This was an illustrated history of Washington State political cartoons and cartoonists published in the same year of the Evergreen State's centennial-- 1989.
Lots of big names in here: Brian Basset, Paul Fung, Steve Greenberg, Walt Crowley, David Horsey, Mike Lukovich, Bob McCausland, Shaw McCutcheon, Alan Pratt, Milt Priggee.
And of course Ray Collins from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a comic artist who once met with me for an hour of his busy day in 1977, looked over the portfolio of a nobody young man and gave me many valuable pointers such as any good cartoonist needs to study poetry. He was also delightfully irreverent of authority-- putting this into practice by being the number one cartoonist to expose the craziness of Gov. Dixy Lee Ray.
My work slipped into this book by accident, and I think I was included as sort the token little rural weekly guy with a different day job since I'm definitely not in the same league as the professionals listed above. Apparently someone connected with this book, perhaps it was Maury Forman who called me up, used a printshop in Oly that I frequented. The printers mentioned my work to him, and the next thing you know I'm in this book.
As for this particular strip, Grays Harbor County continues to be solidly Democrat, but in this last election the Dems lost one, perhaps two countywide seats-- the first time since the 1950s!
In McCleary there used to be this joke: The ballot counter is tallying the votes, "Democrat, Democrat, Democrat, Republican, Democrat, Democrat, Democrat, Republican! The sonofabitch voted twice!"
The Democrats here aren't like the liberal Dems on the I-5 Roman Road through Seattle-Tacoma-Oly. Out here they are old time good ol' boys in the not-so-admirable sense. Frankly, I'm glad to see them finally lose a seat or two. Usually they run unopposed.
Wild John refers to local legend Wild John Tornow, the Wild Man of the Wynochee.
I'll be running my East County Comix strip in this blog eventually.
