State of the Morty Blog, 2/26/11

Still trying to post something every day, and as I look at the pile of material yet to be shared (I originally typed "shred" by accident. Hmmm), there is lots more to do in the scanning and posting department.

We've been slowly making material available via the Mortyshop. The funds we get through sales and the donation button are being poured back into other comix projects. Right now I am looking into the possibility of publishing the 5-part, almost 200 page Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke as a single volume squarespine paperback in the original legal size enlarged digest.

Of course the big excitement around here is in the preparation for attending SPACE in Columbus, Ohio next month! Sarah is going to remain here in Mortyville to keep the cats fed and the blog warm while I go Back East, so she shall remain a mysterious and shadowy figure, the power behind the blog.

We Rode With the Clowns could be called our first Morty the Blog comic. I'm gathering material for the next one and already have contributions from Harry Bell, Bruce Chrislip, Bob Vojtko, Anvil, and Roldo. Want to climb aboard? Send me a random drawing! The more the merrier.

Here are some interesting numbers, demonstrating we remain very obscure:

Total number of visitors so far: 10,503
43% of you use Firefox, 41% IE, 8% Safari.
81% use Windows, 12% Mac.

Top ten posts:

McCleary Time Capsule, 1943-1963

about that Donate button

Brad Foster Has Lit the Fuse

City Limits Gazette: Sample Discussion

End of the Earth and Turn Left

Strange and Unbelievable, but Real and True! I Inherit Over 5 Million Bucks From June Pointer!

City Limits Gazette: Lynn Hansen Interview

Newave Reader

Mr. Crawford Raises Herfords, Too

Brave New Nazis of the Inland Empire

Where the readers are from, the top 10 states:

Washington
Utah/New York (tie)
Texas
California
Oregon/Ohio (tie)
Minnesota
North Carolina
Pennsylvania

Top 10 countries:

USA
South Korea
Spain
France
Poland (mostly spammers, thanks a lot guys)
Germany
Canada
United Kingdom
Russia
Malaysia (more spammers)

Top Referring Sites:

Facebook
OlyBlog
Comics Reporter
The Jim and Frank Podcast
Midnight Fiction
The Magic Whistle

The minicomic Dante's Coat gets plenty of hits I assume from people trying to find a real life product that matches the overcoat of a character in the Devil May Cry game named Dante, or at least that's what I gather since the term "Dante's Coat" is one of the most popular here.

Anyway, I'm still having a blast and I hope you readers are enjoying this too. Many thanks to the Fabulous Sarah for making this particular place of pixels a reality.

Newave! + Morty Comix in Mortyshop

Today we have listed our second item in Mortyshop, the Newave! book with a bonus. Each one contains a Morty Comix drawn on the 1st preliminary page.

We are hoping to reprint another comic from the classic Newave era soon, some original art, and I'm currently investigating the possibility of having the Tragedy of Morty Prince of Denmarke republished in one book. At almost 200 pages it is the closest I've come to drawing what is now popularly called a graphic novel.

Mortyshop is Open

After many delays, we are finally getting together a Mortyshop, a space available for those of you who want hardcopy versions of the comix I am scanning and posting. You can find Mortyshop under the "Pages" section on the margin.

This is all new to us, so I am going to ask for your patience as we bumble through this online shopping game. We'll try this one title for awhile, and once we get the system figured out I plan on offering more titles and some original art.

The first title I have up is Dog of Dawn, Dog of Dusk.

I have ideas for several other titles to sell, and want to explore the possibility of publishing The Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke (almost 200 pages!) in a single hardcover volume.

Cranium Frenzy # 10

1st edition, September 5, 2003, 40 copies, ivory cover. All editions are regular digest size.

2nd edition, October 24, 2003, 20 copies, green cover.

Special Oly Comix Fest Edition, May 10, 2004, 32 copies, yellow cover.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies, pink cover.

This is my most recent full length solo comic. It was created as sort of a 30th anniversary of self-publishing obscuro comix-- hence all the reprinted work and dredging up of many old characters. I guess I should get on the dime and really finish up this comic I'm working on now in order to have Cranium Frenzy # 11 ready by 2013 for the 40th anniversary.

This comic was also my experiment with silent timing in comix.

Trivia:

The cover logo was, I think, drawn on toilet paper or a paper towel with felt tip and then enlarged.

Page 3: There are many characters in this story who were left over from the unpublished Bezango WA 985 # 9, such as Oric the waiter. They will be easy to spot.

Page 8: Oogla boogla meebee zeebee was a chant I first used in comix in the early 1970s.

Page 15, last panel: My favorite panel in the whole comic. Shows you how us lowbrows like to celebrate frivolity.

Page 20-22: My comment on the post 9/11 world. Also, a personal photocopier in the hands of a cartoonist can be a dangerous thing.

Page 28: I like the word "thwart" almost as much as I like the word "cranium."

Cranium Frenzy # 2

1st edition, Seattle, Washington, January 1982, 40 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest.

2nd edition, Seattle, Washington, early 1982, 25 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest. The 2nd ed. can be identified by a faint vertical line on the cover.

Available as a print-on-demand in regular digest size, 1996.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies (1 green, 4 red), regular digest size.

If I'm not mistaken, I think I burned all the original art to Cranium Frenzy # 1-2, and possibly # 3, in the fireplace of the house I was renting in Seattle. A few of my housemates attended the wake. My thinking at the time was that the art needed to be destroyed, much like a woodblock that had been used to make limited prints.

All of my 1981-1982 Seattle imprints were printed by a couple brothers originally from, I think, Iraq, who ran a print shop on University Ave. called Mecca Printing. Believe it or not, Lynda Barry had directed me to them by chance when I ran into her just across the street from the place. I sometimes wonder what became of them in Century 21 America. They had the first self-service photocopier I encountered where one could play around with amazing features like enlarging and reducing! You can't imagine how much of a difference this made in my publishing output. Prior to 1981, getting any comix art reduced in size was a major hassle and usually costly.

Trivia:

P. 2: Panel 4. Studio 54 was still in operation in 1982. In 1979 I actually made a whole party stop cold for a few silent seconds in Burlington, Vermont when I asked in complete innocence, "What is Studio 54?" It was a fine moment when they asked what planet I was from. I still had hay in my hair, apparently.

P. 3. Humptulips is a real place, right here in Grays Harbor County, Washington.

P. 5. A play on one my favorite lines from Caligula, by Albert Camus: "Men die and they are not happy."

P. 6. I think Brooke Shields was the source of the quote.

P. 7, panel 3. Another one of my favorite panels ever. Panel 7, based on Fred C. Dobbs from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a movie I really enjoy.

P. 10+: This was originally a short story I wrote in college ca. 1978 while studying with the writing instructor Peter Elbow, who taught me some wonderful methods in creating stories-- namely the use of freewriting. Still, when I read the whole thing out loud to him, Peter just sat poker faced and encouraged me to get more serious. But all my classmates were laughing pretty hard.

P. 11. More Hamlet stuff anticipating The Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke.

P. 12: Computers were just about at the point of really taking over and becoming part of office labor's daily experience when this comic was drawn. The name Mark Sense is a play on a now outdated computer term.

P. 22+: What was I thinking?!?

P. 26+: Arnie Wormwood was a character I liked who didn't get very far. I eventually killed him off, and unlike Morty the Dog, he pretty much stayed dead.

P. 33: You don't hear too much about Edgar Cayce these days, he seemed more of a household name in 1982. The Magus Bookstore in Seattle's U District had this page on display as you entered their section for paranormal books.