the complete Captain Confederacy

Captain Confederacy was published between 1986 and 1992. I wrote it; Vince Stone drew it. The reviewers said:

• "...plots are intricate and creative.... This is not a comic book for children." ―Southern Magazine
• "...excellent alternate-Earth science fiction." ―Comics Buyer's Guide
• "...Written with intelligence and no fear of controversy. Buy it!" ―Graffiti
• "From the retooled Stars and Bars of Captain Confederacy's costume to the mapping of urban and rural southern places, the series takes up the symbols of the South and imaginitively reconstructs them, shaking loose the stock figures, geographies, and temporalities of southerness. If Octavia Butler and Kara Walker alter the meaning of the southern lady, Shetterly reconfigures the southern gentleman, unfixing his location in an idealized Civil War past, instead deploying him for a different understanding of our present." ―Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South, by Tara McPherson (Duke University)

I've revised it in the hope I'll look like a better writer than I was—the dialogue's leaner, the pacing's faster, and the conclusion's stronger. The complete Captain Confederacy story:

• The Nature of the Hero
• Yankee UFO
• Hero Worship

If you prefer to read offline, download them from the Internet Archive. The first story is in Captain Confederacy, Book One; the other two are in Captain Confederacy, Book Two. They're CBZ files, which are ZIP files that can be read by many comics reader programs.

The original Captain Confederacy comics sometimes turn up on eBay or in bittorrents, but besides an inferior script throughout, the lettering for the second story reeks. (I can say that since I was the letterer. It was one of the first experiments in computer lettering, and not a good one.) However, Matt Feazell and Stu Shiffman did great backup stories, and several people besides my wife have said we had the best letters column in comics—if you care about alternate history, anyway.

There's a tip jar for Vince and me in the side bar. I can't promise that donations will improve the odds of seeing the story of Kate's daughter someday, but they might.

—Will Shetterly