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Thirty years ago, a battle-tested hero valiantly embarked on a brand-new journey. He had no superpowers, no lofty goals, no damsel to save from eternal distress—just a cup for a head and the drive to consume as much coffee as possible.
It’s surreal that Too Much Coffee Man, aka TMCM, the galumphing avenger dreamed up by Eisner-winning Portland artist and writer Shannon Wheeler, has been seeking his next cup for three decades (Milwaukie’s Dark Horse Comics began publishing TMCM’s adventures in 1995, though the character had already appeared elsewhere, including in a mini-comic promoting Wheeler’s Children With Glue).
The hero of countless comics and the unlikely star of a shoe commercial in which he vomits the Converse logo, TMCM is the ultimate ‘90s character: a slacker whose stubborn principles sideline him in a crude, corporatized world. Yet with his savvy, ruthless satire of superhero comics and films, TMCM could have easily been born of the post-Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero boom.
For readers eager to bone up on the TMCM mythos, there’s no finer tome than Too Much Coffee Man: The Original Comic Books (Adhesive Comics, 182 pages, $30). Featuring the original nine TMCM issues, the collection is a caffeine-loaded crash course that is mocking but never mean, thanks to Wheeler’s playfully provocative storytelling.
Joyfully flouting superhero convention, TMCM doesn’t reveal his origin until Issue #3, in which we meet a teenage boy who guzzles a mug of radioactive coffee after he gets stood up for a date. “The elements slip into place,” crows the story’s narrator. “Ready to play their parts in this diaphanous drama.”
The twist? The teenage boy doesn’t become Too Much Coffee Man when he drinks the poisonous blend; he dies, leaving the narrator to become TMCM. “I could have done something to prevent the tragedy. I did nothing!” the narrator defiantly declares. It’s a classic TMCM moment that hilariously trades destiny for randomness and cowardice for nobility.
Too Much Coffee Man: The Original Comic Books strings together several narratives, including the story of an aimless romantic whose only attribute is his long hair—which, inevitably, is shaved off—and a square-jawed cartoonist ambivalent toward his own creations.
Still, it is TMCM himself who dominates the comics, whether he’s wielding unlimited power—echoing the 1987 Marvel graphic novel Emperor Doom, in which Doctor Doom grows bored after brainwashing humanity to do his bidding—or tussling with a superhero Wheeler cheekily names Cliché.
“I’ve been waiting for this day,” Cliché announces as he confronts TMCM, whose eyes bulge as he replies, “Good things come to those who wait.” By design, the entire issue is a series of similarly generic sayings, culminating with a joke so obvious (“And here’s the punch line!”) that it’s uproarious.
Wheeler is a ubiquitous and spiky humorist (last year, he published a cartoon in The New Yorker featuring a boss who informs his employees, “Once we undermine trust in doctors, fact checkers, and scientists, we’ll be able to sell people anything”). Yet Too Much Coffee Man: The Original Comic Books reveals another side of Wheeler: his ferocious passion for comics and his rage at the forces he sees as corrupting them.
In his introduction to Issue #5, Wheeler rants against DC Comics for deceiving fans by killing off Superman in 1993, then promptly resurrecting him. “Kids were heartbroken and they turned away from comics in droves,” he writes.
Wheeler’s rebuttal to that betrayal is an exuberantly absurd story in which TMCM perishes in every way possible—including suffering a caffeine-induced heart attack and being crushed by a falling safe—only to repeatedly rise from the dead, offering only the flimsiest explanations (“Breaking your neck isn’t as fatal as you might think”).
The laceration of comics tropes speaks not only to Wheeler’s cleverness, but the depths of TMCM himself. Don’t let the silly crimson long johns fool you—for all his blunderings, TMCM is a philosopher and occasional political revolutionary.
“You don’t even vote?” TMCM excoriates a pontificating sidekick in Issue #9. “I’m going to start calling you Mister Hypocrite right after I kick your ass!” Written eight months before Bush v. Gore, those words are proof of Wheeler’s prescience.
Of course, to take Too Much Coffee Man too seriously is to miss the point. If we did, we’d be just like the kid in Issue #1 who demands, “I want that comic with gold foil, hologram, die-cut, and poly-bagged.” The cashier’s response? “We’re sold out.”
GET IT: Too Much Coffee Man: The Original Comic Books is available at etsy.com/shop/ShannonLeoWheeler.