Boswell's influences include film directors Josef von Sternberg and Luis Buñuel, composer Hector Berlioz, comedians Buster Keaton, and W.C. Fields, and humourist Robert Benchley, as well as early Hollywood and European cinema stars, and he often features references in his work.

He gets around in a flying house, and uses a rope ladder to literally drop in on a randomly selected guest and kidnap him or her to be interviewed on the show.

Reid is able to lift his milk truck with his bare hands and has a degree of invulnerability that has prevented serious or lethal injury.

At one point, Ivan has a terrible accident while driving, spends 6 years in a coma, and, upon awakening, falls to his death from an open window.

In Rogue to Riches, which starts right after the 1-shot Eclipse issue, Reid is finally fired by Mr. O'Clock for wrecking one truck too many (which he didn't do), shacks up with Lena, gets employment with a cable company, and, though he appears to be good at it, he and his partner are finally fired for damages to a customer's lawn gnome.

Although Reid's adventures were first published in The Georgia Straight newspaper in 1978, the first comic book collecting them was self-published by Boswell in 1980.

After again lying dormant for four years, Reid Fleming was revived for a Dark Horse Comics one-shot teaming him with Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot.

Issue #3 of the 1991 DC Comics limited series Challengers of the Unknown features a poster depicting the character Leslie "Rocky" Davis starring in a Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman movie.

This is an allusion to a well-known scene in the 1980 self-published issue where Reid threatens to urinate on someone's flowers unless 78 cents is paid.

Boswell's 1978 photograph of Leonard Cohen is the cover photo on the authorized biography by Sylvie Simmons in the following countries: Canada [hardcover and paperback], United States [hardcover and paperback], the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Israel, and Poland.