Comixtalk Interview

Comixtalk was a very nice concept zine consisting of interviews with small press and Obscuro comix cartoonists. This was one of Kevin Collier's publications out of Nunica, Michigan.

Kevin had come from the more mainstream fannish side of comic art enthusiasts. This was a network older and larger than us underground comix-inspired Newave troublemakers. But he made an honest effort to bridge the gap between his home camp and the more remote and alien world of what was left of Newave in the late 1980s. It was an admirable try and the few issues of Comixtalk are now valuable historical source documents for anyone interested in the history of Newave comix.

In some ways Kevin was ahead of the curve. Anything new, dangerous, progressive and possibly profitable quickly gets co-opted into mainstream culture and becomes the new norm. He was making an honest effort to treat us seriously before Fantagraphics moved to Seattle and soaked up all those Newave cartoonists into their commercial fold. In this regard, Kevin needs to be respected as a visionary.

The motive behind my involvement with the Fan camp was I felt we Newavers could perhaps get some of the more mainstream influenced cartoonists to open up their artistic vistas if they could see our work and realize they didn't have to mimic the Big Boys in order to express themselves. It was the arrogant evangelical side of me, I suppose. But I did get to know many fine cartoonists through the network Collier was part of and had to rearrange my world view of cartooning as a result. I had to accept it is OK to be a fan, since there were so many decent people and great cartoonists who used that as their premise.

This interview comes from Comixtalk no. 1 (August, 1987).

Fan Scene # 1

Cartoonist extraordinaire Matt Feazell once suggested we construct a family tree of comix. I don't know if he ever followed up on the idea, but if he had you would probably see the Newave line trace back through undergrounds, Mad, Help, Tijuana Bibles, etc.

But there was another larger and older network of self-publishers in comic artland-- the fans. They emulated the commercial comics. In fact, in the 1960s, you could say my own superhero and funny animal selfmade comics were fan products, and I'm not the only Newaver who had some history in this area as a developing cartoonist. But unlike the readers of Fan Scene, I had never really networked outside of my family and friends prior to reading undergrounds.

In the mid-1980s the Fans began to discover the Newave movement. Although our content was very different, we all shared a love of comic art and the challenges of being small press publishers before the Age of Internet.

This publication, Fan Scene # 1 (July/August 1984), profiles Morty the Dog. Although I'm not a big fan of the term "fan," I felt this article was an example of the two networks recognizing each other.

As you can see, the subtitle of this publication uses the ancestor of the word "zine"-- fanzine!