In a modest Manhattan walk-up, a group of survivors are on their last legs. As the end seems nigh, a teenage girl is spotted on the avenue, not only alive but repelling the undead like Moses parting the Red Sea. When she comes to their aid questions of who, what and why she''s immune to attack arise. Almost like a play, this single location-centric story features a strong cast of archetypal, yet fully fleshed-out, distinct, characters. And the mysterious stranger that arrives as their saviour, only to confound them, even as she complies with their ever-increasing impositions.
Best known for the comic series
Minimum Wage, Fingerman's contributions to the world of comics have been many and varied.
While still in attendance at New York's School of Visual Arts, he created work for Harvey Kurtzman (creator of
Mad magazine and
Playboy's "Little Annie Fanny" as well as
Humbug) on the young readers anthology
NUTS! At the same time Fingerman produced a series of parodies for the European market, which ran in such periodicals as France's
L'Echo Des Savanes and Spain's infamous
El Vibora.
In the '90s he decided to focus on comics, doing a stint on
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He also created covers and short stories for Dark Horse Comics, and DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. During this time he created his first graphic novel,
White Like She, a social satire about a middle-aged black man whose brain is transplanted into a white teenage girl's head.
Fingerman then decided to turn his attention inward. The result was the semi-autobiographical series
Minimum Wage, which charted the bumpy relationship of Rob Hoffman and Sylvia Fanucci.
Fingerman then branched out to prose. His debut, the darkly humorous vampire novel,
Bottomfeeder (M Press), dropped in early 2007. Then came
Connective Tissue (Fantagraphics, May 2009), a trippy illustrated novella, and
From the Ashes (IDW), a "speculative memoir" set in post-apocalyptic NYC. In 2010 the collected edition of
From the Ashes was released, followed by his second novel,
Pariah, from Tor. He also had a short stories in the popular zombie anthology
The Living Dead 2 (Night Shade Books, October 2010) and the classic pulp magazine
Weird Tales.
Maximum Minimum Wage, a deluxe reissue of his defining comic series, was released in March 2013 from Image Comics and lead to new the all-new
Minimum Wage, Focus on the Strange (Image, October 2014) and
Minimum Wage, So Many Bad Decisions (May 2016). 2014 also saw the Image Comics release of the 20th anniversary edition of
White Like She.
In 2018 Bob became one of "the usual gang of idiots" in MAD magazine, with his features "Boonies Burbs & Burgs" and "Lukey & Mukey". His most recent book is Dotty's Inferno, a collection of humorous stories set in Hell.
A lifelong New Yorker, he has recently relocated to California.
