Bezango: Exploring Oly

Olympia Power & Light, February 10-23, 2010

Hmm, y'know this article and topic was a literal city limits gazette!

Bezango: Happy 100th, Rosy!

Olympia Power & Light, January 27-February 9, 2010.

Gov. Rosellini is now 101!

What is "Bezango"?

Last October 9th, when I posted the Bezango/Bezango Obscuro story I made a stab at the etymology of the word "Bezango."

It was just a word I made up. I liked the sound of it. I had used it as an expression of joy for awhile, perhaps starting as early as the 1980s. The first instance of this word seeing print, so far as I can ascertain, was in the 1994 comic of the same name. But perhaps I used it in City Limits Gazette 1991-1993. When I post those I'll keep my eye out for it.

Later "Bezango" became a geographic place in the Bezango WA 985 series, an 8-issue run that began in late 2001. Bezango was another name for the weird and unusual people and places tucked away in these moss-covered hills of Southwest Washington.

The word was revived for the Olympia Power & Light column in 2009. To me, the word has evolved into some kind of catch-all for the stories that fall between the cracks, the oddballs, the weirdos, and the celebration of frivolity. We'll get into the story behind that last descriptor in good time.

Bezango WA 985 has also been on stage and shown as gallery art.

Bezango: Um ... The Computer Just Broke

Olympia Power & Light, January 13-26, 2010

The great computer crash of December 2009. It would be 8 or 9 months before I got a new one, so my OP&L columns in the first half of 2010 had to be written in longhand. In a lot of ways I discovered not having a computer is like not having a car, my mobility was severely hampered in a society built around certain technologies.

Editor Meta Hogan drew the sad and tragic scene of the dead elves.

And I really did draw a Morty the Dog story. It's a few pages long and is in the possession of a certain crazyman Back East who might turn it into a jam.

Bezango: Running For Elected Office the Absurd Way

From Olympia Power & Light, December 30 2009-January 12, 2010.

One reader wrote in, a bit confused. His memory mixed up Greene's 1972 Republican campaign with a later absurdist run for the same office, when the 1976 OWL (Out With Logic, On With Lunacy) Party ran Don "Earthquake" Ober (1922-1979) for Commissioner of Public Lands. A rather easy mistake to make in a state that draws so many colorful characters to the ballot.

The OWL Party didn't exist in 1968. No. Greene ran, hilariously, as a Republican. The fact he went under the radar and won the Republican primary is actually more subversive than running as a third party candidate.



Above: Greene's official entry as a Republican candidate for Commissioner of Public Lands, from the 1968 Official Voters Pamphlet for Washington State.

Bezango: Life Lessons From Roosevelt Elementary

Olympia Power & Light, Dec. 16-29, 2009. The school building shown on OP&L's webpage is the recent incarnation of Roosevelt. I have yet to find an online image of the Roosevelt I attended.

When the school celebrated it's centennial a few years ago, a nice history was assembled, including this bit:

Over the years, Roosevelt School has had a number of building additions to make room for its expanding student population. In 1949 Roosevelt received the first new elementary school building in Olympia's modernization program. The new school was made out of brick and had one floor with no steps or ramps. The classrooms were painted pastel shades to give "a cheerful and homelike atmosphere". The district boasted that it was the safest type of building being planned. Families rapidly built houses in the neighborhood so they could send their children to the new school. Roosevelt's student population increased 32% between 1948 and 1949. When the new school opened in 1949 there were 395 students enrolled. Although the school had the most modern facilities, it lacked a public address system. Roosevelt's innovative principal Wilfred Reeves would go down the hall on roller skates to notify teachers or students when they had a phone call. Luckily the PTA was able to raise sufficient funds to install a public address system. Forty years later in 1989, Roosevelt opened another new school using a special floor plan where grades were clustered into three pods; one for kindergarten and first grade, one for second and third grade, and one for fourth and fifth grade.

I bolded the roller skate part. That sentence not only demonstrates how long the halls were, but also Mr. Reeves' playfulness. Of course, when I remember the principal he was quite old and finishing his career, but I can easily imagine him skating down the hall in his younger years.

A real-life, official Roosevelt School beanie!

Bezango: Olympia Memories

Olympia Power & Light is a biweekly newspaper serving the Oly area. My Bezango column has been an irregular feature since the first issue. Here's my introductory piece.

The editors usually decide what the headline will be, as well as the illustration. Generally they leave my text alone. And guess what? They actually pay me!

As a result of my participation in OlyBlog as a contributor and moderator, I figured more Olympia readers would know me as stevenl than my real name, so there it is.

I believe I did request an image of Morty the Dog to accompany the logo, which is now a regular icon for the column. Co-Editor Meta Hogan found this one online and it really fits! It was originally drawn for the cover of The Almost Complete Collected Morty Comix (1984)

The main illustration for this debut essay was by an artist named Edward Lange (1846-1912), who drew urban panoramas and frequently filled the borders of his art with little advertisements, like this one.

Retreads 14

1st edition, December 2005, 25 copies, white cover, regular digest size.

The final issue of this series so far.

There is a strong possibility there will be no issues in the near future for couple reasons. First, I have not been very active as a cartoonist in the last few years. Retreads was a place where I gathered up my comix work that has been published hither and yon. Since 2005 my showbiz energy has been more in the text arena: online at OlyBlog and in hardcopy at Olympia Power and Light.

Secondly, I stopped keeping bibliographical track of my work after October 2007. Since I'm a professional catalog librarian by profession, naturally I kept a running list of all my work for decades. But in 2007 I decided to stop in order to present future bibliographers who give a damn the joy of the hunt for locating the work of my senior years as I slide down the back forty toward oblivion. Hint for an obscuro one: toggle on the logo at the online The Jim and Frank Podcast to catch fellow Washingtonian Pat Moriarity and myself.

A Visit to the Danger Room

That's Casey on the left, Frank on the right. These are the Danger Room guys. They love comix and have a section of shelves set aside just for us obscuro cartoonists, helping to get our comix out there without permission from the big publishers and distributors. They are both also keen observers of comix as social indicators.

As you can see by the photo, Frank is the chief storyteller, armtwister and Sam-I-Am here. Somehow he talked me into providing the store with Danger Room Reprint editions of over 120 titles in 2005. Actually, he also talked me into finally attending the Oly Comix Fest, and hey, I like green eggs and ham! I do, I like them, Sam-I-Am! So you can thank Frank for reviving all those titles and getting me out on the local comix scene in person.

The 2005 Danger Room Reprint editions are no longer available there, but I do supply them with copies of the recent material I've printed like Dog of Dawn, Dog of Dusk and Natural Functions.

Yesterday I dropped off a couple copies of We Rode With the Clowns and took these photos.

The Danger Room is also where I first met Chelsea Baker, another cartoonist who migrated to Oly in order to attend the Evergroove State College. Not only is she one of the organizers of the Oly Comix Fest, but she also contributed to We Rode With The Clowns. You can find her cartoons in Olympia Power and Light, a local biweekly.

201 4th Avenue West
Olympia, WA 98501-1003
(360) 705-3050

Library Comix

Although this was really a comic book by committee, the group pretty much let me do what I wanted with the graphics and story for the little tour guide critter.

The Evergreen State College was where I attended school in my undergrad years (1974-1979), and I returned there to work as the acting head of cataloging in the library from 1986-1988. When I arrived as an employee the printed library guide then in use was a Lynda Barry booklet that had apparently been modified and reprinted for a few years.

My version was first published in 1987 and then revised and reprinted for the 1988 and 1989 school years, but by that time I had moved on. I don't know if it was published beyond 1989. It is safe to say that out of all my comix this one has had one of the highest copy counts.

Trivia:

Pages 4-6: The Library has since been gutted and rebuilt. There was a ghost residing on the floor on page 6. He was seen by a library student worker in 1988 striding from the "Big Hole" to where the letters "PA" are drawn. I'm told he's still around. This fellow was the subject of one of my Bezango columns for Olympia Power & Light.

Page 16: Morty the Dog readers might've heard of Marge Brown (1956-2006) who was also known as an animator and all around nice person.

Page 20: Yup, there's yours truly. With less weight and more hair.