The weekly comic strip "Phoebe and the Pigeon People", by Lynch and illustrator Gary Whitney, ran in the "Chicago Reader" for 17 years in the late 1970s and 1980s; Kitchen Sink Press published 3 issues of a "Phoebe & the Pigeon People" comic book collecting material from the strip in 1979–1981. Up until his death, Lynch had scans of more than 500 editions of the strip ready for any publisher who saw the potential of a "Phoebe and the Pigeon People" book.