Friday, April 24, 2009

Boxing the Books

Back before these internets, dear reader, young punks would rail at the stars with 'zines. These sprung from the hippy underground and the sci-fi fan world of the 1960s and proliferated with cheap photocopies in the 80's and 90's.

Kin with the zinesters were the punk cartoonists who brought design style to self-publishing.

Many wonders uncovered as we pack up to move two blocks south.

These from the "Comics" section of the library.

Brian's personal "Snatch"

This is a digest-sized R. Crumb comic from 1969.

Every drawing is filthy. In fact the two below are the "cleanest" ones.


inside cover

In the kitchen at The Ink Tank was a laminated drawing of a man finger pointed skyward with a speech balloon exclaiming: "Keep this place clean!"

"That looks just like a Crumb drawing," I said to R. O. Blechman while we washed dishes after a birthday party.

"It is," he quickly replied and told me about the time Crumb came to dinner at his home (R. O. had spent a week with Crumb in San Francisco in the early 60s and they mutual admirers). As the food was about to hit the table, R. O. entered the drawing room, finger upward and exclaimed "Dinner is served!" A week later he recieved a thank you note and the portrait which he photocopied and re-titled as a daily reminder for cleanliness.

That same room held boxes and boxes of these:

Nozone: Joost Swarte cover

Nicholas Blechman began publishing this 'zine of political comics while doing freelance out of the studio.

Each issue is different in theme and format. The content is political but the experience is always visual, while much of the work is heavily polemic it's even more "revolutionary" in design terms.


One regular contributor Nicholas' books was David Mazzuchelli. We're fortunate to have all three of his "Rubber Blanket" issues.


Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik published "Bad News" in 1984.

cover by Kaz

Contributors included Gary Panter, Glenn Head, Milt Gross, and Peter Bagge amongst others (including an "Homage to Chuck Jones" by Bruno Richard).

But the coolest part for me is an ad for the bygone Venus Records, where I wasted many hours in college when I should have been chasing girls.

Good Golly, Miss Molly!

And there's this title, which I never heard of:

Exit, edited by Adam Parfrey

I didn't know who the editor was (he's not in the New York cartoonist circles these days). Turns out he's publishing interesting and esoteric authors with his own press Feral House .

The first few pages are a newspaper. On the overleaf, you can't tell if the stories are real or fiction.


There's a gatefold by Joe Coleman.



And for you cartoon fans, a comic drawn by "Rugrats" composer Mark Mothersbaugh.

2 comments:

Mark Newgarden said...

Yeah, you should have been chasing girls. That VENUS RECORDS guy never paid for his ad! No wonder he went belly up!

roconnor said...

You should have at least gotten a few of those $1 mystery bags.