One Horse Leadworks

The three issues of Headcheese.

So, one of the more prominent Canadian artists to date is Stuart Immonen who has worked for both DC and Marvel pencilling just about every prominent series within such as Superman, Hulk, Ultimate Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men. That said, it wasn’t until 1993 that he started working with bigger companies, so what did he do before hand?

Along with his then girlfriend and now wife Kathryn Immonen (née Kuder), they created the publishing house One Horse Leadworks in Toronto. Slightly higher quality than a fanzine, Immonen and Kuder orchestrated the production of alternative comic anthology Headcheese and then Playground, both of which spanned three issues. Headcheese was released in 1988 and the contributors are as follows:

Issue #1

  • The Eternity Bar – Ron Boyd
  • Shooting Gallery – Nick White
  • Mort & Shirley – Kathryn Kuder, Stuart Immonen
  • Pax Magoohan – Wayne Immonen
  • Peer Pleasure – Sheldon Inkol, Stuart Immonen
  • No. 1 – Kathryn Kuder
  • Agro – Nick White
  • Just Thinking – Ron Boyd
  • Passing Time – Stuart Immonen
Issue #2
  • Service With a Smile – Jerry Drozdowsky
  • The Insane Machine – X
  • Mort and Shirley Banks – Stuart Immonen, Kathryn Kuder
  • My Last Girlfriend – Sheldon Inkol, David Scott
  • Peer Pleasure – Sheldon Inkol, Stuart Immonen
  • She-Devil – Kathryn Kuder
  • Blood and Roses – Ron Boyd
  • The Shooting Gallery – Nick White
  • Art Gallery Stuff – Rob Alton
  • Penis Longspot – Stuart Immonen
Issue #3
  • Quantum Leap – Nick White
  • Love in a Calm – Andrew Clark, 1HLW
  • I Saw the Bloody Stump of God – Kathryn Kuder, Stuart Immonen
  • Chicken Gumbo – Stuart Immonen
  • Peer Pleasure – Sheldon Inkol, Stuart Immonen
  • Art Gallery Stuff – Robert Alton
  • The Garden – Jerry Drozdowsky, Ron Boyd
  • Oswald – Sheldon Inkoll, Jai Dixit
Definitely a great piece if you’re interested in his early work, although they might be a bit hard to find considering there were only 250 made of #2 and #3. Likewise, Playground was co-produced by Immonen and Kuder, and the fourth and final issue was published by Caliber Press in October of 1990.
The issues are subtitled as:
  • Prologue: The Vessel
  • Chapter One: The Wheel
  • Chapter Two: The Vessel
  • The Hundred Year’s Wake
Here is an interview with Immonen in which he references the early works, as well as here.