Library Comix

Although this was really a comic book by committee, the group pretty much let me do what I wanted with the graphics and story for the little tour guide critter.

The Evergreen State College was where I attended school in my undergrad years (1974-1979), and I returned there to work as the acting head of cataloging in the library from 1986-1988. When I arrived as an employee the printed library guide then in use was a Lynda Barry booklet that had apparently been modified and reprinted for a few years.

My version was first published in 1987 and then revised and reprinted for the 1988 and 1989 school years, but by that time I had moved on. I don't know if it was published beyond 1989. It is safe to say that out of all my comix this one has had one of the highest copy counts.

Trivia:

Pages 4-6: The Library has since been gutted and rebuilt. There was a ghost residing on the floor on page 6. He was seen by a library student worker in 1988 striding from the "Big Hole" to where the letters "PA" are drawn. I'm told he's still around. This fellow was the subject of one of my Bezango columns for Olympia Power & Light.

Page 16: Morty the Dog readers might've heard of Marge Brown (1956-2006) who was also known as an animator and all around nice person.

Page 20: Yup, there's yours truly. With less weight and more hair.

Phone photo 204

The Office Christmas Party, Columbia Room, Legislative Building, Olympia, Washington

Larry of McCleary and Other Characters

1st edition, February 1989, 47 copies, grey cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, April 1989, published by Eastern Grays Harbor Historical Society, McCleary Museum, 60 copies, grey cover, enlarged digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, July 2005, 5 copies, blue cover, enlarged digest size.

In the late 1980s I tried my hand at a comic strip in our regional weekly, The East County News. I wanted to create a strip with a local appeal, capturing some of the quirks that made eastern Grays Harbor County a bit, er, different that the rest of western Washington.

The strip continued for another 10 months after this collection was published. The remainders were assembled in an issue of Retreads, I think. We'll see when we get there.

From reading the strips you would correctly conclude I had become a new parent in this period of time. 1988 to be exact.

Trivia:

Page 4, strip 1: This was also reprinted in Cartooning Washington.

Page 4, strip 3: I also used this line in Write-In Morty the Dog for Mayor!

Page 6, strip 2: Olympia, the Legislative Building, and the hills in the background where McCleary sits.

Page 7, strip 2: Elma, 7 miles away from McCleary, used to have annual festival honoring the lowly slug. For some strange reason it never really took off. Shelton, of course, is a town full of roughnecks and buffoons, not like genteel McCleary at all.

Page 13, strip 13: Yelm is near Olympia and home to J.Z. Knight, a mystic who has apparently become wealthy channeling the spirit of "Ramtha," a warrior from long ago. From the film clips I've seen, I suspect she grabbed the idea from the Hitchcock film Family Plot, as she does a pretty good Barbara Harris imitation.

Page 16, panel 1: I originally used this line in one of my comix from the 1970s, but I can't remember which one right now.

Page 17, panel 2: Our Shetlands did this to our trailer when I was growing up on the farm.

Page 18, panel 1: You have to see the slugs around here to believe them.

Page 20: We have two nuclear power cooling towers standing tall and ugly in this region. They have never been used (Thank God!) and remain standing today as monuments to the folly of man. This story has the unfortunate acronym of WPPSS.

Larry of McCleary

Phone photo 203

McCleary, Washington.

I always liked this unique little square poking into the greater McCleary megaopolis skyline from one of my all-time favorite grocery stores. There are stories in town that it was actually an apartment for a store employee long ago and today is haunted. Pretty neat, eh?

This store was a regular stop for me from age 8 to high school for buying the newest comic books and thus shares the blame for how I turned out as an adult. Back in the early 1960s they actually had a bench where kids could sit and read comics while the parents shopped.

Of Newave and Williams

Michael Dowers asked me to write an introduction for J.R. Williams Fun House # 1 (September 1993, Starhead Comix). It was a pleasure to act as a master of ceremonies in print for a fellow Pacific Northwesterner and one of my favorite cartoonists.

This essay also gave me an opportunity to write a short history of Newave comix in order to provide the setting for JR's early years in publishing.

By the way, if you haven't seen this comic I highly suggest hunting down a copy. The guy is funny.

Phone photo 202

Dandelion in December!

This little one is growing on my front lawn.
A bit of trivia, the dandelion is an invasive non-native plant to Washington State. It is said the flower was introduced to the area by the legendary Catherine Maynard.

The Interrupted Song

A memorial to Lynn Hansen, published in spring 1995 during my print-on-demand phase. I have no clue how many of these are out there. And somehow that little numerical copy information void seems fitting for anything having to do with Lynn.

Events subsequent to Lynn's death have only made his demise all the more mysterious. A few people have surfaced, even as recently as 4 or 5 years ago, who have revealed sides of Lynn I never knew. His life was apparently compartmentalized to an incredible extent.

When most people die, the news is spread through a circle of friends. But Lynn didn't have that. He had a string of friends, and very few of us were connected to each other. And none of us knew him as well as we thought we did.

What exactly happened to me? After doing the normal guy thing and ignoring an abdominal pain for two weeks, my wife discovered I was in trouble when I let out a yelp while sitting down. She forced me to go to the hospital. This no doubt saved my life as the docs rushed to open me up ASAP. It turned out I had swallowed some toxic substance, which they could not identify, and a foot of my colon had died. They said I most likely would've croaked in a day or two if I had done nothing. I now have an 8 inch scar as a souvenir of that surgical adventure, plus nerve damage in my drawing hand (which is about half numb most of the time these days). This was referenced in Cranium Frenzy #8.

From what I gather, Lynn's symptoms were different. Apparently he was dehydrated and had flu-like problems. He died at the same time I was released from my week-long hospital stay.

I'll be revisiting this unfinished story when I post info about Lynn's book on the Paul McCartney death hoax entitled Number 9. And believe me, it just gets weirder.

Phone photo 201

Let's hear it for the good guys!

McCleary Fire Department's Annual Santa Run, collecting nonperishable food items throughout town. They got into a little political tangle this year, the kind of tempest in a teapot that can split up a small burg like ours, but I think they handled it with class and did the right thing.