Raining Quills, pt. 3

I miss Bruce Chrislip. When Bruce and Joan lived in Seattle it was easy to get together and enjoy socializing. Bruce hosted several cartoonist get togethers and it was through these parties I got to meet many of the local comix people during an exciting period when Seattle was being discovered by the rest of the country and Fantagraphics had moved up here. At the start of the 1980s I felt quite alone as an obscuro self-publisher living in Seattle. By the end 1980s, there was a cartoonist on every block.

But then this funny, nice guy with the encyclopedic brain for comix trivia had to go and leave us for his native Ohio. Seattle has never been the same.

Mark Campos has become something of Seattle cartoonist icon. I personally don't feel any cartoonist gathering is complete without him. During the days when I edited City Limits Gazette (1991-1993) I realized Mark was one the greatest writers among us Newave/Obscuro cartoonists.

Mark, Bruce and I have similar simple drawing styles and sense of space, so our work blends together in this jam. Horst, comes from a different school, and his visuals really give the story an energetic shift. He has a gift for really packing a lot of info in a small area! And nice work it is too.

Published by Starhead Comix in Seattle in 1990.

Raining Quills pt. 2

It's those damn porcupines again!

This series was a different kind of jam. I drew the the first page with Augustus in a wheeled bathtub trapped under a rainfall of dead porcupine quills. Then I copied it five times and sent it to five different artists around the country. My aim was to have 5 minicomic jams, each with 5 artists, but all of them starting with the same premise.

Four of them made it back. And so far I have permissions from all the artists in two of those issues. I am grateful those cartoonists could be found after 20 years.

All four of the minicomix that made it back home were published by Starhead Comix in Seattle.

This one, part 2, was initially sent to David Tosh in Texas. He sent it up to Pittsburgh, where the incredible Wayno got his hands on it. And from there comic went to his fellow Pittsburgh area cartoonists the single named Stanley, and Mark Daniel.

This issue also has a rare accidental edition. I don't know how many copies exist, but apparently some of them included Morty Comix #1882 in the final pages. I've scanned one of those here.

Normal

In a symbolic twist, Normal was first published Sept. 2, 2001. My last comic before the end of the Old Normal for all of us. This run had 33 copies, all in yellow.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. of June 2005 had 5 green copies.

The entire minicomic was scanned and posted on OlyBlog, July 24, 2007.

The original art was drawn in a very tiny size using a sharp-enough-to-perform-surgery #1 lead pencil. Then the art was enlarged on a photocopier. I like the accidental neat stuff that happens in the texture when this method is employed.

As for the content, The Wild Bunch is one of my favorite Westerns. Holden was terrific in that one. Also note the porcupine, an animal that has been in the background of my published comix since 1973. In fact, I saw a huge one waddling around in front of my house just a couple months ago! And yes, I actually do utter the saying, "Drabness is goodness" on a frequent basis.