“Although John Porcellino’s comic strip Prairie Pothole ran for only a short 16 weeks in the Chicago Reader, it quickly became a favorite. When an editorial shift ended the Reader’s comics page after four months, John continued to produce the strip for his Patreon supporters, writing mainly about his childhood memories of growing up in Chicagoland. Listening to weird records, earwigs, trick or treating, and smelt (?!), The Collected Prairie Pothole includes all 28 of these classic four-panel newspaper-style strips, plus bonus material!”

JOHN PORCELLINO was born in Chicago, in 1968, and has been writing, drawing, and publishing minicomics, comics, and graphic novels for over thirty years. His celebrated self-published series King-Cat Comics, begun in 1989, has inspired a generation of cartoonists. Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man, a collection of King-Cat stories about Porcellino’s experiences as a pest control worker, won an Ignatz Award in 2005, and Perfect Example, first published in 2000, chronicles his struggles with depression as a teenager. King-Cat Classix and Map of My Heart, published in 2007/2009, offer a comprehensive overview of the zine’s first sixty-one issues, while Thoreau at Walden (2008) is a poetic expression of the great philosopher’s experience and ideals. According to cartoonist Chris Ware, “John Porcellino’s comics distill, in just a few lines and words, the feeling of simply being alive.”

Porcellino’s work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Italian, and Korean. He currently lives in Beloit, Wisconsin.

Uncivilized Books (Minneapolis), 2022

8″ x 6.5″, two color cover, black and white interiors with two pages of full color

36 pages