Hard to believe, but in less than six months after I left Washington State University's employment for greener pastures, WSU staged a huge exhibit on the Newave and undergound comix in their collection.
The exhibit ran from November 3-December 19, 1986, making it probably one of the very earliest academic presentations on Newave comix. I remember the exhibit included
Cranium Frenzy #5, Natural Functions, and
Storm Warnings.
There was a panel discussion when the exhibit opened. The participants included cartoonists Michael Dowers, Maggie Resch, Leonard Rifas, myself, English faculty Paul Brians (donor of the original box of undergrounds that started the whole collection), and librarian Ed Kukla. As I recall, Leonard was an old hand at this kind of thing and blew everyone else out the water with an excellent set of slides (before the days of power point).
Bruce Chrislip was also invited to speak, but he couldn't make it. So he provided a life-size cardboard drawing of himself. We set it up in a chair and played the cassette tape he provided of his presentation. The part of the tape I remember most was when Bruce was almost finished and than said, "Any questions? Yeah, you in the back ... Oh, I'm glad you asked that ..." and then proceeded with a bit more info.
Librarian John Guido coordinated with us cartoonists. A very nice young woman named Marilyn Sandmeyer prepared the exhibit itself. She very politely asked me not to kill off Morty the Dog.
The program cover and poster was reprinted from
The Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke Act 3.
