NEW! Artistic Licentiousness

All three issue of Artistic Licentiousness, including the rare first issue are NOW available. BUT (and here’s the ‘but’) since the content is Adults Only, I am only selling it by check or Money Order accompanied by a signed note that you are over 21 years old sent to my PO Box address. It seems like a lot of hoops to jump through, I know. People have been asking about it, though, so I want to have it available. All three issues are $15 postpaid for the US ($18 overseas). I plan on selling about ten sets, so get them while they last. (There are plenty of #2’s and 3’s, so those will be available longer.)

REAL CAT TOONS!

This is a small-press collection of all my cat comics from Naughty Bits, rare "Kitty Kat Toons," plus some new pages. All feature REAL cats and the people who love them. Meet Muffy, Pushkin, and Purrzac (and others) and read all about Louis Wain, who deserves to be an Honorary Cat! Lots of reading packed into 24 pages, plus cover. Good stories: my Muffy story was nominated for an Eisner Award (the comic book industry equivalent of the Oscars!) for Best Short Story! This is the first edition, and all money collected from sales will go into Pushkin's Medical fund. (He has Feline Diabetes and the bills are really mounting up!) PLUS, every book will have a big "Thank You" autographed on the back with a drawing of Kitty Angel! Appropriate for all ages.

DYNAMITE DAMSELS

My very first comic book, published in 1976, is still available in limited quantities. The art is pretty embarrassing to me, nearly 30 years later, but it is a humorous snapshot of the feminist world of the middle 70s. Frieda Phelps, the star of the Feminist Funnies strip, takes center stage. She is an idealistic young woman out to change the world for the better, and soon discovers roadblocks along the way, as well as learning what good things can come about when women work together for change! The comic also has two short fantasy stories, "Superdyke," a lesbian super-heroine, and "Liberatia," the story of a women-only land. The ad on the inside back cover in also enlightening, to show how many feminist underground comics (now nearly all unavailable) were being published in the 70s. AND, the inside front cover has me giving an opening monologue… and introducing my cat, two things I have become notorious for in the pages of Naughty Bits.

I published 10,000 of these, (as I recall, it was over thirty boxes of comics!) and am now down to a partial box full. I sold them in small amounts mostly through sales to women's bookstores: "Hi! Here is a sample of my comic book. Send me $6 and you will get 10 additional copies for your store." I also sold through the main distributor of underground comics back then, Last Gasp, so a lot of these also wound up in head shops right next to copies of Zap and The Freak Brothers. People still tell me that they fondly remember when they first saw Dynamite Damsels, and some have said the book literally changed their lives!

SHEILA AND THE UNICORN

This is a book full of little three-panel comic strips about a woman named Sheila… who is NOT supposed to be me, either! She is based on a woman I used to work with back in the early 80s named Sheila who would get up on Sunday mornings at seven AM to go to the laundromat. (I don't know why that always seemed so horrifying to me!) Sheila is a bit of a proto-Bitchy, unhappy with life and with her job and with very set ideas about what the world is like. Then Joe the Unicorn shows up in her life, unexpectedly and unexplainably. The story becomes a humorous fable about relationships and happiness and choices as Joe tries to get Sheila to see some of the magic that exists in everyday life. It tells a complete story with a beginning, middle and end.

Click on Art to See Panel

For years I was rather intrigued by the comic strip format. My family members always insisted that was the only way I would be successful as a cartoonist, but none of the subject matter I was interested in seemed to be appropriate for family newspapers. I decided to meet the challenge and create a story in three-panel increments, with cookie-cutter art (accomplished by a lot of laborious tracing on a light table!) but once I got the story done, I hated the idea of having to do a unicorn strip every day for the rest of my life if I became 'successful' so I never sent the strip on the rounds for possible syndication. I had just enough saved to have a nice little paperback printed of the Sheila saga. It is one of the few things I have published that is appropriate for all ages, meaning there are no naughty words or undressed people, though I think the subject matter is still just a bit above the heads of most youngsters.

WINGING IT

This is a project that I have been working on for nearly two decades, and it has spilled over into other creative projects, as well, and continues into the present. It is a rather metaphysical storyline that seems to have followed me for most of adult creative life, and finally gotten into print, in various imperfect forms. Two volumes exist, the first published in 1988 and the second, concluding one published in 1999, but the story does not even end with the second volume. Sometimes creativity can be that way, and this is definitely the sort of story that only I could write! I have never encountered anything remotely resembling what goes on in these pages, and that is a good thing, since if I HAD, perhaps I would have never taken this strange creative journey which, for the moment, seems to have no end.

The story itself has metaphysical and magical realism elements and also strays into a bit of fantasy and science-fiction. On the first page, the protagonist, Lupe, commits suicide, but soon finds herself back in the world she thought she left behind. Only now, things have become very strange: she meets an angel, a winged person of no determinate gender who, far from being a guiding presence, is even more disoriented than she is.

As Lupe soon finds out, her suicide has set some metaphysical events in motion that lead to major changes in this world and beyond. A race of animal-like winged people appear soon afterwards, and these will be the people of Mother Mountain. The second volume of Winging It even contains the earliest Mother Mountain stories written and drawn as a graphic novel.

On the surface, this graphic novel is a rather straightforward story, but since there are no authoritative captions or narration, (As in, "Now Superman spots Professor Gizmo…" etc.) only pictures and dialogue, the reader is left to discover the metaphors and deeper meanings. Or not. Also, many of the participants are of very indeterminate gender, or none at all, and this just seems so perfect for the graphic novel format. In a conventional, words-only novel, there would be pronouns to tip off the reader (unless the author resorted to cute tricks to avoid them.) In a movie or play, the sound of a person's voice would be a clue. Humans seem to think it is so essential to know what lurks beneath the clothing of the stranger you meet on the street!

Some potential readers seem completely put off by Winging It. Others, I think it all just goes over their heads. And those who really read it and 'get' it seem to absolutely treasure it. It is not for everyone. But, it certainly is one of the books I myself would love to pick up and then be intrigued by and wonder how anyone could dream up something like this. It still is, in a way: whenever I read it, even I discover elements I had never noticed before.

ARTISTIC LICENTIOUSNESS

This is an adult series about creativity. The two protagonists are Denise, a writer, and Kevin, a comics creator. Both are rather ordinary-looking folks who have rich inner lives, and obsessions about their own creations that interfere with their relationships with others, to put it mildly. Denise has just come out of a bad relationship with a man, and decides she really prefers women… as well as erotic fantasies about the centaurs and satyrs and other fantastic creatures of her imagination. Kevin is obsessed with his "Fillycia," a sexy anthropomorphic horse. As the storyline progresses, and new people enter their lives, both of them learn that it is not a good idea to make assumptions about someone's sexuality-especially one's own! (And that it is a very bad idea to have sex with someone just because you feel sorry for them!) And that love can turn to hatred in an instant!

This was intended to be a "smutty" comic book. Soon after Fantagraphics launched their lucrative Eros comics line, (sorry, no links, folks! I do NOT want to get arrested!), I was approached by Michael Dowers of Starhead Comics to do an adult comic. I put my all into it, with graphic sex scenes every few pages or so, thanks to the fertile imaginations of my creative protagonists. The first issue got a very good review in The Comics Journal. Starhead went out of business, so I published the second and third (concluding) issue myself, but made them less overtly sexual and more intriguing. The angel and horned beasts from the pages of Winging It became the creatures of Kevin's imagination.