Happy May Day!

Morty T-Shirt

A couple of my co-workers arranged to have this t-shirt made for me featuring a panel from Cranium Frenzy #8.

The Interrupted Song

A memorial to Lynn Hansen, published in spring 1995 during my print-on-demand phase. I have no clue how many of these are out there. And somehow that little numerical copy information void seems fitting for anything having to do with Lynn.

Events subsequent to Lynn's death have only made his demise all the more mysterious. A few people have surfaced, even as recently as 4 or 5 years ago, who have revealed sides of Lynn I never knew. His life was apparently compartmentalized to an incredible extent.

When most people die, the news is spread through a circle of friends. But Lynn didn't have that. He had a string of friends, and very few of us were connected to each other. And none of us knew him as well as we thought we did.

What exactly happened to me? After doing the normal guy thing and ignoring an abdominal pain for two weeks, my wife discovered I was in trouble when I let out a yelp while sitting down. She forced me to go to the hospital. This no doubt saved my life as the docs rushed to open me up ASAP. It turned out I had swallowed some toxic substance, which they could not identify, and a foot of my colon had died. They said I most likely would've croaked in a day or two if I had done nothing. I now have an 8 inch scar as a souvenir of that surgical adventure, plus nerve damage in my drawing hand (which is about half numb most of the time these days). This was referenced in Cranium Frenzy #8.

From what I gather, Lynn's symptoms were different. Apparently he was dehydrated and had flu-like problems. He died at the same time I was released from my week-long hospital stay.

I'll be revisiting this unfinished story when I post info about Lynn's book on the Paul McCartney death hoax entitled Number 9. And believe me, it just gets weirder.

Cranium Frenzy # 8

Along with a few other titles, Cranium Frenzy # 8 came into the world during my print-on-demand phase, so it never really had a 1st edition print run in the Kennedy Guide sense. The first ones were printed about October 1995 and the title was made available on a demand basis through 1996. I'm guessing maybe a hundred or so in this time period? All versions were published in regular digest size.

Yellow Edition, 1998, 2 copies, pink cover, yellow guts.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies, blue.

One of the very first long comix I drew after nearly dying in March/April 1995. Not only is my existential side more entrenched in the storyline, but the surgery had an impact on my nervous system. If you look closely you can detect the unsteadiness of my drawing hand by the Richter Scale-like seismic squiggles in the felt tip lines. At first it didn't seem so bad, but then it worsened and finally peaked around 2000, I guess. I'm steadier today but my left hand has never regained the old control.

What had happened to me? The doc said I had swallowed a toxic substance, a poison of unknown origin, and it was killing me from the inside out. The lab could not identify it and I have no clue what it was. They slit me up a treat and took out pieces of me on April Fools Day, 1995. I still have a nice long scar on my abdomen. There is much more to this story, but that is for another post.

Trivia:

Page 1: When Evergreen student Lee Norton interviewed Morty in the mid-1980s for the Cooper Point Journal, she described his ear floating in his drink. That image stuck with me, so I used it.

Page 4: Yes, that wooden bear really exists. I'm attaching a news article from the Jan. 15, 1997 East County News where my sister-in-law Susan and I are photographed next to thing on top of McCleary City Hall. I remember the bear was cracked and covered with a fine patina of thin green moss not visible from the street. Such are the realities of living at the edge of rain forest country.

Page 6: Hamlet stuff.

Page 8, panel 5: And that's exactly how it happened.

Page 9: Nixon in Orwell's 1984.

Page 10, panel 5: I really was reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass at the time they told me I had to be sliced apart or die. Somehow it seemed fitting.

Page 11: How Can You Sleep?

Page 12+: The Big G has always been one of my favorite characters to use as a foil for Morty. Mukey too. In this case, I've got all three interacting.

Page 15: It's them damn giant reptiles again! I think I must enjoy drawing all the jagged and pointy lines on these critters. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

Page 20: I'll talk more about Mukey the Mutant Membrane when we see his only solo comic which is entitled, strangely enough, Mukey the Mutant Membrane.

Back cover: Two truths. Both correct. Paradoxism needs a snappier label than "Paradoxism."

By the way the video we produced was entitled From They To We, it was 30 minutes long and aired on Olympia's TCTV for the better part of a year.