Lawyers in Comics: Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre

From the exhibit, “Superheroes in Court! Lawyers, Law and Comic Books”, curated by Mark S. Zaid, Esq., and on display Sept. 4-Dec, 16, 2010 in the Rare Book Exhibition Gallery, Level L2, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School.

Alanna Wolff and Jeff Byrd began taking on their macabre clients in a weekly strip in The Brooklyn Paper in 1979. Creator Batton Lash took his inspiration from the gothic law offices along Brooklyn’s Court Street, the hub of The Brooklyn Paper’s readership. From 1983 to 1997 the Wolff & Byrd strip ran in The National Law Journal, and the firm got their very own comic book in 1994, with story titles like “It Stalks the Public Domain,” “Juristic Park,” and “Lawyers in Hell,” where Wolff and Byrd literally met a client in hell. Exhibit A Press still publishes the comic today under the title Supernatural Law, along with 16 compilations and an ongoing web comic. The Lillian Goldman Law Library has a complete collection of Wolff & Byrd comics.

Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre no. 3 (Sept.1994). Rare Book Collection, Lillian Goldman Law Library.