I enjoyed an eight year correspondence with Jane. In hindsight I wish I had been more frequent on taking her up more often on invitations to contribute to comic projects. But I did manage to send in a few pages for her minicomix.
In looking over this folder of her mail I get angry thinking about how she was taken away so early. She certainly was one of the major female Newave cartoonists and I believe she would be gratified today to see the more equitable gender balance of cartoonists producing self-published and obscuro comix as compared to the 1980s.
Jane needs to be more celebrated and recognized as a pioneer. You can find a nice 1986 interview with her by Tim Corrigan in the Newave Reader.
I remembr being impressed by how Jane, out of our motley crew of scribblers, seemed to be the one with a head for the business of comics- she was doing full-size publications with color covers and all sorts of other projects, while the rest of us were still photo-copying our little mini books. The sheer energy was amazing, and I felt it was such a horrible waste when she left us so early, all the things that she might have gone on to do. Feel lucky I got to meet her once in San Diego.
ReplyDeleteI met Jane in 1972 over a school break in a bookstore in Houston, the old Hallmark Card & Bookstore in Rice Village.
ReplyDeleteI was looking for some SciFi to read and she asked me I had any books on vampires. We talked for about 30 minutes about books and vampires. I told her she needed to at least read Bram Stoker's book. Came to find out she thought I worked there. Turns out her mother was in the Mercedes out front. She came in to find out what was taking so long. So her mother invited me over and to make a long story short, we saw each for the next two weeks.
We would meet at her place in River Oaks. Sometimes she'd get stoned, but mostly we'd talk about books and plots, then we would make out. I thought she was the most Bohemian girl I'd ever known! Her hair was dark, long and thick. She joked it was like horsehair and that you could make bowstrings out of it. She also eschewed the razor. Her legs and armpits were very European.
At the time she was attending a prep school, but she lived at a place called the Broadmoor. It was only later I found out it was one of the only two 5 star hotels in the country. Safe to say her parents had some money, but she was just a natural girl. She was the closest I have ever come to knowing a true free spirit, the idealized hippie.
A year later we met at the college she was going to in San Francisco. She was living in a dorm on a hill at a very exclusive liberal arts college. A coed dorm! Back in 1973 it was still a novel idea.
We talked about life and what we were doing. She showed and gave me some cartoon artwork she had drawn for her story about Jerry the Vampire. Somewhere I still have some of it. I was very excited to see her. To tell the truth, I was kind of hoping I could get back together with her.
Then her boyfriend/roommate drifted trough and out. He was a little older, I think, and apparently unwashed with long stringy hair. The stoner/hippie look personified! I was disappointed. I was deeply attracted to her personality. I eventually headed back down to Menlo Park with much on my mind.
We kept in touch by phone off and on for a year or so, but we eventually lost touch.
The last time I saw her was in 1981. I was managing a bookstore in Rice Village when I noticed an old Mercedes out front. And who should walk in but Jane! And it was the same Mercedes her mother had been driving almost 10 years before! She come back to Houston for a short while and was staying for a week or two.
We got together a couple of times. She talked about Jerry the Vampire, which she had eventually published, and gave me a copy of the first issue. She also gave me a 45rpm record of a release by her husband/partner's band, Mea Culpa. Still have that in my collection, too. She told of life in the canyons of northern California. Stories of people who had sought refuge from the the so-called real world. I was surprised to hear that there were a few communes and quite a few "farmers" grow a crop that was not called "medicinal" yet! She also offered me some very good acid. I got the impression she dropped it like some people take asprin. Always the free spirit.
I also seem to remember she had a baby with her. And that was Jane, too. One foot in the real world with its obligations, with her head in a universe all its own.
I lost touch completely with her after that. It wasn't until the new century and the advent the internet, that I ran a search on her and found she had died of cancer.
The past week I have been sorting through old comic books, selling some, throwing away others, storing the rest in hopes that they will be worth something one day. And there I found my now over 30 year old copy of Jerry. And I also found so very dear memories.
She will always hold a very dear place in my life and in my heart.