“It just kind of happened by accident," explained writer Mark Russell. "I was just tweeting funny lines I thought Snagglepuss would say if he was Tennessee Williams -- some kind of Southern Gothic playwright -- and Marie Javins, my editor, thought they were funny and she talked to Dan [Didio, DC co-publisher] about turning that into a comic. That's how it started. It was really just funny tweets, and it just ballooned from there.”

 

He added: “The way I write him, he's kind of an avant-garde figure for the times -- people kind of expect him to say things that are edgy, and witty. In a way, he's allowed to breach subjects and say things in 1953 in New York that other people simply could not.”

 

In the series, Snagglepuss is very much in the closet and is forced to lead a double life. .

 

“But he has values and integrity as an artist, and he's trying to stand up for people who otherwise would be shoved under the stairs in this time of great national paranoia in the Red Scare mentality," Russell said. "It's very easy in a time of national catastrophe -- of perceived national catastrophe -- to throw people under the sink and forget about them, and Snagglepuss is unwilling to let them do that to people he knows and loves. He's willing to stand up for people when the rest of the country is not.”

 

 

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 will be out in January, 2018.