State of the Morty Blog, 5/31/11

Above: Buster makes his shameless bid for playtime. He often jumps on to my lap as I type these posts and edits my work with a very critical eye. This is a fellow with melodramatic acting skills made for the silent film era, such is his repertoire of purely visual emotional expressions.

Two major comix gatherings have taken place since my last State of the Morty Blog report: SPACE in Columbus, Ohio and the Olympia Comics Festival in Olympia, Washington. Attending both of these events was a wonderful experience and helped reconnect this old Morty to the spirit of the creative cartooning community.

I was thinking of collecting old work and reprinting it in squareback books, like those I have seen available at both conventions I attended. I have even talked to a couple printers about it. But after a lot of thought I have backed off. Apparently there is a modern a-go-go requirement for the art to be in digital pdf. But my work was made for straight-ahead photocopy, which carries much more power in the fluid lines that are part of my style. Digitizing my drawings seems to diminish them somehow. Also, a lot of my older work was made for folded legal size, a format now called obsolete by every modern printer I've talked to.

Perhaps I'm a bug trapped in amber, but there it is. So if I ever do publish a squareback, it will be a photocopy, and maybe in legal size folded ("enlarged digest" as we said in Newave days) . Unfortunately, that option appears to be much more expensive.

Call me a dinosaur, but when I see a photocopied comic adrift in a sea of color cover publications, I zero in on the black and white toner produced work. The format just has more of a visceral punch for this ancient Newaver. There is a difference between offset vs. photocopy, between toner vs. digital. The photocopy format itself is a rejection of the slick. And I like the subversive feel of that.

I guess it comes down to being able to master the technology that lands in your lap. There are many great new artists producing wonderful works in the digital and online formats. It is first nature to them. So interesting how technology and the generational landing spot shapes our methods of expression.

But I am working on a way to deliver my stories in a multimedia format. The Fabulous Sarah, the technology brain behind this Morty the Dog outfit, is helping me figure out how to realize an insidious Morty vision that has been forming in my cranium. BwahahahahaHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Hopefully you'll see the results of my evil plan within the year. It will be a new toy that will be too obnoxious for words.

The numbers:

Total number of visitors so far (since Aug. 2010): 20,504
This month (May) we topped over 4000 visitors, so we enjoyed a big spike from the previous average of 2500
45% use IE, 38% Firefox, 8% Safari
82% Windows, 12% Mac

Top Ten Posts:

McCleary Time Capsule, 1943-1963

Tsunami Warning System, Ocean Shores, Washington

Olympia Comics Festival 2011 Report, Pt. 1

SPACE 2011 report, Pt. 3

City Limits Gazette: Sample Discussion

SPACE 2011 Report, Pt. 1

About That Donate Button

Brad Foster Has Lit The Fuse

The Bulletin Board

I Am NOT D.B. Cooper

Where the readers are from. The top ten states:

Washington
New York
Oregon
California
Missouri
Ohio
North Carolina
Texas
Illinois
Minnesota

Top Ten Countries:

USA
Russia
Spain
Slovenia
South Korea
Germany
France
Canada
United Kingdom
Malaysia

Unlike Russia, the sustained hits from Spain appear to be from real people and not spammers. Why? This interests me. Picasso was always a fraud to me, but I love Dali's work. In the pre-Internet days I had a good audience from Portugal (where my comix were translated) and parts of Spain, and although I was flattered I could never figure out why although I suspect it had something to do with Morty the Dog's universal call for liberty. Anyway, the current interest in this blog from Spain is intriguing.

Top referring sites:

Facebook
OlyBlog
Comics Reporter
Back Porch Comics
The Jim and Frank Podcast
Poopsheet Foundation

And no, I am not a member of Facebook, or Twitter, and have no plans for signing up.

Phone photo 467

Lynn Hansen Photos, San Diego 1983

Here are some photographs Lynn Hansen took at the San Diego Comic Convention in 1983. None of them are marked so I'm taking a guess.

You fellow old folks are welcome to hop in and help me identify some faces. Brad Foster, Dave Miller, and Clay Geerdes are the only three here I've met in person.

Top: Valentino, David Miller, Par Holman, Clay Geerdes.
Middle and Bottom: Clay holding court.

Left to right: Brad Foster, Par Holman, Dave Miller, guy with hands in mouth is Steve Lafler, and the fellow holding a drink behind him is Valentino. The rest I cannot identify.

Top: Robert Williams
Bottom: Trina Robbins

Top: Brad Foster on the right.

Bottom: Gerard Santi, Robert Williams, Don Donahue, Ron Turner, Trina Robbins, Warren Greenwood.

David E. Miller, one of the greatest Newave cartoonists ever, holding a Comix Wave spec sheet. Of this photo Lynn wrote: "The spotting process I used did not work as well as I had hoped. Oh well No one else will get a copy of the David Miller print, only two exist and that is it."

Top and bottom: The one and only Brad W. Foster, the undisputed most prolific artist to come out of the Newave. That Texas star behind him reminds me that if you read up on the U.S.-Mexican War, Texas was actually founded by illegal immigrants. Holy irony, Batman! I need to ask, is that Dave Patterson in the background of the bottom photo?

Phone photo 466

Post Office, McCleary, Washington

Grass Green Scrapbook

Richard "Grass" Green was a very unique figure in our Newaver world. It wasn't really the fact he was one of the few African-American cartoonists involved in our game that got our attention. No. It was his experience and age.

Born in 1939, Grass was older than the rest of us. He was considered a pioneer in comic fandom, he had commercial credits under his belt, and he had been involved with underground comix. He'd been around the block and we all respected and looked up to him for the dedication he had given to his art.

Not old enough to be our Dad, but Grass was certainly a mentor. When I visited Cincinnati a couple months ago Carol Tyler called us Newavers the younger brothers of the undergrounds. A very apt description, I think.

The scanned letters here pretty much confirm Grass was aware of this mentor status and passed along advice like a big brother. My correspondence with him was from 1983 to the end of the 1980s. Another one gone too soon, he died in 2002.

The posted documents here represent a sampler of my correspondence with Grass.

Phone photo 465

Chrislip, Gallacci Morty Versions

I met a secret source in a parking garage and acquired copies of these drawings of Morty the Dog created by Bruce Chrislip and Steve Gallacci at the 1985 Fremont Fair in Seattle.

Phone photo 464

Starhead Presents # 1 Cover Prep

It's amazing the things I find while engaged in archaeological digging through my studio.

Here's some of the preparation work by Michael Dowers for the cover of Starhead Presents # 1. Color is not my friend, so either Patrick or Michael Dowers hand colored this draft. I love Colin Upton's saying, "Color is for the weak," it provides me with an excuse for being color-challenged.

I'm also noticing something I forgot about. The draft version is actually an entirely different drawing. I don't remember creating more than one cover. Well, it has been nearly 30 years!

I'm also including a scan of the finished and published covers.

Phone photo 463

Morty the Dog in Grimjack # 28!

One day back in 1986 I was thrilled to find out of the blue a letter in my PO box from the great cartoonist Hilary Barta. He not only ordered some of my comix but let me know he slipped a pic of Morty the Dog into a story in Grimjack # 28.

The black and white images are what Hilary sent me. I found a copy of the comic itself in my files to scan and post as well.

Barta later joined Maximum Traffic, Mike Hill and myself in our last comic of the 20th century, Modernman # 3 ; Maximum Traffic # 210.

Phone photo 462

Bezango: Driving

Olympia Power & Light, May 5-19, 2010

As it turned out I was never unemployed. I was indeed "bumped" by someone with more seniority but I had a part-time job the next day. And in a weird twist of fate, I was hired back to my old employer within a month.

The drawing of Morty dates back to 1981, in Cranium Frenzy # 1. Notice I cropped out the "Outta my way, ya peckerheads!" word balloon from the original. They trained us to curse like that when I drove a taxicab in Burlington, Vermont.

Jack's Shoe Repair still exists in the same storefront in Olympia. I often wonder where that little girl is today and if she has any inkling of how she scarred me for life.

No one has taken me up on investing in the thermotropic mood car idea yet. But you'll see. You'll see.

Phone photo 461

Elma, Washington

Bezango: Ghosts and Love

Olympia Power & Light March 24-April 6, 2010.

Typo alert: "Washington State Academy" is supposed to read "Washington State academic."

The illustration was originally on the cover of one of Max Traffic's issues of Buzzizyk and reprinted in Retreads 14. Is that heart flying away, or, coming in for a landing?

If you are into ghost hunting and sightings in the Olympia area, the colleges seem to be the places to start. I understand that in addition to The Evergreen State College and South Puget Sound Community College, there is another ghost (a monk who committed suicide? Did I get that story right?) over at Saint Martins University in Lacey.

Phone photo 460

Elma, Washington

Morty Mysteries

While looking through my files I found a letter from our Newave comrade Hank Arakelian. It's dated 7/6/92.

He provided me with a copy of this image and captioned: "Remember this? It will appear in the Exp View in a month or two."

Whatever happened to Hank? At the time he suddenly vanished from our radar Hank and I had been pretty deep into a full length comix jam. Unfortunately, I believe he has all the art from that effort since the ball was in his court and he was going to publish it. I can't find any copies here. So will it always be one of those Lost Comix? Actually, I have several of them out there floating in the void.

Also, I don't believe I ever saw the above image in print. Did it ever see the light of day via photocopy toner in his Exploded View comix?

Oh well. What's life without a few mysteries? Hank, if you're still out there, drop us a line if you feel like it. We miss you.

Phone photo 459

McCleary, Washington

Bezango: Fallout? Aliens!? Or Worse-- ?

Olympia Power & Light March 9-23, 2010.

The windshield pit panic is a true and hilarious event in the history of the Pacific Northwest.