Mud Bay, Thurston County, Washington
The Diogenes Club
Friday, October 29, 2010
Cranium Frenzy # 1
1st edition September 1981, Seattle, Washington, 40 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest.
2nd edition, October 1981, Seattle, Washington, 25 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest.
3rd edition, January 1982, Seattle, Washington, 25 copies, cherry cover, enlarged digest.
It was at some point in the first three editions I was first contacted by Jay Kennedy, author of The Official Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide, and was educated to the fact print runs were of extreme importance to some collectors. From this point on I started keeping closer track of this kind of trivia. The first three editions of Cranium Frenzy # 1 are, to my eye, indistinguishable from each other.
Available as a print-on-demand title, regular digest size, 1995-1996.
1st Danger Room Reprint Ed., June 2005, 6 copies (3 blue, 2 green, 1 red) also regular digest size.
This is my longest running title and probably the best one to trace my career as an obscuro cartoonist. The first issue was drawn during my torturous time in graduate school at the University of Washington-- the comix project was keeping me sane. The latest issue, #10, was published in Century 21.
Somewhere between the three printings I learned about Clay Geerdes Comix World newsletter and the Newave comix network, so this title served as my initial calling card and trading stock as I quickly became introduced to a small army of amazing fellow cartoonists through the mail.
It is pretty safe to say most of the 1st editions were handed around to my social circle in Seattle at the time, and hardly any of them were comrade comix artists. I imagine most of the copies circulating among comix collectors out there are the 2nd and 3rd editions.
Jay Kennedy liked my work and I think included mention of the first two Cranium Frenzys in his Guide as something of a last minute effort since it seemed he was practically finished when he initially contacted me. I've attached his listing, although I must restate there is no way to tell the first three editions apart.
Trivia:
P. 2: Panel 1 anticipates my future Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke. Last three panels: I had the pleasure of meeting the Pacific Northwest poet William Stafford in the 1970s. A pacifist in WWII, he pointed out this inconsistency about society's attitudes toward murder with sort of a quiet rage.
P. 3: The smartest man in the world shows up again in Cranium Frenzy # 2.
P. 4: Ronson Rabbit was a character I drew in funny animal comics during my childhood.
P. 7: Giant reptiles were later used in Amused to No End, Cranium Frenzy # 6, and most notably in Fetid Lake of Doom.
P. 10: Using the population statistics as a title and a way to set the tone was later employed in the microcomic Pop. 1075. Panel 6: I was a taxicab driver in Burlington, Vermont for awhile in 1979. Every budding cartoonist should drive a taxicab for little bit as part of the training for a career in comic art. It's a trip, man.
P. 11+: By a weird coincidence, an excellent cartoonist named Chad Woody came up with a toasterhead character about 10 years later, utterly unaware of this comic. Now what sort of cosmic consciousness did we both plug into (no pun intended)?
P. 20+: Based on the bizarre real-life journey of Oliver Cromwell's severed head. As an aside I had two ancesters who were minor officials in the Cromwell regime. This duo, father-in-law and son-in-law, were Puritan ministers who enjoyed going into those magnificent cathedrals with sledgehammers in order to whack away at graven images. After Cromwell died they became "Nonconformist" Puritans. One of them died young as the result of constant imprisonment.
P. 23: "Puny and absurd ..." I think it was a line from the movie The Incredible Shrinking Man.
P. 24: Last panel. Notice Maxwell from the earlier giant reptile story lurking in the background. I forgot about that until I scanned this thing.
P. 25: True story. And it is still all I know about Indiana from first-hand experience. This page was sort an ancestor to my later State of Beings series.
P. 26+: By 1981 Morty the Dog had already been around for about 5 or 6 years as one of my characters, but this was his first full-length story. Notice he's called "Morty Mutt" in the title. In an earlier incarnation I called him "Mortie the Dog." But back on page 2 you'll see he's "Morty the Dog."
P. 26: Parvo Nakacheker, I think, was the inventor of the jock-strap. Or at least that's what I thought at the time.
The car and truck were based on two childhood toys I still have. They survived our housefire on the farm, so the fact they remain in my possession is pretty neat. I'll attach a photo of them here.
P. 29: Panel 4. One of my all-time favorite panels ever. The word "peckerhead" entered my vocabulary during my cab driver days.
P. 32: "Mr. God" later became known as "The Big G," the bald little guy with the Yellow Kid smock. I do believe in God, by the way. I think after I bite the Big One I'll get to meet God and she'll thank me for making her laugh about how goofy all these religions are.
The Cat With the Human Mouth
This tidbit of feline data gives me the opportunity to return a compliment. The Jim and Frank Podcast gave Morty the Dog a nice plug yesterday.I'd like to direct our readers to Jim Gill's Conversation with My Cat Part 1 and Part 2.
Sarah laughed so hard she got tears in her eyes. But the four cats looked nervous during the brief animations, like the jig was up or something.
Counter-Culture Comix : a Look at Newave and Underground Literature
Hard to believe, but in less than six months after I left Washington State University's employment for greener pastures, WSU staged a huge exhibit on the Newave and undergound comix in their collection.
The exhibit ran from November 3-December 19, 1986, making it probably one of the very earliest academic presentations on Newave comix. I remember the exhibit included Cranium Frenzy #5, Natural Functions, and Storm Warnings.
There was a panel discussion when the exhibit opened. The participants included cartoonists Michael Dowers, Maggie Resch, Leonard Rifas, myself, English faculty Paul Brians (donor of the original box of undergrounds that started the whole collection), and librarian Ed Kukla. As I recall, Leonard was an old hand at this kind of thing and blew everyone else out the water with an excellent set of slides (before the days of power point).
Bruce Chrislip was also invited to speak, but he couldn't make it. So he provided a life-size cardboard drawing of himself. We set it up in a chair and played the cassette tape he provided of his presentation. The part of the tape I remember most was when Bruce was almost finished and than said, "Any questions? Yeah, you in the back ... Oh, I'm glad you asked that ..." and then proceeded with a bit more info.
Librarian John Guido coordinated with us cartoonists. A very nice young woman named Marilyn Sandmeyer prepared the exhibit itself. She very politely asked me not to kill off Morty the Dog.
The program cover and poster was reprinted from The Tragedy of Morty, Prince of Denmarke Act 3.
Art Guards
Charlie and Dreamer protect an original unpublished illustration. They claim it belongs it to them. It was drawn in May 1977 during the first time I lived in Seattle. I believe it was created with India ink, a medium I have not used since then.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The Collected Bil Keane Watch
Published mid-1994 with an initial run of 50 copies, most of those going to contributors. After that it became a print-on-demand publication for a year or two.
Basically it was simply every "Bil Keane Watch" from City Limits Gazette collected and presented as an individual set of books. Five volumes to be exact! The volume number designation was indicated by the amount of nostrils on the cover.
There were a couple things in this set not originally presented in CLG. One of them was "The Last Bil Keane Watch," which was an article in Subliminal Tattoos # 1 (1994).
Although I did offer this as a print-on-demand back in the 90s, I'm hesitant to scan and post things with this here newfangled electronic gizmo without permission from the contributors.
Here's the list. If your name is on this lineup and you don't mind me reprinting your writing, let me know and maybe I'll post a sampler of this set on this blog in the near or distant future:
Mark Campos, Randy Scott, Wayno, Ted Bolman, Bruce Chrislip, Troy Hickman, Bruce Bolinger, Clark Dissmeyer, Jeff Nicholson, Jeffrey Kipper, Maximum Traffic, Mike Lee, Ben Adams, Sean Bieri, M. Stengl, Bill Donahue, Steve Lafler, Ricardo Nancy McJacksonstein, Jeff Zenick, Randy H. Crawford, Jeff Snee, Brad Foster, Russell Rose, Bryan Willis, Matt Love, Andrew Roller, "Thad Willis," Kel Crum, Gary Usher, Dusty Rhoads, Jeremy Pinkham, Ted Delorme, Tom Jansson, Asa Sparks, Ken Clinger, Michael Drummond, William Dockery, Greg Stomberg, and Bruce Sweeney. Apologies to anyone I've missed.
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