out antics that are beamed directly into the brains of burgeoning dreamers and children at heart. Characters like Dippy The Donkey and Olmar The Otter. (but more importantly our patron saint, Ryder Rabbit. Guy's been on the air for years through syndication and honestly, I don't know how he does it.)

Anywho some years ago a freak accident occured where I was shot clean cross the universe and wound up in a place called Bumsville, Idaho. It took a while to get used to, sure, but I took to it like a duck to water (yessir, we got puns in this book folks, take a number!). I made friends with a lot of sheared primates (what I call you humes, natch), but none moreso than Lindsey Willham. For all her looks (and trust me, she was a gorgeous dame. She was an artists model at numerous colleges), she had a strong determination and a heart of gold (I loved the kid, but she got kidnapped by her childhood stalker Dr. Braun and no, not the coffee grinder. Lord only knows where she is now)

But it all came crashing down around me when my autobiography was turned into a feature length farce. Oh, you should have seen how deeply the press dug into me, it was a travesty! Anywho, after the movie, I relocated to New York and set up shop as a private duck-tective (will work for bread and all that. Puns! We got puns I tell yah!)

It's in this line of work (as boring as it is) that I met a fella that you're probably going to get to know more than you're gonna want to, Norman D. Rockafellow. He was a burgeoning caricature artist who moonlighted as a courtroom artist. Unfortunately he made the cardinal sin of drawing the jury in all kinds of funny hats. He came to me with his portfolio in hand, hoping to be a sketch artist, wondering if I could put him in touch with some of my cop buddies. I said I would. What really endeared me to him was his lack of confusion about me being a duck (but then again, after the movie, people in stopped doing that in general).

We decided to toast the occasion by going to the downstairs diner for a cup of joe and an early-riser (though eating eggs even as a cartoon duck churns my stomach). Now the diner was run by an old chum of mine from Tuune' named Trigger Blueregard. Trigger worked as a bounty hunter and made good money doing it, but he wanted the simple life for himself so he relocated via direct transport to New York and took up shop with me.

Ever since I got popular (pre movie that is) people have wondered about Tuune'. Well, some scientists decided that they could make an artificial link with a computerized brain and bring toons here. Well, that didn't work out too well. Technically we were considered illegal immigrants and not being human kind of made people think of us second class citizens. Overpopulation and the feeling of not having enough is always a touchy subject and I won't harp on it here. It's not my job, nor the job of the people who write this four-color periodical.

Anywho, I watched Norman unwind as he drank and ate. Must have been hard for him feeling that vulnerable from lack of work. He slowly opened up to me about who he really was, guess he felt like he could trust me. Turns out that Norman was a super that you might have heard of called The Centurion. While not the first Centurion (the first one died horrifically in a bran cereal commercial while his suit caught on fire), Norman was primed to be his replacement.

Norman grew up as recluse in a bomb shelter by the government with a fake family made up of some pretty convincing robots (or as convincing as robots from the 40's could be anyway). He was fed a steady diet of god and country horsepucky along with Bologna sandwiches and warm Dr. Pepper. These last two were apparently infused with a special mineral found only in the west indies called Talvinum Anhilate. What it truly did, no one was quite sure, but it was speculated by scientists to give the boy special abilities that would separate him from us regular joes.

Unfortunately funding ran out pretty quickly and Norman was just kind of left in the shelter for a good twenty years or so, unaffected by the signs of aging, and was let loose on modern America. What he must of felt being thrown in blindly to a world of free-love, civil liberties, and hatred of fellow man and the government. He was later found and drafted into G.A.P. (that's Government Appointed Protection to you and me) and became an agent of freedom and liberty, or so they thought. Norman was at odds with himself. He frankly felt like a walking anachronism and felt as though he didn't belong (a man after my own heart really). But through preservence he become a better person and found friends and even a lady love.

So I asked him, rather bluntly I might add, why he needed me. He had all this government dough to live off of and seemed fairly successful. Well kids, he told me something that knocked my socks clean off; he told me that he wanted to "find America". And I laughed like I hadn't laughed in years, not at the idea, but because of how needlessly earnest it seemed. But then I wondered how can anyone truly find America? You can't find it in books, history only goes so far and sometimes the context of certain actions and events is lost on a lot of people.

No, this is something you need to take by the proverbial horns and ride head on into that bright light. I don't know what I thought I was doing agreeing to such a to such a thing, business was scarce and maybe I could have used a sick day? I went upstairs, packed my things and left my office keys with Trigger, telling him to mind the shop and jokingly told him to hold my calls. I don't think I'll ever forget that sunrise, so warm and golden that you could almost butter your toast with it...