Cryogenic Comix # 39

Cryogenic Comix # 39
Copyright (c) 2019 Steve Willis

Felt tip on a sketchpad, Burlington, Vermont, Sept. 1979.

This issue of Cryogenic Comix concludes bringing out this collection of late 1979-early 1980 drawings.

The photo of me in my living room was taken in Sept. 1979, the same month that I drew these images. The other photos, taken Oct. 1979, was where I lived, 349 Pearl St. The old house had been divided into at least three units. I lived on the first floor with four other people, all strangers to me when I landed in Burlington knowing not a soul. My room had a door to the back, as seen in the rear view.

As seen in one of these drawings I quickly learned the Vermont trick of politely giving wrong directions when a big car would pull up and someone with a NYC or Boston accent would rudely demand a geographic lesson. It happened so often that I would be utterly thrown when the driver was polite.

I'm Sure There Must Be a Story Here

... but I'll be damned if I can remember what that story would be:

$25 Sale - Original Art - Spring! and Nixon

 

 

Two drawings I am selling as as set, both unpublished

"Spring" black ballpoint on light bond, 14 x 22 cm. Drawn during the Pullman years, ca. 1984

Nixon: blue ballpoint on card stock, 22 x 28 cm. Drawn in 1973 or 1974 during the Watergate affair

$25 ppd

Check or money order to
Steve Willis
PO Box 390
McCleary, WA 98557-0390

Or order through PayPal

Spring! and Nixon

My Mother recently cleaned out one of her closets and found a couple old drawings of mine.

Spring! was drawn, I'm betting, about 1984.

The isolated Richard Slimehouse Nixon was probably drawn in 1973 or 1974 as his scandals piled up. Notice it is signed by "Jobbo Bonobo."

Mythic Residue

1st edition, spring 1978, Olympia, Washington, 30 copies, letter size leaves bound with a plastic strip which I think is called velobinding. Dark blue covers with light blue guts.

2nd edition, 1983, Pullman, Washington, 30 copies, light blue covers, enlarged digest size.

3rd edition, print-on-demand, 1996, probably regular digest size.

1st Danger Room reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies (4 blue, 1 red), regular digest size. This is the one scanned and posted here.

My fifth comic was drawn for a class at The Evergreen State College called "Old Stories/Re-Creations." Part of the focus was finding universal themes in world literature throughout history. Our final project was to present a re-creation of an old story. So this was mine.

Actually it was more of an exercise in learning how to loosen my drawing hand. In my previous comic, An Untitled Portfolio (1977) I had finally turned some corner in developing a fluid style, so in this book I was going hogwild.

The next book wouldn't come until 1981, but by then I had calmed down a bit.

One of my classmates was my friend Steve Charak. The faculty who worked with me on this project was Hazel Jo Reed (1938-2009), who we all called Josie. She was a mathematician with a Ph. D. from the Carnegie Technical Institute and had no previous experience with comic art at all-- which means she was an excellent teacher! To this day I can barely add or subtract, and when Josie gave me artistic feedback she was responding from a side of the brain I seldom visit.

Having a mathematics Ph. D. as a comic art teacher was a great experience, and was probably only possible at Evergroove and only in the 1970s. Josie had a great sense of humor and allowed me to develop my own style.

But on the flipside of TESC, as I recall, when I went to pick up the finished copies at the campus print shop, the guy behind the counter was loudly telling his co-worker for my benefit what a piece of crap and waste of time this book was to print and jeez, what is the world coming to when garbage like this is encouraged in college? He was pretty intense and riled up about the whole thing. It was real charming. Looking back I think that experience probably chilled me from producing any more books while I was at Evergreen, but I also saw firsthand how simple lines on paper could evoke some hot reactions.

Trivia:

Only the first edition had illustrated covers (pictured here), subsequent editions merely had the title on the cover. The later editions included an introduction from my then-spouse, Robin.

My usual formula was to draw 4 panels and then make a line at random over the whole page. Then I would incorporate the line into my narrative.

Page 1: I believe this might might be the first of many times I have drawn someone using hot dog buns as shoes.

Page 2-3: The Odyssey was one of our class texts.

Page 5: Obviously in hindsight I was anticipating Reagan.

Page 15, 21, 26: I retold 4 panels from various old comic books.

Page 23, panel 4: Self-portrait.

Page 25, panel 4: Jobbo Bonobo. All hail Jobbo Bonobo!