258. "Tug! " 7" x 10.5" TWO-PRINT SET

TUG! — TWO-PRINT SET

Each order now includes BOTH TUG! art prints:
• 1973 Mets — YA GOTTA BELIEVE!
• 1980 Phillies — WE WIN!

If you already ordered, you’re getting both. You don’t need to do anything. 

Size: Two 7 × 10.5 inch art prints (not comic books)
Availability: Pre-order ends Sunday, October 4th at 3 PM PT / 6 PM ET
Shipping: Expected to ship approximately 40–60 days after the purchase window closes. Estimated timeframe. Not guaranteed.

Also included: Every order will also  have one of three loose comic pages tucked inside, randomly selected. Each is built around an actual Tug McGraw story.

From the Artist:

Most of the time when I start a Pop Fly, I know the baseball story first.

This one started when I learned something about Tug McGraw, an oft-requested player for this project, that I somehow had missed all these years:

Tug had a comic strip.

In the mid-’70s he collaborated with cartoonist Mike Witte on Scroogie, a nationally syndicated strip built around a screwball relief pitcher.

I mean...this whole Pop Fly project is basically me taking two things that don’t necessarily belong together, baseball & comics, and finding ways to smash them together. But with Tug, there it was already. I didn’t have to make the connection. It had been sitting there since the ’70s.

It all came together for me pretty much instantly. I knew I wanted to pay homage to Witte’s original Scroogie art style and use it to tell Tug’s biggest Phillies moment.

So I made 1980.

WE WIN!

But after I launched it, I kept thinking about '73. New York. Ya Gotta Believe. And once I could see that second cover in my head, I couldn’t really unsee it. The first one suddenly felt like one half of a bigger Tug story.

So I went back and made the other half...which, if you've been following for a while, you know I NEVER do. 

YA GOTTA BELIEVE!

Every TUG! order now gets both prints. If you already ordered, you’re already covered. No extra charge. Nothing else to buy.

Two cities. Two rings. Only one Tug.

There’s another part of this one that’s really personal for me (which is probably why I'm obsessed with this format). Those paperback collections of comic strips were probably the thing I checked out from the library more than anything else when I was a kid. If it wasn’t MAD Magazine or Cracked, it was The Family Circus, Al Jaffee, Garfield, Hägar the Horrible...whatever I could get my hands on. I loved those little books.

Annnnd making ONLY the covers wasn’t enough for me.

I started thinking, well, if this is supposed to be this imaginary Tug paperback...what would actually be inside it?

So I made that too.

Every order will have one of three loose comic pages tucked inside. Three different pages, all built around actual Tug stories and basically just Tug being...Tug.

This one has been ridiculously fun to make if you couldn't already tell. Obsessed.