This installment of International Read A Comic Book Naked Day is dedicated to the recently semi-retired Neilalien, who was one of the few around to see the inaugural edition. Too hot to hoot!

Bueno Excellente drawn by Bob, by way of John McCrea.

“And remember, it will be in your lifetime, when you walk down the street, you will shop, you will attend the theater in the nude.”

-Criswell

In our darkest hour, naked comic-reading.

For those of you with limited skill in reading comprehension, International Read A Comic Book Naked Day is a completely fabricated excuse to get naked and read some comics at the same time.

Tradition dictates that I help out the comics-deprived by providing links to online comics for their naked perusal. This was relatively easy when I started this and there were less than a dozen comics blogs, but as the years go by and scan blogs, bittorrent and webcomics become more popular, it’s become difficult to find anything that hasn’t already been done to death elsewhere.

One comics archive that has gone virtually unnoticed is the full collection of Very Vicky comics and ephemera by John Mitchell and Jana Christie, supplied by the creators themselves and “not some nasty little scanner-wielding comic book pirates, god love them”. The story of a young, urban sophisticate drinking hard and fighting Shriners, Very Vicky was one of my favourite comics from the self-publishing boom.

My complete run was lost in one of many ill-considered evangelical attempts, but now I can share these treasures with you with no possibility of tear-stained pillows as an outcome. And if you’re hesitant to download the entire thing, make sure you sample a few of the various short stories, or the pin-ups by such Friends of Jilly as Steve Bissette, Michael Zulli, Evan Dorkin, Dave Sim, Brian Bendis, among others. It’s all there, more comics than you can shake a cocktail at.

Now get naked and start reading!