Brian Rainville on the "Wild World of Obscuro Comix"

Olympian writer Brian Rainville tried to prepare the unsuspecting citizens of Olympia for the lecture I was soon to unleash upon them, entitled "The Wild World of Obscuro Comix" in 1993. Note the little "Willisy" detail about my brother, Bryan, and I in the final piece.

Olympian: Evergreen Grad Finds "Life in Hell" Amusing

Bart Potter wrote this profile of Matt Groening for The Olympian, January 20, 1987.

Due to my dithering along aimlessly and quitting a couple times, Matt got out of Evergreen a couple years ahead of me. During that time he sent me his Life in Hell self-pubbed comix in the mail before it had morphed into a strip. Matt's talent wasn't something that grew and developed to professional level while at TESC in the 1970s. No. Rather he was already an excellent cartoonist from the minute I first met him, when we became neighbors in 1974.

To me the format and distribution of the Life in Hell photocopied books in the 1977-1979 era qualifies Matt as taking part in the Newave genre, although he probably didn't know that was what it was being called at the time.

Well, come to think of it, neither did I.

Daily Zero, April 21, 1977

During his tenure as editor of the Cooper Point Journal, campus newspaper for The Evergreen State College, Matt Groening organized a pretty dead-on parody of The Daily Olympian (now called the Olympian), the mainstream paper for Olympia, Washington. Charles Burns is included among the contributors.

During the previous quarter I recall hearing Matt talk about this project, but by April I had moved to Seattle.

To see the entire paper, hop on over to OlyBlog. You don't have to be a fellow Mossback to enjoy the trip.

Matt Groening at The Evergreen State College, 1977

From The Sunday Olympian, Feb. 6, 1977.

I seem to recall Matt saying something about the Daily Olympian reporter holding up a copy of The Cooper Point Journal and declaring no one could get away with this kind of writing in real life after college.

The Naked Preacher and the Family Circus

City Limits Gazette was the only news source brave enough to make the attempt to tackle this cosmic connection.

A local naked preacher controversy was somehow explained in real time by the allegories presented in Bil Keane's Family Circus for that day. Amazing!

Write-In Morty the Dog for McCleary Mayor!

First published April 23, 1999, 51 copies on white paper.

2nd ed., April 26, 1999, 75 copies on yellow paper.

3rd ed., May 15, 1999, 30 copies on yellow paper with press release.

4th ed., May 23, 1999, 30 copies on yellow paper handed out at an art lecture at South Puget Sound Community College for Jane Stone's class.

As far as I can tell, the 2nd-4th editions are identical to each other. I marked my own copies, and apparently I don't have the 3rd ed.

The entire comic was printed in the Montesano Vidette, May 20, 1999.

5th ed., July 13, 1999, 60 copies on green paper.

6th ed., Aug. 16, 1999, 50 copies on goldenrod paper.

7th ed., Oct. 1999, 50 copies on blue paper.

8th ed., Special SPSCC ed., Mar. 5, 2000, 26 copies on cardstock (14 green, 11 red, 1 yellow) printed for a class lecture.

The 9th ed. was the the 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. in June 2005 with 5 copies on red cardstock.

Morty was, I think, the first announced candidate for the 1999 McCleary mayoral election, making him the frontrunner for awhile.

Lots of local issues here that probably won't make sense to an outsider. This comic did get a number of people very upset and an equal number very amused. As you can imagine this didn't make me very popular with the town pillars. By word of mouth I heard Morty took about 5% of the vote as a write-in. His tally didn't have an impact on the outcome.

Shortly before the election I awoke to find a large Morty for Mayor sign hanging from my front fence. The authors of this work have never identified themselves, but I suspect they have the initials of Jim and Eddie Jarvis. I still have the sign in my garage.

Attached are articles from the Olympian (6-7-99) and Montesano Vidette. Photo of Morty sign by Sarah.

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.

Job Under the Strobe

Not exactly the feelgood comic of 1985, my take on the Book of Job with a dash of Hamlet was first published by Small Town Publications in Cloquet, Minnesota. The first printing was on white paper. The second Small Town printing was later that same year with blue covers. Small Town Publications was actually Ross Raihala, who was, from what I could gather, a teenager at the time. He later became a newspaper journalist and columnist. For awhile he even worked for The Olympian in Olympia, Washington, but I understand he's now back home in Minnesota and still writing. Unfortunately we never met while he was working out here.

In 1994 I revived the title in my own Reprint Series and made it available as a print-on-demand minicomic.

Five copies on red cardstock were printed as the 1st Danger Room reprint Ed. in June 2005.

This appears to be something that only gets published once every ten years. Perhaps I should aim for 2015 for the next round?