Lynn Hansen's Beatles Collection

Lynn Hansen didn't just collect undergound and Newave comix, he also acquired anything to do with the Beatles.

This article isn't really quite accurate:

First, Lynn didn't leave a will regarding his estate, so far as I know. The earthly possessions he left behind were distributed by his father, Ralph. It so happened that Ralph and I had met independent of Lynn at a librarian conference in Eugene, Oregon about ten years before Lynn died. By 1995 Ralph was retired. I think he had been Head of Technical Services at Boise State University.

Being not all that familiar with Lynn's comix and music collections, Ralph approached a few of us who were Lynn's friends and asked our advice. That Lynn's comix would go to Washington State University seemed a natural choice, since he had been a generous donor when I worked at WSU and was building the collection.

But the Beatles collection was a different kind of problem. Lynn had a zillion bootlegs, which would've made selling the stuff problematic for those of us not as schooled in the nuances of the trade. WSU seemed like a good home for the Fabs material, and the school accepted them.

An inventory of the collection can be found online at the WSU website.

A couple years after acquiring the collection, WSU held an exhibit of some of the material.

Secondly, Lynn and I did not meet at comics convention. Rather he first contacted me in 1981/82 when I was living in Seattle and he was in Idaho Falls. We quickly became regular correspondents as he ordered copies of every comic I published. We first met in person around 1983-1985 in Idaho Falls at his place. Over the years he was our house guest here in McCleary several times.

OK, I've set the record straight now. And even after all these years I still miss the guy and continue to wonder about many of the little mysteries he left behind.

Number 9

After Lynn Hansen's death in April 1995, I provided some assistance to the Hansen family in dealing with the estate, particularly with Lynn's comix and Beatles collections. Eventually both of those chunks of popular culture found an academic home in the Washington State University library system.

Then there was the problem of what to do with Lynn's unfinished manuscript, Number 9.

This was a book Lynn had been writing for at least a decade. The first time I proofread it was back in my days at Pullman, so that would've been between 1983-1986. Sometimes he would ask my help in researching trivia and details.

He was fascinated with the Paul-is-dead hoax from the Beatles era. He developed his own original theory about the event and kept fine tuning it over the years. His goal was to have the thing commercially published.

An interesting topic, to be sure. But not nearly half as interesting as the circumstances surrounding Lynn's final year, as covered in the memorial volume Interrupted Song.

To make a long story short, Lynn called me in August 1994 and said he was sending the Number 9 manuscript to me for safekeeping, since he was sure he would soon be dead or have to go undergound very soon. He made me promise to see that the work would be published.

According to Lynn's father, a newer version of the manuscript was found by the front or back door when the police went to Lynn's house and discovered his body.

Through phone calls and correspondence with Lynn's parents in Boise, we worked out a deal where I would edit the text and they would foot the printing bill-- although I think I paid for extra copies to distribute. I can't remember what the print run amounted to, perhaps as many as 100 copies or more. Some of them were given to libraries.

The final product was v, 77 leaves on letter size, held with comb binding.

The Hansens and I were at a loss to locate some of the people Lynn thanked in his introduction. As it has turned out over the years since his death, I have learned Lynn led a highly compartmentalized and enigmatic life. Among those in his comix circle I knew him as well as anyone, but I am still constantly amazed by strangers and the truly odd characters who find me and share some weird tidbit of info about Lynn that portrays a very different person than the Lynn I had known.

Editing this manuscript six months after Lynn died was quite difficult. He had a good outline. He had good essay hooks. He was just a clumsy and awkward writer. How do you edit something like this without losing the voice of the person who created it? Especially when it is impossible to return it to the author with suggested revisions? In addition to that, my mind wandered to an almost unthinkable direction.

This was a book about a death hoax. Death hoax. Lynn was immersed in planted clues, secret messages, creating an illusion. Today I am sure Lynn is really dead (even if he doesn't show up in the Social Security Death Index!) but in September 1995, right after I had finished transcribing and editing this book (on a typewriter!) I wasn't so sure. The surrounding events had been weird enough to make me wonder if I had been set up as I replayed 1994-1995 in my head.

Maybe one day I will draw a comic about this whole thing. Actually I have started to write it several times, but I keep waiting for enough clues in this real life bizarre mystery to show up so I can make sense out of it. I might be waiting forever.

I'm posting the covers and intro material to Number 9. The illustration for the cover was also used in promotional material when Washington State University held an exhibit of Lynn's Beatle collection in 1997, From Penny Lane to Abbey Road: the Beatles, 1964-1970.

From Penny Lane To Abbey Road: The Beatles, 1964-1970

When comix collector Lynn Hansen died in April 1995 he left behind a massive collection of recordings, books, videos, etc. related to his other collector interest-- the Beatles. Lynn had, save for one 45 single, everything the Beatles commercially recorded and produced. He also had a ton of bootlegs.

Lynn's father, Ralph Hansen, asked for suggestions on what to do with the Beatles material. My advice was to have it join Lynn's comix collection as part of the Washington State University Library. Ralph and I are both librarians so the idea made perfect sense to us.

Two years later WSU held an exhibit of some of Lynn's Beatles collection. This 25 page book is nice little walk through the albums.

The cover was also distributed as a poster. The image was originally drawn as the cover for Number 9, a book Lynn had written about the Paul McCartney death hoax. Ralph and I published it in late 1995. Our introductions to the WSU booklet had also originally appeared in Number 9.

Maryhill Museum Comix Exhibit

Well, I can retire from comix now. My work has been displayed at Maryhill.

This morning I visited the Maryhill Museum near Goldendale, Washington to see the "Comics at the Crossroads" exhibit, featuring cartoonists from Washington and Oregon. Awhile back they asked me to submit some original drawings but since I didn't have any art to loan, I just gave them a bunch of my old comix. My Tragedy of Morty series, which was my interpretation of Hamlet, was displayed as if it was something museum worthy. Everything has come full circle.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I drew that particular 5-part 200 page run, I was also attempting to establish an academic collection of Newave, small press, and self-published comix at Washington State University in Pullman, where I was a librarian and member of the faculty. In those days our brand of comix did not hold the exalted place in the art establishment they do today. An English Dept. faculty named Paul Brians had earlier donated a box of rare underground comix to WSU that had sat languishing in the rare books area, and I offered to enhance this collection through my Newave contacts. Hundreds, perhaps 2 or 3 thousand comix poured in from my comrades. John Guido, the Rare Books librarian at the time, raised his eyebrows, but he stuck by me in the face of criticism from the hoity toits and nervous Nellies. Paul started the collection, I gave it a jump-start, but it is to John Guido's memory, may he rest in peace, comix researchers owe their thanks.

When collector Lynn Hansen died in 1995, his librarian father, Ralph, made sure the collection went to WSU, increasing the holdings by a significant amount and making the school a major stopping place for anyone interested in our brand of comix.

But if you would've told me in 1985 that my little photocopy comix would be on display in Maryhill a quarter century later, I wouldn't have believed it.

To be fair, my stuff was the oldest comic art at the show, and I think I was the only one who wasn't displayed as a framed artist with original art. So I was presented more as a relic. A prehistoric comix artist, a native Washingtonian who was active here self-publishing before all the hip invaders discovered this corner of the world. A dinosaur. The Neanderthal who scrawled on the walls of caves. And that's fine with me. Although my work has been in art exhibits before, I must admit I have a few problems with comix as gallery art. That will become evident as I post more work on this blog.

The list of artists in the show is a virtual who's who in Washington-Oregon cartooning. But I was surprised to see Valentino in there. I didn't know he had moved to Portland. He was in the Newave in the very early stages, and was just starting to become a commercial name about the time I discovered the network in 1981. So we overlapped and corresponded a little bit back then. I couldn't make it to the exhibit opening where the artists showed up and was sorry to miss this fellow old guy who attended the same invisible college.

A Rodin exhibit was in another part of the Museum. It included a number of his late drawings, which, fittingly, I would consider cartoons in the original sense of the word.

Thanks to Steve Grafe of Maryhill for coordinating the show.