See you on June 15th at the Olympia Comics Festival!

See you on June 15th at the Olympia Comics Festival! Celebrate Marisha and Casey's wedding and take home some free art!

Olympia Comics Festival June 15, 2019

I'll be giving away nearly 300 Morty Comix at the Olympia Comics Festival at the Olympia Community Center on June 15, 2019. The comix are wedding favors on the happy occasion of the wedding of Marisha Kay and Casey (Danger Room) Bruce.

https://olycomicsfest.tumblr.com/Exhibitors

A little more than half of the Morty Comix are in the "traditional" 4-page format. Each issue is one-of-kind original art. The series dates back to Feb. 1983. The rest of the Morty Comix are 3-dimensional "installation pieces" given away in wedding white bags.

I hope I can fit them all in my little 20th century compact car (see photos of giant plastic tubs and boxes, as well as a ton of loose bags). We might have a clown car situation here.

The issue number range is between # 2900-3200, created between Aug. 2018-Mar. 2019. Hope to see you there!

Olympia Comics Festival 2012, pt. 11

Triple book signings at the Danger Room with Mike Allred, Jason Shiga, and Shannon Wheeler. Casey Bruce is the retail moderator.
 
I hope the City of Olympia appreciates what a treasure it has in the Danger Room.

Olympia Comics Festival 2012, pt. 2

Two SWs, Shannon Wheeler and Steve Willis

I like this gig where the Danger Room guys assign me the task of interviewing great cartoonists at the Olympia Comics Festival. I used to interview and document cartoonists a lot during my City Limits Gazette days and didn't realize how much I missed that aspect of mixing librarianship with comix until the last couple years when I got roped into helping out in Oly.

This was probably one of the most seamless interviews in my experience-- mostly due to Shannon's impressive self-awareness as an artist and his willingness to speak frankly. I didn't feel like I had to pull nails out of this guy. He is a very modest, likeable, thoughtful and talented artist with a good stage presence. We really clipped along and covered a lot of ground in short time. Shannon is a cartoonist who has gone through a fascinating evolution in the last couple decades and is well worth following.

[Photo taken by Casey Bruce]

Vote Danger Room!

Hey gang, it's time to rally behind our favorite comic shop, Olympia's Danger Room in the KING Evening Magazine's poll of the "Best of Western Washington."

Give them a vote at this link.

Frank and Casey support our kind of comix, not only through their shop but also in their involvement in the Olympia Comix Fest. Let's give them some support back. They are underdogs here, mostly due to demographics since Oly is much smaller than Seattle or Tacoma.

Deadline is October 9th, but vote now!

A Visit to the Danger Room

That's Casey on the left, Frank on the right. These are the Danger Room guys. They love comix and have a section of shelves set aside just for us obscuro cartoonists, helping to get our comix out there without permission from the big publishers and distributors. They are both also keen observers of comix as social indicators.

As you can see by the photo, Frank is the chief storyteller, armtwister and Sam-I-Am here. Somehow he talked me into providing the store with Danger Room Reprint editions of over 120 titles in 2005. Actually, he also talked me into finally attending the Oly Comix Fest, and hey, I like green eggs and ham! I do, I like them, Sam-I-Am! So you can thank Frank for reviving all those titles and getting me out on the local comix scene in person.

The 2005 Danger Room Reprint editions are no longer available there, but I do supply them with copies of the recent material I've printed like Dog of Dawn, Dog of Dusk and Natural Functions.

Yesterday I dropped off a couple copies of We Rode With the Clowns and took these photos.

The Danger Room is also where I first met Chelsea Baker, another cartoonist who migrated to Oly in order to attend the Evergroove State College. Not only is she one of the organizers of the Oly Comix Fest, but she also contributed to We Rode With The Clowns. You can find her cartoons in Olympia Power and Light, a local biweekly.

201 4th Avenue West
Olympia, WA 98501-1003
(360) 705-3050

Danger Room News

The Danger Room, an Olympia, Washington comix shop has been around for well over a decade. The store has been a champion and promoter of self-published, small press, and alternative comix. Olympia's annual comics festival, hosted by Danger Room, has been unusual in that it is artist-centered. The vender tables are frequently manned by the creators themselves.

When Frank worked there he even talked me into reprinting special Danger Room editions of my old comix to put up for sale! And I did it! (in print runs of 5 copies each. No, none of those comix are there now) This guy must be a hypnotist.

Anyway, according to an email I just received from an employee, it is now official that Pat and Kendra have sold the Danger Room to former employees Frank and Casey. Should be interesting to watch how this impacts Oly's amazing evolution as a comix center.

Thanks Pat and Kendra (and Chelsea!) for your efforts. And best of luck to Frank and Casey.