City Limits Gazette # 5 zillion and six (May 1991)

Logo by Mark Campos. Dennis Pimple on defining underground comix, Lynn Hansen reviews, Wayno on minicomix, bad cover versions of Day in the Life, Day Tripper, Dear Prudence, Dig It, Do You Want to Know a Secret, Don't Bother Me, Don't Let me Down.

City Limits Gazette # snoodlebee clapsaddle (May 1991)

Snoodlebee Clapsaddle was the name of a character I invented in the 1970s and have used sopradically over the years, such as in Cranium Frenzy # 7 (1994). Sometimes the name is spelled as Snoodle B. Clapsaddle.

Logo by S. Minstrel, Jay Kennedy defines underground comix, Jim Ryan creates a Ryan/Willis image, the WSU comix collection covered by the Lewiston Tribune.

Back in the USA for 21 Cents

My friend and comix comrade Rex Munger and I took the ferry from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, British Columbia July 13, 1972. We visited Mad Hatter's Tea Party International member John Newberry and shopped for comix.

I filled up my wooden suitcase with a bunch of great Canadian underground comix in the course of the day.

On the way home, American customs officials detained me for an hour, searched all my belongings, and then charged me a whopping 21 cents duty for the books. I still keep the receipt inside the suitcase lid as a memento. I wonder if I would've been allowed to return if I had not come up with the cash?

Underground Comics Surface in Pullman

I can't remember where the author of this article was based. Here's what the AP version looked like as published by the Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, August 20, 1989. By this time the organized collection was already 5 years old but apparently the concept of comix in research libraries was still considered worthy of journalistic interest.

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!

City Limits Gazette: Sample Discussion

City Limits Gazette was a comix news/discussion publication originally started by Bruce Chrislip. I edited it from 1991 to 1993 and printed it biweekly. Here's a sample of a discussion on comix definitions from some old hands, April-July 1991 as we try to figure out who we are.