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Bezango WA 985 on Stage

Every year a group of students from Japan arrive in Olympia and produce a theatrical event courtesy of the Academy of International Education. In 2002 they included a stage version of my comic series Bezango WA 985 in their production.

My brother Bryan is usually one of the organizers, and hence my connection to the 2002 season.

In this performance, he selected ten characters from the first two or three issues and had the students perform my narrative verbatim from the books.

It was a freaky experience to see these lines on paper come to life with Japanese accents. Director Kimiko Nakagawa presented it as a "movement piece." Many of the characters in Bezango WA 985 were based on real life figures, and I was astounded to see a few of the actors do a fairly good imitation of these folks without ever having met them.

The venue was the old State Theater in Olympia, Washington. Posted are selected parts of the program.

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Another shot of the "It's the Water" fountain of the long deserted Olympia Brewery.

2001 So Far

1 sheet, printed in May 2001. Number of copies unknown, but probably not many. Ten or less is my guess.

Yes, it was only May but we had already experienced a stolen presidential election and a massive earthquake. But yet to come, of course, was September 11. As an added bonus, Governor Gary Locke personally arrived at my place to employment to inform us we were being eliminated from the budget.

A throwaway work.

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On the road to Summit Lake

Morty Comix #1413

Our Newave Kansas comrade John E. was perusing through the sunny slopes of yesterday and found this thing in a box, apparently in his garage while surveying for possible water damage.

Morty Comix took all sorts of forms, but I have no memory of creating this one. It measures 17 x 10 cm. and has uneven margins. The reverse is signed and states "2/4/86, Pullman, WA."

The material is some kind of layered card paper. Looks like I used a razor to cut through the top single sheet of black to create this image.

Thanks for loaning this, John! Makes me wonder if I made any others in this fashion.

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Cattails on SR 8

Maryhill Museum Comix Exhibit

Well, I can retire from comix now. My work has been displayed at Maryhill.

This morning I visited the Maryhill Museum near Goldendale, Washington to see the "Comics at the Crossroads" exhibit, featuring cartoonists from Washington and Oregon. Awhile back they asked me to submit some original drawings but since I didn't have any art to loan, I just gave them a bunch of my old comix. My Tragedy of Morty series, which was my interpretation of Hamlet, was displayed as if it was something museum worthy. Everything has come full circle.

Back in the mid-1980s, when I drew that particular 5-part 200 page run, I was also attempting to establish an academic collection of Newave, small press, and self-published comix at Washington State University in Pullman, where I was a librarian and member of the faculty. In those days our brand of comix did not hold the exalted place in the art establishment they do today. An English Dept. faculty named Paul Brians had earlier donated a box of rare underground comix to WSU that had sat languishing in the rare books area, and I offered to enhance this collection through my Newave contacts. Hundreds, perhaps 2 or 3 thousand comix poured in from my comrades. John Guido, the Rare Books librarian at the time, raised his eyebrows, but he stuck by me in the face of criticism from the hoity toits and nervous Nellies. Paul started the collection, I gave it a jump-start, but it is to John Guido's memory, may he rest in peace, comix researchers owe their thanks.

When collector Lynn Hansen died in 1995, his librarian father, Ralph, made sure the collection went to WSU, increasing the holdings by a significant amount and making the school a major stopping place for anyone interested in our brand of comix.

But if you would've told me in 1985 that my little photocopy comix would be on display in Maryhill a quarter century later, I wouldn't have believed it.

To be fair, my stuff was the oldest comic art at the show, and I think I was the only one who wasn't displayed as a framed artist with original art. So I was presented more as a relic. A prehistoric comix artist, a native Washingtonian who was active here self-publishing before all the hip invaders discovered this corner of the world. A dinosaur. The Neanderthal who scrawled on the walls of caves. And that's fine with me. Although my work has been in art exhibits before, I must admit I have a few problems with comix as gallery art. That will become evident as I post more work on this blog.

The list of artists in the show is a virtual who's who in Washington-Oregon cartooning. But I was surprised to see Valentino in there. I didn't know he had moved to Portland. He was in the Newave in the very early stages, and was just starting to become a commercial name about the time I discovered the network in 1981. So we overlapped and corresponded a little bit back then. I couldn't make it to the exhibit opening where the artists showed up and was sorry to miss this fellow old guy who attended the same invisible college.

A Rodin exhibit was in another part of the Museum. It included a number of his late drawings, which, fittingly, I would consider cartoons in the original sense of the word.

Thanks to Steve Grafe of Maryhill for coordinating the show.

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Cattails on SR 8

The Minicomic Experience

For more than a month I've been scanning and posting a ton of work in the minicomic format. All of my solo minis, so far as I know, have been included. Almost all the jams have been in here as well.

Finding all the Raining Quills artists will continue to be a challenge, but I have managed to post two issues here. Hank Arakelian, if you're reading this, drop me a line.

One artist I have yet to track down is Marc Myers, one of the more gifted Newave artists. In 1986 he visited Pullman and stayed with us for a few days. During that time Marc and I produced a mini called Little Snowjob. I would love to post it here, but I need his permission. Marc, wherever you are, please contact me.

There are many other minis where I contributed a page or two, or an essay. Brad Foster's Stuff series was one of my favorite places to be a guest. And I haven't even mentioned Outside In yet (Illustration above is Morty and I, from Outside In #2, in 1983). But all will be revealed over time.

I like the mini format, and especially used it in Century 21 as age shortened my attention span and energy level. Right now I'm working on a full length story, but find myself not really driven. So I might return to minis as the venue of choice.

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Charlie

ZZZZZZ Elvis!

This jam with Mike Honeycutt was published by Starhead Comix in Seattle in 1985. Mike was one of the Tennessee artists who came into the late Newave with Bob X and XNO. They had a regional brand of comix with a flavor of grotesque surrealism and rich, energetic visuals.

I was a Beatles guy, so Elvis to me was always sort of a sad and comical figure. His deification by a significant portion of the world still puzzles me to this day. For Honeycutt, who lived in Elvis country, this must've been an extra strange comic in which to participate. But I'm glad he did.

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Camellia with snow, from a couple years ago. These two things normally don't go together around these here parts. We'll see if 2011 gives us another late snowfall.

Xenophobic Knives and Other Love Songs, pt. 2

Although part 2 of 3 (pt. 3, however, has never been started) of this series has a copyright date of 1990, it appears Starhead Comix in Seattle in reality published this in the spring of 1991.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. of June 2005 had 5 copies with yellow cardstock covers, and orange guts.

This is a rare comic in that it shows my delightful and refreshing character, Mukey the Mutant Membrane, when he was just a little snot.

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Xenophobic Knives and Other Love Songs, pt. 1

First published by Starhead Comix in Seattle, 1985. The comic was trimmed so that it was a centimeter shorter than the standard minicomic size at both length and width.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. of June 2005 had 5 copies with red cardstock covers and yellow and orange guts. It was standard minicomic size. In the Danger Room Ed., the pages inside the covers (which were blank in the Starhead printing) had text explaining the history of the series.

And what was that history? Michael Dowers of Starhead always liked my Cranium Station DMZ-Eternities of Darkness-Hungry Stairs to heaven trilogy, long before he included it in the recent Newave anthology published by Fantagraphics. He asked me to create another one. Xenophobic Knives was planned to be the first of three in a metamorphosis loop series.

For some reason I never really got much steam behind this one. I don't even remember drawing either one of the two issues. The 5-year gap between parts 1 and 2 should tell you something. Part 3 has yet to appear.

To show you how much I've forgotten, I didn't know this minicomic had a secret message until I started scanning it. Then I had to struggle for a few minutes to decode it!

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The Wrong Foot

1st published August 2001. 32 copies on yellow cardstock.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. of June 2005 had 5 copies on red cardstock.

Drawn with a #1 lead pencil.

As you can tell, I didn't have a lot of confidence in George W. Bush in his role as President even though he had only been in office for eight months when this was published. I'm afraid my opinion didn't improve over time.

Oddly, the most enthusiastic readers of this little comic were Republicans!

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