Sunday, March 16, 2008

MAGIC CLAMS



This is the first panel of the only comic strip I ever did, in 1975, for Arcade, a comic mag of the time which Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelmann were publishing. I was really nervous about the lettering, and it shows. It was never in color. Click on the picture to see the whole page. It was originally horizontal composition, two layers, but I rearranged it just fower yew.

14 comments:

Linda Davick said...

Why does Anita always have to be so mean to Quasi? Quasi has the best furniture and his front teeth are just like mine. And he likes to do the same kind of things I do.
Anita has a Maus bag! Is the big dragon on her dress like the one that was embroidered on the back of the bathrobe you gave away?

Jesse said...

I infer that Quasi must be earning his ire from Anita in panels or animations we can't see :)

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

So cute! I love it!
I see Quasi has his slice of cake handy.
I like how the furniture and accessories all have faces. Also like the wavy black background in panel two and the foreshortening where Quasi puts his hands in the glass.
Come to think of it, whatever became of Quasi? Any backstory as to what he's up to these days?;)

Anonymous said...

I, too, wondered if Anita's dress was like the bathrobe ... and why she's so mean to Quasi! This strip looks great. What's Zippy the Pinhead up to these days?

Sally said...

Anita is at her skankiest in this strip. I was surprised it was from 1975. I can't explain any back story on Quasi. I always thought buck teeth were attractive. Yes that's like my long gone bathrobe.

Quasi's voice was done by a long ago boyfriend so there's no chance in hell of reviving that character.

I was pretty uptight when I drew this panel because I was living with an underground cartoonist and hanging in that group. I didn't like the fixed aspect of cartoon panels for my stuff. And all that erasing after inking.

I used to love those magic clams when I was a kid.

Bill Griffith lives in Connecticut now and Zippy is still syndicated. The Pinhead was always about to become a motion picture. Bill is actually related to the famous pioneer Western photographer William Henry Jackson.

Jesse said...

> Quasi's voice was done by a long
> ago boyfriend so there's no chance
> in hell of reviving that character.

I don't know, I heard him in Quasi at the Quackadero and the voice sounds simple enough to imitate? ;)

Linda Davick said...

Sally, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Obviously Jesse can provide the voice for Quasi. (And of course I love it that Anita's mean. It's just that sometimes I can't help but identify with Quasi--someone who loves to watch people work and who loves chocolate cake.

Anonymous said...

Was it scary/fun living with an underground comic? Can you say who?

Anonymous said...

I used to love the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Mr. Natural (the comics too). Then I found out how weird R. Crum was in the documentary. Am tempted to buy the whole reprint set of the FFF brothers comics just to see if they still make me laugh, then put them away in the memorabilia box.

Sally said...

Linda, the only reason I can even make cartoons that talk anymore is because of those stupid electronic voices which make it easy to get started and makes the start of a new project less formal. Recording voices in a studio is not going to happen.

It was fun/scary living with Kim Deitch I guess, the way any difficult relationship was in Berkeley in the 70's when you weren't even 30.

Briefly I sublet R. Crumb's girlfriend's flat in 71. His brother's weird notebooks filled with page after page of carefully scribed incomprehensibles were lying about. She was travelling with Crumb around the country.

I still think he's the greatest artist of recent times.

Anonymous said...

Working on a cartoon publication in the 1980s, I gravitated further and further away from predictable, mainstream, formulaic gags and found the alternative cartoonists much more interesting, creative, and exciting.

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

I've grown fond of those electronic voices. They add a quirky charm to the cartoons.

Jesse said...

Wait, I thought I posted a trackback here last night? Maybe I forgot to save it.

Anywho, I'd tracked down Quasi and got a soundbyte from him about the matter, but I'd also be interested to hear what a synthesized version of him would sound like. :)

Sally said...

Thanks Namowal. Eventually electronic voices will be really good- I'm surprised their rise has been so slow. Jesse, Can't wait to hear it.