Help Build a New Comix Zine!

Bruce Chrislip, Colin Upton, Blake Werts

SPACE 2011, Columbus, Ohio

Our friend Blake Werts has either lost his mind or is a visionary (I'm going with the latter, but he might wind up in the former after a year or two of this project!). 

Please take a look at this news release and give Blake some feedback. I have already contributed an essay for the first issue:

 January 18, 2014

Charlotte, NC


Greetings mini comix fan,

It all started when I made a half-joking proclamation to Dan W. Taylor, "We
should start a mini comix news zine!" Dan wasted no time responding, more or
less, with "Blake, that sounds like a great thing for YOU to do.." Fast
forward a few years and I still have the itch. This idea was mentioned in an
email exchange with Richard Krauss, and next thing I know I was getting both
words of encouragement and lots of great suggestions on how we could make it
happen. Would it be possible to recapture some of the "paperNet" of years
past? I won't be so bold as to say we'll rebuild the sizable networks that
congregated around Clay Geerdes' "Comix World/Comix Wave" or Bruce Chrislip
and Steve Willis' "City Limits Gazette," but I'm excited to give it a try.
All I need is a little help from you..

Below you'll find a few questions to gather current information. It will be
compiled and published in our first few issues. Then, as you create new
material, or have updates that you'd like to share with the community, just
let us know and we'll help spread the word. Also planned are interviews,
biographies, histories, artwork, and maybe a few surprises from Steve
Willis!

Please help us get this started by answering the enclosed questionnaire and
returning it to me as soon as you get a chance. Of course, you can email
your responses to me at bwerts@vnet.net if you'd rather.

Much appreciated!





D. Blake Werts
12339 Chesley Drive
Charlotte, NC 28277



Please answer and mail/respond to:

        D. Blake Werts

        12339 Chesley Drive

        Charlotte, NC 28277

        bwerts@vnet.net



1. What's happening? Are you currently active in cartooning or any other
creative endeavors?


2. Do you have any new comix or zines available? If so, what are the details
(size, page count, cost)?


3. Do you have any older comix or zines available? If so, what are the
details (size, page count, cost)?


4. Will you consider trades?


5. Best way to contact you? Postal mailing address? Email address?


6. Besides this newsletter, how can readers keep up with your work? Are you
are active online?


7. What would you like to see in a newsletter / zine about mini comix?


8. Any announcements you'd like to make?


9. Would you be willing to contribute a spot cartoon or cover artwork for an
issue?


10. Any other mini comikers we should contact?


-----------------------------------

Congrads to our old friend, Bruce Chrislip!

SPACE Prize

Life Time Achievement &

Official Historian

Bruce Chrislip 

City Limits Gazette

Presented at the 

Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (SPACE)

April 13, 2013

Columbus, Ohio 

Morty Comix # 2494

Morty Comix # 2494 looked like the kind of comic art that needed to travel, so I turned to my online card deck to help me decide where to send it.

The 5 of diamonds. Five. Our 5th President was James Monroe, the first of the subset of Obscure Presidents. Since this blog is basically an online Obscuro Comix, Monroe was the perfect choice Fate decided to use.

There are 17 counties in the United States named Monroe County, and I am guessing each one is named after the President. I whittled the list down to the counties residing in states I have visited: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia. I've been in Missouri, but only in the St. Louis airport changing planes and I won't count that.

Next card, 6 of hearts. Six. Ohio was the 6th state I listed. Hearts starts with "H" so I searched for a place in Monroe County, Ohio that starts with that letter and found the small settlement of Hannibal, on the Ohio River across from West Virginia.

I've actually been within about 40 miles or less of Hannibal in 1999 when I was driving north on I-77. Nearby Cambridge, Ohio was the home of Henry McCleary, who founded McCleary, Washington. The McCleary family farm now sits under an artificial lake created in the 1950s and is part of an Ohio state park.

Hannibal is nestled in some nice country.

I also visited Ohio during SPACE 2011, with my friends Bruce and Joan Chrislip as my hosts. In both visits I was impressed by how welcoming the natives of the Buckeye State were. My own ancestors lived for a generation or two in the northeast and southeast corners of pioneer Ohio on their way West.

Anyway, it turns out Hannibal is unincorporated and about a quarter of the size of McCleary (we have a bit over 1600 people here). So I simply searched for Hannibal online and chose the first place that popped up with an address, which turned out to be a vacant place of business up for sale. So I'm sending it care of the "Art Director," with a brief note, and hope whoever receives it has a sense of humor and an appreciation for the unexpected.

I submit that there will be no other comic art title harder to collect than Morty Comix. In March this serial will be 30 years old. And in a weird twist, it is the later issues that will be much harder to find. I am sure most of them have been thrown away since I have created this art form of Obscuro random distribution.

Morty Comix # 2488

We had our family holiday gift exchange a couple days before Christmas. Susan gave me a potato gun with two spuds to use as ammo.

It does NOT shoot up to 50 feet, as we shall see. However, I am looking forward to years of service. We'll get back to this gift in a bit, but let's move on to ...

... a somewhat revolting present from Bryan and Zach. These dismembered plastic monkey parts are in a bag. And as if that wasn't creepy enough, the monkey's eyes on the severed monkey head BLINK!
 

Stay with me now. All will be be revealed by the end. I made a grid with 50 little squares on a sheet of cardboard.

Then I arranged the disgusting monkey parts on a TV tray. 

The grid was placed under and behind the tray.

I shot several potato pellets at the monkey parts, which were precariously balanced at the edge of the tray. Although the little spud bullets hit the targets, they lack the required velocity to knock them to the floor. So when the label declared "Shoots Harmless Potato Pellets," they meant it.

So it was time to haul out a more advanced technology to achieve my goal. I went to the toybox and extracted the gyroscope.

 You can tell the monkey's expression is politely apprehensive at this juncture.

 I let the gyroscope rip

It did not fail me as it knocked over two revolting monkey parts. A foot landed on numbers 27, 28, and 32.

 

Now it was time for the next phase, but I knew the potato gun would not be able to do the job. Mr. Spud himself told me this was all a half-baked idea anyway, and he took his leave. But I thanked him for helping me with the initial parts of this project.

  

So I made a much simpler grid, narrowing the field to three.

And this time I brought out the heavy artillery,  foam darts!

 

It took a few tries, but in less than 3 minutes I knocked a repulsive monkey hand into the grid. It landed on number 32.
 

32. That means Minnesota, the 32nd state, admitted to the Union in 1858. I've been over Minnesota in a passenger airline but have never set foot there, but hopefully someday I'll be able to pay a visit.

None of my ancestors parked there on their way West in the pioneer era (but a few were next door in Wisconsin in the 1850s-1860s).

Minnesota has a great tradition of creative comic art, was one of the hotspots in the Newave era, and today remains a prominent place for our brand of comix. Meeting Matt Feazell at SPACE 2011 was a real honor and even though he now lives in Michigan, I nominate him for Minnesota's Cartoonist Laureate for his amazing past contributions.

 Anyway, I rolled the dice the for the next step. As you can see, the number was 7. That's lucky!

And the 7th largest city in Minnesota is Plymouth. I consulted a map of that city and decided to just pick a street name I liked, and Cheshire was my choice. A co-worker calls me the Cheshire Cat and I admire that character.

So I randomly selected an address on that street, which turns out to be home to a business enterprise. I'm mailing it tomorrow morning. This issue of Morty Comix will probably be tossed in the trash or recycling, but I hope you readers enjoyed the narrative. Actually, in many ways, these blogposts are the real Morty Comix, the hardcopy product is residue.

Obscuro comix in action!

Fifteen Heart Attacks, page 6

From this point on, all the pages are entirely written and drawn by the amazingly incredible creative ball of energy we know as Maximum Traffic. Students of Newave and Obscuro will notice what care he took to  mimic my drawing style in certain instances in order to have some sort of continuity in the inevitable anarchy of the open jam.

Max is a brilliant star in the comix universe. I am so glad I got to meet him in person last year at SPACE in Columbus, thanks to Bruce Chrislip and Bob Corby making my trip possible.

SPACE Interview Reposted

The Jim & Frank Podcast somehow found audio from my visit to SPACE 2011 when Bruce Chrislip interviewed me. Mostly this piece of comix history is valuable for hearing Bruce's incredible rendition of a couple Bil Keane Watch columns.

Mortymail 5/9/12

OK, I admit I have become a terrible correspondent to those of you who contact me via USPS. And I have been for a number of years. Burnout is liberating yet guilt-inducing.

Anyway. It is not my intention to make this a regular feature of Morty the Blog, but I thought I would report on some of the stuff I get in the mail before I send it off the to the Washington State University comix collection. In no way is this making up for Richard Krauss basically suspending Midnight Fiction, and I am not reviewing. If you are looking for a networking place, send your comix to Rick Bradford at Poopsheet.

I let my mail pile up quite a bit before I even look at it. Then I get out the jack-knife, slice those babies open after they have collected dust for a week or more, and mostly pay bills while some old movie is in the VCR. Yes, you heard me, I said VCR. Occasionally some comix stuff slips in there.

Here's what arrived this week:

Kel Crum sent me his latest, Scribbles. I'd like to know how he found legal sized paper to print this work in the classic enlarged digest size which I loved. I finally got to meet Kel at SPACE last year and admired his performance skills during the comix reading show.

Bruce Chrislip sent me a big packet of material. Included were copies of a couple jams from SPACE 2011. I found his reprint (20 years later) of Thurber of Ohio to be especially wonderful. Before Bruce and I left SPACE in Columbus last year to head for Cincinnati, we visited the Thurber House. I really enjoyed visiting the home of one great Ohio cartoonist while accompanied by another great Ohio cartoonist.

I hope one day Bruce and Joan Chrislip return to Washington State.

And finally, our old Newave comrade, Gary Fields, sent this great version of Morty the Dog! 

I love it!

Midnight Fiction Going Into Hibernation

One of the treats of Saturday mornings, besides not having to commute to work, is visiting Richard Krauss' Midnight Fiction site, where I can catch up on news about this thing of ours. In addition to being a really nice guy and fellow Pacific Northwest comix artist, Richard has provided a real service to those of us who publish our own work. He has extended the Newave philosophy into the 21st century.

When I was at SPACE last year I was asked more than once: Is Richard Krauss really as nice as he seems?  And of course the answer was a big YES, based on my in-person contacts with him.

Today's installment has some news, which I'll abbreviate:

"An assignment for a class in Dreamweaver, with content fueled by Newave comix pages, soon took on a life of its own with comix, reviews, small press news, interviews and special features. MidnightFiction.com has served the small press scene nearly every week, since Oct. 2006."

"It's been a good run, but I'm ready for a break ..."

"I'll continue to keep the site online as a resource, but after next week ... MF.com will for the most part be on hiatus."

I left out all the individuals he thanks. For that I suggest you visit his site.  

Having edited City Limits Gazette for nearly three years, I can totally understand Richard's reasoning. And my deal was only bi-weekly! Five and a half years, weekly, of Midnight Fiction is a very good show.

So thank you Mr. Krauss for providing a major contribution in telling our story to the world at large. You done good and my Saturday morning ritual will take awhile to get used to the void. In the meantime, I hope your newfound free time is used in endeavors you find creative, original and expressive.

City Limits Gazette # Pall bearers on roller skates (Oct. 1992)

A great logo by Jeff Snee, Ricardo Nancy McJacksonstein makes a flashy debut, Bobby London underground Popeye, Bil Keane Watch by Sean Bieri, Bruce Sweeney's Underground Station, CLG profile of Steve Willis by Hank Arakelian, A new direction for high schools by Jeff Snee, another Bil Keane Watch by Maximum Traffic, a thought by Troy Hickman, bad cover versions of Yesterday, graphic by Maximum Traffic later used as the cover for his landmark comix anthology Truth Be Known.

CLG bonus in this issue: State of beings # 14. Illinois.

McJacksonstein was in reality a fellow faculty member at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington, where I worked at the time. Psychology was his subject. Needless to say he was not using his real name.

I'm not sure but I think the last copies of Truth Be Known were practically given away in the spirit of obscuro comix at SPACE this year by Max. The cover image is included here.

Interesting to read Hank's interview with me almost two decades later as I realize I probably wouldn't alter almost every answer I gave if I was asked the same questions today. I do miss Hank and his great comix. I wish he'd resurface and give us a shout some time.

City Limits Gazette # pongo (Aug. 1991)

Book thief Stephen Blumberg passes over WSU Library's comix collection, logo by S. Minstrel, another logo by Dan W. Taylor, Mike Culpepper on Kennedy's Guide, the Bil Keane Watch read out loud by Bruce Chrislip at SPACE 2011 with such great emotion I was reduced to tears-- of laughter, Return to Normalcy (Mad Hatter's Tea Party International), reviews by Lynn Hansen, Bruce Sweeney's Underground Station with logo by Bruce Bolinger.