Index to Cartoonists and Illustrators in The Paper and Cooper Point Journal, 1972-June 1982

The student newspapers for The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington have served as an early venue for several cartoonists who are now well known. I covered the history of these papers in OlyBlog in Evergroove Trivia pt. 44.

This manuscript was put together in July 1982. Around 1987-1988 one of my cats, Alex, took a couple chunks out of the introduction. He was a rambunctious black and white longhair. Anyway, it is possible that before Alex edited the front page, I supplied a copy to the Washington State University Library comix collection. I'm not sure when I reproduced this thing for them.

Many great cartoonists have emerged from TESC after the cutoff date of this index, but this early list is still pretty impressive.

You'll find now familiar commercial names in here, and also a number of people who were well known in the 1980s Newave movement.

Although I graduated in 1979, most of my CPJ work continued to be published clear up to the late 1980s.

The cartoonists in this list who I got to know during my Evergroove years (1974-1979) were Lynda Barry, Matt Groening, Randy Hunting, T.J. Simpson and Gary May.

I had a nodding acquaintance with several other cartoonists in this roster who I'm sure don't remember me today like Charles Burns, Jim Chupa, Flicky Ford, Dan Owens, and the amazing Dana Leigh Squires. In those years I cultivated a very careful, quiet, nonentity persona-- just being a norm, minding my own business. Drabness, I always say, is goodness.

In my post-TESC years I had the pleasure of meeting several other folks in this index: Matt Love, Lhisa Reish, Maggie Resch, Larry Stillwell, and Tucker Petertil.

Of course today, embracing the hermit lifestyle, I'm not in touch with any of these fine cartoonists, although I have crossed paths with Tuck Petertil in Olympia a time or two in the last couple years.

Phone photo 200

A holiday evening scene in downtown Elma, Washington

Help! Burl Ives is Alive! And in my Kitchen!

Burl Ives always gave me the creeps-- ever since the early 1960s when I heard his voice in the stop action Rudolph Reindeer animation where he plays the role of that snowman who glides around with no visible means of locomotion.

*Shiver*

He spent his later life up the road from here in Anacortes, Washington and supposedly died over 15 years ago. So why is he in my kitchen singing "Holly Jolly Christmas"?!?

Phone photo 199

Crosby House, Tumwater, Washington

This 150 year old home was originally built by Bing Crosby's grandfather and is one of the few survivors of the destruction of historic downtown Tumwater when Interstate 5 plowed the middle of town in the 1950s. Tumwater was the site of the earliest American settlement on Puget Sound in the mid-1840s.

Illustrations in Search of a Story

1st edition, October 28, 2001, 15 copies, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, blue cover, regular digest size.

In this low printrun comic, you can see preliminary drawings for work in Ted, Monkey Trap, and Bezango WA 985 # 1. The last title's 1st edition was also published on October 28, 2001.

Phone photo 198

Tumwater, Washington

How Two Ex-Presidents Went Up My Nose!

1st edition, 1994, 40 copies, ivory cover, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, red cover, regular digest size.

I have long been fascinated by the eerie "coincidences" in the lives of presidents Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur (Arthur's middle name was pronounced "Ah-lawn" in case you wondered, and some historians believe he was born in Quebec, not Vermont. Truman claimed Arthur kept a prostitute in the White House). Arthur had made an appearance in one of the first two issues of Cranium Frenzy in 1982. I'm too lazy to look up which issue it was. In fact, it is hardly worth the effort of typing this sentence saying it is hardly worth the effort.

Anyway, I had put together a pamphlet on their eerie "coincidences" in the mid-1980s which I'll no doubt be posting here in the future. It served as the source for many of the astounding trivia bombs dropped in this comic.

Trivia:

Page 9: One branch of my relatives were big wheels in the Free Will Baptist Church. Before that, up in the Cumberland Mountains of Virginia, a part of the family were called Hardshell Baptists, they were extreme fundamentalists. For example, one of my great-grandfathers believed the Earth was square because the Bible made a reference to the four corners of the World. And yes, this was still in the 20th century. The other Virginia Cumberland branch were nonbeliever criminals, murders, black marketers, bootleggers, etc. so I guess it all balanced out.

Pages 21-23: Totally true event. I really did inhale a dead person. And people wonder why I choose a sedentary life, safe and snug within the boundaries of my own home.

Phone photo 197

WSU Comix Exhibit

The Library in Washington State University in Pullman is highlighting their comix collection, which is nice to see.

You can read about it in WSU Today.

I think they are now in their 3rd or 4th generation of staff handling the collection since I left WSU. There is no one left from my day who is working with the comix.

The article I have linked to doesn't do this, but in others I have read it is interesting, even charming, to see how the collection's origin changes with each teller over time, as institutional memory gives way to an almost bureaucratic folklore.

This is a natural cycle in organizations, I guess. But the main thing is that the collection is still very much alive and being promoted. One of my career highs as a librarian was getting those WSU comix organized, established, accepted, and embedded in an academic setting where they would be safe for future generations to study and enjoy.

Phone photo 196

Looking west over Capitol Forest.

Calling A to Z! Calling A to Z!

Calling A to Z! That is, calling Hank Arakelian and Joe Zabel! If you guys are out there please drop me a line. I'm interested in posting some jams from the past.

Also, I'm thinking of putting together some new minis. One idea I have is to invite 8 or more artists to send me a page for a minicomic with a random image or images. I'd put all the pages together and form a story. It builds and expands the concept of the minis I drew with Dale Luciano at Dada Gumbo. If you're interested send me a page via email or snail mail. It has to be clean enough so I can show it to my aging mother but crazy enough to make my grown daughter roll her eyes and wonder when her Dad is ever going to grow up.

Phone photo 195

Montesano, Washington

This is a manhole leading to the "sanitary sewer." I looked for one leading to the "digusting, smelly, gross, fetid sewer" but I guess they couldn't fit all those words on a manhole cover.

How to Move an Elk

This was one of those deals where someone comes up and requests, "Hey, you draw cartoons. Can you draw me a picture of ... ?"

We have a huge herd of elk around here, and apparently some State types felt some of them needed to be distributed to other areas. Frankly, I think it's not nice to mess with Mother Nature. Leave our elk alone.

Phone photo 194