City Limits Gazette # Digger Digger Rocking Chair (Nov. 1991)

Logo by Mel. White, the number for this issue came from something my daughter (then 3 years old) said, news from Bruce Chrislip, reviews by Lynn Hansen, Bil Keane Watch and illustration by Wayno ("The Dysfunctional Family Circus of Cruelty!!"), Mark Campos on underground comix, Jerry Riddle on Kennedy's Guide.

Dance of Toasters

Butler, Pennsylvania : Maximum Traffic, 1996.

Max put together this jam in June 1996, and included some drawings by my daughter Rose, who was 8 years old at the time.

Seems like an appropriate minicomic to post on Father's Day.

The Bulletin Board

When this was erected in 1986 it was clean and empty. But instead of removing old items, I just stapled over them. Soon I had to get a staple gun to attach paper to this bulletin board.

I guess the layer of paper is well over an inch, maybe two, in some spots. Lots of comix material buried in there, newspaper articles, posters, drawings by my daughter Rose when she was little, etc. etc.

Sometimes I would use it as a tool in creating a new comic. I'd photocopy the art, then staple it on this board, and stand back to evaluate how the different panels worked as a unit. Those working drawings are still in there too. Here we can see some images from We Rode With the Clowns.

One piece I wish I hadn't put in there is an original page by Jeff Nicholson, who sent me a brief visual narrative of his visit here in the late 1980s. Another buried treasure is Ken Kesey's autograph from the time I talked with him-- probably circa 1987.

So I continue to add stuff to this board. After I croak some archaeologist can carefully peel back the layers and mark comix eras via the paper strata.

Phone photo 265

"Love/Hate" created by the incredible Maximum Traffic/Borpo Deets/Buzz Buzziyk.

I used this dead outlet cover in my kitchen after my daughter repainted the walls.

Phone photo 249

Grrr!
Rose's polar bear guards the house!
Don't be fooled by that smile-- he's dangerous!

Mukey the Mutant Membrane

I'm trying hard not to get a cold today. How fitting to be posting this, of all comix.

1st edition was available as a print-on-demand comic in 1996, I'm guessing about 100 copies out there. This and following editions are regular digest size.

Special ultra-rare goldenrod edition, 3 copies, 1999. Entirely goldenrod.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, green (of course)

This book was used as a vehicle to explore my always uncomfortable relationship with capitalism. I figured using this big piece of snot would be too disgusting for anyone to take seriously as a commercial character. After all, I invented Mukey about 1972-1973 and he hadn't gained much of an audience in all those years.

I was wrong. I think Mucinex should pay me a royalty for their Mr. Mucus character. Another example of the mainstream catching up to us obscuro guys.

Mukey has been a supporting character in many comix over the years, but this is the only comic where he is the focus. I keep hoping one day my brother, Bryan, will write a play about Mukey. A musical. And then it will be turned into a movie. And then the franchise rights will ...

Oh.

See? See what this character does to my thinking? He's dangerous.

Trivia:

Pages 12-15 are entirely true. Page 15 anticipated the publication of Sean Tejaratchi’s Kool Man.

Back cover and inside back cover. My daughter Rose felt that Mukey was "disgusting" while Gumby was "refreshing." Personally, I always thought Gumby was terrifying.

Attached is a photo of her art piece, made at the same as this comic, "Mukey and Gumby in a fight (and Morty)." Gumby says: "I could beat you any day in looks" Mukey replies: "Ya. You wish." Morty observes: "Can't you to be quiet. I need to think!"

Teaching Comix

Some time during my stay in Pullman, Washington (1983-1986) I was asked to give a class for junior high school (now called middle school) pupils about comic art. That started a whole sub-career for me of presenting lessons on comix technique and/or history to students from Kindergarten to college.

My favorite classes are for children from preschool to about 2nd grade. Generally speaking, the magic of comic art is still captivating for them. We cartoonists can communicate so well with this group of kids in classroom settings because we ourselves have never fully surrendered the kid within us to the outside world. Look at all the Oldwavers who are still active. We are now in the 55+ crowd, making us Senior Citizens in the eyes of Burger King and the Pre-Paid Cremation Services folks who send me junk mail (how do they find me? It's rather unsettling) , yet we still put a lot of energy into drawing funny pictures and being playful with lines on paper.

It probably helps that we are also the Boomers, the generation with the never ending adolescence.

I notice that around 3rd grade the children begin to ask about how to make a living at the cartoon game. The practical considerations begin early.

My most memorable presentation was to my daughter's 4th grade class. This is a very small town and most of the kids already knew me. At the end of the talk one little boy asked me to sing my underpants song, which of course I sang loud and proud. It has the tune of "She'll Comin' "Round the Mountain" and goes like this:

Oh, I haven't seen my underpants in weeks
Oh, I haven't seen my underpants in weeks
Oh, I haven't seen my underpants
Haven't seen my underpants
I haven't seen my underpants in weeeeeeeks!

All the girls covered their ears, except for my daughter, who crawled under her desk.

I don't know how many classes I've given over the years, but quite a few, including some at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, where I sometimes would print out special editions of As I Recall the 'Sixties not only as an example of how to make your own comix, but also for a couple history classes.

If you haven't already, I'd encourage my cartoonist comrades out there to take any opportunity you can to teach or talk about comix to your community. It's been my experience that people are predisposed to have fun when they know cartoons will be the topic presented, and who knows, you might awaken the sleeping cartoonist within one of the attendees.

The photo attached here is from a video of a cartoon class I gave at Lincoln Elementary, Olympia, Washington, April 17, 1987. That's Odd Dog on the easel.

How Two Ex-Presidents Went Up My Nose!

1st edition, 1994, 40 copies, ivory cover, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, red cover, regular digest size.

I have long been fascinated by the eerie "coincidences" in the lives of presidents Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur (Arthur's middle name was pronounced "Ah-lawn" in case you wondered, and some historians believe he was born in Quebec, not Vermont. Truman claimed Arthur kept a prostitute in the White House). Arthur had made an appearance in one of the first two issues of Cranium Frenzy in 1982. I'm too lazy to look up which issue it was. In fact, it is hardly worth the effort of typing this sentence saying it is hardly worth the effort.

Anyway, I had put together a pamphlet on their eerie "coincidences" in the mid-1980s which I'll no doubt be posting here in the future. It served as the source for many of the astounding trivia bombs dropped in this comic.

Trivia:

Page 9: One branch of my relatives were big wheels in the Free Will Baptist Church. Before that, up in the Cumberland Mountains of Virginia, a part of the family were called Hardshell Baptists, they were extreme fundamentalists. For example, one of my great-grandfathers believed the Earth was square because the Bible made a reference to the four corners of the World. And yes, this was still in the 20th century. The other Virginia Cumberland branch were nonbeliever criminals, murders, black marketers, bootleggers, etc. so I guess it all balanced out.

Pages 21-23: Totally true event. I really did inhale a dead person. And people wonder why I choose a sedentary life, safe and snug within the boundaries of my own home.

Calling A to Z! Calling A to Z!

Calling A to Z! That is, calling Hank Arakelian and Joe Zabel! If you guys are out there please drop me a line. I'm interested in posting some jams from the past.

Also, I'm thinking of putting together some new minis. One idea I have is to invite 8 or more artists to send me a page for a minicomic with a random image or images. I'd put all the pages together and form a story. It builds and expands the concept of the minis I drew with Dale Luciano at Dada Gumbo. If you're interested send me a page via email or snail mail. It has to be clean enough so I can show it to my aging mother but crazy enough to make my grown daughter roll her eyes and wonder when her Dad is ever going to grow up.

Cranium Frenzy # 8

Along with a few other titles, Cranium Frenzy # 8 came into the world during my print-on-demand phase, so it never really had a 1st edition print run in the Kennedy Guide sense. The first ones were printed about October 1995 and the title was made available on a demand basis through 1996. I'm guessing maybe a hundred or so in this time period? All versions were published in regular digest size.

Yellow Edition, 1998, 2 copies, pink cover, yellow guts.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies, blue.

One of the very first long comix I drew after nearly dying in March/April 1995. Not only is my existential side more entrenched in the storyline, but the surgery had an impact on my nervous system. If you look closely you can detect the unsteadiness of my drawing hand by the Richter Scale-like seismic squiggles in the felt tip lines. At first it didn't seem so bad, but then it worsened and finally peaked around 2000, I guess. I'm steadier today but my left hand has never regained the old control.

What had happened to me? The doc said I had swallowed a toxic substance, a poison of unknown origin, and it was killing me from the inside out. The lab could not identify it and I have no clue what it was. They slit me up a treat and took out pieces of me on April Fools Day, 1995. I still have a nice long scar on my abdomen. There is much more to this story, but that is for another post.

Trivia:

Page 1: When Evergreen student Lee Norton interviewed Morty in the mid-1980s for the Cooper Point Journal, she described his ear floating in his drink. That image stuck with me, so I used it.

Page 4: Yes, that wooden bear really exists. I'm attaching a news article from the Jan. 15, 1997 East County News where my sister-in-law Susan and I are photographed next to thing on top of McCleary City Hall. I remember the bear was cracked and covered with a fine patina of thin green moss not visible from the street. Such are the realities of living at the edge of rain forest country.

Page 6: Hamlet stuff.

Page 8, panel 5: And that's exactly how it happened.

Page 9: Nixon in Orwell's 1984.

Page 10, panel 5: I really was reading Whitman's Leaves of Grass at the time they told me I had to be sliced apart or die. Somehow it seemed fitting.

Page 11: How Can You Sleep?

Page 12+: The Big G has always been one of my favorite characters to use as a foil for Morty. Mukey too. In this case, I've got all three interacting.

Page 15: It's them damn giant reptiles again! I think I must enjoy drawing all the jagged and pointy lines on these critters. That's the only explanation I can come up with.

Page 20: I'll talk more about Mukey the Mutant Membrane when we see his only solo comic which is entitled, strangely enough, Mukey the Mutant Membrane.

Back cover: Two truths. Both correct. Paradoxism needs a snappier label than "Paradoxism."

By the way the video we produced was entitled From They To We, it was 30 minutes long and aired on Olympia's TCTV for the better part of a year.