Morty Comix # 2472

Morty Comix # 2472 was drawn on the morning window condensation of the trailer where my brother Bryan and nephew Zach were staying at the Sou'wester in Seaview, Washington.

Too bad most of the image is lost in the photo. I guess this issue of Morty Comix is mostly lost to history as well. I realize that my current distribution of this title on the face might seem crazy, but on another level I have an audience who reads the Morty the Blog documentation of this artistic communication, although it garners very few responses from the finders. So the comic alone isn't as important as the conceptual placement and documentation, which in itself has become my new art form.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Big Al Camus probably explains my motives here better than anything else.

Back in 1965 we lost our big farm home to fire, and that was followed by seven glorious years with four of us in a trailer about the same size as the one pictured above. Our trailer was a third-hand, falling apart Great Lakes. Our Shetlands would scratch their backs on the end of the mobile home, and our whole house would shake.

But we survived intact and emerged the better for it. My own early lesson here was that material possessions are temporary and can be taken away in a flash. And when that happens, what is left?

Dogtown Zoo # 1

OK, here's the screwy deal with the first three editions of this title. They all have the same info on page [2] of the cover: "First and final edition of 60 copies printed in Seattle and Olympia, Wash." But that is, in actual fact as we understand it in this plane of existence, not true.

1st edition, June or July 1982, Seattle and Olympia, Washington, 60 copies, blue cover, enlarged digest size. This was published during the time I moved from Seattle to Oly. I don't remember where it was printed, but the job was so bad I basically discarded most copies and started over. I think I went down a few streets in Oly and just stuck them in people's mail or newspaper boxes at random. Today this edition is one of the harder-to-find books I've published.

[2nd edition], 1982, Olympia, Washington, 30 copies, white cover, enlarged digest size.

[3rd edition], 1982, Olympia, Washington, 30 copies, white cover, enlarged digest size. Indistinguishable from the 2nd edition.

Print-on-demand, 1996 (reprint series), unknown number of copies, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, yellow cover, regular digest size.

Page 5, panel 3: Another reference to Olympia's newspaper, The Daily Olympian. I think they changed their title to just The Olympian about the time I drew this comic. Who knows, maybe one of those blue cover editions found it's way to the owners of the paper and they decided it was time to change their name as a result of this snarky little detail in the story!

Page 9, panel 1: I always loved that leprosy scab joke, ever since I was a kid.

Page 10, panel 5: Based on Albert Camus, The Stranger, I think.

Page 11, panel 1: "Squirmy Eyed Q-Ball" is an insult my brother came up with and I have employed numerous times in my comix.

Page 12, panel 3: "Unga" was a comic sound my old friend (and comic art fan) Rex Munger used frequently.

Page 15, panel 4: Batum and Schrag are two small hamlets in eastern Washington State.

Page 17: If I don't use the long fadeout, then I'm concluding a story with Morty on the sax. Sorta tiresome after awhile if you ask me.

Page 18, panel 3: In addition to the obligatory "NRA" and "Reagan 80" stickers the others say: "We've been to Humptulips, WA," "Falwell for Prez," "Mukey River, Ioway," "Winooski, Vermont" (I used to drive a taxicab in neighboring Burlington. Sometimes I'd take drunks home from a certain bar in Winooksi. A female bartender would assist a few of these patrons to the car. In just a few years, by a weird coincidence, the bartender and I met again in Puget Sound country, where we were both librarians!).

Another bumpersticker, "Wildermuth Caves, Mo." is in honor of Missouri native (now Seattle resident) and conceptual artist Kevin Wildermuth. Speaking of bumper stickers, he made one that declared "I'd rather be masturbating" and proudly placed it on his rear bumper. While this was on his car I rode with him from Oly to Seattle. The response from the other motorists is worth an entire article.

Page 23: Another early version of the Big G.

Page 25: Apparently Prof. Verner Von Vernervon was a character I used a several comix in the early 1980s.

Page 27, panel 1: I think the fellow with the beard is Dean True, a friend from college days. There's probably a story behind his quote, "Avacados are too expensive to mash into your face," but I have no memory of why I included that.

The title of this comic has a little history. Around 1980 I got into a drinking contest with a Scandinavian guy in a Spokane bar. He was a fellow houseguest of some friends. I can only recall that I didn't lose. Anyway, the next morning we both accompanied our hosts on a little field trip, to an area they called Dogtown. And we stopped and looked through the fence at a small private zoo. In my hungover state I mumbled "Dogtown Zoo," but it took a couple years to surface in print.

Cranium Frenzy # 2

1st edition, Seattle, Washington, January 1982, 40 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest.

2nd edition, Seattle, Washington, early 1982, 25 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest. The 2nd ed. can be identified by a faint vertical line on the cover.

Available as a print-on-demand in regular digest size, 1996.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies (1 green, 4 red), regular digest size.

If I'm not mistaken, I think I burned all the original art to Cranium Frenzy # 1-2, and possibly # 3, in the fireplace of the house I was renting in Seattle. A few of my housemates attended the wake. My thinking at the time was that the art needed to be destroyed, much like a woodblock that had been used to make limited prints.

All of my 1981-1982 Seattle imprints were printed by a couple brothers originally from, I think, Iraq, who ran a print shop on University Ave. called Mecca Printing. Believe it or not, Lynda Barry had directed me to them by chance when I ran into her just across the street from the place. I sometimes wonder what became of them in Century 21 America. They had the first self-service photocopier I encountered where one could play around with amazing features like enlarging and reducing! You can't imagine how much of a difference this made in my publishing output. Prior to 1981, getting any comix art reduced in size was a major hassle and usually costly.

Trivia:

P. 2: Panel 4. Studio 54 was still in operation in 1982. In 1979 I actually made a whole party stop cold for a few silent seconds in Burlington, Vermont when I asked in complete innocence, "What is Studio 54?" It was a fine moment when they asked what planet I was from. I still had hay in my hair, apparently.

P. 3. Humptulips is a real place, right here in Grays Harbor County, Washington.

P. 5. A play on one my favorite lines from Caligula, by Albert Camus: "Men die and they are not happy."

P. 6. I think Brooke Shields was the source of the quote.

P. 7, panel 3. Another one of my favorite panels ever. Panel 7, based on Fred C. Dobbs from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a movie I really enjoy.

P. 10+: This was originally a short story I wrote in college ca. 1978 while studying with the writing instructor Peter Elbow, who taught me some wonderful methods in creating stories-- namely the use of freewriting. Still, when I read the whole thing out loud to him, Peter just sat poker faced and encouraged me to get more serious. But all my classmates were laughing pretty hard.

P. 11. More Hamlet stuff anticipating The Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke.

P. 12: Computers were just about at the point of really taking over and becoming part of office labor's daily experience when this comic was drawn. The name Mark Sense is a play on a now outdated computer term.

P. 22+: What was I thinking?!?

P. 26+: Arnie Wormwood was a character I liked who didn't get very far. I eventually killed him off, and unlike Morty the Dog, he pretty much stayed dead.

P. 33: You don't hear too much about Edgar Cayce these days, he seemed more of a household name in 1982. The Magus Bookstore in Seattle's U District had this page on display as you entered their section for paranormal books.