Phone photo 171

Dog of Dawn, Dog of Dusk

Another one of the delayed comix I created and printed in 1985 (like Cranium Frenzy #5), but held off from releasing until early 1986.

1st edition, 1985, 50 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, 1986, 30 copies, salmon cover, enlarged digest size.

Print-on-demand, 1994, regular digest size. I don't know how many of these are out there, but I imagine they outnumber the first two editions combined.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies (4 red cover, 1 green cover), regular digest size.

I'm not sure what this means, but of all my works this was a favorite for Jay Kennedy and Lynn Hansen, and both of these gentlemen are no longer in the world of the living. Jay liked "The Maze" so much he included it as the concluding piece in Giant-Size Mini Comics #3 (Eclipse Comics, Dec. 1986). "The Maze" is a very simple tale, perhaps too simple, but the message it packs still rings true to me.

Page 17 has a nod to the dog characters of my Newave comrades Steve Lafler and Bruce Chrislip.

The face on page 18, panel 1 was, I think, burned into the paper with a soldering gun. Panel 5 was a recognition that my friend Bob Richart (a fellow librarian who I worked with at WSU and later at WLN) introduced me to the history of dog butting, a very real sport played in Medieval France.

Page 19: Notice in panel 2 Bob Richartolovskii says "Hot Damn! A Morty Dog!" I believe this pretty much confirms Jim Ryan's theory that Morty is species, not an individual-- like a collie, a beagle, a poodle, a Morty Dog. This would explain why he seems to always come back from the dead after being killed.

Page 20+: I was laughing pretty hard when I was drawing the Cosmo Bear portion of the story. At the time, it seemed cute bears with balloons and rainbows were all the rage, as popularized by the Care Bears. I was probably laughing the hardest at page 23, panel 1 as I was drawing. OK, OK, so I have a sick sense of humor.

The final page on the back cover is a quintessential Morty ending, incorporating several devices I liked to employ: A Shakespeare quote, a metamorphosis (the hands), Morty surviving an attempt at being offed by his creator, and the main character drifting away as the viewer remains stationary.

Phone photo 170

Delayed Stress Syndrome Funnies

Apparently part of this comic was drawn when I still lived in Seattle and the remainder was finished after I moved back to Olympia, yet again but for the last time, in mid-1982. The first edition carries as the place of imprint, "Olympia & Seattle, Washington."

It was definitely printed in Olympia. The printshop was run by a local big fish in small pond, a conservative Republican who ran his own weekly newspaper. His employees had a pretty low opinion of this here comic and let me know they thought it was a complete waste of their energy. It wasn't the only time I've had a printer cast asparagus at my work while accepting my money.

However, in this case there was a very unique factor. I think I ordered something like 50 copies and here's what I got for the price: 48 copies of the covers, and 273 complete sets of the guts! Someone goofed in my favor. Unfortunately, all their printing was pretty crappy. But for the first five editions all I had to do was print a new cover as I could afford to print.

1st edition, October or November 1982, Olympia & Seattle, Washington, 48 copies, creme or goldenrod cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, January 1983, Olympia, Washington, 64 copies, yellow cover, enlarged digest size.

3rd edition, May 1983, Olympia, Washington, 68 copies. blue cover, enlarged digest size.

4th edition, February 1984, Pullman, Washington, 50 copies, green cover, enlarged digest size.

5th edition, May 1984, Pullman, Washington, 43 copies, salmon cover, enlarged digest size.

Print-on-demand, 1996, unknown number of copies, regular digest size.

1st Danger Room Reprint Edition, June 2005, 5 copies, pink cover, regular digest size.

The main story is pretty pretentious, but I did enjoy writing the way the dialogue made transitions from one panel to another. The idea of a mentally unstable President making a deliberate silly face in a public speech actually became reality later in the 1980s when old Ron the Con did precisely that.

Omnia Mutantur and Scrap Race to Acropolis were later published as individual minicomix by One Man Studio (Chris Bors), Ithaca, New York.