Bonafide Child Innocence #1

1st ed., 25 copies, February or March 1983, Olympia, Washington, white.

2nd ed., 30 copies, March 1983, Olympia, Washington, white.

3rd ed., 67 copies, June 1984, Gilbert, Minnesota, HSC, white.

1st Danger Room Reprint Ed., 5 copies, July 2005, McCleary, Washington, yellow.

All printings are in regular digest size.

This was my smartass jab at the at-the-time very popular stick comix genre. I had mixed feelings about publishing this in the first place, but someone had to say something. So I did. A few people quietly thanked me.

Actually I can fully understand the reasons why stick figure comix can be a good thing, especially when articulated by Matt Feazell, a great cartoonist who, by the way, accepted my critique most graciously and like a grownup.

Personally, my favorite in this genre can be found online, at the accidental art site, Stick Figures in Peril.

The originals of Bonafide Child Innocence were drawn either in Spokane, Washington, where I was born, or in Olympia, where we moved when I was a little squirt. The source of the drawings was a ledger my mechanic grandfather in Centralia, Washington kept. In it he has notations like "Model A Ford Pump," and latest date I can find is 1944. It measures 30 cm. high, and the back cover reveals it was one of the few things to survive our house fire on the farm in the mid-1960s. And it is packed with narrative cartoons I drew before I knew how to read.

Another childhood item I have acquired is a face drawn on wood. Actually, it was on a piece of furniture my Father had built, a coffee table with a box shelf. I remember drawing the face on this table and getting caught by my Mother, who informed I was going to be in Big Trouble once my Father came home from work. But in fact he was delighted. You see, they thought I was sort of "slow," since I wasn't talking, walking, eating, thinking, etc. at the same rate as other kids. So any spark of artistic expression was seen as, "Hey, he's not a complete moron! Yay!"

The incident helped spur me to draw more, but my Mom made sure that from then on I had paper. She even captioned some of the stories for me! See, now you can blame my parents for these comix.

The table was rediscovered almost five years ago after my Dad died and we were cleaning out the farm, preparing to sell the place. It was stashed in a corner of the basement, but not in very good condition. I managed to save the panel with the drawing on it, and here it is!