Phone photo 1260

A minimart sign in Tumwater after a drunk driver in a pickup had a little trouble negotiating a curve

Favorite Movie Quotes: After the Thin Man

"Come on, let's get something to eat. I'm thirsty."

Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman

This morning I walked to beautiful downtown McCleary to get some breakfast since we are all snowed in up here in the hills. And in front of the only tavern in town is a snowman that was constructed, I somehow suspect, with alcohol being involved.

Why is this snowman inappropriate? It is as plain as the nose that used to be on his face.

Phone photo 914

Topnotch Tavern and Willis Motel
Raymond, Washington

The story I've been told is that the Topnotch was founded by my grandfather's twin brother, London Willis, in the 1930s or 1940s. London was an old moonshiner/bootlegger in the 1920s who apparently attempted to drive to Japan and had a little trouble once his vehicle hit the salt water. It is safe to say alcohol was involved.

Vote Mad Hatters Tea Party International

Our U.S.-Canadian political party was gearing early for the 1976 elections. This ad was published in the April 15, 1973 issue of the Daily Olympian. The only person who responded was a college professor with a serious drinking problem. We didn't exactly set the world on fire.

How the Bear Festival Became the Bear Festival

Actually the short answer for how the McCleary Bear Festival developed this bizarre culinary sideshow probably had something to do with this equation: Journalists + Alcohol x 2 = An argument over which county has the best tasting bear, Grays Harbor or Skamania.

I hope these articles put to rest the error made over and over by my townsmen, even proclaimed on banners and to the press, that the McCleary Bear Festival was first held in 1958. The first was held in 1959.

Susan Brown and I created a documentary on the history of the Bear Festival back in the 1990s. Thanks to our IT wizard Sarah it is available on Vimeo.

Dogtown Zoo # 1

OK, here's the screwy deal with the first three editions of this title. They all have the same info on page [2] of the cover: "First and final edition of 60 copies printed in Seattle and Olympia, Wash." But that is, in actual fact as we understand it in this plane of existence, not true.

1st edition, June or July 1982, Seattle and Olympia, Washington, 60 copies, blue cover, enlarged digest size. This was published during the time I moved from Seattle to Oly. I don't remember where it was printed, but the job was so bad I basically discarded most copies and started over. I think I went down a few streets in Oly and just stuck them in people's mail or newspaper boxes at random. Today this edition is one of the harder-to-find books I've published.

[2nd edition], 1982, Olympia, Washington, 30 copies, white cover, enlarged digest size.

[3rd edition], 1982, Olympia, Washington, 30 copies, white cover, enlarged digest size. Indistinguishable from the 2nd edition.

Print-on-demand, 1996 (reprint series), unknown number of copies, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, yellow cover, regular digest size.

Page 5, panel 3: Another reference to Olympia's newspaper, The Daily Olympian. I think they changed their title to just The Olympian about the time I drew this comic. Who knows, maybe one of those blue cover editions found it's way to the owners of the paper and they decided it was time to change their name as a result of this snarky little detail in the story!

Page 9, panel 1: I always loved that leprosy scab joke, ever since I was a kid.

Page 10, panel 5: Based on Albert Camus, The Stranger, I think.

Page 11, panel 1: "Squirmy Eyed Q-Ball" is an insult my brother came up with and I have employed numerous times in my comix.

Page 12, panel 3: "Unga" was a comic sound my old friend (and comic art fan) Rex Munger used frequently.

Page 15, panel 4: Batum and Schrag are two small hamlets in eastern Washington State.

Page 17: If I don't use the long fadeout, then I'm concluding a story with Morty on the sax. Sorta tiresome after awhile if you ask me.

Page 18, panel 3: In addition to the obligatory "NRA" and "Reagan 80" stickers the others say: "We've been to Humptulips, WA," "Falwell for Prez," "Mukey River, Ioway," "Winooski, Vermont" (I used to drive a taxicab in neighboring Burlington. Sometimes I'd take drunks home from a certain bar in Winooksi. A female bartender would assist a few of these patrons to the car. In just a few years, by a weird coincidence, the bartender and I met again in Puget Sound country, where we were both librarians!).

Another bumpersticker, "Wildermuth Caves, Mo." is in honor of Missouri native (now Seattle resident) and conceptual artist Kevin Wildermuth. Speaking of bumper stickers, he made one that declared "I'd rather be masturbating" and proudly placed it on his rear bumper. While this was on his car I rode with him from Oly to Seattle. The response from the other motorists is worth an entire article.

Page 23: Another early version of the Big G.

Page 25: Apparently Prof. Verner Von Vernervon was a character I used a several comix in the early 1980s.

Page 27, panel 1: I think the fellow with the beard is Dean True, a friend from college days. There's probably a story behind his quote, "Avacados are too expensive to mash into your face," but I have no memory of why I included that.

The title of this comic has a little history. Around 1980 I got into a drinking contest with a Scandinavian guy in a Spokane bar. He was a fellow houseguest of some friends. I can only recall that I didn't lose. Anyway, the next morning we both accompanied our hosts on a little field trip, to an area they called Dogtown. And we stopped and looked through the fence at a small private zoo. In my hungover state I mumbled "Dogtown Zoo," but it took a couple years to surface in print.

Ambergris

Ambergris was first published July 14, 2001, 40 copies on yellow cardstock. Six more copies, also on yellow cardstock, were printed as the 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. in June 2005. In fact, the copy scanned here is one of those. The edition statement is on the last page. Both editions were published right here in McCleary, Washington. It was also scanned and presented on OlyBlog in 2007.

During the first few years of Century 21 I stopped hand lettering several of my stories as an experiment. It was an attempt to put an emphasis on the writing and I thought the typescript letters looked more formal.

Also, after a life threatening surgery in 1995, I found that my drawing hand had lost quite a bit of steadiness. For awhile I was using #1 lead pencils as my drawing tool, as I did here in Ambergris. For many years the felt tip pens picked up on my shaking hand like a seismograph and I found the #1 lead pencil to be steadier. I also enjoyed the texture of the line it made and how grainy it appeared when the image was enlarged. My drawing hand has since regained enough steadiness where I can use felt tip again.

The little guy in the story who is singing is a character I invented in the 1970s while a student at The Evergroove State College in Olympia, Washington. He has yet to be named. Using poetry and song in my comix is one of my joys.

As with many of these scanned images, you will have to click on each one to read the text without squinting.