Phone photo 2724

Spang!

I love it when streets are named after comic book sound effects

Butler, Pennsylvania

The Fetid Lake of Doom

Not exactly a full length story-- more like an extended minicomic in regular digest size, but I guess this qualifies as my most recently published book.

This was originally published as an online work on OlyBlog, April 23, 2007. Rick Bradford's Poopsheet Foundation first brought it into hardcopy in October 2007 with 100 numbered copies.

Right after this was printed by Rick, I pretty much stopped keeping bibliographical track of my comix, lectures, etc. I'm not sure what that means.

A little history here. My friend Rick McKinnon started OlyBlog as a place for citizen journalists covering news in the area of Olympia, Washington in 2005. It was one of the early sites deliberately embracing the concept of "hyperlocal news." Rick asked me to join in the starting days (I'm member # 31) because he wanted two things: 1. A local old guy who knew some of the area's history and 2. Someone who was not deadly serious about politics.

One of the early discussion points in OlyBlog centered on whether or not to return the artificial Capitol Lake to it's original state-- an estuary. I suggested the lake be populated with gators, crocs and caimans to make it more exciting. One thing led to another and the Fetid Lake of Doom was born.

This took me about 8 months to complete, I think. And that's at a faster rate than the comic I'm currently working on!

Also attached is a photo of the real FLOD with the Washington State Legislative Building dome.

Trivia:

Page 1, panel 3. Zach Willis is my nephew. He helped fill in the dark background on the last panel of page 4 when we were on a family visit to Springfield, Oregon.

There is a brief clip of page 5 in progress as part of video documentary on artists balancing their day jobs by Mark Shimada. The USNS Fisher did indeed visit Olympia in late 2005, I think.

Page 6: Rick is, of course, none other than Rick McKinnon. By a coincidence, in real life the FLOD was invaded by the non-native nutria about this same time! Nutria just happen to be one of the crunchy little tidbits caimans down in Latin America love to eat. Beautiful!

Page 7: I used XERK! and QUONK! as sound effects because I realized I had never used comic sounds starting with X or Q before. Both of these completed my Obscuro Comix Sound Effect Dictionary. Fetid Lake of Doom by Steve Willis