1st edition, May 1981, Olympia, Washington : The Evergreen State College, Arts Resource Center. Enlarged digest size.
The issuing number 1 would indicate this was originally intended to be a serial publication, but unfortunately this is the lone issue so far as I know.
Published two years after I graduated from Evergroove, I found out about the existence of this book by accident and managed to get my hands on the last copies for sale at the campus bookstore.
It is interesting this was published before
Jay Kennedy coined the term "Evergreen Mafia" as a reference to the group of TESC cartoonists from the 1970s. This comic is possibly the earliest recognition in print that Evergroove was really forming some sort of comic art legacy.
Although it is a decent roundup of the various artists from 1971 (when the school opened) to 1981, the editors overlooked four cartoonists who should be included in any compilation of TESC comix artists of that era: Kathleen Meighan, Dana Leigh Squires, Maggie Resch, and a guy I didn't know well but really loved his work, Flicky Ford.
As I read this book again I'm struck by the fact that we were all so young and obviously spinning off of older artists we admired as we struggled to define our own style. None of us seemed fully formed yet-- except for maybe Craig Bartlett.
Trivia:
Cover: Craig Bartlett, who I consider one of the greatest cartoonists to emerge from Evergreen, must've arrived right after I graduated. I never had the pleasure of meeting him. This guy landed on campus as an already accomplished artist. His work shows a strong Gilbert Shelton influence.
The
steam tunnels actually do exist under the TESC campus. I was down there several times in the 1970s.
Page 1: The political correctness of Evergroove was one of
Matt Groening's favorite targets, as evidence by his vegetarian dog.
Page 5: The guy in black in the last panel is a portrait of
Gary May.
Page 6, top of p. 7:
Lynda Barry was into fine arts and wanted to be an art teacher when I first met her in 1974. These early cartoons demonstrate she was far more confident with her writing side than her newfound comix artist self. Shortly after these were published Lynda's subsequent comix looked like she admired the style of
National Lampoon cartoonist Randall Enos as a starting place to quickly create her own unique voice in comix.
Page 8-top of p. 10: Watching the student reaction to the cartoons of Charles Burns under the editorship of Matt Groening was my first real exposure to how intolerant certain elements of Evergreen's Leftists could be. It was at this point, around 1977, TESC's utopian Libertarian Left started to get shoved aside by the Authoritarian Left, and an era had ended. At least the authoritarians made good targets for cartoonists.
Page 10: "The Family Irkus," apparently a Burns and/or Groening piece, is one of the funniest single panels in cartoon history for my money.
Page 16-19: An excellent story by Craig Bartlett. The Trojan plant, so graciously constructed by those crafty Oregonians right on the Columbia River on the Washington border, was torn down a number of years ago.
Top of p. 21: Tucker Petertil still lives in Olympia. He continues to create art, which can be seen in gallery shows, and writes a popular music review column for
Olympia Power and Light.
Page 22-27: The Crumb-influenced cartoonist Jim Chupa was by far the most popular and well known cartoonist at TESC while he was active at the school. His work was very topical and a great snapshot of Evergroove's history in the mid-1970s.
Page 30-33: T.J. Simpson was my neighbor for awhile in 1978-1979. He was from, as I recall, Bangor, Maine and had a great Mainiac accent.
John J. Bagnariol, the subject of his cartoon, was known around Olympia as an arrogant jerk in the State House who treated local people in the service industry very badly, demanding special treatment due to his high office. His conviction and subsequent imprisonment by the Feds for being guilty of being a sleazeball in the Gamscam sting operation was welcome news to most of us.
Back cover: Classic Groening.
Behind these doors in the CAB Building (Campus Activities Building), before the place went through a major facelift, sat the office of the student newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal when Matt Groening was editor. Today the area houses student activities offices.
I was amazed and pleased to see the Stairwell Dragons are still with us! Our fellow cartoonist David George was fascinated by this spiral mural. Cruz Esquivel and I shared an adventure with local law enforcement.
The area where the Library Ghost was originally spotted in 1988. According to the eyewitness who returned to area and demonstrated where the ghost had been seen, the being would've been walking away from the camera in the center of the photo.
The huge stairs are now absent, but this is the spot where Evergroove's amazing dedication ceremony took place in 1972.
This squat little cube is actually an air vent and one of many entrances to the fabled steam tunnels. If you are inside this thing you can see people through the grate.
