The Mysterious Odor of 1941, Grays Harbor

The approaching American involvement in the Second World War was not the only concern on the minds of Grays Harbor residents. I ran across this article from the Oct. 25, 1941 Aberdeen Daily World, page 3.

All these towns not claiming responsibility makes me think of a what happens in a crowded room when everyone is trying to find who is guilty of flatulence! Not me! Not me!

Phone photo 1096

Humptulips, Washington Post Office, grocery store, and gas station

McCleary, Washington Does Not Exist!

According to this map in the 2010 Traveler's Companion : the Definitive Guide to Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon, my town does not exist!

I have circled where McCleary is supposed to be. Apparently our town exists in another dimension. Actually that might explain a few things. On the highest point in the road between Oly and the beach, I've always said we are in that narrow Twilight Zone where the Aberdeen and Olympia spheres of influence don't quite touch.

Actually there are quite a few other towns missing, including Oakville, Satsop, Brady, Cosmopolis, Bezango, Cathlamet, Tokeland, Humptulips, Bucoda, Rainier, and many more.

Cranium Frenzy # 2

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.

From Tokeland to Topeka

John E. is a Kansas-based artist of all trades. Writer, musician, painter, and fortunately for us, cartoonist. In the Newave heyday, he had a comix anthology serial featuring various cartoonists called Mumbles. Today he is better known by his full name, John Eberly.

This jam was conducted through the mail. I published 60 copies in 1985, and I believe they were on ivory colored card stock. As far as I know, it has never been reprinted.

The resulting book was one of the more unusual specimens I've published. The folded product measures 11 x 7 cm. There are no staples as the entire comic is one folded sheet. Two 7 cm. cuts were made perpendicular to the center of the shorter border of the letter-sized paper.

I've included scans of both sides of the unfolded sheet, as well as a phone photo of the minicomic itself to illustrate the oddness of the collation.

Hitchhiking was a more common way for us young guys to see the country in the 1970s than it is today. John and I recorded a few of the pitfalls of this mode of travel. The Hole Man was my nod to our fellow Newaver, the most excellent cartoonist Par Holman of Sandy, Utah.

Tokeland, by the way, is a small community on the Washington coast. It is home to our state's oldest hotel, the Tokeland Hotel. I've stayed there several times. The word "funky" comes to mind when I think of the place. It has a ghost, and for awhile a cat named Hunter (pictured here) who would "knock" on your door, strut right in, and let you know you were staying there at his pleasure. Tokeland is very vulnerable to rising ocean levels.

Anyway, I always thought this was a charming little work and one of the better jams I've had the pleasure to be part of.