Phone photo 2909

Is this great or what? My nephew Zach got to announce the players in the middle of the first inning!

Safeco Field, Seattle, Washington

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!

Morty Comix # 2472

Morty Comix # 2472 was drawn on the morning window condensation of the trailer where my brother Bryan and nephew Zach were staying at the Sou'wester in Seaview, Washington.

Too bad most of the image is lost in the photo. I guess this issue of Morty Comix is mostly lost to history as well. I realize that my current distribution of this title on the face might seem crazy, but on another level I have an audience who reads the Morty the Blog documentation of this artistic communication, although it garners very few responses from the finders. So the comic alone isn't as important as the conceptual placement and documentation, which in itself has become my new art form.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Big Al Camus probably explains my motives here better than anything else.

Back in 1965 we lost our big farm home to fire, and that was followed by seven glorious years with four of us in a trailer about the same size as the one pictured above. Our trailer was a third-hand, falling apart Great Lakes. Our Shetlands would scratch their backs on the end of the mobile home, and our whole house would shake.

But we survived intact and emerged the better for it. My own early lesson here was that material possessions are temporary and can be taken away in a flash. And when that happens, what is left?

Morty Comix # 2468

Morty Comix # 2468 was slipped inside a videocassette container with the movie Sunset Blvd., at the Sou'wester VHS library, Seaview, Washington. My nephew Zach was with me during this caper.

Has "Mostly Butter" become a reality?

My nephew Zach took this photo at the airport and asked if someone had swiped the "Mostly Butter" business concept I cooked up long ago. I first came up with the "Mostly Butter" idea back in the 1980s, but didn't communicate it in print, so far as I can recall, until 2002 in Bezango WA 985 #5.

(Click on second image to enlarge and read the scenario)

As it turns out, the "Butter London" business is apparently for nail polish. Perhaps they should change their name to "Mostly Nail Polish"? Or, "Butter Fingers"?

Phone photo 1458

Wood split for me by my brother Bryan and nephew Zach. It is some kind of hardwood I cannot identify.

The Fetid Lake of Doom

Not exactly a full length story-- more like an extended minicomic in regular digest size, but I guess this qualifies as my most recently published book.

This was originally published as an online work on OlyBlog, April 23, 2007. Rick Bradford's Poopsheet Foundation first brought it into hardcopy in October 2007 with 100 numbered copies.

Right after this was printed by Rick, I pretty much stopped keeping bibliographical track of my comix, lectures, etc. I'm not sure what that means.

A little history here. My friend Rick McKinnon started OlyBlog as a place for citizen journalists covering news in the area of Olympia, Washington in 2005. It was one of the early sites deliberately embracing the concept of "hyperlocal news." Rick asked me to join in the starting days (I'm member # 31) because he wanted two things: 1. A local old guy who knew some of the area's history and 2. Someone who was not deadly serious about politics.

One of the early discussion points in OlyBlog centered on whether or not to return the artificial Capitol Lake to it's original state-- an estuary. I suggested the lake be populated with gators, crocs and caimans to make it more exciting. One thing led to another and the Fetid Lake of Doom was born.

This took me about 8 months to complete, I think. And that's at a faster rate than the comic I'm currently working on!

Also attached is a photo of the real FLOD with the Washington State Legislative Building dome.

Trivia:

Page 1, panel 3. Zach Willis is my nephew. He helped fill in the dark background on the last panel of page 4 when we were on a family visit to Springfield, Oregon.

There is a brief clip of page 5 in progress as part of video documentary on artists balancing their day jobs by Mark Shimada. The USNS Fisher did indeed visit Olympia in late 2005, I think.

Page 6: Rick is, of course, none other than Rick McKinnon. By a coincidence, in real life the FLOD was invaded by the non-native nutria about this same time! Nutria just happen to be one of the crunchy little tidbits caimans down in Latin America love to eat. Beautiful!

Page 7: I used XERK! and QUONK! as sound effects because I realized I had never used comic sounds starting with X or Q before. Both of these completed my Obscuro Comix Sound Effect Dictionary. Fetid Lake of Doom by Steve Willis