Antichrist Among Us

Some terrible person and wiseguy using the name "Mort Kanine" wrote a letter to the Daily Evergreen, the student newspaper for Washington State University. It was during the high tide of Reaganism, and WSU was a conservative campus, although it was also noted for being the "Party School" of Washington.

The letter to the editor, published February 16, 1984, claimed that old Ron the Con was the Antichrist. Notice Mr. Kanine did not claim to be a Christian, although at least one responder assumed he was.

Making an allegation at a university where Ronald Reagan was so enormously popular had the predictable effect, as demonstrated by the samples of the subsequent responses which lasted for about two weeks.

What a dreadful man Mort Kanine must have been.

Washington State University News Tip Sheet, March 12, 1991

Interesting they say I edited City Limits Gazette out of Lacey, Washington. Probably due to the fact I was working there at the time. In March 1991 I was right where I am today, the mega-opolis of McCleary, Washington.

News from the Record

The Record, a periodical from the Washington State University Friends of the Library, had brief articles about the comix collection as well as the Lynn Hansen Beatles collection.

Open Stacks

Open Stacks was an in-house newsletter for the employees of the Washington State University Libraries. It had been in stasis for awhile for various reasons, but in the early 1980s I revived and edited the thing. Here are a few samples of Mortyness within the newsletter.

Steve Willis and Morty the Dog : Sometimes You Feel Like a Mutt / by Bruce Chrislip

An article Bruce Chrislip wrote for The Comics Journal # 219 (January 2000).

A nice way to say goodbye to the 20th Century.

The Old School / by Robert Boyd

As part of his "Minimalism" column in The Comics Journal # 183 (Jan. 1996), Robert Boyd covered a couple of my books as well as some comix librarianship activity.

Comic Art Collection

One of the publications that made me feel right at home and not so isolated when I began organizing the Washington State University comix collection in the early 1980s was a periodical called Comic Art Collection.

Edited by my fellow librarian Randy Scott, this was "a newsletter from the Russel B. Nye Popular Culture Collection" at Michigan State University. I was able to point to the existence of this serial as confirmation to my nervous WSU fellow faculty as proof comix were a valuable part of the human experience and worth preserving.

MSU was a real beacon of hope for me back then, and Randy, whether he knew it or not, was something of a professional role model for me.

The publication ran from 1979 to 1992, then changed title to Comic Art Studies. I drew Morty for the Feb. 2, 1985 issue, and wrote a short piece for the August 1988 issue.

Randy, also known as Randall W. Scott, has written several books about comic art librarianship and cataloging.

City Limits Gazette # Zizz (Mar. 1993)

Logo by Maximum Traffic, Harper's magazine subscribes to CLG, 20 years ago by Gary Usher, WSU comix collection news, Fighting City Hall in Toronto by Crad Kilodney, Chad Woody poetry, Bil Keane Watch with Dusty Rhodes - Andrew Roller, an actual photo of McJacksonstein, Footnote to Obscuro press 1961 by Gary Usher, Maximum Traffic rant, Comics Journal small press index by Gary Usher, a final cartoon word from Jeremy Pinkham.

Publishing Crad Kilodney's essay was a special highlight for me as CLG editor.

City Limits Gazette # Terra Waldo (Sept. 1991)

Logo by Dan W. Taylor, who also donated a nice heap of publications to the Washington State University Library comix collection, Ben Adams (the Minnesota Ben as opposed to the California Ben) joins up, profile and bibliography of Kevin Collier, we all wonder who was walking around in the giant Richie Rich head and realize Bruce Chrislip has some explaining to do, bad cover versions of Here There and Everywhere, Hey Bulldog, Hey Jude.

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.