Mini-Comics Day Prep

Mini-Comics Day is almost here!  I took the afternoon off and went to City Hall to pick up the key to the Community Center. Then I found Sarah and brought her with me for set-up since she graciously offered to help. Somehow that seems fitting since she was the one who set this blog up in the first place, so this whole thing in McCleary really traces back to her!

A tip to those of you coming from other places. We are about 25 minutes from Shelton, 30 minutes from Oly, 40 minutes from Aberdeen, 60 minutes from Centralia, 90 minutes from Seattle, 2+ hours from Portland, 6 hours from Spokane my birthplace, 9 hours from Redding, California if you drive like a bat out of Hell, and a stone's throw from Bezango. Keep in mind Memorial Day weekend traffic to the Coast will be thick.

These tables are not the greatest for acting as a drawing surface. Be sure to bring a drawing board or pad. I'll be using a clipboard.

I'll be providing a photocopier, a very funky paper cutter, a longneck stapler, some old dry gluestick, colored paper, pencil sharpener and a few other things. Bottled water will be there too, as well as some "fine" music on old sound cassettes. heh-heh.

This is also the venue where the Man in the Morty the Dog suit appeared in the late 20th century.

The Community Center resides next to the McCleary Cemetery, originally started by the Knights of Pythias in 1912 and then given to the town shortly after McCleary incorporated in 1943. Here is the headstone for one of the many Greeks who lived here in the early days, Christ Pappas, 1882-1956.

 A rare thunderstorm followed these clouds a few minutes later.

I returned home to start hauling out my dusty comix-making tools. Meanwhile, Charlie and Dreamer had an epic wrestling match next to the equipment I gathered in my living room.

Evergreen Lecture

Last night I had fun talking with a classroom of 40 plus students in "The Women's West" program taught by Jolie Sandoz and Ann Storey at The Evergreen State College. My talk, which was a bit rambly, attempted to tie together the threads of the Baby Boom, the history of Evergreen, and Newave Comix and the creative freedom afforded by photocopy technology. Most of the students were in their 20s, the same age I was when I attended Evergroove.

I printed up special TESC editions (75 copies each) of Write-In Morty the Dog for McCleary Mayor, Dante's Coat, Ambergris, To Touch the Face of Larry,  and As I Recall The 'Sixties, as well as a sample of Bezango WA 985.

For you bibliographic completists, the above minis also had a blue test copy, except for To Touch the Face of Larry, which had two copies. I used the lecture opportunity to promote Mini-Comics Day in McCleary and who knows? Maybe we'll see some future cartoonists come out of this.

I had a blast and this was the first time I have given an academic lecture in several years. This was also my first time talking to an Evergreen audience, and it was sort of strange delivering this in a building that didn't exist when I was a student there. They were a good group, very attentive and asked good questions. We even had a drawing exercise.

Thanks for having me over, fellow Geoducks!

Phone photo 1020

How about that? A Phone photo that actually has a photo of a phone!

This public pay telephone booth is still in use in McCleary, Washington. It resides in front of the police station. It appears to be from the 1970s and has a design I'd call retro futuristic.

In the background is McCleary's main intersection, which includes a stop sign equipped with a flashing red light on top. The smokestack back there belongs to Simpson's door plant, McCleary's top payroll provider in this town of 1600 or so.

McCleary was a great source of inspiration for many of the tales told in the Bezango WA 985 series of comix.

Embedded Bezangos

Sasquatch (Olympia Power & Light, June 16-29, 2010) posted with Sasquatch Comix # 1

On Comics (Olympia Power & Light, June 2-15, 2010) posted as Bezango On Comics

On Top of the World (Olympia Power & Light, February 24-March 9, 2010) posted with Washington State Legislative Building

Isthmus Time (Olympia Power & Light, May 19-June 1, 2010) posted with Bezango WA 985 # 4

What is "Bezango"?

Last October 9th, when I posted the Bezango/Bezango Obscuro story I made a stab at the etymology of the word "Bezango."

It was just a word I made up. I liked the sound of it. I had used it as an expression of joy for awhile, perhaps starting as early as the 1980s. The first instance of this word seeing print, so far as I can ascertain, was in the 1994 comic of the same name. But perhaps I used it in City Limits Gazette 1991-1993. When I post those I'll keep my eye out for it.

Later "Bezango" became a geographic place in the Bezango WA 985 series, an 8-issue run that began in late 2001. Bezango was another name for the weird and unusual people and places tucked away in these moss-covered hills of Southwest Washington.

The word was revived for the Olympia Power & Light column in 2009. To me, the word has evolved into some kind of catch-all for the stories that fall between the cracks, the oddballs, the weirdos, and the celebration of frivolity. We'll get into the story behind that last descriptor in good time.

Bezango WA 985 has also been on stage and shown as gallery art.

T-shirts

Actually I've covered the story of the OlyBlog t-shirt earlier this year. But it belongs in the gallery of t-shirts anyway.



Michael Dowers made this t-shirt in the 1980s (I think) using the Starhead Comix logo I drew.



From the 2002 AIE Summer Program, including Bezango WA 985 on stage! The images are from the comic series.

A page from Cranium Frenzy # 3 which was captioned "Three seconds in the life of Rindo Bloch" inspired this play by my brother, Bryan, and the original image was used in the t-shirt.

Cast member Jeff Kingsbury went on to be elected to the Olympia City Council for one term and his name became an Oly household word-- and not exactly in way anyone would choose.












I first drew the image for Woofer the Psychic Dog (co-written by Bryan) back in 1986 and it just keeps living on whether it is performed in New York or Olympia. To publicize the 1988 Oly premiere I created a long banner which spanned 4th Ave. about where the Danger Room is today.

An Untitled Portfolio

1st edition, Fall 1977, Olympia, Washington. 100 copies, dark blue cover, light blue guts, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, Fall 1982, Olympia, Washington, 25 copies, light blue cover, enlarged digest size.

3rd edition, presented as a print-on-demand title starting in November 1995. Regular digest size.

1st Danger Room reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, red cover, regular digest size.

My 4th and quite possibly most important comic in terms of my development as a cartoonist.

This was originally drawn as a class project for the program "Self Exploration Through Autobiography," an interdisciplinary writing/literature class at The Evergreen State College during Fall quarter, 1977.

Earlier that year I had lived in Seattle and taken a couple life drawing classes. One was during Summer quarter at Shoreline Community College and the other was a night course at the University of Washington Experimental College. In both cases I learned to loosen up my drawing hand a bit and give myself permission to make plenty of mistakes. Since I never studied art at Evergreen, these two courses constitute the only graphic art training I've had in my adult life.

It would be a writer, not an artist, who turned my head on comic art. His name is Thad Curtz, one of the best teachers I've known. At the time he was very interested in child psychology and the creative process. Today our paths still cross on OlyBlog, where we are fellow moderators.

Another member of the Evergreen faculty, Peter Elbow, was an adherent of freewriting. His book Writing Without Teachers was one of the good old Evergreen standbys in the 1970s. I would enroll in Peter's class the following year, but by then I had already been using his techniques as applied to comic art-- thanks to Thad's guidance.

During this period I was enamored of the works of William Steig. His books like All Embarrassed, The Lonely Ones, and Persistent Faces from the 1940s really grabbed me. His work would be my model for climbing out of the stilted and constricted method of cartooning I had been employing in my earlier books.

In fact, I dedicated this book to Steig and sent him a copy. He wrote back a brief and nice response. Imagine my surprise when in one of his later books (I don't remember which one) he employed my "Boy Kaboing" interlude concept with a bunch of people dancing to "Hot cha, cha cha cha." He lifted my idea! Oh, well, turnabout is fair play since his style heavily influenced mine, so I can't kick too much.

In fact I still use this method of storytelling now and then. Bezango WA 985, which ran 8 issues, is built on the same kind of foundation.

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