1st edition, Seattle, Washington, January 1982, 40 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest.
2nd edition, Seattle, Washington, early 1982, 25 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest. The 2nd ed. can be identified by a faint vertical line on the cover.
Available as a print-on-demand in regular digest size, 1996.
1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies (1 green, 4 red), regular digest size.
If I'm not mistaken, I think I burned all the original art to
Cranium Frenzy # 1-2, and possibly # 3, in the fireplace of the house I was renting in Seattle. A few of my housemates attended the wake. My thinking at the time was that the art needed to be destroyed, much like a woodblock that had been used to make limited prints.
All of my 1981-1982 Seattle imprints were printed by a couple brothers originally from, I think, Iraq, who ran a print shop on University Ave. called Mecca Printing. Believe it or not, Lynda Barry had directed me to them by chance when I ran into her just across the street from the place. I sometimes wonder what became of them in Century 21 America. They had the first self-service photocopier I encountered where one could play around with amazing features like enlarging and reducing! You can't imagine how much of a difference this made in my publishing output. Prior to 1981, getting any comix art reduced in size was a major hassle and usually costly.
Trivia:
P. 2: Panel 4. Studio 54 was still in operation in 1982. In 1979 I actually made a whole party stop cold for a few silent seconds in Burlington, Vermont when I asked in complete innocence, "What is Studio 54?" It was a fine moment when they asked what planet I was from. I still had hay in my hair, apparently.
P. 3. Humptulips is a real place, right here in Grays Harbor County, Washington.
P. 5. A play on one my favorite lines from
Caligula, by Albert Camus: "Men die and they are not happy."
P. 6. I think Brooke Shields was the source of the quote.
P. 7, panel 3. Another one of my favorite panels ever. Panel 7, based on Fred C. Dobbs from
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a movie I really enjoy.
P. 10+: This was originally a short story I wrote in college ca. 1978 while studying with the writing instructor Peter Elbow, who taught me some wonderful methods in creating stories-- namely the use of freewriting. Still, when I read the whole thing out loud to him, Peter just sat poker faced and encouraged me to get more serious. But all my classmates were laughing pretty hard.
P. 11. More
Hamlet stuff anticipating
The Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke. P. 12: Computers were just about at the point of really taking over and becoming part of office labor's daily experience when this comic was drawn. The name Mark Sense is a play on a now outdated computer term.
P. 22+:
What was I thinking?!?
P. 26+: Arnie Wormwood was a character I liked who didn't get very far. I eventually killed him off, and unlike Morty the Dog, he pretty much stayed dead.
P. 33: You don't hear too much about
Edgar Cayce these days, he seemed more of a household name in 1982. The Magus Bookstore in Seattle's U District had this page on display as you entered their section for paranormal books.
Bob Corby was next. Bob is the organizer of SPACE, which must be a very big job. His humor is gentle and personal. He read from his mini, Why I'm Not Musical, a comic with great graphics that really fit the mood of the narrative.
I read from Ambergris, which meant I had to sing a little. I'm sure my local friends and family will cringe when I say that, since I'm known as the second worst singer in the world, after Jim Jarvis (another McCleary guy). Then I read "Edgar Cayce Talks to the Dead," and finally "How Cats Got That Way."
