GoCollect Blog: Oddball of the Week: Too Much Coffee Man (oddball-of-the-week-too-much-coffee-man )

Who's ready for coffee? This week's Oddball prize winner is the one and only Too Much Coffee Man, a character tailor-made for the comedy of modern comic book adaptations.

Satire has overtaken superhero cinema. Depending on the project, it’s either been done to perfection, as in the case of The Boys and Peacemaker, or it has been done to death, i.e., Marvel’s Phase 4 product. Certainly, the spandex-loving sect of both the MCU and DCEU make for easy targets when it comes to comedy. I would argue it takes more creativity to make an audience take a superhero seriously than it does to make them laugh.

Of course, none of this is lost on the comics community. Satire has long been a comic book tradition, and it’s most often done through a clever character. Thus we have an independent comics legend, Too Much Coffee Man.

Created in 1991 as a joke by The New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, Coffee Man is basically all of us. Wired to the gills on caffeine, he broods over the state of the world, particularly focusing on politics. In many ways, he is reflective of the old-fashioned Sunday morning comic strip characters, and he actually has starred in comic strips of his own.

Coffee Man has developed a cult following, and his title won an Eisner Award for Best New Comic in 1995. Over the years, he has been featured in numerous iterations, including a 2006 opera.

With satire having overtaken superhero cinema, it would seem that the time is right for Too Much Coffee Man to appear in either an animated series or perhaps in live action. That would make it worth the gamble to pick up these key issues.

Too Much Coffee Man (mini) #1

In a sense, Wheeler was ahead of the curve. These days, kickstarters are all the rage for up-and-coming comic book creators. In the early 1990s, that option simply didn’t exist. To bring Coffee Man to life, Wheeler practically did all the work himself, even photocopying the pages to self-publish his creation. It reminds me of the first run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it would seem Wheeler was on a smaller budget than Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. There would be four total issues in the initial run, and getting any of them is an adventure.

Since these were made by Wheeler himself, there are few copies on the market. In fact, this may be one of the rarest comics of the ‘90s out there; the CGC census has only one single copy listed in its database. You’ll find more Action Comics #1s than that. Because of that, there are no known sales records for this ‘91 mini-comic, making this an extremely hard comic to find.

JAB #1

Two years after Coffee Man’s debut mini-comic, Wheeler started his own publishing brand, Adhesive Comics. Of course, he kept a seat warm for Coffee Man. The angsty character would make his first appearance in a traditional comic book in 1992’s Jab #1.

The sales here are few and far between, which is understandable for such an obscure character. The last time a 9.8 traded hands online was in 2019 to the tune of $90.

TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN #1

In 1993, Wheeler finally gave his star creation a self-titled comic. While it may not bring huge prices, this should be on your shopping list on the off chance that Coffee Man is revived for either animated or live-action adaptations.

The highest graded copy to ever sell has been the 9.0, which brought $14 in 2010.

JAB #3

The ‘90s are known for their gimmicky comics, and Adhesive may have the title of most unique. For this 1993 issue, all 3,000 copies printed had an actual bullet hole through the book. Each comic was individually shot with a small-caliber round; the stories were told around the hole piercing all the pages. Again, there are no graded sales listed, but this is such an interesting idea for a comic that it’s worth owning just as a conversation piece.

IT’S TIME FOR COFFEE

Not only has the mainstream audience fallen in love with comedic comic book adaptations, but the current political environment is perfect for a character like Too Much Coffee Man. In the present state of things, the jokes practically write themselves. That makes it prime time to trade in the spandex for red long-johns underwear and a coffee-cup hat.