comet tales

Featuring two writings by Mery Smith

How fucking dare you

I have my own sex life Outside of you Outside of us

I have me

I do some things just for her I will put my name on whatever the fuck I want to I will dance and prance and not hide my jiggly thighs

I am not somebody’s some body

Our name your shame passing it like sand Here, hold this. Our hot embarrassment

I spent too long letting boys do as they pleased with my body

You cannot have my vocal chords or my signature or my name. Here, open your hands, hold this

On The Promises I Make Myself As a Writer

I sit down to read, write and stretch. I notice now, of course, that I am hungry. And cold.

Goddamnit. I reach into my bag for keys, an exit. But instead I find, no shit, a pair of socks.

Moments later, maybe a year or more, my poor body is still hungry. My plans for reading and writing shrivel up in the corner like old cat poo. I can’t focus on words while my stomach argues like this. I reach inside my magic sack and pull out a halfeaten bag of cinnamon gummy bears. I’m not joking. They are warm and soft from the friction of so many surprising things rubbing together.

First, I limit myself. I will only eat, say, three, maybe five. But then, I feel risky and needy. I eat all the bear shaped bodies. My tongue is spicy, gooey and somehow, sandpaper. I devour four more chapters of a novel. What time is it? It must have been forty years ago I left them all. I haven’t checked my phone for messages. No SOS but my own. Making things means survival. I am camped out here dialing for rescue.

My toes wiggle underneath the white cotton foot slacks. I point them out and back towards my nose. I bend to make a shape unbearably hard. The more uncomfortable I am, the more worthy I feel. I must be trying/succeeding? Panic always follows my joy around. I close my eyes and breathe in fire from my hamstrings. Now, in Savasana, I am anything I want to be; Yogi-bitch, Pretzel-Pulitzer prize winner. Hyena.

I am a writer who has not written much. That’s why I came here today. To write. Jesus. What have I done in the three months I have been parked in this parking lot? The magnetic pull to abandon this errand is pulling. I plant my ass in the grass so hard I am having intercouse with the green blades. Being the Promise Keeper that I am, I start sketching a plan. I promise myself to tell the truth I promise myself I will not stop having intercourse with the grass and leave until I write down the truth of who I am:

I AM A WOMAN WITHOUT A CURFEW.

By Ron Evans

When I first set out to see about getting some syndicated comic strips in The Comet, I made many inquiries online and to cartoonists I personally know. I couldn’t really find any answers as to how it all worked. One of our local toonheads and Comet contributor Dan McConnell reached out to a few prolific comic creators including Bill Griffith (Zippy, Young Lust) who had such a clear and concise response. Each strip had a set price based on the distribution numbers of the publication, and that was really all there was to it. And Griffith responded personally which was a nice bonus. So we sent the check and got some Zippys to print.

So, a little background…

In the U.S. during the 60’s and 70’s - along with musical, cinematic and literary revolutions, there was a fledgling movement started by a group of young comic book creators disenfranchised by what they were seeing in most mainstream comics of the day. In search of the freedom to create the kind of content they could never “City Life” Lydia Selk get away with by adhering to the standards and practices of the Comics Code Authority or any of the big publishers - IE explicit sex, drugs, politics, and satire on just about every timely or taboo topic under the sun.

Artists like R. Crumb (Zap, Fritz The Cat), Spain Rodriguez (Subvert Comics, Mean Bitch Thrills), Art Speigelman (Maus, Garbage Pail Kids) Barbara “Willy” Mendes (Make Money, Sell American Seeds) and Kim Deich (Hollywoodland, Beyond The Pale) are just a handful of these stylistically varied, mostly left-wing inkwell revolutionaries. By 1970, San Francisco had become somewhat of a hub for many of these counter culture cartoonists and about that time, New Yorker Bill Griffith decided to venture west to see about this comics movement he’d been hearing about.

As a youngster, Griffith was turned on to illustrative art in part by his next door neighbor, pulp fiction artist Ed Emshwiller, who once used a young Griffith as a model for an issue of Science Fiction Stories. As Griffith got older he fell in love with comics and he soon set out to try his own hand at the craft. His first strips were published in the East Village Other and Screw Magazine and featured an angry amphibian named Mr. The Toad. A character Griffith later featured in its own publication Tales of Toad. Another early publication was Young Lust, an X-rated parody of the popular romance books of the 50s and 60s. He and Art Speigleman co-edited an underground anthology called Arcade: The Comics Revue featuring many of the aforementioned creators.

And then along came Zippy.

Zippy The Pinhead made his first appearance in Real Pulp Comics #1 in March 1971. A viewing of Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks (which featured a couple of microcephalic or “pinhead” characters) likely planted the idea seed according to Griffith.

Per Bill Griffith’s website: “Zippy the Pinhead features a demented microcephalic in a polka-dotted muumuu who spouts surreal aphorisms. The strip is, according to some, a delightfully bizarre social commentary; it appears daily in more than 200 newspapers nationwide.”

If you have ever asked “Are we having fun yet?” you have quoted Zippy, and this popular non-sequitur is acknowledged in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, a longrunning and widely distributed collection of notable quotations. Zippy even has his own theme song with lyrics by The B-52s’ Fred Schneider and vocals by The Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel. Also on the cut are singers Phoebe Snow and Jon Hendricks.

The Comet is thrilled to join the many publications offering monthly Zippy strips and we thought a little QnA with the creator himself would be an appropriate way to get to know the strip, the underground comix movement and the wacky business of professional cartoons.

It’s interesting to me that someone who spent their earlier days creating in such an underground and counter culture medium has also found their way into many mainstream papers and periodicals. Was that ever a goal (interest) or simply part of the organic growth of Zippy?

It just grew out of the weekly alternative newspaper world where Zippy ran in about 50 papers, to the San Francisco Examiner asking to be a client (daily), then to King Features flying out from New York and offering me a national deal. None of it was planned. But I welcomed the steady paycheck, and no one ever gave me editorial guidelines (aside from avoiding four-letter words and x-rated sex).

Around 15 years ago we saw massive declines in newspaper revenue which killed off quite a few papers, but that seems to have stabilized to some degree. Talk about that period from a strip creator standpoint and how things have changed in the overall strip business over the years.

Naturally, my daily paper client list has shrunk over the last 15 years - but the decline seems to be going in slow motion, so I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet. Many papers that stopped print editions kept their online version, where they still run comics, so income still comes from that source.

When researching the topic, I had a hard time nailing down the business of comic strips. Is it a little all over the map concerning syndication? How does this work?

Daily comics syndication is all based on the circulation of the newspaper. The bigger the circulation, the higher the rate. A paper can run strips Mon-Sat or all 7 days, including Sunday. The cartoonist and the syndicate split the weekly take (sometimes 50/50, but depending on individual deals) the Sunday strip is charged at the same rate as all 6 dailies. Also, the Syndicate guarantees it will not sell a strip to competing newspapers in the same city (or market).

Along with the strip format and collected anthologies, you have put out books of a longer narrative style. I’m curious which format you find the most freedom to work in?

I have a two-track mind these days. On one hand, I continue to produce the daily Zippy, which at this point is like breathing. On the other, I do my long form graphic novels. Right now, I’m working on my fourth one. Number three, “Three Rocks, The Ernie Bushmiller Story” (a biography on the Nancy cartoonist) comes out in March 2022 from Abrams Books. I wouldn’t feel quite right if either one was gone, so I just plug on, grateful that both options are still available.

Stories of the old days of underground comix and the collaborative efforts between all these like minded (but stylistically varied) weirdos passionately working together to create something new has always inspired many creators. Are you still in contact with many of your fellow comix pioneers from the early days?

Yes, to a degree. I still see or talk to Art Spiegelman, Kim Deitch and Robert Crumb fairly often.

Much of those early comix worked as satire on the mainstream comics world. Thoughts on where those mainstream publishers are these days? And are there any new(ish) creators, indie or mainstream, whose work you are jazzed about?

Mainstream comics have never held much interest for me, especially after the 1960s. Today, they suffer from competition with superhero movies and they have become increasingly obsessed with violent action and a creepy fetish with musculature. Strictly for adolescents (of all ages). Before the 60s, I read lots of comics, especially Mad magazine, Uncle Scrooge and Plastic Man.

Let’s talk about Zippy. Where did the idea for a pinhead strip come from and what was your intent (hope) with it? And has that intent morphed over the years?

Zippy began as one-shot story for an early Underground comic, “Real Pulp #1” in 1971. I never intended it to go any further. But, soon, I needed a sidekick for my egomaniacal “Mr. Toad’’ character and Zippy was just right. 50 years later, he’s still here, sometimes paired with Mr. Toad, more often with my alter ego character, Griffy.

What’s an average work day like for you? Are you writing and drawing all the time or do you try to compile a bunch and then take some time to enjoy a waterfall here and there?

I generally work from around noon to 8PM. About three days a week is devoted to the 7 daily Zippys, the others to my current long form book.

Any projects/releases you have coming up you’d like to mention? And where can people follow your exploits online?

My current project is a graphic bio of my great-grandfather, pioneer photographer of the American West, William Henry Jackson. People can see a new Zippy strip every day on zippythepinhead.com.

Find Zippy in The Comet on page 36. C

panels and gutters: free comic book day

By Ron Evans

Free Comic Book Day is coming up on August 14th, and it’s the perfect way to see what’s happening in the comics world for seasoned readers and new dabblers alike. It’s also a great excuse to venture into the mysterious, colorful (and often a little overwhelming) realm that is the comic book shop. Leavenworth’s Krampus Kave is one such realm, and they are giddy about Free Comic Book Day. Well... they may just be giddy in general, but if you have been looking for a new comic book to get into or an old classic series to get caught up on - they will happily lend you their qualified guidance. Opened in 2015 by owners Joe Seguin, Matthew Seguin and Sharon Seguin, the shop offers a dizzying variety of books, games, toys and collectibles - all curated and lovingly ushered onto the public by a team of passionate ner- ...ahem, employees. I talked with the shop’s manager, JJ Herndandez, to learn more about the upcoming event and about how Krampus Kave was formed in the dark and moody depths of a Bavaraian village.

Tell us a little about when and why you started a comic shop?

I came up with the idea to start a comic book shop in Leavenworth while walking around at night with a local friend. It had always been a dream of mine to run a “nerd” shop since I first rolled a D20, so I asked my friends if they thought it was a good idea to open a comic book shop here since they lived in town. They said it was a terrible idea, and I ignored them.

How has the industry changed over the years and talk about keeping up with the times concerning comics?

Ha! It feels like there’s a seismic shift every couple years. When we started we had one distributor for all our books, Marvel, DC, all of them and now we have like four. Everyone broke up and now order dates and release dates are all over the place. It’s definitely more work but honestly it seems like the end result is we can get more of what our customers want faster so... net gain?

Favorite books: new and classic?

Oh man, I spend way too much time reading comics. Current books I love are The Immortal Hulk which is about to end (crying emoji) and against all odds there’s Rorschach which is a Watchmen spinoff I expected to hate but fell head over heels for. As far as classic books, I’m afraid I’m less experienced but the old Marvel Conan The Barbarian books are fire and I’m partial to the Dark Horse Star Wars series as well.

If you had to pick one comic book (or series) to turn people on to reading comics what would it be and why?

That’s so tough! I don’t know these people! Send them to me and I’ll ask what they like and find the book they’re looking for. Also Murder Falcon by Daniel Warren Johnson, which I assure you is more wholesome than it sounds.

Has the explosion of comic book based films over the past couple of decades translated into interest in the books as well, or does it seem to be two different audiences?

100% People see and enjoy the characters in the movies and shows and look for more in the books. We are constantly selling out of Scarlet Witch books since Wandavision came out. Same with Invincible and The Boys and what’s really started to happen recently is as soon as new shows and movies are announced people are asking for the books to get ahead of the wave. Moon Knight especially is getting a ton of heat right now.

Other than comic books, are there any sources of revenue for the shop you dabble in?

Board games are our biggest seller by a

Krampus co-owner Joe Seguin and manager JJ Hernandez Friendly Comic Guide Maxwell Reister at the entrance to the Krampus Kave

significant margin. With Collectable Card Games (think Magic The Gathering and Pokemon) coming in second. Comics are like fourth or fifth despite taking up the most floor space.

Tell us about Free Comic Book Day - and what are you most excited about concerning the titles available for this year’s event?

Free Comic Book Day is such a fun event for us. Watching people get to try out books they might not normally go for and get hooked is so delightful. Last year the big hit for me was Fire Power by Robert Kirkman (Invincible, The Walking Dead) and Chris Samnee. This year I’m looking forward to the X-Men book and just finding something new.

Any other events for the store coming up you’d like to promote?

Our favorite event of the year is Free RPG Day which is the weekend of October 16th this year. We are also looking to get some regular Magic The Gathering events in as well as a hobby/paint night. If anyone is interested in painting mini figures for DnD or Warhammer in a supportive group environment maybe having a couple of beers stay tuned to our Facebook and Instagram pages.

Social media/websites.

We’re on Facebook and Instagram @Krampuscomics

We also have a website where you can access our online store, Krampuskave.com We’d love to hear from you.

Long running Wenatchee comics staple Galaxy Comics at 5th and Western typically participates in Free Comic Book Day as well and folks in Ellensburg can hit up Central City Comics at 113 E 4th Ave. As of now there are no Covid-related restrictions in place but masking is highly encouraged. C