For Immature Adults Only

On the passing of Matt Howarth.

There have been two holy grails in my comic collecting career: A complete run of Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man and a complete run of Matt Howarth’s Those Annoying Post Bros. One (the former) was easier to obtain than the other.

With Shade the only issue that managed to elude me for years on end was issue #13. With the Post Bros. it was, gotta go there, really annoying.

I must have first encountered his work in German translations of Heavy Metal Magazine my father collected. And, fuck, did Matt have a unique style. Instantly recognizable. You could spot a Matt Howarth comic from miles away. And he gave no fucks whatsoever. Except for a three issue limited series for DC’s short lived Helix imprint he never went mainstream. He did his thing because it was what he loved.

I had found the random issue of Post Bros. in back-issue bins and at comic conventions, but the task of completing the run seemed impossible.

Cue the late 90s and the Internet. Could be that I was still using my old AOL email address. At the time I was getting in touch with several comic creators on the other side of the world. The promise of the early internet.

Somehow I got hold of Matt’s email and just fired a request across the ocean. „Hey Matt. Here’s a kid from Germany that loves your comics. Could I get them from you?“

Matt responded. And Matt had a problem.

You see, he was really into obscure European electronic music. So he sent me a list of releases he could not get in his part of the world. I got to work and could find most of what he wanted. I sent over a package with weird bleep bloop CDs and got a full set of the Post Bros. and Savage Henry in return.

He was such a nice and easygoing guy.

A while later I got it into my head to publish a comic myself. An anthology about sloths of all things. Naturally I reached out to Matt again. And he sent me a two-page comic featuring his most famous characters Ron and Russ, the Post Bros. My comic was never published, so I guess these pages have never been seen before.

Matt passed away in October of 2026. He was truly special and will be missed. He named his main characters after the fucking Sparks for God’s sake.

If there's one lesson to be learned from Mr. Matt Howarth: Do your thing, don't give a fuck and: Be weird!

Hope he’s in Bugtown now. RIP Matt.

PS: Here's two unreleased comic pages featuring Ron and Russ aka Those Annoying Sloth Bros.