Favorite Movie Quotes: The Candidate

"Marvin, what do we do now?"

Mentioned in Evergroove Trivia pt. 17 on OlyBlog

Olympia, Washington : a People's History / edited by Drew W. Crooks

Published by the City of Olympia in 2009 as part of celebrating the 150th birthday of Washington State's capital city. Local historian Drew Crooks edited a history of the place with each chapter by a different author, making this an anthology.

The chapter on the history of The Evergreen State College was really a boiled down version of my extended history on OlyBlog written in 2005-2006 called Evergroove Trivia.

Difficult to scan, I apologize for the poor visual quality.

Index to Cartoonists and Illustrators in The Paper and Cooper Point Journal, 1972-June 1982

The student newspapers for The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington have served as an early venue for several cartoonists who are now well known. I covered the history of these papers in OlyBlog in Evergroove Trivia pt. 44.

This manuscript was put together in July 1982. Around 1987-1988 one of my cats, Alex, took a couple chunks out of the introduction. He was a rambunctious black and white longhair. Anyway, it is possible that before Alex edited the front page, I supplied a copy to the Washington State University Library comix collection. I'm not sure when I reproduced this thing for them.

Many great cartoonists have emerged from TESC after the cutoff date of this index, but this early list is still pretty impressive.

You'll find now familiar commercial names in here, and also a number of people who were well known in the 1980s Newave movement.

Although I graduated in 1979, most of my CPJ work continued to be published clear up to the late 1980s.

The cartoonists in this list who I got to know during my Evergroove years (1974-1979) were Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, Randy Hunting, T.J. Simpson and Gary May.

I had a nodding acquaintance with several other cartoonists in this roster who I'm sure don't remember me today like Charles Burns, Jim Chupa, Flicky Ford, Dan Owens, and the amazing Dana Leigh Squires. In those years I cultivated a very careful, quiet, nonentity persona-- just being a norm, minding my own business. Drabness, I always say, is goodness.

In my post-TESC years I had the pleasure of meeting several other folks in this index: Matt Love, Lhisa Reish, Maggie Resch, Larry Stillwell, and Tucker Petertil.

Of course today, embracing the hermit lifestyle, I'm not in touch with any of these fine cartoonists, although I have crossed paths with Tuck Petertil in Olympia a time or two in the last couple years.

Bezango WA 985 #2

1st published Dec. 8, 2001, 50 copies, digest size, parchment cover.

2nd ed., June 2, 2002, 15 copies, digest size, blue cover.

Starting in August, 2002, this was a print-on-demand comic for a brief time.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed., June 2005, 5 copies (1 yellow, 1 red, 1 blue, 1 pink, 1 green)

This issue has the local festival as the theme. Here in McCleary we have the Bear Festival, where bear stew is served. Seriously. In Winlock they have Egg Days, where eggs are eaten. It makes me wonder what they consume at Montesano's Festival of People.

The mountain beaver is real animal pretty much regulated by nature to the Pacific Northwest.

The character on page 3 was someone I witnessed up in suburban King County. The man on pages 4-5 is based and modified from a story that came from Port Townsend. The guy on pages 6-7 was a neighbor. The fellow on page 12 was from a story I heard about a local character in Winlock. I have a cousin on the Winlock City Council, by the way, and need to talk to him about why they have the world's 2nd or 3rd largest egg replica on display. The page 13 character really exists to this day. Page 14: I wrote about the Midnight Sponge in Evergroove Trivia pt. 39. Page 15: This guy gave me a ride while I was hitchhiking on Cooper Point in the 1970s. Page 18, my daughter, Rose, used to collect pieces of the road.

Bezango WA 985 #1

First published Oct. 28, 2001, 25 copies with a yellow cardstock cover.

The 2nd, revised edition was published November 28, 2001, 27 copies, yellow cardstock cover.

3rd ed., June 2002, 15 copies, blue cover.

Starting in August 2002 and lasting for a brief time, this was a print-on-demand comic. Apparently printed in a variety of colors. I have no idea how many are out there.

The 1st Danger Room Ed. of June 2005 had 5 copies (1 each in blue, red, yellow, pink, green).

All editions are digest size.

Parts of the series were converted to the stage in August 2002 (info on this was covered in an earlier post).

In June-July 2007 the entire run was exhibited at Batdorf & Bronson, a coffeehouse in downtown Olympia, Washington. Issues 1-4 in June, issues 5-8 in July. Garden stakes were hung in a horizontal manner, clotheslines were then stretched along the stake, and pages from the book were attached to the lines with clothespins.

Although some of my comix comrades might not consider this title to be true comic art, I still think of the Bezango WA 985 series as one of my favorite comic productions. The communication still requires the interaction of text and graphics.

Basically I drew most of my material for this series from the exploits and tales of my fellow residents of Southwest Washington State, a corner of the world that really has yet to be discovered and fully wrecked by the rest of the country. The town of Bezango is a composite of many places and people up here.

I was a little worried that some of the subjects of this series, or their relatives, might be upset about all this. But to my amazement, very few people recognize themselves even though all the other readers know exactly who I'm writing about.

The reason the 2nd edition is revised, as far as I can tell, is that I lopped off the last sentence on page 17.

The original art was drawn with a #1 lead pencil in a very tiny size. Then it was considerably enlarged. The enlarged drawing was then detailed in felt tip or #1 lead pencil.

The characters on pages 6-7 were very real people I knew. The fellow on page 6 was also one of the topics in my Evergroove Trivia history on OlyBlog (pt. 15). The actor who portrayed him on the stage was eerily accurate in his imitation of this man who he could never have known in person.