Unsupervised Existence and Cud
LaBan's first foray into comics was his series Unsupervised Existence, published by Fantagraphics beginning in 1989. Loosely based on LaBan's own life at the time, Unsupervised Existence was a semi-humorous comic book soap opera which followed the adventures of Suzy and Danny, a young, bohemian couple living in Cleveland. Suzy, an underemployed intellectual, spends a lot of time hanging around with her friends and trying to figure out what to do with her life. Danny, her boyfriend, supports them both by driving a cab, but his true vocation is poetry, which he self-publishes, along with the work of his fellow cabbies. Unsupervised Existence garnered LaBan Harvey Award nominations for Best New Artist and Best New Series in 1990. The series was collected in its entirety in two paperbacks, Love's Not a Three-Dollar Fare (the main Suzy and Danny story) and International Bob.
International Bob focused on the series' most outrageous character, rock musician/performance artist Bob Binkum. In the book, hulking, morose Bob comes into his own after he leaves the United States in the wake of breaking up with his flighty girlfriend Annadette, who decided she was more into women than men. Fleeing the soap opera, Bob treks from Greece to India in search of exotic escape. LaBan vividly evoked the nothing-to-lose, anything-can-happen world of the unfettered, impecunious vagabond as Bob tries everything from selling junk jewelry on the street to getting ripped off after a romantic encounter.
Unsupervised Existence was followed by another series, Cud (also published by Fantagraphics), in 1992. Patterned after books like Dan Clowes' Eightball and R. Crumb's Zap, Cud featured a continuing story called "You Can't Spank the Monkey If It's on Your Back", which followed the rise and fall of a performance artist named Bob Cudd. Cudd was lifted from Unsupervised Existence, but he was a different character in the new series. The rest of each issue featured random stories, several of which went on to appear in other places at other times. "Muktuk Wolfsbreath, Hard-Boiled Shaman", for instance, became a DC Comics miniseries. Cud lasted eight issues.
In 1995, LaBan moved over to Dark Horse Comics, where his third series Cud Comics ran another eight issues, until 1998. Though Cud Comics had almost the same name as the Fantagraphics series, it was otherwise very different. Every issue featured several stories about Eno and Plum, a "slacker" couple living in the city. Eno was a lazy Generation X stereotype interested chiefly in watching cable television, while his girlfriend Plum was more of an active go-getter. Other major characters included Plum's dad, Seymour Riverpeace, a wealthy aging, pot-smoking hippy; Catherine, Plum's unhappily-single girlfriend; and Edgar Reamington, a yuppie who was always trying to steal away Plum. Most of the stories in the first four issues were collected in a 1997 paperback.
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