Al Columbia Al Columbia is an American comic book artist . Career As a teenager , Columbia worked as an assistant to Bill Sienkiewicz on Alan Moore 's ill-fated Big Numbers . When Sienkiewicz withdrew from the series , Moore and his publishers asked Columbia to continue as artist on the series . For reasons that remain unknown Columbia also withdrew from Big Numbers , and the series remains unfinished to this day . Columbia 's first solo comic book was the 48-page Doghead , published by Tundra Press in 1992 . He also contributed to several issues of From Beyonde , a horror anthology published by Studio Insidio , and to the seminal British comic-cum-lifestyle magazine Deadline . In these stories he moved away from the painterly photo-realistic idiom of Sienkiewicz towards a cruelly beautiful ( and equally virtuosic ) pen-and-ink style . In 1994 Fantagraphics Books published Columbia 's The Biologic Show # 0 ( a title borrowed from William S. Burroughs ' book Exterminator ! ) . It contained redrawn versions of the stories from Deadline along with new works . The Biologic Show # 1 followed in 1995 ; an issue # 2 was advertised but never appeared . Also in 1995 , `` I Was Killing When Killing Was n't Cool '' became the first of a series of two-color short stories by Columbia to appear in the Fantagraphics anthology Zero Zero . In these works he adopted a more cartoony style of drawing strongly evocative of the animated films of Max and Dave Fleischer . `` The Trumpets They Play ! `` , a work in the same style based on the Book of Revelation , appeared in Blab ! # 10 , also published by Fantagraphics , in 1998 . Since 2003 he has written two issues of The Pogostick , a comic book illustrated by Ethan Persoff . Other Fantagraphics publications featuring Columbia 's work include Kristine McKenna 's Book of Changes and the anthology Dirty Stories Volume 3 . Illustrations by Columbia have been published in The New York Times and The Stranger . Columbia is also a musician and a founding ( but no longer active ) member of the band The Action Suits . He currently plays guitar and sings vocals for the band Her Own Mass Murder . After a three-year delay , Columbia 's website went online in late 2006 . Works published in Zero Zero `` I Was Killing When Killing Was n't Cool , `` 4 pages , issue # 4 ( August 1995 ) `` Jack never woke up , `` 1 page ( inside front cover ) , issue # 8 ( March/April 1996 ) `` Walpurgischnacht '97 , `` 1 page ( back cover ) , issue # 15 ( March 1997 ) `` The Blood-Clot Boy , `` 6 pages , issue # 16 ( April/May 1997 ) `` Amnesia , `` 8 pages , issue # 20 ( September/October 1997 ) `` Alfred the Great , `` 5 pages , issue # 26 ( July/August 1999 ) `` Vladimir Nabokov 's Cheapy the Guinea Pig '' ( back cover ) and untitled front cover , issue # 27 ( August 2000 ) External Links AlColumbia.com Art by Al Columbia at the Comic Art Collective Lambiek Comiclopedia page on Al Columbia Categories : Comics artists | American comics artists 