How Two Ex-Presidents Went Up My Nose!

1st edition, 1994, 40 copies, ivory cover, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, red cover, regular digest size.

I have long been fascinated by the eerie "coincidences" in the lives of presidents Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur (Arthur's middle name was pronounced "Ah-lawn" in case you wondered, and some historians believe he was born in Quebec, not Vermont. Truman claimed Arthur kept a prostitute in the White House). Arthur had made an appearance in one of the first two issues of Cranium Frenzy in 1982. I'm too lazy to look up which issue it was. In fact, it is hardly worth the effort of typing this sentence saying it is hardly worth the effort.

Anyway, I had put together a pamphlet on their eerie "coincidences" in the mid-1980s which I'll no doubt be posting here in the future. It served as the source for many of the astounding trivia bombs dropped in this comic.

Trivia:

Page 9: One branch of my relatives were big wheels in the Free Will Baptist Church. Before that, up in the Cumberland Mountains of Virginia, a part of the family were called Hardshell Baptists, they were extreme fundamentalists. For example, one of my great-grandfathers believed the Earth was square because the Bible made a reference to the four corners of the World. And yes, this was still in the 20th century. The other Virginia Cumberland branch were nonbeliever criminals, murders, black marketers, bootleggers, etc. so I guess it all balanced out.

Pages 21-23: Totally true event. I really did inhale a dead person. And people wonder why I choose a sedentary life, safe and snug within the boundaries of my own home.

Cranium Frenzy # 8

Along with a few other titles, Cranium Frenzy # 8 came into the world during my print-on-demand phase, so it never really had a 1st edition print run in the Kennedy Guide sense. The first ones were printed about October 1995 and the title was made available on a demand basis through 1996. I'm guessing maybe a hundred or so in this time period? All versions were published in regular digest size.

Yellow Edition, 1998, 2 copies, pink cover, yellow guts.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies, blue.

One of the very first long comix I drew after nearly dying in March/April 1995. Not only is my existential side more entrenched in the storyline, but the surgery had an impact on my nervous system. If you look closely you can detect the unsteadiness of my drawing hand by the Richter Scale-like seismic squiggles in the felt tip lines. At first it didn't seem so bad, but then it worsened and finally peaked around 2000, I guess. I'm steadier today but my left hand has never regained the old control.

What had happened to me? The doc said I had swallowed a toxic substance, a poison of unknown origin, and it was killing me from the inside out. The lab could not identify it and I have no clue what it was. They slit me up a treat and took out pieces of me on April Fools Day, 1995. I still have a nice long scar on my abdomen. There is much more to this story, but that is for another post.

Trivia:

Page 1: When Evergreen student Lee Norton interviewed Morty in the mid-1980s for the Cooper Point Journal, she described his ear floating in his drink. That image stuck with me, so I used it.

Page 4: Yes, that wooden bear really exists. I'm attaching a news article from the Jan. 15, 1997 East County News where my sister-in-law Susan and I are photographed next to thing on top of McCleary City Hall. I remember the bear was cracked and covered with a fine patina of thin green moss not visible from the street. Such are the realities of living at the edge of rain forest country.

Page 6: Hamlet stuff.

Page 8, panel 5: And that's exactly how it happened.

Page 9: Nixon in Orwell's 1984.

Page 10, panel 5: I really was reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass at the time they told me I had to be sliced apart or die. Somehow it seemed fitting.

Page 11: How Can You Sleep?

Page 12+: The Big G has always been one of my favorite characters to use as a foil for Morty. Mukey too. In this case, I've got all three interacting.

Page 15: It's them damn giant reptiles again! I think I must enjoy drawing all the jagged and pointy lines on these critters. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

Page 20: I'll talk more about Mukey the Mutant Membrane when we see his only solo comic which is entitled, strangely enough, Mukey the Mutant Membrane.

Back cover: Two truths. Both correct. Paradoxism needs a snappier label than "Paradoxism."

By the way the video we produced was entitled From They To We, it was 30 minutes long and aired on Olympia's TCTV for the better part of a year.

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.