Showing posts with label Richard Brautigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Brautigan. Show all posts

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Cartoon Simple

[illustration by Paul Tumey]

Morty the Blog readers need to check Jim Gill's new website, Cartoon Simple.

It brings to mind the advice I got from Seattle Post-Intelligencer cartoonist Ray Collins in 1977: if you want to be a great cartoonist-- study poetry. Say a lot with just a few lines. Then he politely told me my work was very bad. And it was. But I got better, in part because of what I learned from Ray.

Nelson Bentley, William Stafford, Ken Kesey, Richard Brautigan: I sought out the Pacific Northwest poets and writers. Authors who described the world I lived in. It made a difference in my comix.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Retreads 7

































1st edition, 1986, Pullman, Washington, 50 copies, orchid cover, enlarged digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, blue cover, enlarged digest size.

This would be the last issue of this run for 19 years. I'm sure I had some good reason for putting it in stasis for so long, but the original intention of this action has managed to escape my memory banks. The not remembering thing going on in my cranium seems to be a common occurrence these days. And yet yesterday I was recalling the obnoxious theme song of TV show called "Little Leatherneck" that aired only once, on July 29, 1966.

Trivia:

Page 9: I later learned we actually had a guy run for Governor here in Washington State named Henry Joseph Snively in 1892.

Page 9-20: I'm not an atheist. I believe in God. Today I happen to believe God looks like a giant cat. Tomorrow God might take another form. I think God must have a sense of humor given all the jokes played on us by life circumstances. But I don't believe in religion. Obviously.

Page 23, panel 4: Charles Dickens.

Page 26-27: Although I'm not a big reader of fiction, the Big Three for me in American literature during my college years were Vonnegut, Kesey, and Brautigan. In the 1980s I had the joy of hearing Vonnegut speak in person, and had a chance to converse a little with Kesey. Never did see or meet my fellow Washington State native, Richard Brautigan.