1st edition, February 1989, 47 copies, grey cover, enlarged digest size.
2nd edition, April 1989, published by Eastern Grays Harbor Historical Society, McCleary Museum, 60 copies, grey cover, enlarged digest size.
1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, blue cover, enlarged digest size.
In the late 1980s I tried my hand at a comic strip in our regional weekly, The East County News. I wanted to create a strip with a local appeal, capturing some of the quirks that made eastern Grays Harbor County a bit, er, different that the rest of western Washington.
The strip continued for another 10 months after this collection was published. The remainders were assembled in an issue of Retreads, I think. We'll see when we get there.
From reading the strips you would correctly conclude I had become a new parent in this period of time. 1988 to be exact.
Trivia:
Page 4, strip 1: This was also reprinted in Cartooning Washington.
Page 4, strip 3: I also used this line in Write-In Morty the Dog for Mayor!
Page 6, strip 2: Olympia, the Legislative Building, and the hills in the background where McCleary sits.
Page 7, strip 2: Elma, 7 miles away from McCleary, used to have annual festival honoring the lowly slug. For some strange reason it never really took off. Shelton, of course, is a town full of roughnecks and buffoons, not like genteel McCleary at all.
Page 13, strip 13: Yelm is near Olympia and home to J.Z. Knight, a mystic who has apparently become wealthy channeling the spirit of "Ramtha," a warrior from long ago. From the film clips I've seen, I suspect she grabbed the idea from the Hitchcock film Family Plot, as she does a pretty good Barbara Harris imitation.
Page 16, panel 1: I originally used this line in one of my comix from the 1970s, but I can't remember which one right now.
Page 17, panel 2: Our Shetlands did this to our trailer when I was growing up on the farm.
Page 18, panel 1: You have to see the slugs around here to believe them.
Page 20: We have two nuclear power cooling towers standing tall and ugly in this region. They have never been used (Thank God!) and remain standing today as monuments to the folly of man. This story has the unfortunate acronym of WPPSS.
Larry of McCleary
