Natural Functions

1st edition, February? 1986, 60 copies, orchid cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, April 1986, 30 copies, orchid cover, enlarged digest size. (The version scanned and posted here)

Available as a print-on-demand, 1994, as part of the Reprint Series. Regular digest size.

Special Fandom House edition, 1994, 20 copies, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies (1 blue, 4 yellow), regular digest size. (Wraparound cover example scanned and posted here)

This comic will soon be available in the Mortyshop, 50 copies from the original master copy, enlarged digest size.

"How Cats Got That Way" is up there on the list of my most popular stories, judging by how many times it has been reprinted and commented on. It is true that I'm really much more of a cat person than a dog guy. Ironic considering the name of this blog, eh?

I don't have anything against dogs, in fact I like them a lot. But cats are self-contained furry enigmas. They don't fetch, they don't do well with collars, and they don't need to go for walkies. They say they are too cool for those trifles. I live with four cats and sometimes at night I swear I can hear them in the next room chanting, "Cats rule! Dogs drool!" They all love Sarah and call her by name, but I'm known to them as "Mr. Food Giving Man."

This comic was dedicated to my buddy Ahab, who lived to be 10 years old. I found a photo of him sitting in the bathroom sink about the same year this comic was drawn, when he was around four years old. He was very slovenly, liked to eat potato chips, and had the most beautiful cat voice I have ever heard. He had so many ailments that the vet told us he was going to build a new wing to his clinic and name it after Ahab.

Phone photo 248

Mythic Residue

1st edition, spring 1978, Olympia, Washington, 30 copies, letter size leaves bound with a plastic strip which I think is called velobinding. Dark blue covers with light blue guts.

2nd edition, 1983, Pullman, Washington, 30 copies, light blue covers, enlarged digest size.

3rd edition, print-on-demand, 1996, probably regular digest size.

1st Danger Room reprint edition, July 2005, 5 copies (4 blue, 1 red), regular digest size. This is the one scanned and posted here.

My fifth comic was drawn for a class at The Evergreen State College called "Old Stories/Re-Creations." Part of the focus was finding universal themes in world literature throughout history. Our final project was to present a re-creation of an old story. So this was mine.

Actually it was more of an exercise in learning how to loosen my drawing hand. In my previous comic, An Untitled Portfolio (1977) I had finally turned some corner in developing a fluid style, so in this book I was going hogwild.

The next book wouldn't come until 1981, but by then I had calmed down a bit.

One of my classmates was my friend Steve Charak. The faculty who worked with me on this project was Hazel Jo Reed (1938-2009), who we all called Josie. She was a mathematician with a Ph. D. from the Carnegie Technical Institute and had no previous experience with comic art at all-- which means she was an excellent teacher! To this day I can barely add or subtract, and when Josie gave me artistic feedback she was responding from a side of the brain I seldom visit.

Having a mathematics Ph. D. as a comic art teacher was a great experience, and was probably only possible at Evergroove and only in the 1970s. Josie had a great sense of humor and allowed me to develop my own style.

But on the flipside of TESC, as I recall, when I went to pick up the finished copies at the campus print shop, the guy behind the counter was loudly telling his co-worker for my benefit what a piece of crap and waste of time this book was to print and jeez, what is the world coming to when garbage like this is encouraged in college? He was pretty intense and riled up about the whole thing. It was real charming. Looking back I think that experience probably chilled me from producing any more books while I was at Evergreen, but I also saw firsthand how simple lines on paper could evoke some hot reactions.

Trivia:

Only the first edition had illustrated covers (pictured here), subsequent editions merely had the title on the cover. The later editions included an introduction from my then-spouse, Robin.

My usual formula was to draw 4 panels and then make a line at random over the whole page. Then I would incorporate the line into my narrative.

Page 1: I believe this might might be the first of many times I have drawn someone using hot dog buns as shoes.

Page 2-3: The Odyssey was one of our class texts.

Page 5: Obviously in hindsight I was anticipating Reagan.

Page 15, 21, 26: I retold 4 panels from various old comic books.

Page 23, panel 4: Self-portrait.

Page 25, panel 4: Jobbo Bonobo. All hail Jobbo Bonobo!

Phone photo 247

Elma, Washington