Intro to Mini Comix by Blake!

[Above: Blake shows a photo of the legendary Clay Geerdes as portrayed in the Michael Dowers book, Newave!]

Our old friend Blake has just released a 35 minute introduction to minicomix on YouTube.

It is quite an experience to see a comix movement one was a part of be treated as an exciting period in comic art history. Blake tracks the Newave Comix movement from the comix ancestors of the 1960s up to the 1980s.

To this day I still proudly classify myself as a Newave Cartoonist.

Go Blake! Thank you for recognizing the importance and spark of our comix genre!

Update: Blake follows this up with an addendum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jamUb7Grhc0

Morty Comix # 2462

Morty Comix # 2462 was drawn inside a copy of the Newave book and included as part of an order. Hopefully it is in Nebraska by now.

Morty Comix # 2433

Morty Comix # 2433 was drawn on one of the preliminary pages of the Newave! books I am selling and is packaged and ready to go to Kansas.

$25 Sale - Newave!

Newave! the Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s / edited by Michael Dowers.
Fantagraphics, 2010.

Around 900 pages of alternative obscuro comix from the Prehistoric era by Newave's greatest cartoonists, as well as some interviews and historical background. I'll include a signed drawing inside the cover.

$25 ppd
Check or money order to
Steve Willis
PO Box 390
McCleary, WA 98557-0390

or order through PayPal

Newave! Promo Mini Comic

Here's the page I contributed to the 8 page minicomic Michael Dowers printed up to promote his Newave book. Other artists included, XNO, Wayne Gibson, Wayno, J.R. Williams, David Lasky and Jamie Alder in what was probably one of his last published drawings.

White Buffalo Gazette news

A year ago Michael Dowers revived interest in Newave comix with the compilation Newave! The Undergound Mini Comix of the 1980s.

And now in 2011 Butler, Pennsylvania artist Maximum Traffic/Buzz Buzzizyk/Borpo Deets has produced 100 copies of a collection that will revive interest in the post-Newave comix of the 1990s, a genre known by many of us as Obscuro comix. Although most of the art in this book appears to be from the Century 21, many of the artists come from the Newave/Obscuro era.

It is an impressive and beautiful work. Over 160 pages in enlarged digest format. In fact, this is the very same kind of size and binding I'm thinking of for my own compilations, giving the graphics room to breathe. A very good choice in delivering the artistic goods.

Bravo Max! I admire the way you give life to your creative visions.

Newave Reader

1st edition was available as a print-on-demand title, I bet there are probably 100 copies out there.

Special Micah edition, December 28, 2001, 3 copies, parchment cover.

In attempting to put together a history of the Newave comix movement, I gained permission from various participants to reprint essays and interviews. The inside cover lists the original sources of the material from Jay Kennedy, George Erling, John E.'s interview with Jim Ryan, Tim Corrigan's interview with Jane Oliver, and my own writing from City Limits Gazette and J.R. William's Fun House.

Clay Geerdes, on the other hand, didn't want me to reprint anything of his. Instead he generously provided me with a wonderful essay just for this book. It was later reprinted in the recent Fantagraphics Book, Newave! the Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s.

Clay was very enthusiastic about this project and wanted me to make it a series. If his health had held up I think he would've been happy contributing original writing to each issue. As it was, I felt very fortunate to have this great document where he looks back and really ties things together.

Likewise, I think I could've roped Jay Kennedy into providing original essays if this title had been a series. It would've appealed to his frustrated librarian side. Once again, I'm lucky to have what I have here.

Including the great George Erling was a no-brainer if you want to study the history of Newave. Jane Oliver was an important figure to include since she was one of the pioneers in making this boy's club less of a boy's club. And the incredible Jim Ryan was always one of my favorite artists to come out the Newave, one of our very best.

Newave! + Morty Comix in Mortyshop

Today we have listed our second item in Mortyshop, the Newave! book with a bonus. Each one contains a Morty Comix drawn on the 1st preliminary page.

We are hoping to reprint another comic from the classic Newave era soon, some original art, and I'm currently investigating the possibility of having the Tragedy of Morty Prince of Denmarke republished in one book. At almost 200 pages it is the closest I've come to drawing what is now popularly called a graphic novel.

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.

Newave! the Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s

When Michael Dowers told me he was going to put this book together, I had a difficult time imagining what the final product was going to look like. But knowing Michael's amazing history as a visionary publisher and coordinator, I had faith it was going to be great. He didn't disappoint me.

My personal file of the little minicomix which I keep as my portfolio fills up two card catalog drawers. I loaned them to Michael so he could see if there were any he wanted to reproduce for this book. He picked them up at my place, and about 6 months later Sarah and I went down to Puget Island, which sits in the middle of the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington and retrieved them.

Although this dense brick of a book clocks in at around 900 pages, it is just the tip of the volcano. But the impact of this little baby has been the Newave event of 2010. A lot of us Oldwavers have dusted ourselves off and gotten to know each other again. We knew in the 1980s we were on to something wonderful, and now we are seeing that we were way ahead of the pack, even pioneers.

Not only has Michael's book been a factor (along with Sarah's lighting a fire under me) in my decision to crawl out of my cave and revisit this comix stuff, but it has also brought forth a whole new audience of the next generation of comix readers.

Michael, you done good.

I'm reproducing the interview portion from this book. Rick Bradford, who is turning out to be one of the main historians of the Newave movement, conducted the back and forth via email. Since the spine of the book doesn't allow me to lay the pages flat on the scanner, I wish you luck on reading the photocopy version.

Lordy, Lordy, Where's Mr. Morty?

Phantasy Press of Lakewood, Colorado was known for having slightly higher production values than most other minicomic publishers. Back in an era when doing so was more problematic for us independent photocopy guys, they printed many of their comix with color covers. Including Lordy, Lordy, Where's Mr. Morty?

Publisher Bob Conway printed 500 of these puppies (get it?) in 1984. 50 of them were signed and numbered. Bob paid his contributors with copies, so at one time I had a whole ton of these to give away or trade. Apparently the one copy I kept for myself has grown legs and ran away, but I found an image of the cover elsewhere to display the color for you.

However, you collectors will get to see something rarer than that. I've scanned the black and white proof copy Bob sent to me a few months before the big printing. Compare it to the color version and notice the lack of background texture, Phantasy logo, and price on the cover. There can't be too many of these floating around.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. had 5 copies in June 2005. All had yellow covers but two had green guts, three had yellow guts.

The entire comic, along with the color cover, was reprinted this year in Fantagraphics Newave book.

Detective Arnie Wormwood was a character who occasionally popped up as Morty's sidekick. He was the way I imagined myself looking 30 years later. And I wasn't too far off!

The sidewalk hammering is based on a true story. One of my relatives back in Kentucky or Virginia suffered this fate. Or so I'm told.

The Daily Lump O' Pain is what I call our local Daily Olympian, but they changed their title to merely Olympian in the 1980s. Most locals just it The Daily Zero.

"Another widow in Commie-Land tonight!" was a real line I had read in an Eisenhower-JFK era war comic and the intensity of it stuck with me. Of course in 1984 the Cold War was still going on and this was my little jab at it.

The big reptile in the story is a dark sign of things to come in Century 21. But we'll cross that bridge when get to it as I dig out more comix and talk about them.

Cranium Station DMZ

This was the first of a trilogy including Eternities of Darkness and Hungry Stairs to Heaven. It is a circular story and can be picked up anywhere in the narrative without worry or anxiety about missing out on the "plot."

The first edition was published in 1984 by Dada Gumbo Press in Tucson, Arizona both in minicomic and digest-sized formats. I had been using the comic metamorphosis technique since the early 1970s, but Dada Gumbo's publisher Dale Luciano really gave me an encouraging venue to explore this method with some more detail.

Starhead published the 2nd ed. in 1992, during a time when they were briefly housed at Ocean Shores, Washington on the other end of Grays Harbor County from McCleary! The cover included red highlights.

When I had my print-on-demand catalog in 1994, this trilogy was not included. This was due to fact I was also selling unsold inventory for Clay Geerdes and Dale Luciano. And Dale still had copies of the set left over and available at that time.

The 1st Danger Room ed. in June 2005 had 5 copies with green covers and yellow and white guts.

The entire trilogy was finally published in a form it which it was meant to be presented in 2010 as part of Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s, published by Fantagraphics and edited by Michael Dowers.

Some points of trivia. The comic has a not so subtle secret message, the influence of my friend Lynn Hansen (1958-1995), who was obsessed with the hidden messages in Beatles' songs and images. The bottle of Wildermuth on p. 3 is reference to my old college pal and conceptual artist Kevin Wildermuth. The guy with the glasses on p. 5 is me. Page 7: clowns have long been a source of sordid fascination for me. In the early 1970s I had a seedy clown character named Jobbo Bonobo, which grew into a rather disturbing cult a few years later at The Evergroove State College in Olympia.