Starhead Presents # 1

1st edition, 1986, Seattle, Washington : Starhead Comix. Traditional comic format.

I believe this was my first nationally distributed comic, published during the start of the Great Black and White Glut of the 1980s.

50 copies included a hand drawn Morty Comix inside the front cover. The range was # 1641-1690.

A physical oddity: the cover is made of the same newsprint material as the guts.

This was later re-released by Starhead in 1992 under the title Morty the Dog in the Shadow of the Rainbow.

I'm also including the promotional material Starhead's Michael Dowers assembled for marketing to comic dealers.

Morty the Dog # 1

Do not be misled by the numbering. This is actually the second of a three issue run.

The first issue was Morty the Dog # nothing, released in an odd oblong minicomic format.

Issue # 1 was printed in April, 1987 and consists of reprints from Natural Functions, Tales From the Timewalker, Starhead # 9, and Shin Kage.

This was one of my few nationally distributed comix. I think Michael intended it to be a quarterly. It is now a fairly common visitor on eBay. Notice Michael's recognition of the famous black and white glut of the mid-late 1980s in his intro.

I notice that on the inside back cover advertisement, I'm the only artist listed who is still above ground today. Little shudders like that creep into my cranium on a more frequent basis these days as I reacquaint myself with these old comix. I never knew Sloan, sad to say, but Big Daddy Roth and I had sort of an interesting connection. I covered it in a minicomic called Musical Chairs.

Nils Osmar, who has an ad on the back cover, is a Seattle artist, writer and nice guy I met a few times at those comix get-togethers Bruce Chrislip used to host up there before he skeedaddled back to Ohio. Nils is apparently still active in Seattle and has a webpage worth visiting.

The panel in the first story where the scientist shows Morty the Starhead Comix on display under museum glass was sort of how I felt seeing the Tragedy of Morty on display in Maryhill Museum last October!