The Comix Files: Rick "Ricko" Bradford

 Drawn by Dave Tosh

 Looks like a jam from a comix convention

Rick Bradford of Texas first contacted me in 1992 during the City Limits Gazette days. Although his comix art is wonderful and sparky, we all know Rick as the genius behind Poopsheet, at first a hardcopy resource but it evolved into one of THE most important online resources for creators and collectors of Newave, homemade, zine-like comix. Such energy. The guy must be a strange visitor from another planet with powers above and beyond that of mortal men.

Check out these links:

Poopsheet Foundation

Poopsheet Shop

To My Comrades in the Dallas Area

Hope all you Morty the Blog pals down there weathered the twisters and are well, Brad, Rick, Dave, and whatever Lone Star Lurkers there are who read this. You are in our thoughts. The film footage looked horrific. I trust you guys were not part of that carnage bestowed by Mother Nature.

Raining Quills pt. 2

It's those damn porcupines again!

This series was a different kind of jam. I drew the the first page with Augustus in a wheeled bathtub trapped under a rainfall of dead porcupine quills. Then I copied it five times and sent it to five different artists around the country. My aim was to have 5 minicomic jams, each with 5 artists, but all of them starting with the same premise.

Four of them made it back. And so far I have permissions from all the artists in two of those issues. I am grateful those cartoonists could be found after 20 years.

All four of the minicomix that made it back home were published by Starhead Comix in Seattle.

This one, part 2, was initially sent to David Tosh in Texas. He sent it up to Pittsburgh, where the incredible Wayno got his hands on it. And from there comic went to his fellow Pittsburgh area cartoonists the single named Stanley, and Mark Daniel.

This issue also has a rare accidental edition. I don't know how many copies exist, but apparently some of them included Morty Comix #1882 in the final pages. I've scanned one of those here.

Done to a Turn

Comix jams generally don't result in a product with a tight storyline, but this one was relatively coherent compared to others I'll hopefully be scanning if I can contact the artists.

Dave Tosh and I sent the art back and forth and checkerboarded panel by panel. He published it in 1987 under his Slice o' Life label (Dallas, Texas). We've never met in person, but when you work on something like this you create a connection that is almost like talking in person. I don't know how many copies he printed, but 50 of them were set aside and signed and numbered by both of us.

Trivia: The wraparound cover included our heads on platters, that's Dave on the left and me on the right having my nose honked by Morty. This comic has an unusual depiction of Mukey the Mutant Membrane. He actually predates Morty the Dog by a good five years or more. This comic depicts his face as more human-looking than other works. I love Dave's background touches such as the title "Bullets I have Known" on the detective's bookshelf, and the Red Herring Cafe. Our drawing styles were close enough that the visuals don't seem too jarring.

When my last day comes, I want to utter a cryptic clue like Mukey does here. And of course it will be a total lie, but it'll keep everyone guessing. Heh-heh.

I see as of this date, Rick Bradford has the original art for this comic available at The Poopsheet Shop. His specs state:

- page size roughly 5½ × 7½"
- all pages have one hard-to-see crease running through them (my assumption is that the pages were folded when they went back and forth through the mails one page at a time), condition is otherwise very good, no tears or markings

Original art in these comix were usually larger than the printed version and then reduced for sharpness and clarity. Reducing and enlarging on photocopy wasn't really commonplace until the late 70s-early 80s, and it had a profound impact on the ability of us Newavers to produce and publish our own work.

Scanned with permission from Dave Tosh.