[who did it] Sideshow Books, March, 1998.

[chance of gettin'] Not too difficult to find.

[the skinny] It was not Lee or Pelan who invented the term that became the title of this hilarious comedy/horror/porn collection, it was Jack Ketchum, creating the word “splatterspunk” while blurbing Lee’s gross-out magnum opus THE BIGHEAD. “Micah Hays” is actually a real person, a long-time friend of Lee, who later gave Lee permission to use his likeness in fiction. The first appearance of the wise-cracking, motor-mouthed, and outrageously sexist cop came in an auxilliary passage Lee wrote for GOON (the “Cotter’s Field” scene, which is reprinted here and won the second Official World Horror Gross-Out Contest. The First World Horror Gross-Out Contest was won by another Lee passage from GOON, the “Ghoula” scene. Lee and Pelan both won the award, thanks to Pelan’s excellent presentation as Lee himself was absent from both conventions). Given the success of GOON, Lee invited Pelan to partake in the first dedicated “Micah Hays” story, “Girls Night Out.” Pelan pitched the theme as a collection and sold it almost instantaneously. “John really is a terrific salesman,” Lee explains. “I didn’t think this would sell in a million years but John had it sold, if I remember correctly, with one phone call. He did the same thing previously with GOON--one phone call and it’s sold. Unbelievable!” A tongue-in-cheek intro by the real Micah Hays starts the collection off, and there’s also a reprint of “The Police Officer’s Cockring and the Piano Player Who Had No Fingers,” then a full-blown solo novella by Pelan and one by Lee (Lee’s is called THE REFRIGERATOR FULL OF SPERM. Classy title.)