Not to sound too grandiose right off the bat, but Tim Lane is more than just a cartoonist, he’s a medium — his mind, his pencils, and his brushes channeling a message from the past, yet one that’s somehow timeless, of an America that maybe never really was, but is no less “real” for the fact that it only “exists” in the same “place” that conjured it forth : the morass of our collective national subconscious.

To be sure, what Lane calls “The Great American Mythological Drama” is peppered with genuine personages, places, and events, many of which he relates with as much historical accuracy as is possible, but the way in which he weaves them together into something like a seamless tapestry is the stuff of pure legend — a legend he’s been constructing in his sporadically self-published comics series, Happy Hour In America, since 2003, as…