Rites of Passage (Toxic! Magazine,1991)

All illustrations are © Kevin O'Neill & Pat Mills

Introduction

Between 28th March and 24th October 1991, Apocalypse Ltd had proposed a full color weekly magazine, Toxic!, with Pat Mills as editor, and Marshal Law as the leading story. The Hateful Dead story was indeed first published from #1 to #8.

During the weeks that followed the end The Hateful Dead pre-publication, many readers have wondered if ultimately Mills and O'Neill had not killed their character.

Doc Tox, who was in charge of the letter column never really contradicted them until the cancellation of the magazine with issue #31 (Apocalypse Limited went bankrupt).

Rites of Passage

To fill the magazine with marshal Law material before the next installment (that eventually never came as the magazine ceases to exist), the 8 page prologue first published in the Fear and Loathing paperback were reused in issue #14 and 15 of Toxic!.

Two unpublished pages were added to this prologue. The first new page published in Toxic! #14 is linked to the last panel of The Hateful Dead.

The last page of the prologue was originally designed to introduce the cover of the first issue of the original series.

The second new page published in Toxic! #15 provides a new sequence that turns back to the end of The Hateful Dead.

One could find these 2 new pages in the bonus section of the US Blood, Sweat, and Fears TPB published by Dark Horse in 1993 (note that the UK TPB of the same title, released by Titan Books in 2003, does not include these pages). The first of these two new pages (as well as a reprint of the cover of Toxic! #14) is also included in the bonus section of the UK TPB Fear Asylum (Titan Books, 2003).