Morty the Blog Hiatus

Morty the Dog Blog will be slowing down or even hibernating for a few days as I attend to other business. In the meantime, please feel free to enjoy this music as much as you want until my next post.

This is Our 1000th Post

And I still have a ton of stuff yet to scan and share. But it will come to an end eventually and after that-- who knows?

"Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it."

Thank You, O Anonymous One!

A big thanks to our anonymous donor who dropped some cash in the donation box! It is very appreciated and helps in printing up these Morty the Blog jam comix!

State of the Morty Blog, 5/31/11

Above: Buster makes his shameless bid for playtime. He often jumps on to my lap as I type these posts and edits my work with a very critical eye. This is a fellow with melodramatic acting skills made for the silent film era, such is his repertoire of purely visual emotional expressions.

Two major comix gatherings have taken place since my last State of the Morty Blog report: SPACE in Columbus, Ohio and the Olympia Comics Festival in Olympia, Washington. Attending both of these events was a wonderful experience and helped reconnect this old Morty to the spirit of the creative cartooning community.

I was thinking of collecting old work and reprinting it in squareback books, like those I have seen available at both conventions I attended. I have even talked to a couple printers about it. But after a lot of thought I have backed off. Apparently there is a modern a-go-go requirement for the art to be in digital pdf. But my work was made for straight-ahead photocopy, which carries much more power in the fluid lines that are part of my style. Digitizing my drawings seems to diminish them somehow. Also, a lot of my older work was made for folded legal size, a format now called obsolete by every modern printer I've talked to.

Perhaps I'm a bug trapped in amber, but there it is. So if I ever do publish a squareback, it will be a photocopy, and maybe in legal size folded ("enlarged digest" as we said in Newave days) . Unfortunately, that option appears to be much more expensive.

Call me a dinosaur, but when I see a photocopied comic adrift in a sea of color cover publications, I zero in on the black and white toner produced work. The format just has more of a visceral punch for this ancient Newaver. There is a difference between offset vs. photocopy, between toner vs. digital. The photocopy format itself is a rejection of the slick. And I like the subversive feel of that.

I guess it comes down to being able to master the technology that lands in your lap. There are many great new artists producing wonderful works in the digital and online formats. It is first nature to them. So interesting how technology and the generational landing spot shapes our methods of expression.

But I am working on a way to deliver my stories in a multimedia format. The Fabulous Sarah, the technology brain behind this Morty the Dog outfit, is helping me figure out how to realize an insidious Morty vision that has been forming in my cranium. BwahahahahaHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Hopefully you'll see the results of my evil plan within the year. It will be a new toy that will be too obnoxious for words.

The numbers:

Total number of visitors so far (since Aug. 2010): 20,504
This month (May) we topped over 4000 visitors, so we enjoyed a big spike from the previous average of 2500
45% use IE, 38% Firefox, 8% Safari
82% Windows, 12% Mac

Top Ten Posts:

McCleary Time Capsule, 1943-1963

Tsunami Warning System, Ocean Shores, Washington

Olympia Comics Festival 2011 Report, Pt. 1

SPACE 2011 report, Pt. 3

City Limits Gazette: Sample Discussion

SPACE 2011 Report, Pt. 1

About That Donate Button

Brad Foster Has Lit The Fuse

The Bulletin Board

I Am NOT D.B. Cooper

Where the readers are from. The top ten states:

Washington
New York
Oregon
California
Missouri
Ohio
North Carolina
Texas
Illinois
Minnesota

Top Ten Countries:

USA
Russia
Spain
Slovenia
South Korea
Germany
France
Canada
United Kingdom
Malaysia

Unlike Russia, the sustained hits from Spain appear to be from real people and not spammers. Why? This interests me. Picasso was always a fraud to me, but I love Dali's work. In the pre-Internet days I had a good audience from Portugal (where my comix were translated) and parts of Spain, and although I was flattered I could never figure out why although I suspect it had something to do with Morty the Dog's universal call for liberty. Anyway, the current interest in this blog from Spain is intriguing.

Top referring sites:

Facebook
OlyBlog
Comics Reporter
Back Porch Comics
The Jim and Frank Podcast
Poopsheet Foundation

And no, I am not a member of Facebook, or Twitter, and have no plans for signing up.

Technical Difficulties

Blogger has been experiencing technical problems during the last couple days. If you saw some earlier posts here but no longer can find them, it isn't your imagination. They were around not long ago but as of tonight are out in the Phantom Zone.

It won't be a big deal for me to re-input them, but Blogger says they are still restoring missing posts, so hopefully we'll be back 100% soon. It can't be a fun job for them, so kudos to Blogger for putting all the pieces back together.

State of the Morty Blog, 2/26/11

Still trying to post something every day, and as I look at the pile of material yet to be shared (I originally typed "shred" by accident. Hmmm), there is lots more to do in the scanning and posting department.

We've been slowly making material available via the Mortyshop. The funds we get through sales and the donation button are being poured back into other comix projects. Right now I am looking into the possibility of publishing the 5-part, almost 200 page Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke as a single volume squarespine paperback in the original legal size enlarged digest.

Of course the big excitement around here is in the preparation for attending SPACE in Columbus, Ohio next month! Sarah is going to remain here in Mortyville to keep the cats fed and the blog warm while I go Back East, so she shall remain a mysterious and shadowy figure, the power behind the blog.

We Rode With the Clowns could be called our first Morty the Blog comic. I'm gathering material for the next one and already have contributions from Harry Bell, Bruce Chrislip, Bob Vojtko, Anvil, and Roldo. Want to climb aboard? Send me a random drawing! The more the merrier.

Here are some interesting numbers, demonstrating we remain very obscure:

Total number of visitors so far: 10,503
43% of you use Firefox, 41% IE, 8% Safari.
81% use Windows, 12% Mac.

Top ten posts:

McCleary Time Capsule, 1943-1963

about that Donate button

Brad Foster Has Lit the Fuse

City Limits Gazette: Sample Discussion

End of the Earth and Turn Left

Strange and Unbelievable, but Real and True! I Inherit Over 5 Million Bucks From June Pointer!

City Limits Gazette: Lynn Hansen Interview

Newave Reader

Mr. Crawford Raises Herfords, Too

Brave New Nazis of the Inland Empire

Where the readers are from, the top 10 states:

Washington
Utah/New York (tie)
Texas
California
Oregon/Ohio (tie)
Minnesota
North Carolina
Pennsylvania

Top 10 countries:

USA
South Korea
Spain
France
Poland (mostly spammers, thanks a lot guys)
Germany
Canada
United Kingdom
Russia
Malaysia (more spammers)

Top Referring Sites:

Facebook
OlyBlog
Comics Reporter
The Jim and Frank Podcast
Midnight Fiction
The Magic Whistle

The minicomic Dante's Coat gets plenty of hits I assume from people trying to find a real life product that matches the overcoat of a character in the Devil May Cry game named Dante, or at least that's what I gather since the term "Dante's Coat" is one of the most popular here.

Anyway, I'm still having a blast and I hope you readers are enjoying this too. Many thanks to the Fabulous Sarah for making this particular place of pixels a reality.

New URL

We are changing our URL from:

http://mortydog.blogspot.com/

to

http://www.mortythedog.com/

although the old URL should still get you here eventually. The changeover should be complete by the end of the week.

Why is this Breakfast Smiling?

Here's the way to start a day. Some more smackeroos were dropped into the Kibble & Cigars for Morty donation box by our friend D. Blake Werts, enabling us to get closer to reprinting another comic from years past.

Here's how Blake described the donation: "Found a $10 bill on the ground today and thought that I'd pass it along to a good cause...."

Where else but America? Thanks Blake, we appreciate your thinking of us.

Alan Fiore-- Patron of the Morty Arts!

Once again we thank Morty the Blog reader Alan Fiore for dropping some smackeroos into the "Kibble & Cigars For Morty" donation box, enabling us to get closer to putting another comic in print-- and earning him the second book in a row where he'll be recorded in the publishing info as sort of a producer.

Dog of Dawn, Dog of Dusk was the first comic we have listed in the Mortyshop. I have found the master copies in enlarged digest size to some other comix from the 1980s and hope to have more items listed in the shop soon.

Morty the Blog News

First, the studio is back again and as I'm archaeologically digging through all the crap crammed in there I'm uncovering a bunch of stuff I didn't know I had. Much of it I'll be posting, so the scanning and posting coverage here is going to be even more obscure than ever.

Second, this is the month I'll start offering things for sale. The first title I'll be reprinting is Dog of Dawn, Dog of Dusk-- from the original master copy. This means it'll be presented in the original enlarged digest size, just like it was in 1985. I'm preparing it for the print shop right now. Although this title is available online in this blog, I realize some readers want to have a hardcopy in hand.

I'm also hoping to draw original, individual issues of Morty Comix inside copies of the Newave book and offer them for sale as well. I'll also be listing some published original art and other odds and ends, mostly odds.

2011 should be a fun year.

State of the Morty Blog 12/2010

So far so good.

Today I'm putting my studio back together after the double interruption of a gas heater that flooded and having my incredible wonderful daughter paint the inside of the house.

In the meantime Sarah has been setting up a way for us to start making some reprinted comix available. I've identified a couple titles I'd like to start with. Thanks to our patrons of the comix arts, making the first print run should be no problem.

The blog has gained a small but regular audience, not unlike my comix. We're averaging about 1500 hits a month from all over the world. We're still in a little subculture secret corner, even online.

At some point I had to make a decision whether or not to put more focus on networking. But I've been there before when I edited City Limits Gazette. Also, there are already some great websites covering us obscuro comix artists, notable among them are Poopsheet and Midnight Fiction.

The current phase of this website, scanning and posting old comix, has a finite life. Eventually I'll cram everything in here. I admit there are a few comix I'm still debating whether or not to post since they are so bad, and there are cartoonists I've jammed with that I can't locate for permission to post, but aside from that this website should be as about a complete portfolio of my published work as possible.

Then what? We'll see.

Thank You Alan Fiore!

Alan has the distinction of being Morty the Dog blog's first real life patron to donate to the cause.

And here's a strip I drew in the 1970s as a way of celebrating the philosophy of this blog!

about that Donate button

Steve's blog here sports a new Donate button to help keep Morty in kibble and cigars. Feel free to toss some $ in the tip jar.

I'm purposefully not running google or other ads on this blog so that the focus can stay on Steve's work.

Speaking of Steve's work - isn't it impressive how active he is with his blog? I've even suggested that he could afford to slack off a little, say by reducing his posting to every other day, but that ain't happening for now. He and Morty have a lot to share with us.

So it is the least I can do to help make sure they both are kept in kibble and cigars. :-)

The Cat With the Human Mouth

This is Charlie. He has a human mouth and actually talks.

This tidbit of feline data gives me the opportunity to return a compliment. The Jim and Frank Podcast gave Morty the Dog a nice plug yesterday.I'd like to direct our readers to Jim Gill's Conversation with My Cat Part 1 and Part 2.

Sarah laughed so hard she got tears in her eyes. But the four cats looked nervous during the brief animations, like the jig was up or something.

State of Morty the Blog

In our first month we've had over 1000 pageviews from all over the world including Canada, England, France, Germany, Finland, Russia, South Korea, and Utah. I'm probably about halfway through posting all the little minicomix, and then I'll be moving on to the larger publications. This could take years, folks.

My favorite part about all this is getting reacquainted with you other old guys while seeking permission to post these jams.

Sarah has been instrumental in setting up all this. There is no way this blog would be happening without her. So if you like this stuff, your thanks belong to Sarah.

Today you'll notice we are now PayPal verified by the little logo on the margin. So we are edging closer to making some comix and artwork available for you collectors.

Onward.

Yeah, But Where Is It?

The following email was discovered in our inbox this morning:

Hi Steve,

With a couple of coincidental happenings, I came across your name/artwork in a couple of places while learning what I could about mini comics. First on Richard Krauss's Midnight Fiction site and then in Michael Dower's Newave! book that came out earlier this year. I really enjoy your work and would love to purchase up anything that you may have available today, old or new, comics or zines. I've gotten a couple of older pieces from Rick at Poopsheet.

Richard made me aware that you have started a new blog which is how I'm contacting you now.

Thanks very much for your consideration,
D. B. W.

Thanks for asking, D.B.W. Life is sorta slow out here in the sticks of Grays Harbor County, Washington. The Fabulous Sarah has more or less coaxed my comix persona into the online world. Somehow the Muse had her fuse lit and now here I am. We are planning on getting the vintage stuff on the block, probably through eBay or something like that. I also have, I think, all the original artwork to one of the Cranium Frenzy comix (maybe #8 or #9) I'll put up for sale, just as soon as I fish it out of the place it fell between the filing cabinet and wall about a decade ago. Hopefully it is still in good shape.

We are still coming up with a plan on reprinting the over 120 solo titles I can re-release without special permissions. Quite frankly, the older I get the less I like collating, stapling, and folding. Michael Dowers has told me he gets an almost Zen like state of bliss in that activity, but I have grown to hate it.

I recently revived Morty Comix and have been working, slowly, like syrup, on a new Cranium Frenzy. Not sure if I'll ever finish the latter, or where the former will go.

In the meantime, Rick Bradford's Poopsheet is the outlet where you'll find most of my work available. Other older comix (and new stuff) have been scanned and appeared in OlyBlog under "Steve's Comix."

Stay tuned.

Thank You, Sarah

for setting up this blog. I'm sure I never would've gotten around to creating one myself. The Morty news for August is that I have revived Morty Comix with issue #2196, Aug. 14, 2010. The title was initially brought back as part of an art auction to raise money for the Olympia Film Society, but I think I'll just keep cranking out these little monsters.