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.

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Mud Bay, Thurston County, Washington

Cranium Frenzy # 1

1st edition September 1981, Seattle, Washington, 40 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest.

2nd edition, October 1981, Seattle, Washington, 25 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest.

3rd edition, January 1982, Seattle, Washington, 25 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest.

It was at some point in the first three editions I was first contacted by Jay Kennedy, author of The Official Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide, and was educated to the fact print runs were of extreme importance to some collectors. From this point on I started keeping closer track of this kind of trivia. The first three editions of Cranium Frenzy # 1 are, to my eye, indistinguishable from each other.

Available as a print-on-demand title, regular digest size, 1995-1996.

1st Danger Room Reprint Ed., June 2005, 6 copies (3 blue, 2 green, 1 red) also regular digest size.

This is my longest running title and probably the best one to trace my career as an obscuro cartoonist. The first issue was drawn during my torturous time in graduate school at the University of Washington-- the comix project was keeping me sane. The latest issue, #10, was published in Century 21.

Somewhere between the three printings I learned about Clay Geerdes Comix World newsletter and the Newave comix network, so this title served as my initial calling card and trading stock as I quickly became introduced to a small army of amazing fellow cartoonists through the mail.

It is pretty safe to say most of the 1st editions were handed around to my social circle in Seattle at the time, and hardly any of them were comrade comix artists. I imagine most of the copies circulating among comix collectors out there are the 2nd and 3rd editions.

Jay Kennedy liked my work and I think included mention of the first two Cranium Frenzys in his Guide as something of a last minute effort since it seemed he was practically finished when he initially contacted me. I've attached his listing, although I must restate there is no way to tell the first three editions apart.

Trivia:

P. 2: Panel 1 anticipates my future Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke. Last three panels: I had the pleasure of meeting the Pacific Northwest poet William Stafford in the 1970s. A pacifist in WWII, he pointed out this inconsistency about society's attitudes toward murder with sort of a quiet rage.

P. 3: The smartest man in the world shows up again in Cranium Frenzy # 2.

P. 4: Ronson Rabbit was a character I drew in funny animal comics during my childhood.

P. 7: Giant reptiles were later used in Amused to No End, Cranium Frenzy # 6, and most notably in Fetid Lake of Doom.

P. 10: Using the population statistics as a title and a way to set the tone was later employed in the microcomic Pop. 1075. Panel 6: I was a taxicab driver in Burlington, Vermont for awhile in 1979. Every budding cartoonist should drive a taxicab for little bit as part of the training for a career in comic art. It's a trip, man.

P. 11+: By a weird coincidence, an excellent cartoonist named Chad Woody came up with a toasterhead character about 10 years later, utterly unaware of this comic. Now what sort of cosmic consciousness did we both plug into (no pun intended)?

P. 20+: Based on the bizarre real-life journey of Oliver Cromwell's severed head. As an aside I had two ancesters who were minor officials in the Cromwell regime. This duo, father-in-law and son-in-law, were Puritan ministers who enjoyed going into those magnificent cathedrals with sledgehammers in order to whack away at graven images. After Cromwell died they became "Nonconformist" Puritans. One of them died young as the result of constant imprisonment.

P. 23: "Puny and absurd ..." I think it was a line from the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man.

P. 24: Last panel. Notice Maxwell from the earlier giant reptile story lurking in the background. I forgot about that until I scanned this thing.

P. 25: True story. And it is still all I know about Indiana from first-hand experience. This page was sort an ancestor to my later State of Beings series.

P. 26+: By 1981 Morty the Dog had already been around for about 5 or 6 years as one of my characters, but this was his first full-length story. Notice he's called "Morty Mutt" in the title. In an earlier incarnation I called him "Mortie the Dog." But back on page 2 you'll see he's "Morty the Dog."

P. 26: Parvo Nakacheker, I think, was the inventor of the jock-strap. Or at least that's what I thought at the time.

The car and truck were based on two childhood toys I still have. They survived our housefire on the farm, so the fact they remain in my possession is pretty neat. I'll attach a photo of them here.

P. 29: Panel 4. One of my all-time favorite panels ever. The word "peckerhead" entered my vocabulary during my cab driver days.

P. 32: "Mr. God" later became known as "The Big G," the bald little guy with the Yellow Kid smock. I do believe in God, by the way. I think after I bite the Big One I'll get to meet God and she'll thank me for making her laugh about how goofy all these religions are.

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McCleary, Washington

The Cat With the Human Mouth

This is Charlie. He has a human mouth and actually talks.

This tidbit of feline data gives me the opportunity to return a compliment. The Jim and Frank Podcast gave Morty the Dog a nice plug yesterday.I'd like to direct our readers to Jim Gill's Conversation with My Cat Part 1 and Part 2.

Sarah laughed so hard she got tears in her eyes. But the four cats looked nervous during the brief animations, like the jig was up or something.

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