Phone photo 2009

"The Count Has a Posse"

Sticker found in an alley in Aberdeen, Washington. This is an image of Joe Towey in his role as The Count,  an over-the-top vampire who introduced late night night horror films on KIRO TV in Seattle in the 1960s-1970s.

Joe also worked as the director of the J.P. Patches show. I met Joe when I interviewed J.P. back in 1975. Mr. Towey was a very mild mannered and almost shy man as he demonstrated how the control booth and cameras worked as the show was airing.

Morty Comix # 2444

Morty Comix # 2444 was left on a brick ledge over a couple of pathetic real estate brochure distribution boxes in a strip mall on the Westside of Olympia. This was the same facility where I first met J.P. Patches ca. 1960 when he came to promote the grand opening of this place. Notice both storefronts pictured here are vacant.

Old, decaying strip malls, I must admit, do hold a certain fascination for me. They were the proto-malls of their time. This particular one predated the Oly area's first bonafide mall (South Sound Mall in Lacey) by a half dozen years. Both vacant holes pictured here hold many memories for me as the spaces have performed a variety of retail roles in their past.

In cartoonist terms, the left half of this image once housed a pharmacy/gift shop back when Tricky Dick was in office. They also sold LP albums, lots of them. The owner was a big fat Republican member of the Washington State House of Representatives who used his girth as a campaign plus since he claimed it would make him be noticed when he stood up to talk. But in fact all he did was introduce bills to benefit pharmacists.

Anyway, when my parents would be shopping for groceries next door, I'd slip into this place and study the amazing album covers. I didn't really care about the music on the vinyl as much as I studied the big graphic images used to sell them. This was part of my education as a visual artist.

Godspeed, J.P. Patches

He's gone.

We Puget Sound Boomers who grew up watching live local TV in the late 1950s to 1960s came to love J.P. Patches. Contrary to legend, I do not believe Portlander Matt Groening based his Simpsons Krusty the Clown character on J.P., but rather on Portland's Rusty Nails, an Oregon J.P. counterpart.

J.P. was not really a clown, he was not really an adult, he was something else. Something special. An adult who understood us. He introduced us kids to Spike Jones music, improv theater, and anarchy. He certainly was a key figure in shaping the lives of local cartoonists and was a big influence on my own art.

I interviewed J.P. in person in 1975. I was impressed how he gave me, a nobody college student, his entire morning. Bob Newman, who played Gertrude, joined us as well. I had seen J.P. a couple times before, first at the opening of the big shopping center in west Olympia (now the home of Grocery Outlet) ca. 1960 and later I saw him at the Century 21 World's Fair in 1962 on a go-cart with Gertrude.

Goodbye J.P., we love you. And thanks for all the fun you gave to us Patches Pals.

Morty Comix # 2317

Morty Comix # 2317 was left on the front door handles of a long vacant Hollywood Video as an offering to the nearly extinct VHS/DVD rental Gods. In fact, it was almost as if I was in ancient Olympia, Greece honoring some now forgotten deity instead of being on the westside of chronically overcast Olympia, Washington, leaving some cartoon art on a place that once housed a great collection of movies. I bought a few of their used vids when the store was alive and those movies show up in this blog.

It was very near this spot I first met J.P. Patches about 1960 when he came to open the new Peterson's Foodtown shopping area, now occupied by Grocery Outlet. I would later see him again at the Seattle World's Fair in 1962 and, incredibly, got to interview him on the set in 1975. J.P. Patches is one of my personal heroes, so as you can see the very area where I deposited this residue of my cartoon hand is a special one with a lot of history.  

Notice the Bil Keane-like crucifix symbol posing as a telephone pole over the roofline, giving the image an almost tragically sacred tone. When Hollywood Video pulled out of this place overnight, apparently in some nasty dispute with the landlord according to word of mouth (for what that is worth), they created a literal black space for cinema enthusiasts in the area. And that was quite awhile ago. In fact, in Phone Photo 566 from last year, the place was already closed. I sure hope the workers there were not screwed over in the process.

If video killed the radio star, then Internet killed the video star.

So, Morty Comix # 2317 was offered in remembrance. It probably fell on the ground, got rained on, and is now pulp in the storm drains. A fitting fate in this land of constant rain and natural recycling.

Washington State Cartoonist Laureate

This announcement was sent yesterday to my email. One of Washington State's last ditch efforts to keep culture alive as we all slide into the New Dark Ages:

POET LAUREATE APPLICATIONS SOUGHT

Applications are now being accepted for the 2012 – 2014 Washington State Poet Laureate position. The Poet Laureate serves to build awareness and appreciation of poetry – including the state’s legacy of poetry – through public readings, workshops, lectures, and presentations in communities, schools, colleges and universities, and other public settings across the state. The selected Poet Laureate will develop a two-year plan of activities, in consultation with the Washington State Arts Commission and Humanities Washington.

Qualified applicants must meet the following eligibility requirements:

· Be a current resident of the state of Washington;

· Have had at least one full-length book of poetry published by an established press;

· Be engaged in the poetry community;

· Be willing and able to promote poetry and the legacy of poetry throughout Washington State for a two-year period.

Applications must be submitted electronically no later than 5:00 p.m. PST on November 30, 2011. For more information about the Washington State Poet Laureate program, including application criteria and guidelines, or to submit an application, visit www.washingtonpoetlaureate.org or contact Julie Ziegler, Executive Director, Humanities Washington, at julie@humanities.org, 206.682.1770 x 110; or Kris Tucker, Executive Director, Washington State Arts Commission, at kris.tucker@arts.wa.gov, 360.753.3860.

OK, so I am providing this news release both as announcement for the few poets who read this blog and an opportunity to promote the idea of a Washington State Cartoonist Laureate.

In modifying the above guidelines to fit the world of cartooning, my nomination for Washington State Cartoonist Laureate would be the legendary Bob Cram, cartooning weatherman.

In the early 1960s, when he replaced cartooning weatherman Bob Hale on KING-TV in Seattle, Bob instantly became one of my cartoon heroes. In that early, primitive era of live local TV, Bob was second only to J.P. Patches in influencing us budding Boomer cartoonists in Puget Sound.

I loved the way he made cartooning seem so easy and improvisational as he enhanced the weather report with his comic illustrations. He actually flew as he drew. I'm sure I am not the only local comix artist Bob influenced. And he's a long time Washingtonian and part of our cultural history.

I nominate Bob Cram for Washington State Cartoonist Laureate!

[Update: Just had a nice phone conversation with Bob Cram. It is fitting that I had already put out the flag on my front porch honoring vets and was able to thank him for his WWII service. Bob is still cartooning to this day! Go Bob, very inspirational!]

Seattle Star

Oh, Washington my home, wherever I may roam--

Michael Dowers first published the comic tabloid Seattle Star in the mid 1980s. Most of my contributions were recycled from my books, but Michael added color to several of them. Here are the colorized versions. All the black and white stuff you guys have already seen in this blog.

I liked the fact that no matter if the comic was reprinted in color or black and white, Michael liked to use a lot of my cartoons with a Washington State or Pacific Northwest theme in keeping with the Seattle Star feel.

Before Fantagraphics moved up here in the late 1980s, Michael Dowers' Starhead Comics publishing concern was probably the main venue for outsiders to learn about comix art from the Pacific Northwest.

Bezango: The World's Fair and the Gayway

Olympia Power & Light, March 23-April 5, 2011

J.P. Patches and Gertrude are still around, I'm happy to say. There is a mistaken belief that Matt Groening based Krusty the Clown on J.P., but down in Portland they had their own live kid show host, another clown named Rusty Nails. I used to watch Rusty when I visited my cousins in Vancouver, across the Columbia River.

Matt and Lynda Barry and I used to talk about J.P. and Rusty quite a bit. It was during the time we were together in college that I interviewed J.P. in person, and both of my fellow cartoonists were hungry for the details. Lynda also grew up as a Patches Pal.

I must say having seen both J.P. and Rusty, there was no comparison. J.P. had the magic, Rusty did not. I'm convinced Krusty is Rusty.

Stevetreads # 2

1st ed., 1987, Chico, California : Jeff Nicholson. 3 copies, regular digest size.

Jeff seems to have edited this one with a local Washington State theme.

I see the geoduck, mascot of The Evergreen State College, not only recently made the "9 worst college nicknames" list but is now a highly coveted by the Chinese mafia.

Retreads 9

1st edition, November 2005, 25 copies, white cover, regular digest size.

Trivia:

Pages 1-3: Yes, I really did interview J.P. Patches.

Pages 7-11: It is safe to say I did not enjoy the graduate school experience. But then again, I wasn't supposed to. The first panel portrays Lee Norton (who, for reasons I don't want to even begin to guess at, wore a duck decoy on her cranium once) interviewing Morty for an article entitled "Morty Dog, Come Home." This was originally in the Cooper Point Journal and reprinted in Retreads 4.

Pages 23-24: This particular teacher died last Fall at the age of 101. She was a sweetie. I hated algebra and used to draw cartoons on the margins. She would return my papers with the grade: "Math - D, Art -A." As you can see, I attended a pretty wild junior high during the Vietnam War era.

This is the only issue of Retreads still available at Poopsheet.