Phone photo 211

McCleary 2002 Calendar

1st edition, September 22, 2001, 50 copies, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, November 20, 2001, 30 copies, enlarged digest size.

Frankly, I'm not sure if there is way to tell the editions apart.

Not all of my published work has to do with comix. For about 15 years I was very active with the McCleary Museum and even served as President of the McCleary Historical Society for a year, cataloged their collection of photographs, manuscripts and publications, and edited the newsletter for awhile too.

Anyway, I'll be including some of the historical writings in this blog due to the graphic work. This calendar was put together as a fundraiser and sold out quickly. Note the entry on May 20.

The drawing on final page is not mine. I wish it was, but it isn't.

McCleary Calendar 2002

Phone photo 210

McCleary, Washington, east end of town looking north. This part of town, where I lived 1986-1994, was known as "Little Italy" in the old days. It was also where one of our most famous residents, Angelo Pellegrini, first discovered American culture and described it so well in his writings. I used to live kitty corner from the Pellegrini house. It was fun to read his essays about McCleary and then simply look out of my window to see the very neighborhood he was telling us about.

State of the Morty Blog 12/2010

So far so good.

Today I'm putting my studio back together after the double interruption of a gas heater that flooded and having my incredible wonderful daughter paint the inside of the house.

In the meantime Sarah has been setting up a way for us to start making some reprinted comix available. I've identified a couple titles I'd like to start with. Thanks to our patrons of the comix arts, making the first print run should be no problem.

The blog has gained a small but regular audience, not unlike my comix. We're averaging about 1500 hits a month from all over the world. We're still in a little subculture secret corner, even online.

At some point I had to make a decision whether or not to put more focus on networking. But I've been there before when I edited City Limits Gazette. Also, there are already some great websites covering us obscuro comix artists, notable among them are Poopsheet and Midnight Fiction.

The current phase of this website, scanning and posting old comix, has a finite life. Eventually I'll cram everything in here. I admit there are a few comix I'm still debating whether or not to post since they are so bad, and there are cartoonists I've jammed with that I can't locate for permission to post, but aside from that this website should be as about a complete portfolio of my published work as possible.

Then what? We'll see.

Phone photo 209

McCleary, Washington, looking northwest

Carved out in the hills south of the Olympics, where the Aberdeen and Olympia spheres of influence don't quite meet, the town has always been fiercely independent. It was a company town until the end of 1941, and unlike other camps that rolled over and died, the people incorporated the place and created their own municipality.

A List of Strange and Eerie Coincidences of Cosmic Significance Concerning the Lives of Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur

Full title: A List of Strange and Eerie Coincidences of Cosmic Significance Concerning the Lives of Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur : Earthshaking Evidence Which Will Change the Course of American Historiography.

Unrevised, marked-up, rough 1st edition, 1987, blue cover, regular digest size.

2nd edition, somewhat revised and bit less messy than the 1st edition, 1988, white cover, regular digest size.

I have no idea how many of these are out there, but it can't be too many. The 2nd edition, I think, was printed because a library in Montana actually requested one via interlibrary loan, so I cooked up a new edition with a very small run.

This was churned out on my old typewriter and looks it. The idea became a full exhibit at The Evergreen State College Library in late 1987. I later used most of the exciting facts as part of the story in How Two Ex-Presidents Went Up My Nose.

In my world view of predestination there is no such thing as coincidence or free will. So these Millard/Chester facts are not as eerie as they seem.

Sarah believes the world would be better off not knowing these Fillmore/Arthur facts. To broadly paraphrase her, she thinks civilization is not ready for this cosmic connection.

Phone photo 208

Making Mistakes

Making Mistakes : Teaching Writing to Children / Steve Charak. Olympia, WA : Young Voices, c2002. (0962720151)

When my friend Steve Charak asked me to draw the cover for the book he had worked so hard to produce, I was flattered. Steve had always been very supportive of my comix and counted himself a Morty fan. His death in 2004 at age 51 was a devastating loss to the Olympia community.

The cover was actually the work of two of us. Garn Turner designed and provided the typography.

Phone photo 207

Limbolympia

1st edition, January 1983, Olympia, Washington, 50 copies, ivory cover, enlarged digest size.

2nd edition, March 1983, Olympia, Washington, 56 copies, goldenrod cover, enlarged digest size.

Print-on-demand reprint series, 1994, McCleary, Washington, regular digest size.

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

So named because I was back in Oly 1982-1983 and not feeling all that great about being trapped in that city, yet again. I was holding down a temporary job in my field after having just gotten married and wanted something permanent. Hence in Limbo in Olympia.

Trivia:

I think the Darwin Corksniffer story might've been born in a writing class with instructor Peter Elbow during my senior year at The Evergreen State College 1978-1979. I revived the idea and made it into a comic.

"The 13 O'clock Movie" story has the feel of purging a bunch of stuff.

Apparently Joe Stalin knew a lot more English than he let on. I once made a constructive suggestion involving Stalin's stuffed corpse to the Russians via my comic The Tall Elf.

The D.B. Cooper story is true. The case remains unsolved although several strong candidates (all of them now dead) have emerged in the last decade.

There have been a lot of reprints over the years of some parts of this book, but Found Loose in the Mail was made into a minicomic of it's own by Hal Hargit in 1987.