I'm Sure There Must Be a Story Here

... but I'll be damned if I can remember what that story would be:

Morty Comix # 2478

Morty Comix # 2478 is being sent to Maximum Traffic in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Here's the story: Back in the 1980s and the pre-Internet 1990s I was right on top of my postal mail. The US Postal Service was my lifeline to my comix comrades. But that was then.

Today I check my PO box infrequently, and even then I just pile up the mail and look at it once a week. Sometimes I throw it in a stack and don't get to it for months.

On this rainy weekend I started excavating through my studio and found several long forgotten documents dating back to the Stone Age. This included a SASE from one of my all time favorite artists, Maximum Traffic.

So, here's to you, Max. My buddy Charlie helped me stuff the envelope.

This issue of Morty Comix is a bit unusual. Many of the 5 x 3 in. versions are made of old discarded Gaylord circulation cards with WLN labels, originating from South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington.

But a few of them, like Morty Comix # 2478, are drawn on the reverse of discarded shelflist cards that were used as a springboard for recataloging, also from the WLN era.

I miss WLN. It was a great organization and the contribution to the field of librarianship in the Pacific Northwest has not been matched since their demise over a decade ago.

Buttons - Union - 1991

AFT

This button was issued to me when I joined the American Federation of Teachers as a member of the faculty at South Puget Sound Community College, 1991-2000.

Morty Comix # 2406

Morty Comix # 2406 was a bit unusual. I had purchased a DVD of the 2005 movie Sahara at a library book sale, but the copy was too defective to watch. Which was too bad, because I enjoyed the 30 minutes or so I got to see before the disc freaked out. Give me VHS every time.

Anyway.

I flipped the paper wrapping and drew the front and back cover for the plastic container, and then included two more drawings in the package drawn on the vast supply of 1990s discarded Gaylord circulation cards from the library at South Puget Sound Community College I rescued from the recycle tub way back when. They were placed inside the container.

Then I placed the whole thing in one of those groady real estate brochure outlet booths in a very funky part of Tumwater, Washington. I have come to realize no one ever opens up one of these sad dispensaries, and putting a Morty Comix in there is equal to placing it in a time capsule, where someone will find it after the rest of us have been dead for a few decades.

Phone photo 1286

OlyGhostBusters

Just stumbled across the OlyGhostBusters website. The focus is on the "Lady in White," the ghost who is alleged to roam the campus of South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. The site reprints my "Ghosts and Love" article from Olympia Power and Light March 24-April 6, 2010 and includes a brief interview which was via email, as I recall.

Turtle-Face Bob and His Dancing Testicles / by Ricardo Nancy McJacksonstein, Totally Multicultural Person

A mini-novel by McJacksonstein I had to print in two volumes. I published this as one of the print-on-demand titles in my catalog from 1994-1996. Readers of City Limits Gazette will remember Ricardo as one of our more lively and unusual contributors.

McJacksonstein, who was in reality a community college psychology professor obviously using another name, apparently spent his early years in New Mexico, which might account for the story being set in the Land of Enchantment. I have not run into McJ for several years, but I imagine he must be retired by this time.

Meeting Notes, July 1990-Sept. 1991

Today I've been weeding through my books and in the process ran across a notebook I kept of work related meeting notes from July 1990 to September 1991.

This was a time period when the Washington State agency I worked for had converted into a private nonprofit corporation (only the 2nd such instance in the history of Washington). After privatization in July 1990 I was promoted to a position where I managed anywhere between 12 to 20 people at any given time. This was a bibliographic utility called WLN (now extinct since around 1999/2000) and I kept copious notes of every meeting. For anyone interested in the history of online library services in the Pacific Northwest, or in the topic of public to private conversion, this notebook might be a valuable primary document.

WLN (originally called the Washington Library Network, then Western Library Network, and finally just WLN) was a great place to work and we had an excellent set of products and top notch crew of dedicated people. Even so, I was recruited and lured away by South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington in September 1991 where I worked as a librarian and member of the faculty. WLN was the hardest job I ever left, but in the long run it turned out to be a good decision.

Anyway, I noticed while looking through these notes that there were a lot of illuminations. Almost all of them in pencil (sorry, I know many are difficult to see). Contrary to being distracted, we cartoonists actually listen and think better while moving our drawing hands around. Non-cartoonists think we're goofing off, but actually we are processing what we are hearing through our special comix-vision. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

During the second half of the time period covered here I revived City Limits Gazette. Some of the drawings seem like the very beginnings of comic ideas that were later fully developed and published, such as Tulpa and State of Beings # 2.