The March/April 85th anniversary issue of Weird Tales features our big list of “The 85 Weirdest Storytellers of the Past 85 Years.” We’re breaking it down online, too: one honoree per day, in no particular order, for 85 days!

Apparently, we were all in danger of never finding out what avant-garde comedy looked like. Quoth ANDY KAUFMAN (1949-1984): “Here I come to save the day!” He didn’t do stand-up, he did put-on, dragging both intentional and unknowing audiences into his bizarre narratives. (Okay, so some of those audience members were plants, but still.) From the Inter-Gender Wrestling Championship of the World to the spinning nervous breakdown of the crying Rotowhirl rider, Kaufman’s pranks constituted sophisticatedly strange world-building.