Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Cranium Station DMZ
This was the first of a trilogy including Eternities of Darkness and Hungry Stairs to Heaven. It is a circular story and can be picked up anywhere in the narrative without worry or anxiety about missing out on the "plot."
The first edition was published in 1984 by Dada Gumbo Press in Tucson, Arizona both in minicomic and digest-sized formats. I had been using the comic metamorphosis technique since the early 1970s, but Dada Gumbo's publisher Dale Luciano really gave me an encouraging venue to explore this method with some more detail.
Starhead published the 2nd ed. in 1992, during a time when they were briefly housed at Ocean Shores, Washington on the other end of Grays Harbor County from McCleary! The cover included red highlights.
When I had my print-on-demand catalog in 1994, this trilogy was not included. This was due to fact I was also selling unsold inventory for Clay Geerdes and Dale Luciano. And Dale still had copies of the set left over and available at that time.
The 1st Danger Room ed. in June 2005 had 5 copies with green covers and yellow and white guts.
The entire trilogy was finally published in a form it which it was meant to be presented in 2010 as part of Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s, published by Fantagraphics and edited by Michael Dowers.
Some points of trivia. The comic has a not so subtle secret message, the influence of my friend Lynn Hansen (1958-1995), who was obsessed with the hidden messages in Beatles' songs and images. The bottle of Wildermuth on p. 3 is reference to my old college pal and conceptual artist Kevin Wildermuth. The guy with the glasses on p. 5 is me. Page 7: clowns have long been a source of sordid fascination for me. In the early 1970s I had a seedy clown character named Jobbo Bonobo, which grew into a rather disturbing cult a few years later at The Evergroove State College in Olympia.
Labels:
clowns,
Cranium Station DMZ,
Dada Gumbo,
Eternities of Darkness,
Hungry Stairs to Heaven,
Jobbo Bonobo,
Morty the Dog,
Newave The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s,
The Evergreen State College