David Chelsea's Blog, page 18

UNDERGROUND USA: The Pictures

Don’t you wish that you had been at the recent UNDERGROUND USA symposium, which was a celebration of the legacy of Portland’s underground newspapers, the Willamette Bridge and the Portland Scribe? Here’s what you missed: Comics historian Patrick Rosenkranz blew our minds by proving that Basil Wolverton made it into print as a cartoonist by 1929- the crack of dawn of comic books. Also by identifying the exact points in the lives of Basil Wolverton and Carl Barks when their careers paths crossed those of the underground cartoonists who followed them. Former Scribe staffers Maurice Isserman and Norman Solomon discussed the urgency and political outrage behind the deceptively casual “fly by the seat of your pants” appearance of the underground press. Event organizer Anne Richardson talked about the several “undergrounds” which influenced the thinking and film writing of Sheldon Renan. I, David Chelsea, gave a tour of the artists/cartoonists who appeared in Portland’s underground press. Event moderator Richard Gehr and surprise guest Matt Groening drew a verbal map of a Portland stuffed with record stores, bookstores, live music, and Ken Kesey sightings, and both identified themselves as former Willamette Bridge newsboys. Animation legend Bill Plympton joined the panel discussion and Portland’s Poet Laureate Walt Curtis spoke in appreciation of Norman Solomon. A very complete experience! These photos may give some idea:

David Chelsea is watching: The Witch

Starring Anya Taylor-Joy

Me giving my presentation on the Portland Scribe
Image from my slide presentation, two panels from an early Portland Scribe comic
Panel discussion with moderator Richard Gehr, me, Patrick Rosenkranz, Norman Solomon, Bill Plympton, Maurice Isserman, and Matt Groening.
Posing in front of the wall of Scribe covers: Monte Wolverton, Patrick Rosenkranz, me, Maurice Isserman, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Richard Gehr, Norman Solomon, (front) Walt Curtis.
KBOO-FM host S. W. Conser, Patrick Rosenkranz, and me at the nearby Oregon Historical Society Comics City, USA exhibit

Photos by Gus Fredericks, S. W. Conser, and Ann Richardson.

Now archived! My appearance on the KB00-FM program Words And Pictures discussing UNDERGROUND USA with host S. W. Conser, Patrick Rosenkranz, and Norman Solomon.

The Modern Love Podcast: Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am

The Modern Love Podcast has repurposed another of my illustrations from the long-running New York Times column. In this episode of Modern Love: The Podcast, English actress Rebecca Hall (“Please Give”, “The Prestige”) reads the essay “Take Me As I Am, Whoever I Am,” Terri Cheney’s explanation of what it’s like to date while having bipolar disorder.

David Chelsea is reading:The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh

by Norman Solomon

Ms. Cheney is a best-selling author whose book “Manic: A Memoir” further delves into her experience with mental illness.

Rebecca Hall

Ms. Hall currently stars in the film “Christine”. This movie biography about Christine Chubbuck, a local news anchor who shot herself on the air in 1974, enriches two trivia categories: movies starring two unrelated actors with the same last name- Rebecca and Michael C. Hall (previous examples include Ivanhoe with Robert and Elizabeth Taylor, Six Weeks with Dudley and Mary Tyler Moore, and Conduct Unbecoming, with Michael and Susannah York), and because there is another film about Chubbuck in theaters, multiple movies about the same historical figure released the same year (two Oscar Wilde films in 1961, two Jean Harlow biographies in 1965, two Steve Prefontaine movies in 1997, and two Truman Capote movies in 2005).

UNDERGROUND USA On Words And Pictures

I recently blogged about Saturday’s Symposium UNDERGROUND USA, a nostalgia-fest about how awesome Portland’s underground papers, the Willamette Bridge and the Portland Scribe were. Tomorrow I talk about the event on KBOO-FM’s comics program Words And Pictures with fellow panelist Patrick Rosenkranz and KBOO host S.W. Conser. Listen in at 11:30am on 90.7 FM or online.

Produced by:

KBOO

Produced for

Words and Pictures

Air date:

Thu, 10/13/2016 –

11:30am to 12:00pm

David Chelsea is reading: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions

by Randall Munroe

We revisit Portland’s underground comics scene with cartoonist David Chelsea and author Patrick Rosenkranz

Underground USA is a symposium at the University of Oregon’s Portland campus on October 15th, paying tribute to great underground artists of the Pacific Northwest.

Joining us in the studio is Underground USA keynote speaker Patrick Rosenkranz, author of The Artist Himself: A Rand Holmes Retrospective and The Mythology of S. Clay Wilson. Also joining us is illustrator and cartoonist David Chelsea, whose colleagues at influential underground papers The Portland Scribe and The Willamette Bridge included Norman Solomon, Richard Gehr, and Bill Plympton.

And don’t forget to come to the event itself!

UNDERGROUND USA takes place this Saturday, October 15, 2016

from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at

70 Northwest Couch Street, Portland, OR 97209

Students (any kind, we won’t ask): $30

Members of Oregon Historical Society: $30

Members of Northwest History Network: $30

Members of Know Your City: $30

Members of IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center): $30

Members of KBOO: $30

Persons affiliated with PCM (Portland Community Media): $30

Members of OCTE (Oregon Council of Teachers of English): $30

Attendees of the 2015 and/or 2016 Oregon Film History Invitational: $30

My Portland Scribe slide show takes place from 1:00 PM – 1:40 PM

I will be participating with the other guests, Patrick Rosenkranz, Bill Plympton, Norman Solomon, Maurice Isserman and Richard Gehr, in a panel discussion from 2:45 PM – 3:45 PM

Two Days To Save AMERICAN BYSTANDER #3!

Cover of AMERICAN BYSTANDER #3

I pass along this message from AMERICAN BYSTANDER editor Michael Gerber:

Folks,

Big week for Bystander: Newsweek just called us “the last great humor magazine.”

But we hit a perfect storm with the crowdfunding on #3 — the election, and a change in Facebook’s algorithm that artificially suppresses our Kickstarter links (they want everybody to buy ads).

But the issue is still on track: an angel has agreed to make up any shortfall as long as we get to $25,000. We’re at $22,205 as I type. Deadline is Tuesday, Oct. 11, at 7:00pm PDT.

Please tell your friends to go back the issue.

We need to raise at least $2,795 before Tuesday at 7:00pm PDT. It should be a piece of cake, if everybody tells a pal or five.

Well, now I’ve told EVERYBODY.

I have blogged about the BYSTANDER before. It truly is the first notable new humor magazine to appear in decades, and it would be a shame if it doesn’t go past its second issue, and I don’t say this just because I have an illustration in the third issue:

THE AMERICAN BYSTANDER features from some of the funniest, most celebrated writers and artists from several generations: Roz Chast, George Meyer, Terry Jones, Brian McConnachie, Ellis Weiner, R.O. Blechman, Mimi Pond, M.K. Brown, Ron Barrett, Kate Beaton, Louisa Bertman, R.O. Blechman, Chris Bonno, John Caldwell, Seymour Chwast, Liza Donnelly, Xeth Feinberg, Liana Finck, Emily Flake, Shary Flenniken, Patricia Gerber, Robert Grossman, Stefan Hagen, Ron Hauge, Danny Hellman, Farley Katz, Adam Koford, Ken Krimstein, Eugenia Loli, Scott Marshall, Ethan Persoff, Mimi Pond, Arnold Roth, Cris Shapan, Mark Simonson, Grant Snider, Edward Sorel, Akiko Stehrenberger, Tom Toro, D. Watson, Julia Wertz, Nathan Yoder, Steve Young, and Jack Ziegler.

That link again.

This Saturday: UNDERGROUND USA

This Saturday, October 15th, I will be taking part in UNDERGROUND USA, a one-day symposium examining Portland’s radical past through the history of its underground newspapers, The Willamette Bridge and The Portland Scribe. Or, to quote the copy from the event’s official website:

UNDERGROUND USA is a one day public history/arts education event focusing on one chapter of Oregon print cartooning history.

website

Two underground papers, the Willamette Bridge (1968-1971) and the Portland Scribe (1972-1978), provided first jobs for a generation of artists and writers who went on to have national careers. Oregon Cartoon Institute invited five of them – artists Bill Plympton and David Chelsea, and writers Norman Solomon, Richard Gehr and Maurice Isserman – to return to Portland to taIk about these early experiences.

Among the questions they will address: What makes Portland so comics and cartooning friendly?

Two time Oscar nominee Bill Plympton drew covers for the Scribe. Political journalist Norman Solomon wrote for it. Historian Maurice Isserman edited it. Graphic novelist David Chelsea illustrated it. Village Voice columnist Richard Gehr sold it on the street.

Patrick Rosenkranz, the author of Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975, is our keynote speaker. He too worked for the Scribe.

What was the underground press?

Who read it?

Who wrote it?

What role did underground comics play in creating the sensibility of the underground press?

Was Portland’s current affinity for comics/cartooning already in evidence during this forgotten period of regional media making?

Through talks, presentations, onstage conversations and one gigantic culminating panel discussion, UNDERGROUND USA participants will explore these and other questions.

schedule

UNDERGROUND USA is open to the general public. It is presented by Oregon Cartoon Institute in partnership with UO Comics & Cartooning Studies and PSU Comic Studies, and with support from Oregon Historical Society.

David Chelsea is reading: War in the Neighborhood

by Seth Tobocman

Portland Scribe logo

In addition to appearing on a panel with the other guests, I will be presenting a talk on illustration and comics at the Scribe. My own earliest published comics were drawn for the paper, mostly featuring this character, Piggola, who was kind of a Wonder Warthog without superpowers:

Piggola

Also featured was Joe Cat, an average dad type, with his wife Bodice:

Joe Cat

And Reuben Rabbit, a bland and vacuous announcer:

Reuben Rabbit

The Willamette Bridge had carried syndicated strips by Underground greats like R. Crumb and Gilbert Shelton, but comics were a decidedly lesser element at the Scribe, as opposed to illustrations, which accompanied most articles. The Scribe was very upfront about its radical politics, and comics with their air of bourgeois frivolity were ever on editorial thin ice. One-shot strips were more common than continuing series, which never lasted long. Every year or so, a new series would be announced, only to be inconspicuously snuffed a few issues later. The Gilbert Street Fool’s Retreat, a strip about a commune drawn by an artist known only as Christopher, lasted two installments:

Gilbert Street Fool’s Retreat by Christopher

Prolific artist Bob Rini was a mainstay of the Scribe, contributing dozens of illustrations and one-shot comics, but his serialized strip FETUSMAN was also quickly aborted:

Fetusman by Bob Rini

The most famous artist to work at the Scribe was future animation star Bill Plympton, whose strip The Tube appeared both in the Scribe and New York’s Soho Weekly News- naturally, for only a few installments:

The Tube by Bill Plympton

My own experience was typical. I was a staff illustrator, patiently accepting every editorial assignment drawing heroic freedom fighters and evil CIA agents, while lobbying for a continuing strip of my own. Finally, the editors gave in, and I was even allowed to draw a cover announcing it:

About seven weeks later, my Piggola strip was voted out of existence at a collective meeting. I quit the paper, and soon moved to New York, where I became a full-time illustrator and didn’t draw comics again for nearly a decade.

Some of the one-shot strips which did pass editorial muster give an idea of the tenor of the times. As early as 1972, there was a sense that the glory days of the New Left had passed, as in this strip by Richard Weholt:

Comic by Richard Weholt

Women cartoonists were very much in the minority back then, but the Scribe gave them space. This strip by the otherwise unknown Billie Miracle strikes a blow for feminism and against the capitalist patriarchy by providing a recipe for homemade tampons made from industrial sponges:

Menstrual Sponge Comic by Billie Miracle

Thanks to Fred Nemo of Black Hat Bookstore for letting me photograph his Scribe archive!

UNDERGROUND USA takes place this Saturday, October 15, 2016

from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at

70 Northwest Couch Street, Portland, OR 97209

Students (any kind, we won’t ask): $30

Members of Oregon Historical Society: $30

Members of Northwest History Network: $30

Members of Know Your City: $30

Members of IPRC (Independent Publishing Resource Center): $30

Members of KBOO: $30

Persons affiliated with PCM (Portland Community Media): $30

Members of OCTE (Oregon Council of Teachers of English): $30

Attendees of the 2015 and/or 2016 Oregon Film History Invitational: $30

My Portland Scribe slide show takes place from 1:00 PM – 1:40 PM

I will be participating with the other guests, Patrick Rosenkranz, Bill Plympton, Norman Solomon, Maurice Isserman and Richard Gehr, in a panel discussion from 2:45 PM – 3:45 PM

Read my answers to three questions from UNDERGROUND USA organizer Anne Richardson here.

Anne Richardson

Rebecca Talks Socks

In case you missed Tuesday’s edition of PORTLAND TODAY, here is a link for you to watch Rebecca talking with the hosts Drew Carney and Cathy Marshall, and Sock It To Me Design Director Alicia Reese about her third-place-winning sock design for the Design-A-Sock Contest from last year, by way of promoting this year’s contest. Rebecca is at the right in the photograph above, wearing her own pair of Penguin-festooned socks. Unfortunately, you’ll miss all the ads and the live reports from Powell’s Bookstore interviewing people standing in line to have their picture taken with Bruce Springsteen, but you can’t have everything!

By the way, you can order Rebecca’s socks by using the link below. If enough people use my website link, I get a payment which will benefit the Feed And Clothe Ben And Rebecca Fund!

The Secret Stash On Patreon: Looking Glass Ads!

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my Patreon page. Last Thursday I posted a new selection of Secret Stash material– a selection of newspaper ads drawn for the Portland Scribe advertising the Looking Glass Bookstore in the years between 1976 and 1978. The Looking Glass Bookstore was run by Bill Kloster and Katie Radditz, a married couple and good friends of mine. I had been a long time customer from the time I was in high school, frequently sneaking looks at the off-limits-to-minors underground comics they had displayed on a rack.

David Chelsea is reading: Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

by Harry N. Abrams

The ad below features the staff of the bookstore at the time. Bill is second from the left and Katie is fourth from the left. The names of the others are unknown, but I am fairly sure that the mustached guy in the middle was named Barry.

Thanks to Fred Nemo of Black Hat Bookstore for allowing me to photograph pages from his archive of Portland Scribe issues. Soon I will be posting some of the illustrations I did for that newspaper, which were among the earliest paid work I did anywhere, and I will also appear as part of UNDERGROUND USA, a symposium on Saturday, October 15, which is generally about Portland’s radical past, seen through the history of its underground papers The Willamette Bridge and The Portland Scribe. More about this later.

Membership has its privileges; all Secret Stash material is viewable by patrons at the $4.99 level and above.

I have also been posting new episodes of ARE YOU BEING WATCHED? weekly, and in fact I have now returned to posting two pages a week. We have been through Mugg’s return to Expulsion Island, where he and Mandy got into a sudden death challenge for the million dollar prize, which appears to be going quite badly for Mugg:

This may look like the end of the story, but trust me, there’s a way out, because we segue to a short transitional scene where the devil is up to routine mischief in a tattoo parlor:

And on to Packrats, a Hoarders-type show in which Mugg is amassing an archive of 24 hour comics, much to the consternation of his wife Mandy:

Also posted this month– a new batch of re-scanned and re-formatted WELCOME TO THE ZONE pages, featuring the Trumpoid real estate developer Ronald Duck:

Patreon is a reader-supported site, but all comics content is free. If you like what you see, tell your friends, and $how Your $upport!

Promise – this week I’ll post about last weekend’s 24 hour Comics session at Books With Pictures!

Episode #2 Of IN THE STUDIO Now Up!

In this thrilling installment, Jacob and David discuss the new Flintstones comic, discuss the imminent 24 Hour Comic Book Day, and argue about the systemic inequalities of comic conventions. Listen here.

Episode # 2 Of IN THE STUDIO Now Up!

In this thrilling installment, Jacob and David discuss the new Flintstones comic, discuss the imminent 24 Hour Comic Book Day, and argue about the systemic inequalities of comic conventions. Listen here.

I’m Going Off Caffeine!

The reason being, that I’m drawing my first 24 Hour comic in three years this Saturday to Sunday from 8 am to 8 am, at Books With Pictures, a comics store at 1100 SW. Division St. in Portland (this is the store that was also the site of my recent SNOW ANGEL signing). My traditional method of preparing involves going off caffeine for a week before the event, then taking a ritual first sip at the eight-hour mark, after which I chomp chocolate-covered espresso beans all through the night. Feel free to stop on by and have a chat- if you missed the signing, I’ll even sign a copy of SNOW ANGEL for you!

David Chelsea is reading:The Fade Out Volume 3

by Image Comics

This will be 24 Hour Comic #17 for me- wish me luck! I have an idea what I’ll draw, but I don’t want to jinx things by talking about it beforehand. No doubt I’ll have more to report once it’s done.