Pearl Bartruff, Washington State Female Cartoonist in the 1920s Had to Fight

The following article is from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 3, 1977, p. C3. I love the fact it quotes the great Ray Collins.

Dr. Seuss Necktie

Picked this up at Goodwill and wore it to work. I like it because it blends my librarian and cartoonist selves. Dr. Seuss has been one of my art heroes since childhood.

The reverse side has a quote:

"The more you read, the more things you will know.
The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

-from I Can read With My Eyes Shut, by Dr. Seuss.

Buttons - Union - 1993

Don't Risk Our Future

I-601, I-602

Washington Federation of Teachers

On the curl: Air Power Graphics, 1-206-568-3490

Buttons - Union - 1991

AFT

This button was issued to me when I joined the American Federation of Teachers as a member of the faculty at South Puget Sound Community College, 1991-2000.

Phone photo 686

Why Don't Politicians Take a Pay Cut Instead of Teachers
Burton, Washington

Knowing Our Lines

Ulp! That's today! Guess I better get a script together.

Teaching Comix

Some time during my stay in Pullman, Washington (1983-1986) I was asked to give a class for junior high school (now called middle school) pupils about comic art. That started a whole sub-career for me of presenting lessons on comix technique and/or history to students from Kindergarten to college.

My favorite classes are for children from preschool to about 2nd grade. Generally speaking, the magic of comic art is still captivating for them. We cartoonists can communicate so well with this group of kids in classroom settings because we ourselves have never fully surrendered the kid within us to the outside world. Look at all the Oldwavers who are still active. We are now in the 55+ crowd, making us Senior Citizens in the eyes of Burger King and the Pre-Paid Cremation Services folks who send me junk mail (how do they find me? It's rather unsettling) , yet we still put a lot of energy into drawing funny pictures and being playful with lines on paper.

It probably helps that we are also the Boomers, the generation with the never ending adolescence.

I notice that around 3rd grade the children begin to ask about how to make a living at the cartoon game. The practical considerations begin early.

My most memorable presentation was to my daughter's 4th grade class. This is a very small town and most of the kids already knew me. At the end of the talk one little boy asked me to sing my underpants song, which of course I sang loud and proud. It has the tune of "She'll Comin' "Round the Mountain" and goes like this:

Oh, I haven't seen my underpants in weeks
Oh, I haven't seen my underpants in weeks
Oh, I haven't seen my underpants
Haven't seen my underpants
I haven't seen my underpants in weeeeeeeks!

All the girls covered their ears, except for my daughter, who crawled under her desk.

I don't know how many classes I've given over the years, but quite a few, including some at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, where I sometimes would print out special editions of As I Recall the 'Sixties not only as an example of how to make your own comix, but also for a couple history classes.

If you haven't already, I'd encourage my cartoonist comrades out there to take any opportunity you can to teach or talk about comix to your community. It's been my experience that people are predisposed to have fun when they know cartoons will be the topic presented, and who knows, you might awaken the sleeping cartoonist within one of the attendees.

The photo attached here is from a video of a cartoon class I gave at Lincoln Elementary, Olympia, Washington, April 17, 1987. That's Odd Dog on the easel.

Making Mistakes

Making Mistakes : Teaching Writing to Children / Steve Charak. Olympia, WA : Young Voices, c2002. (0962720151)

When my friend Steve Charak asked me to draw the cover for the book he had worked so hard to produce, I was flattered. Steve had always been very supportive of my comix and counted himself a Morty fan. His death in 2004 at age 51 was a devastating loss to the Olympia community.

The cover was actually the work of two of us. Garn Turner designed and provided the typography.

Dada Gumbo Morty

1st edition, 1994, print-on-demand, regular digest size. I have no idea how many of these are out there. It was available from 1994-1996, so perhaps 100 of them, give or take 75.

Special Fandom House edition, 1994, 20 copies.

This is a reprint collection of comix jams with Dada Gumbo publisher Dale Luciano. Some of them were originally released as pages in anthology comix (Dog Boy #7, Scratchez Magazine #8, Stevetreads #3, and Worker Poet #9), others as individual minicomix:

Harnessing the White Elephant

It Has No Story ...

The Persecution and Assassination of Morty the Dog ...

Something Morty This Way Comes ...

All of these were initiated by Dale, who also decided where and how they would be published. He sent me pages with the panels containing random images and I attempted to impose order on them, an exercise I thoroughly enjoyed. I have used this technique in other comix, most lately online at OlyBlog with the UML series and the What's My Line? series.

When I occasionally give cartoon presentations to classrooms, I'll ask the kids to close their eyes and draw a line on the blackboard (or in recent years, whiteboard) and then I'll show them how they can build an image around this line if they approach it with some imagination. I like this method-- it forces me to get outside the cookie cutter way of drawing where I can easily imprison myself since I'm essentially a sedentary and lazy artist.