We all have trade paperback (TPB) collections we'd like to see. Here's one of mine:

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Batkevin74 got me on a nostalgia kick today with his fan fic Wild Dog Chapter One. This led to me wishing I had my issues of Wild Dog accessible so I could read them again, and then of course, to wishing there were a trade paperback available of the original mini-series. Then I remembered there were a series of stories in Action Comics Weekly at one time, and in searching, also rediscovered a forgotten Wild Dog Special. Very cool stuff.

"Pfft," I hear you say. "That's 'cool?' I don't think so." You're wrong though. Here's why:

Wild Dog was created by Max Allan Collins. This guy is known in prose as much as he is in comics, but if you named the top ten comic writers for street level guys, Max A. Collins should be in your top five. Before creating this character in 1987, he created a fairly popular Indie character in 1981 named Ms. Tree. He's probably best known for having created and written the comic Road to Perdition, which led to the movie of the same name. My favorite accomplishment of his is that when a replacement was needed for Chester Gould, Collins was the one who took over Dick Tracy. If you don't know how incredibly badass that is, then shame on you.

"What's so special about Wild Dog though?" you ask.

Wild Dog was almost certainly a response to the Punisher- a character that had been around since 1974, but really only hit his stride in popularity with a 1986 mini-series that led to the first of many ongoings in 1987. In fact, The Punisher ongoing started in July, 1987- only two months before the September, 1987 release of Wild Dog #1. That's not what made Wild Dog special though.

What made him special was that anybody could be Wild Dog... for real. Much like Chester Gould, who kept up on the latest in police and scientific advancements for use in Dick Tracy, Collins only gave Wild Dog weapons that could be had by the average joe in real life. Fortunately for Wild Dog and thanks to the likes of military surplus stores, this included things like uzis and taser shock gloves (I still want a pair of those gloves).

For whatever reason, Wild Dog never quite made it. Maybe fans didn't like a comic that was so grounded in real world problems. Or maybe it shown so bright a spotlight on the things the Punisher would really have to deal with that fans felt Wild Dog was just making fun of his Marvel counterpart. Or maybe they just hated the name and that silly sports jersey. I dunno. I liked them though.

For the trade paperback, I was going to suggest just the four issue mini-series, but what the heck, if I'm going to dream, let's dream big. So this would be one massive volume with the four issue mini-series, all twenty-three stories from Action Comics Weekly, and the follow-up Wild Dog Special. Without the issues onhand to check, I'm guessing that the Action stories were only eight pages long. With the five full issues of the mini-series and special, that's a pretty hefty book. If they were longer than eight pages then this would have to be broken into two volumes.

For the cover, I'd go with the pic from the promo ad, which is the same as the cover from the first issue of the mini-series with slightly different coloring. If possible, I'd use the pic without the text box, either running the title across Wild Dog's midsection, in black space over his head (which would mean shrinking him down in the picture a little), or just run the logo on the spine of the book. For the back cover, I'd run the pic from Action Comics Weekly #640. If this had to be two volumes, I'd use #640 for the cover to Volume 2 instead.

Update 10/22/16: Ran across this while searching for something else, but Bleeding Cool had a short article announcing some cancelled DC collections on October 16, 2015- just three months after this blog- and Wild Dog was one of them. They briefly explain that some of these books may not have been announced to the public, but were announced to those in the book trade. One of the comments on the article speculated that DC may have solicited the book to coincide with a Max Allan Collins run on Batman, as he is the one who wrote Wild Dog. Told ya it was a good reason! ;)

Don't despair though! Hit TV show Arrow is featuring Wild Dog as part of the Season 3 Team Arrow. Once the character is better known to the larger television audience, I think chances are good that this collection will be revisited. -cb