Phone photo 59

This little stand was built by a guy who was the previous resident of a house I owned here in McCleary from 1986 to 1994. He was a World War I veteran and had lived here many years.

By the early 1980s he was a long time widower and had apparently been included in a circle of old fellows who had been befriended by a white supremacist nutjob. This young fellow must've thought McCleary was a nice place to hide out and do whatever sort of illegal thing he was doing. They say he made himself useful to several oldtimers by doing carpentry oddjobs.

The story goes that this young racist left town in order to stay at some compound filled with others of his ilk out in Missouri or Arkansas. But before he left he asked if our old guy would let him use his upstairs as a storage unit. So the elderly vet agreed.

Shortly after this junior Nazi departed town, the old fellow went to the Post Office and fell dead as the result of a heart attack. His nephew inherited the house and found some interesting things upstairs, chiefly explosives, firearms, napalm detonators, etc. The FBI and Fort Lewis came and cleaned the place out. The neighbors told me Feds told them that if that house had caught fire half of McCleary would've turned into a crater. I assume the guilty party was apprehended.

Anyway, the explosives storage area later became the same place where I conducted all my comix business, including editing City Limits Gazette, from mid 1986 to mid 1994.

So as a token of that local lore, I still have the old fellow's little homemade stand and his homemade fishing pole.

Raining Quills pt. 2

It's those damn porcupines again!

This series was a different kind of jam. I drew the the first page with Augustus in a wheeled bathtub trapped under a rainfall of dead porcupine quills. Then I copied it five times and sent it to five different artists around the country. My aim was to have 5 minicomic jams, each with 5 artists, but all of them starting with the same premise.

Four of them made it back. And so far I have permissions from all the artists in two of those issues. I am grateful those cartoonists could be found after 20 years.

All four of the minicomix that made it back home were published by Starhead Comix in Seattle.

This one, part 2, was initially sent to David Tosh in Texas. He sent it up to Pittsburgh, where the incredible Wayno got his hands on it. And from there comic went to his fellow Pittsburgh area cartoonists the single named Stanley, and Mark Daniel.

This issue also has a rare accidental edition. I don't know how many copies exist, but apparently some of them included Morty Comix #1882 in the final pages. I've scanned one of those here.

Phone photo 58

Something Morty This Way Comes, or, Why are Health Care Costs so High?

Although the date on the cover declares 1985, this jam with Dale and Pat Luciano was actually published in early 1986 by Dada Gumbo Press in Ashland, Oregon.

Another sideways minicomic, measuring 11 x 14 cm.

That's a self-portrait on pages six and seven, back when I had a thin body and thick hair. Now I have a thick body and thin hair.

Phone photo 57

This six-foot high ancient fertility icon was so valuable I had to build a special room for it. In order to move the thing to it's present position I recruited a bunch of rich people from Seattle to help lift the object and carry it about 25 feet. And then I fed them a large meal. That made me the hoity hoist host.

Well, OK, maybe I'm stretching the truth a tiny bit. It's a really a rusty old leg from a clawfoot bathtub, and it's about six inches high. And I moved it myself with no help into a white wooden box, since I did not build a special room. But those are the only details that differ.

Smorgasboard of Delight

The Smorgasboard of Delight was first published Mar. 1, 2001. It was the day after the worst earthquake I've ever experienced. As I recall, we couldn't go back to work on Mar. 1 because our building wasn't deemed safe at that point. So I stayed home and made this comic.

Could there be a connection between the quake and the content of this comic?

[And here SW whips off his glasses in a dramatic fashion, steps forward, deepens his voice, and with a stern expression says]

You decide!

This comic had an initial run of 15 copies. 3 each of blue, yellow, pink, red, green.

the 1st Danger Room reprint Ed. of June 2005 had 5 red copies.

Drawn with #1 lead pencil. I think the cover illustration is original size the remainder of the comic consists of the same image being enlarged.

Phone photo 56

Serena

This is, I'm pretty sure, my most recent comic to date in the minicomic form.

The 1st ed. was printed on grey cardstock, 29 copies, Feb. 22, 2004.

The 1st Danger Room Reprint Ed. in July 2005 had 5 copies on blue cardstock.

For some weird reason I am frequently in the jury selection pool here in Grays Harbor County. For years they used to start the proceedings with a video starring Raymond Burr. Strange.

Serena was inspired by a septic tank-sized depression forming in the backyard of a friend. This comic was drawn with #1 lead pencil in a very tiny size, enlarged, and then the enlargements were detailed. The fact that the boyfriend is pictured as an unchanging prop as if made out of plywood is no accident.

Phone photo 55

Scrap Race to Acropolis

This originally appeared as a story in Delayed Stress Syndrome Funnies (1982) and was repackaged in minicomic form by One Man Studio (that One Man being Chris Bors) in Ithaca, New York in 1985.

In other repackaged works like this, Chris usually had a print run of 50, so I'll guess Scrap Race to Acropolis has about the same number.

I'll explain more about the background of this story once we get to the original publication.

Phone photo 54

Don't mess with Charlie!

Sasquatch Comix #5

The final entry in the Sasquatch Comix series.

The 1st ed. was printed on white paper in 1983, probably in late February or early March 1983 in Olympia, Washington. It had a run of 73 copies.

The 2nd ed., also on white paper, also published in Olympia, had a run of 54 copies in June, 1983.

The 3rd ed. was published June 1984 in Hopewell, Virginia by Robert Stump.

In the 1994 print-on-demand compilation, the cover of this minicomic was also used for the cover of the digest anthology.

Yes, this is basically a true story. My friend Elissa, who now lives in Seattle, can verify all this. Some details in real life that differ from the published version-- We are not dogs and Sasquatch doctors did not see me at the conclusion. But I was acquainted with a Dr. Robert Norton.

And instead of the Grub Harbor County Sheriff and crew that were totally drunk, it was several Grays Harbor County deputy sheriffs, the jail matron, and others in the staff who were totally drunk. And they did indeed lay the whole "search party" line on us. When we left early the next morning, that crowd was still there-- pretty wrecked and hung over!

Yes, I used to chew that Copenhagen garbage. Don't ever get hooked on that stuff, kids. Quitting it is pure Hell.

By the way, when my family moved to the farm which we went on to own for 40 years, I spent my childhood running around these Northwest jungle woods with the little grizzled dog who came with the place. He was gruff, floppy eared, and probably would've smoked cigars if I let him. We became best buddies and in many ways he was the original Morty the Dog. The previous owners named him Blackie, so the name stuck. I'm including a photo of us during my farm kid years.

Phone photo 53

Sasquatch Comix #4

1st ed. published early 1983 in Olympia, Washington. Blue cardstock cover, white guts. 55 copies.

2nd ed. in March, 1983, also in Olympia. Blue noncardstock cover. 50 copies.

For some reason I apparently do not have a copy of the 3rd ed., but my records indicate it was published in October, 1983 by Robert Stump in Hopewell, Virginia.

This was included in the 1994 digest-sized reprint-on-demand compilation of the series.

This tale is weird with a beard, man. I don't remember where I found it. This story has a hint of the Native American origins of the Sasquatch legend.

Aside from the small detail that Morty is the narrator, and he has some speaking lines in the last panel, he is otherwise more of a normal and traditional canine than usual in this story.