The Mysterious Brownies: Calling All Comic Art Historians!

This Christmas I was given an unusual gift by my Brother's partner, Lauren. It was a framed color drawing of odd little people helping children learn how to read. A fitting gift for a librarian! Apparently it had been in Lauren's family for awhile, and she said her Mother told her those little people were Brownies.

I saw that some backing tape was eating at the paper, and could tell the drawing was from out of a book. So I removed the frame and found on the reverse side that the little guys were indeed Brownies, just like Lauren said:

When to the seaside off you go

The Brownies will come too, I know;

They'll take you in the sea, no doubt,

And laugh to see you splash about.

On the color page, note that two Brownies have numbers attached to their hats.

I'd love to know the source book for this. Is this by Palmer Cox? Somehow it looks too primitive to be his work, but I could be wrong. One could argue that the two images are by different illustrators, the line drawing being much less polished.

Hopefully I am giving you comic art scholars out there a nice mystery to solve.

Brownies, along with elves, trolls, and fairies, were part of the mythology I grew up hearing stories about. But we knew it was all make believe. Sasquatch, however, was another matter.

Phone photo 2614

Bigfoot Burgers

Tumwater, Washington

Phone photo 2164

A portrait of that one-eyed genocidal pirate, Robert Gray, "discovering" the harbor that now bears his name. Found in the Grays Harbor County Courthouse, Montesano, Washington. Personally, I would like us to rename this chunk of land "Sasquatch County." The so-called Sasquatch myth is more credible than the bunk we have been fed about Robert Gray.

Phone photo 1754

Phone photo 1732

Tidelands Resort sign with Sasquatch figure

Near Copalis Beach, Washington

The Sasquatch icon is a very popular one throughout Grays Harbor County.

Mini-Comics Day in McCleary, pt. 10

The Floating Head of Humptulips was a jam on Mini-Comics Day by Frank Young, Jim Gill,  Paul Tumey and Morty the Dog. The "occupency" sign (by Paul?) is a real-life typo from a public notice posted by the City of McCleary in the Community Center. Yes, Grays Harbor County is indeed in the Third World, where literacy is not first nature and dictionaries gather dust. It is even evident on street signs and newspaper headlines. On the public health index and unemployment, this county ranks dead last out of 39 counties in Washington.

Still, I love Grays Harbor County. This place is one of the last islands of the old Washington State, the real Washington we rural Boomer natives knew as we were growing up. Sasquatch is safe out here. We can still scratch where it itches. Wild Russian boars run amok.

Phone photo 1400

Surfboard and Sasquatch

Westport, Washington

Phone photo 1351

This is "Chef Pizza Monster." Apparently the mascot of Noble Roman's Take-n-Bake Pizza, based somewhere not in the Pacific Northwest. I have never seen this promo out here on the NW Edge of America before today. Since this company has been around awhile, those of you in the Midwest might be more familiar with this image.

Some time, somewhere, some one thought this was a good advertising image.

Uh, OK.

I'm sure the pizza is good and the company has enjoyed success in other parts of the country, but, I'm sorry, this creature does not inspire me to purchase this product. It looks like a Muppet on an acid trip. Or perhaps they are using magic mushrooms as a topping.

In fact, this thing looks very much like the mythological creatures the native people of the Northwest Coast of North America used to carve into totems. And frankly, those images scare the Hell out of me. If you live out here where we have volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis and "extratropical cyclones" (Columbus Day 1962), surrounded by thick jungle-like rainforests where creatures like wild Russian boars (who have tusks like this guy) and Sasquatch roam in a dramatic landscape, the thought of a cryptozoological animal with a chef hat serving food is sort of unsettling.

And of course us old guys recall the Purple People Eater. This mascot reminds of us of that song.

I love pizza, and maybe next time I visit that store I'll try this offering. But it will be in spite of the creepy creature. 

Outside In # 2

1st edition, 1983, 150 copies on white cardstock.

2nd edition, December 1983, 20 copies on white cardstock.

3rd edition, 1984. Seattle, Washington : Starhead Comix, regular stock white paper.

Doug Holverson, John Howard, David Miller, Robert Stump, Robin Coder-Willis, Steve Willis, Clay Geerdes.

That great cover shows Holverson in, I believe, his beloved Studebaker. David Miller's self-portrait looks like it could've been drawn during the Renaissance and it remains one of my favorites in the series. Robin's demonstrates just how provincial we native Washingtonians can be, tucked up here in this corner, walled off by water, mountains and rain. Morty obviously has little patience for T.S. Eliot.

Howard and Stump were two prolific Newave regulars during the early-mid 1980s. John produced some of the funniest wage slave comix I've encountered, and Robert was very active in publishing, including reprinting my Sasquatch Comix series.

I met Geerdes and Miller in 1989 on a visit to the Bay Area. As you can see by the photos in the Clay Geerdes Scrapbook post, David looks pretty much like the way he portrayed himself, but Clay had a more creative self-image I must say. Oddly, to me Clay's self-portrait matched his voice, but not his face.

Seattle Star

Oh, Washington my home, wherever I may roam--

Michael Dowers first published the comic tabloid Seattle Star in the mid 1980s. Most of my contributions were recycled from my books, but Michael added color to several of them. Here are the colorized versions. All the black and white stuff you guys have already seen in this blog.

I liked the fact that no matter if the comic was reprinted in color or black and white, Michael liked to use a lot of my cartoons with a Washington State or Pacific Northwest theme in keeping with the Seattle Star feel.

Before Fantagraphics moved up here in the late 1980s, Michael Dowers' Starhead Comics publishing concern was probably the main venue for outsiders to learn about comix art from the Pacific Northwest.

Embedded Bezangos

Sasquatch (Olympia Power & Light, June 16-29, 2010) posted with Sasquatch Comix # 1

On Comics (Olympia Power & Light, June 2-15, 2010) posted as Bezango On Comics

On Top of the World (Olympia Power & Light, February 24-March 9, 2010) posted with Washington State Legislative Building

Isthmus Time (Olympia Power & Light, May 19-June 1, 2010) posted with Bezango WA 985 # 4

I Am NOT D.B. Cooper

It has come to my attention this evening that certain nefarious elements in the Olympia community are attempting to spread the heinous rumor that the famous Thanksgiving Eve 1971 airplane hijacker known as D.B. Cooper still lives and breathes in the person of-- me!?! Why, I cannot say. Hoaxers are such perplexing creatures.

Well, let's nip this one right in the bud.

Above is a portrait of D.B. I drew for the Missing Persons playing card series in 1996.

Below is a photo of me taken around the time Cooper performed his crime. As you can see we look nothing alike. He's balding, I had plenty of hair. His hair was dark, mine blonde. He appeared to be in his mid-forties in 1971, I obviously am not.

Also, Cooper was described as being taller than me. He smoked cigarettes, drank highballs, and used the term "snarf." Not to mention hijacked a jet. I didn't do any of those things in 1971 and with the exception of a brief and stupid flirtation with cigarettes in the later 1970s, never did any of those things later in life either. In addition I have never gone skydiving, although one day I'd like to try.

And, not a small detail: hijacking a plane and terrorizing the airline employees is just plain wrong, in addition to being a major crime.

I always thought his crime resonated with so many people because it was about money, not a political cause. And money is very universal. But as Morty the Dog readers know, money is not really the thing that motivates me.

Yes, it is true I lived very near under both of his flight paths. But that is about as close a connection as I have with Cooper. Well, that, and the fact I was living on Cooper Road at the time of the hijacking.

We may never learn the true identity of D.B. Cooper. But, to use a phrase in use at the time of the hijacking, you can bet your sweet bippy it ain't me.

Also below, "The Amazing Legend of D.B. Cooper," originally published in Limbolympia (1983)

Missing Persons

This was another WFMU giveaway as part of a fund drive. Compiled in 1996 by Hank Arakelian, these were actual playing cards.

The theme concerned missing persons. I was given the diamond number cards and assigned to come up with missing persons in the Pacific Northwest. My subjects were Jacko the Sasquatch, Harry R. Truman, Hale Boggs, Butch Cassidy, Wesley Everest's grave, victims of Billy Gohl, flying saucers over Mt. Rainier, me, and D.B. Cooper.

The artists in this project were: Sam Henderson, Deirdre Kennedy, Justin Green, William Graef, Dave the Spazz, John Schnall, Kaz, Hank Arakelian, Harry S. Robins, George Erling, Doug Skinner, Krystine Kryttre, Diane Farris, Chris Ware, Bob Powers, Steve Willis, Nisa Rauschenberg, Mack White, Robert Armstrong, David Chelsea, R. Sikoryak, and Dorian.

The set was accompanied by a small booklet presenting the biographies of the subjects.

Wes Everest's grave is now a well marked IWW memorial to the 1919 Centralia Massacre. I never met Harry R. Truman, but I remember seeing his lodge when I visited Mt. St. Helens and Spirit Lake a year and a half before the eruption.

Missing