RIP Morty

This little card has lived in my wallet since 1987. It has survived at least three trips through the wash. I think it was created by and given to me by Seattle artist Kevin Wildermuth.

The laminate has peeled off, so I'm retiring it to a display area in my house.

Cranium Frenzy # 4

1st edition, spring 1983, Olympia, Washington. 74 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest size.

Available as a print-on-demand title, 1996, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies, yellow cover, regular digest size.

Easily the most unusual issue of this series to date.

To start with, the cover was a linoleum block print using an oil-base color. I remember all those covers hanging to dry from clothes lines in the studio, making the room look like a used car lot. The subsequent printings did not have original block print covers.

The other unique part of this issue had to with the contributors. Nine other people had artwork in this comic: Robin Coder-Willis, Lee Norton, Anina Sill, Kevin Sill, Dean True, Jon Turnbow, Petrina Walker, Stevie Webb, and Kevin Wildermuth.

Kevin W. created the stamp seen in the upper right-hand corner of the cover. Except for Turnbow, all the other artists in the book were not involved with cartooning. In this comic he used the name "T. Warp." Jon is better known today under the name Strongbow.

For various reasons, I'll just be scanning and posting my own work here.

In a lot of ways my 1983 story also fits our current era.

Phone photo 61

One of the Ames brothers, created 30 years ago or so by Seattle artists Kevin Wildermuth and Stevie Webb. No, I don't which brother this is. He's in my garage and watches over my workbench projects. It's a long story and I still have to get ready to go to work this morning.

Damn Weird Jam Comix #2

I don't remember the story behind this 1993 jam, but for being only four pages it was pretty damn weird!

This was Maximum Traffic's series and he drew the cover and opening thesis. I drew the rest. The comic was printed on one letter sized sheet of paper and folded twice. Then we both published it. I don't know how many Max published in Butler, Pennsylvania. Out here in the Wild West I printed 25 copies on yellow paper.

Ever since high school I have drawn people with pie-slice shaped parts of their craniums disengaging and doing unlikely things. In college my friend Kevin Wildermuth called these frequent creations "wedgies." If you haven't noticed by now, I have a "thing" about the word "cranium." It is probably no accident that an important part of our anatomy in the brain neighborhood is called the "Circle of Willis."

Max used the image on the last page many times in his later collage comix work, so if you collectors count those in your bibliographies of my work, have fun tracking them down!