Newave! the Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s

When Michael Dowers told me he was going to put this book together, I had a difficult time imagining what the final product was going to look like. But knowing Michael's amazing history as a visionary publisher and coordinator, I had faith it was going to be great. He didn't disappoint me.

My personal file of the little minicomix which I keep as my portfolio fills up two card catalog drawers. I loaned them to Michael so he could see if there were any he wanted to reproduce for this book. He picked them up at my place, and about 6 months later Sarah and I went down to Puget Island, which sits in the middle of the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington and retrieved them.

Although this dense brick of a book clocks in at around 900 pages, it is just the tip of the volcano. But the impact of this little baby has been the Newave event of 2010. A lot of us Oldwavers have dusted ourselves off and gotten to know each other again. We knew in the 1980s we were on to something wonderful, and now we are seeing that we were way ahead of the pack, even pioneers.

Not only has Michael's book been a factor (along with Sarah's lighting a fire under me) in my decision to crawl out of my cave and revisit this comix stuff, but it has also brought forth a whole new audience of the next generation of comix readers.

Michael, you done good.

I'm reproducing the interview portion from this book. Rick Bradford, who is turning out to be one of the main historians of the Newave movement, conducted the back and forth via email. Since the spine of the book doesn't allow me to lay the pages flat on the scanner, I wish you luck on reading the photocopy version.

Phone photo 166

This photo was found on a federal poster educating the public about noxious weeds. This particular part of the poster was the example for tansy ragwort, an invasive plant here in the Pacific Northwest that can be deadly to some livestock. I remember my grandmother (who was born here in Washington in 1891) telling us about women who wanted to shed themselves of unwanted pregnancies in the early 20th century found that tansy tea did the trick.

Anyway, what caught my eye here was the fact this photo was taken on the 55 acre farm where I grew up. In the summer of 1980 I came back home and helped Dad put the roof on that little pumphouse on the right. And I put up that barb-wire fence in the same summer, or in 1981. Every time the posthole digger hit the ground, little puffs of Mt. St. Helens volcanic ash would poof up.

I can tell this was taken after my father died and we sold the place. There are several tipoffs. First, we didn't let tansy grow to that size. Second, I don't see any Shetlands grazing in the field. Third, the ever present horse trailer next to barn is missing. And last, Dad would have shot anyone sneaking into the field with a camera, especially a Fed. You could say he was sort of libertarian in his outlook.

Phone photo 126

Bonafide Child Innocence #1

1st ed., 25 copies, February or March 1983, Olympia, Washington, white.

2nd ed., 30 copies, March 1983, Olympia, Washington, white.

3rd ed., 67 copies, June 1984, Gilbert, Minnesota, HSC, white.

1st Danger Room Reprint Ed., 5 copies, July 2005, McCleary, Washington, yellow.

All printings are in regular digest size.

This was my smartass jab at the at-the-time very popular stick comix genre. I had mixed feelings about publishing this in the first place, but someone had to say something. So I did. A few people quietly thanked me.

Actually I can fully understand the reasons why stick figure comix can be a good thing, especially when articulated by Matt Feazell, a great cartoonist who, by the way, accepted my critique most graciously and like a grownup.

Personally, my favorite in this genre can be found online, at the accidental art site, Stick Figures in Peril.

The originals of Bonafide Child Innocence were drawn either in Spokane, Washington, where I was born, or in Olympia, where we moved when I was a little squirt. The source of the drawings was a ledger my mechanic grandfather in Centralia, Washington kept. In it he has notations like "Model A Ford Pump," and latest date I can find is 1944. It measures 30 cm. high, and the back cover reveals it was one of the few things to survive our house fire on the farm in the mid-1960s. And it is packed with narrative cartoons I drew before I knew how to read.

Another childhood item I have acquired is a face drawn on wood. Actually, it was on a piece of furniture my Father had built, a coffee table with a box shelf. I remember drawing the face on this table and getting caught by my Mother, who informed I was going to be in Big Trouble once my Father came home from work. But in fact he was delighted. You see, they thought I was sort of "slow," since I wasn't talking, walking, eating, thinking, etc. at the same rate as other kids. So any spark of artistic expression was seen as, "Hey, he's not a complete moron! Yay!"

The incident helped spur me to draw more, but my Mom made sure that from then on I had paper. She even captioned some of the stories for me! See, now you can blame my parents for these comix.

The table was rediscovered almost five years ago after my Dad died and we were cleaning out the farm, preparing to sell the place. It was stashed in a corner of the basement, but not in very good condition. I managed to save the panel with the drawing on it, and here it is!