Mukey the Mutant Membrane

I'm trying hard not to get a cold today. How fitting to be posting this, of all comix.

1st edition was available as a print-on-demand comic in 1996, I'm guessing about 100 copies out there. This and following editions are regular digest size.

Special ultra-rare goldenrod edition, 3 copies, 1999. Entirely goldenrod.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, green (of course)

This book was used as a vehicle to explore my always uncomfortable relationship with capitalism. I figured using this big piece of snot would be too disgusting for anyone to take seriously as a commercial character. After all, I invented Mukey about 1972-1973 and he hadn't gained much of an audience in all those years.

I was wrong. I think Mucinex should pay me a royalty for their Mr. Mucus character. Another example of the mainstream catching up to us obscuro guys.

Mukey has been a supporting character in many comix over the years, but this is the only comic where he is the focus. I keep hoping one day my brother, Bryan, will write a play about Mukey. A musical. And then it will be turned into a movie. And then the franchise rights will ...

Oh.

See? See what this character does to my thinking? He's dangerous.

Trivia:

Pages 12-15 are entirely true. Page 15 anticipated the publication of Sean Tejaratchi’s Kool Man.

Back cover and inside back cover. My daughter Rose felt that Mukey was "disgusting" while Gumby was "refreshing." Personally, I always thought Gumby was terrifying.

Attached is a photo of her art piece, made at the same as this comic, "Mukey and Gumby in a fight (and Morty)." Gumby says: "I could beat you any day in looks" Mukey replies: "Ya. You wish." Morty observes: "Can't you to be quiet. I need to think!"

Phone photo 246

Morty Without Tears ; and, Planet of the Bobs

1st edition, August 1989, 30 copies, ivory cover, regular digest size.

Available as a print-on-demand title, 1996.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies, yellow cover.

In 1986 I returned to The Evergreen State College in the role of employee. The institution was much different than the school I had left in 1979. "The experiment," TESC's new president announced, "is over." And so it was.

Be that as it may, The Cooper Point Journal, Evergreen's newspaper, was still around. Since 1979 they had been publishing my comix from a giant stack of drawings I had left-- So I started giving them new work.

Drawn in 1986-1987, I was pretty convinced at the time I was through with comix as an artist. It turned out I wasn't exactly finished, just not as prolific. 1983-1986 was my most productive cartooning years in terms of quantity.

Trivia:

Page 2: Evergreen was not active in sports teams until after I graduated. But it always had a mascot-- the geoduck ("Gooey duck"), an obscene looking shellfish found locally.

Page 3: I believe this happened at the 1978 or 1979 graduation ceremony. True story. By the way I enjoy wearing ties.

Page 4: Evergreen's 4-sided clock tower was famous for having four very different times on each face.

Phone photo 245

Number One!

Morty U-Shape

A comic created by the audience, making it sort of a cartoon democracy.

Originally drawn in 1986, this was meant to be a stand alone book, but the publisher made it part of the Sketchman # 2 anthology. It wasn't until December 2005 that I finally got it into print the way I intended.

25 copies, blue, enlarged digest size.

The text responses are pretty funny. Funnier than the graphic portion, actually. This is what happens when you attempt to get a bunch of wiseass cartoonists to fill out a simple form.

Phone photo 244

A battered relic still stands
Elma, Washington

Morty the Dog Who Walks Like a Man!

1st edition, Seattle, Washington : Starhead Comix, 1987. Color cover, 18 cm. spine. Newsprinty paper.

1st Danger Room reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies (4 pink, 1 green), regular digest size.

1987 was one of several years where I was convinced I had "retired" from comix. But as Clay Geerdes accurately predicted at the time, "You'll be back. No cartoonist ever retires."

According to the intro inside the cover, this story was really drawn in 1986 for another publisher who left the scene before I finished the piece. And now, a quarter century later, I can't even begin to remember who that would-be publisher might be.

I've had short comic stories printed in anthologies that were translated into Finnish and Portuguese, but so far as I know, this is my only stand-alone comic book that has been translated and published in another language, in this case-- Greek. Michael Dowers made all the arrangements. I posted Mopti on December 30, 2010 if you want to compare the English and Greek versions.

This comic has most of my usual texture tricks, except there is one additional bit that might be unique to this story. The fridge on the 1st panel of the 5th page of the story has a piece of patterned cloth acting as shadow texture.

Here's some real trivia, especially for you cataloger librarians out there. The background of the 2nd panel on the 6th page of the story are modified delimiters used in MARC records for the now extinct WLN bibliographic utility. I have used this symbol in a few other stories.

It is interesting that Morty has been in a few comix where he is a political candidate. Still, no matter how weird my stories might be where this is a premise, none of them can compete with the surrealism of his real life run for McCleary Mayor in 1999.

Phone photo 243

Elma, Washington

Charlie Campbell, Evergroove's Overlooked Cartoonist

The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington is known as being an early venue for many fine cartoonists, and whenever the topic comes up the usual list of illustrious names are recited.

But there is one name I have never heard in that lineup. It should be.

Charlie Campbell.

Yesterday I sorted through a bunch of old issues of The Cooper Point Journal, Evergroove's campus newspaper, and caught up on the Fall 1979 to Spring 1986 material. I graduated in 1979 and returned there to work for a couple years, starting in mid-1986. So reading these papers sort of filled the gaps for me. Yeah, I know, 30 years too late. So I'm slow. So what?

Campbell's single panel cartoons, which appeared in the CPJ in 1984, struck me as a delightful cross between two other cartoonists I admire, James Thurber and John Callahan.

With the help of private dick Arnie Wormwood, I tracked down Campbell to his Portland, Oregon based commercial music and sound design business and Charlie graciously allowed me to scan and post some examples of his 1984 CPJ work.

Phone photo 242

The Yard Birds Crow.
Or should I say a Yard Birds Crow piggybank.

For those of you who are wondering what this means, follow the link to Skinny and Fatty: The Story of Yard Birds. It's one of those things that makes Southwest Washington Southwest Washington, and we love it.

Why is this Breakfast Smiling?

Here's the way to start a day. Some more smackeroos were dropped into the Kibble & Cigars for Morty donation box by our friend D. Blake Werts, enabling us to get closer to reprinting another comic from years past.

Here's how Blake described the donation: "Found a $10 bill on the ground today and thought that I'd pass it along to a good cause...."

Where else but America? Thanks Blake, we appreciate your thinking of us.

Phone photo 241