Morty goes Kindle

Someone out there in the wonderful web world has formatted four of Steve's comix for Kindle e-reader use.

If you don't have a Kindle you can still view these books with Kindle for PC.

I grabbed copies and stashed them in our Google Docs, follow links here and feel free to download and enjoy.

Storm Warnings
Morty, the Dog Who Walks Like a Man
Lordy, Lordy, Where's Mr. Morty
Eternities of Darkness

Xenophobic Knives and Other Love Songs, pt. 1

First published by Starhead Comix in Seattle, 1985. The comic was trimmed so that it was a centimeter shorter than the standard minicomic size at both length and width.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. of June 2005 had 5 copies with red cardstock covers and yellow and orange guts. It was standard minicomic size. In the Danger Room Ed., the pages inside the covers (which were blank in the Starhead printing) had text explaining the history of the series.

And what was that history? Michael Dowers of Starhead always liked my Cranium Station DMZ-Eternities of Darkness-Hungry Stairs to heaven trilogy, long before he included it in the recent Newave anthology published by Fantagraphics. He asked me to create another one. Xenophobic Knives was planned to be the first of three in a metamorphosis loop series.

For some reason I never really got much steam behind this one. I don't even remember drawing either one of the two issues. The 5-year gap between parts 1 and 2 should tell you something. Part 3 has yet to appear.

To show you how much I've forgotten, I didn't know this minicomic had a secret message until I started scanning it. Then I had to struggle for a few minutes to decode it!

Hungry Stairs to Heaven

The final entry in the Cranium Station DMZ and Eternities of Darkness trilogy, this minicomic has pretty much the same printing history as the latter title (meaning I'm not aware of any digest size versions). The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. consisted of 5 copies with red covers and yellow and orange guts.

Trivia: Like the two previous parts, this one also has a secret message, although not as obvious."Omnia Exstares" was my nod to The Evergroove State College. Our school mascot was the geoduck (pronounced "gooey-duck"), a very obscene looking shellfish found on the shores of Cooper Point, where TESC resided. Although the college didn't actually have any official athletic teams in the 1970s, we still considered the geoduck as our icon. "Omnia Exstares" was as close as the college could get in Latin to "Let it all hang out," which, when captioned under a picture of a geoduck in full glory, was pretty rude. Cougars and huskies drool-- geoducks rule, man! In the 1978-1979 school year (the year I graduated), certain officials attempted to get rid this mascot, but the students overwhelmingly voted in a special campus election to keep the critter, and the geoduck mascot remains at TESC to this day. Omnia Exstares!

Eternities of Darkness

This minicomic is the 2nd part of the Cranium Station DMZ trilogy (see earlier post for a more complete history).

First published by Dada Gumbo in 1984. Unlike Cranium Station DMZ, I don't believe this also had a digest-sized version published as well.

The scanned copy here is from the 2nd ed., published by Starhead in 1992.

The June 2005 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. had a print run of 5 copies (green covers, yellow guts).

Trivia: The title is a line from Nabokov: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." Cover: I'm told I fell down some stairs and was seriously injured when I was a very small child while living my native city of Spokane, Washington. The experience must've burned into my bank of memories I can't remember but still access, since the image of falling down steps is one that keeps showing up in my work. There is another not so subtle secret message embedded in the comic. Page 4, Tony Dow was the actor who played Wally, older brother to Beaver. Page 9, I occasionally use the name "Jubby" for different characters in my comix. I just like the sound of it. Page 11: I had the honor of interviewing J.P. Patches and met Gertrude in 1975. Two great guys who I'm sure influenced my cartooning to a great degree.

Cranium Station DMZ

This was the first of a trilogy including Eternities of Darkness and Hungry Stairs to Heaven. It is a circular story and can be picked up anywhere in the narrative without worry or anxiety about missing out on the "plot."

The first edition was published in 1984 by Dada Gumbo Press in Tucson, Arizona both in minicomic and digest-sized formats. I had been using the comic metamorphosis technique since the early 1970s, but Dada Gumbo's publisher Dale Luciano really gave me an encouraging venue to explore this method with some more detail.

Starhead published the 2nd ed. in 1992, during a time when they were briefly housed at Ocean Shores, Washington on the other end of Grays Harbor County from McCleary! The cover included red highlights.

When I had my print-on-demand catalog in 1994, this trilogy was not included. This was due to fact I was also selling unsold inventory for Clay Geerdes and Dale Luciano. And Dale still had copies of the set left over and available at that time.

The 1st Danger Room ed. in June 2005 had 5 copies with green covers and yellow and white guts.

The entire trilogy was finally published in a form it which it was meant to be presented in 2010 as part of Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s, published by Fantagraphics and edited by Michael Dowers.

Some points of trivia. The comic has a not so subtle secret message, the influence of my friend Lynn Hansen (1958-1995), who was obsessed with the hidden messages in Beatles' songs and images. The bottle of Wildermuth on p. 3 is reference to my old college pal and conceptual artist Kevin Wildermuth. The guy with the glasses on p. 5 is me. Page 7: clowns have long been a source of sordid fascination for me. In the early 1970s I had a seedy clown character named Jobbo Bonobo, which grew into a rather disturbing cult a few years later at The Evergroove State College in Olympia.