Unwanted: A Tall Tale of the Old West and the New Wave

From Michael Malice—Unwanted, the story of Rubber Rodeo: a band caught between punk, country, and the hit that never came. A RippaSend original graphic novel.

Bob makes mail-art postcards on his living-room floor—a serious photo, a crazy slogan, paste it to cardboard, send it out into the world. The band starts the same way: assembled from found pieces, half art project and half rock group, carried by Trish's voice and Bob's conviction that they've made something genuinely new. Nobody can quite say whether Rubber Rodeo is a band or performance art—and for one improbable stretch that's exactly what makes a major label reach for its checkbook, with an advance and a seven-album deal that lands like a winning lottery ticket pulled out of a mailbox.

What follows is the part of the rock story nobody writes songs about: the gigs that don't fill, the bass-player problem, and the slow discovery that being first is not the same as being wanted. Drawn from the band's real history—new wave meets country, postcards and all—and told with the affection and the knife-twist Malice's readers know.

A 144-page original graphic novel on the RippaSend imprint, Rippaverse Publishing's adult-readership lane. From writer Michael Malice—author of The New Right, The Anarchist Handbook, and The White Pill—with interior art by Andre Siregar (Indonesia) and colors by Andrew Cramer. Letters by The Invisible Art Studio.