Delayed Stress Syndrome Funnies

Apparently part of this comic was drawn when I still lived in Seattle and the remainder was finished after I moved back to Olympia, yet again but for the last time, in mid-1982. The first edition carries as the place of imprint, "Olympia & Seattle, Washington."

It was definitely printed in Olympia. The printshop was run by a local big fish in small pond, a conservative Republican who ran his own weekly newspaper. His employees had a pretty low opinion of this here comic and let me know they thought it was a complete waste of their energy. It wasn't the only time I've had a printer cast asparagus at my work while accepting my money.

However, in this case there was a very unique factor. I think I ordered something like 50 copies and here's what I got for the price: 48 copies of the covers, and 273 complete sets of the guts! Someone goofed in my favor. Unfortunately, all their printing was pretty crappy. But for the first five editions all I had to do was print a new cover as I could afford to print.

1st edition, October or November 1982, Olympia & Seattle, Washington, 48 copies, creme or goldenrod cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, January 1983, Olympia, Washington, 64 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest size.

3rd edition, May 1983, Olympia, Washington, 68 copies. blue cover, enlarged digest size.

4th edition, February 1984, Pullman, Washington, 50 copies, green cover, enlarged digest size.

5th edition, May 1984, Pullman, Washington, 43 copies, salmon cover, enlarged digest size.

Print-on-demand, 1996, unknown number of copies, regular digest size.

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

The main story is pretty pretentious, but I did enjoy writing the way the dialogue made transitions from one panel to another. The idea of a mentally unstable President making a deliberate silly face in a public speech actually became reality later in the 1980s when old Ron the Con did precisely that.

Omnia Mutantur and Scrap Race to Acropolis were later published as individual minicomix by One Man Studio (Chris Bors), Ithaca, New York.

Phone photo 169

Thanks to D. Blake Werts!

We have a second patron of the arts here, D. Blake Werts, who contributed to Sarah's brainstorm-- the donor box. We appreciate the support, Blake. Once the studio gets fixed up we're going to start reprinting some of the old comix and this piggie bank is going to be a great booster in getting things off the ground!

Phone photo 168

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.

Phone photo 167

One of the guardian trees on my driveway starting to be covered with the first snow of the season here in McCleary. Since I took this phone photo a few hours ago, the white stuff has not stopped falling.