Stevetreads # 3

1st edition, 1987. Chico, California : Jeff Nicholson. White cover, regular digest size.

The number of copies for the 3rd and 4th issues of this series isn't recorded in my list, but I would assume the count is low since the first two issues had a grand total of 3 copies per issue.

The name Stevetreads was a play on my Retreads title, a series devoted to reprinting items printed hither and yon into one collection (I smile as I recall Ted Bolman wanted to start yet another play on this called ReTeds, which I hope he did). Several of the pieces Jeff reprinted were actually reprints of reprints. But in this issue there was something different. Half the book was filled with new work.

Jeff had acquired several pages of unpublished jam comix between Dale Luciano and myself. This was the in-print debut for the cover art and all work from the "Memories" page to the end. These were later reprinted in 1994 in Dada Gumbo Morty.

Dada Gumbo Morty

1st edition, 1994, print-on-demand, regular digest size. I have no idea how many of these are out there. It was available from 1994-1996, so perhaps 100 of them, give or take 75.

Special Fandom House edition, 1994, 20 copies.

This is a reprint collection of comix jams with Dada Gumbo publisher Dale Luciano. Some of them were originally released as pages in anthology comix (Dog Boy #7, Scratchez Magazine #8, Stevetreads #3, and Worker Poet #9), others as individual minicomix:

Harnessing the White Elephant

It Has No Story ...

The Persecution and Assassination of Morty the Dog ...

Something Morty This Way Comes ...

All of these were initiated by Dale, who also decided where and how they would be published. He sent me pages with the panels containing random images and I attempted to impose order on them, an exercise I thoroughly enjoyed. I have used this technique in other comix, most lately online at OlyBlog with the UML series and the What's My Line? series.

When I occasionally give cartoon presentations to classrooms, I'll ask the kids to close their eyes and draw a line on the blackboard (or in recent years, whiteboard) and then I'll show them how they can build an image around this line if they approach it with some imagination. I like this method-- it forces me to get outside the cookie cutter way of drawing where I can easily imprison myself since I'm essentially a sedentary and lazy artist.

It Has No Story, and It's Only Part of a Small Cult Phenomena, or, Low-Budget 'Pataphysics Made Easy

Hey, how many books can you name with the word '' 'pataphysics " in the title?

This was published by Dada Gumbo in Tucson, Arizona in 1985, not too long before Dale Luciano moved to Ashland, Oregon.

Like the previously mentioned Harnessing the White Elephant, this was later reprinted in Dada Gumbo Morty in 1994.

As usual, Dale had sent me panels with images slapped on in Dada random. I saw my job as attempting to form a story with what I was given.

Harnessing the White Elephant Vol. 2, No. 1

Dale R. Luciano's Dada Gumbo Press showcased his interest in Dada and Surrealism. An educator in theater arts by trade, Dale wrote a landmark survey of Newave comix artists which was serialized in several issues of The Comics Journal in the mid-1980s. He was the first serious writer from the outside to recognize and cover with any depth the Newave comix movement. At the same time he went native, and started publishing an wagonload of some of the most interesting minicomix of the 1980s.

Dale and I jammed on several comix projects. Our collaborative work would typically follow this process: He'd send me several panels with random images pasted on them. That was the Dada portion. Then I would attempt to form a story around the images. Sometimes I wasn't sure what Dale with do with our work-- would they part of a larger anthology, or, as a stand-alone book?
Harnessing the White Elephant had no vol. 1, no. 1 as far as I know. 100 copies were printed in May 1986 by Dada Gumbo in Ashland, Oregon. The comic is sideways, 11 x 14 cm. As you can see by the content, I was not a big fan of the Art Establishment. Actually, my opinion since then has softened a tiny bit-- but not much. This minicomic also showed up in 1994 in Dada Gumbo Morty, a collection of all Luciano/Willis jams under one cover, reprinted during my print-on-demand publishing period.

Scanned and posted with permission from Dale Luciano.