Hip social gathering spot for the friends and fans of Jay Lynch
Spontaneous Combustion
"If you're not good enough to be a cartoonist, maybe you can be an artist."
--S. Clay Wilson
In the late 50s Robert and his brother, Charles, published, Foo, a fanzine homage to funny animal comics -- in particular, Pogo -- and "bigfoot" cartoons like Smokey Stover.
But Jay Lynch and I inhabited the anteroom of comics fandom that celebrated satire and bohemian savior vivre. Like the humor of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, and the hip urbanity of Playboy magazine. We had in common with the brothers Crumb an obsession with the work and publications of Harvey Kurtzman. However we somewhat disdained funny animal comics as juvenile. So we dismissed the endeavors of the Charles and Robert as unsophisticated, even as we admired the fine craftsmanship of their art.
Around this time, after charging and prodding his younger brother Robert to be a cartoonist, Charles renounced art and life. He became disconnected and a recluse until his suicide in 1995.
In 1961 Harvey Kurtzman, editor of Help! magazine, began publishing my single-panel, clumsy cartoons. Also the cartoons and comics of Jay Lynch and Gilbert Shelton. But, most importantly, the fully-blown artistic virtuosity and intellectually fluent art of Robert Crumb. His adventures of Fritz the Cat, his sketchbook reports from Bulgaria and Harlem were transcendent. More sumptuous and remarkable than what the rest of us were up to. And were, to us who were in the process of choosing life as a corporate wage-slave versus life as a insubordinate artist, influential in tipping the balance in favor of the vulgar arts.
Help! magazine folded in the summer of 1965, just as Robert Crumb was to become an editor. He had disappeared from our radar screen.
In the vacuum between the death of Help! magazine and the birth of the underground comix movement, as Jay Lynch and I laid feverish plans for our publishing empire and subsequent international media conglomerate, we wondered "Whatever became of Robert Crumb?"
***
In 1963 a kid named Joe Pilati -- from Pearl River New York -- decided to publish a fanzine called Smudge. Smudge was primarily focused on satire magazines of the time like Mad, Cracked and Sick, but its real purview was the work of Harvey Kurtzman. Pilati wrote a letter that was published in Cracked about his pending fanzine. The letter included his address.
Jay Lynch (living in Florida), Art Spiegelman (in New York) and I (in Canton, Missouri) all contacted Joe Pilati, and before long we were all publishing our nascent cartoons in Smudge. Then, within months, there were several hectographed and mimeographed fanzine homages to Harvey Kurtzman. They included Wild! (published by Don Dohler in Baltimore), Jack High (published by Phil Roberts in Detroit ) and Blase´ (published by Artie Spiegelman). And I published -- with the help of my high-school buddies Tim Blickhan and Richard Baily -- a 'zine titled Squire.
None of these little magazines had circulations much more that 100, but they became the network for savants like us -- those obsessed with cartoons and worshipful of satire -- to coalesce.
***
By the Spring of 1967 I was becoming impatient. Cecilia and I had been married for a year. And Culver-Stockton College was tedious and -- for the direction I was heading -- useless. I'd stopped attending classes around the first of the year.
I'd been contributing cartoons to the Detroit Fifth Estate since 1965, Carlos Cortez (anarchist, member of the I.W.W., poet and artist) had solicited me to do a cover for the Industrial Worker and I had been doing cartoons for The Realist. In the meantime Jay Lynch, Art Spiegelman and I had been experimenting with surreal comic strips.
In New York City the East Village Other was churning out bohemian anarchy every week. In San Francisco the underground newspaper was the San Francisco Oracle, which published dizzyingly beautiful graphics to illustrate psychoactive non-sequitur, even as Stanley Mouse and Rick Griffin were producing dazzling poster art for bands like the 13th Floor Elevators, the Charlatans, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. It was time for me to do something, and it wasn't going to get done in Canton, Missouri.
I got a job painting a mural on the walls of the Palmyra State Bank. Palmyra is a small Missouri town about 30 miles south of Canton. The bank wanted something on their wall that would depict the history of the town, in particular "the Battle of Palmyra", a Civil War skirmish that -- after living a decade in the area -- I was ignorant of. Other highlights of the mural were grain silos, fields of corn, hogs and cows. I was being paid three-hundred dollars for the job, in those days a tidy sum of cash for college students. Cecil, a fair artist in her own right, helped me paint the cows. And we conspired to use the money to blow out of the rural midwest and move to Chicago.
I'd asked Jay Lynch if we could spend a short time with him until we could get our own place. He said "No problem" so we packed our bags and hopped a train to the Hog Butcher.
When we arrived at Jay's place we were greeted by Jay and Linda.
Jay was a student at both the Art Institute and Roosevelt University. He lived in a dark and cluttered apartment, surrounded by his paintings that were acid visions of morphing clowns and heads exploding into paisley anti-matter.
Linda was Jay's girlfriend, an audacious Puerto Rican chickadee from upstate New York. Linda was a feral thrill ride, a rebel-child with a taste for speed. Intravenously injected. She and Jay would spend their time doing their drugs of choice (She: Speed, intravenously injected. He: Lysergic acid diethylamide-25.) and fucking their chemically-altered brains out which, as we would discover, young people all over town were doing.
LSD was legal until early '67. At Roosevelt University The League for Spiritual Discovery was one of the official school clubs. The members would drop acid and discuss their revelations, awakenings and mystic visions.
Jay popped some LSD on his tongue and offered a dose to Cecil and me. But we were acid virgins, and we were apprehensive. LSD in those days was not the weak-kneed, strychnine-laced drug the kids use these days. It was a high-octane mind fuck, an excursion into elaborate enlightening darkness. I knew of its potential psychoactive insanities, so I was a bit afraid of the drug. And that it was probably not a good idea to embark into the phantasmagorial outback haunted by trepidation. Jay, on the other hand, was a seasoned traveler. It would be a year before I worked up the nerve to trip the blacklight fantastic. Cecilia didn't take acid until after we were divorced and she'd moved back downstate.
As he was coming on to the acid Jay crouched in a corner, pointed at the two of us and started laughing a demented cackle. It was a bit unnerving, especially for Cecilia. She started pleading with me that we call a cab and get back on a train to Missouri. I said "No. We're here and I'm sure as hell not going to turn tail and run back to Canton after being in Chicago for less than 24 hours. Let's just wait until the light of day and see how things sift out."
After awhile Cecil and I climbed into the fold-out couch in the living room and fell asleep as Jay and Linda fucked their addled brains out.
I the middle of the night Cecil nudged me awake. She said "I need something to drink. I need a Pepsi."
I sat up in the dark and called out Jay's name.
"Hey Jay, wadda you have to drink?"
When I called out Jay's name he left his bed and came into the living room. He knew that civilized behavior dictated that he cover his nakedness. However, lysergic acid often confuses the issue. So instead of covering his nudity with a blanket, he came out with the blanket over his head and his genitals fully exposed. Cecil --already apprehensive due to the grim urban turf and the overt consumption of exotic drugs -- became even more distressed by Jay's peculiar raw display.
In those days Jay was beguiled by acid's cosmic revelations. He'd take it recreationally but it wasn't just a hallucinogenic roller coaster ride. He'd glean divination and pick through the hoodoo for truths.
Jay had a problem with rodent infestation and toward morning he wandered into the small room that was his studio. A rat had been caught in a trap and, in it's dying throes, was dragging itself across a sheet of acetate next to his drawing table.
Jay read this as an omen. If there's a rat in the house, it must be removed. Metaphorically speaking, Linda was a rat in his house. She kept a bag of disposable syringes in his living room closet. And the appearance of the rat indicated to him that he had to get Linda and her bag of needles out of his house before he got busted.
So he took some Thorazine, in order to come down from the LSD, and escorted Linda and her bag of spikes out of the house and put her on an el train.
Jay told me "I had to follow the rat omen. Otherwise we'd never have started doing the Mirror, as I would have been too busy porking and taking acid with Linda to get anything done."
The next day things had returned to relative normality. But there was a dead rat that needed to be dealt with.
"Rats carry disease," I said. "We need to find some way to disinfect it and then dispose of it."
Jay looked around for some kind of disinfectant and came up with a can of Draino. "Good idea" I said. And we sprinkled the white crystals on the rodent carcass. Then we gingerly carried the deceased animal behind Jay's apartment and dumped it in the alley.
Later in the day Jay and I were walking around the neighborhood discussing our plans to publish a magazine.
"I think we should call it 'The Chicago Mirror'," Jay said as we turned the corner and passed by the alley behind Jay's apartment building.
Two kids were in the alley. They were tossing the dead rat back and forth to each other, occasionally punting the inanimate furball through the air, trailing entrails and crystal particles as it soared.
Jay was unmoved by the young boys' sport, as if it were normal urban youth activity. "We should be able to print ten thousand copies for around $500," he opined.
"Hey, kids!" I yelped. "Put down that dead rat!"
"Howcome?" asked the older boy.
"You could catch a disease and die!" I warned.
"So what," said the older boy. "What have we got to live for anyway?!" And they continued their existential play.
A bit later, as we were still walking the neighborhood, we came across an empty lot where young girls were playing jump rope with barbed wire.
***
We stayed at Jay's place while I looked for work.
Jay was a short-order cook at Little Pleasures, a sandwich shop in Old Town. We'd stop by when he was on duty and feed on corned beef sandwiches and Cokes for no charge. But after a week of bumping into each other in Jay's apartment it became obvious that we needed to find other accommodations.
I'd found a job working as an apprentice at Art Programs, Incorporated, a small advertising art agency on Ohio Street about a half a block from Michigan Avenue. But it would be three or four weeks before I'd have enough money to rent an apartment of our own.
A friend of Jay's had a sister, Mary, who had a roomy apartment. She was willing to let Cecil and me have a room until we could afford get a place.
On the weekends Mary entertained a boyfriend, a psychedelic negro, head bandana-wrapped, Fu-Manchu mustached, bell-bottom panted, shirt opened to the navel, love-beaded kind of guy. They'd drop LSD and sequester themselves in her bedroom for a couple of days. Very early Monday morning he'd be off about his business only to return every Friday for another druggy romp.
The first Monday morning we were at Mary place I prepared for work at Art Programs, Incorporated, headed through the kitchen and out the door.
Mary was at the stove preparing her morning coffee. She was bleary-eyed, rumpled and naked. When I walked into the room she squealed "YEEEK!," covered herself with her hands and ran into her bedroom.
"Er..uh...Excuse me," I said and left out the door to catch the bus to work.
The following Monday I was leaving for work, walked into the kitchen. And there was Mary. Naked.
"Oh, shit! Not again!" she yelped, covered her nudity with her hands and scurried off to her bedroom.
"Sorry," I apologized and went off to work.
The third Monday morning I was heading through the kitchen to the door. Mary was standing, stark naked, at the refrigerator. This time she didn't attempt to cover herself. "'Morning, Skip," she said as she retrieved the milk out of the fridge and walked over to the table, poured a little into her coffee and sat down and started reading the newspaper.
The following week Cecilia and I rented an apartment of our own.
The night we moved in there was a commotion in the street. I peered out our bedroom window and witnessed some guy pistol-whipping another guy under the street light across the street.
***
The only headshop in Chicago in 1967 was the Molehole on North Avenue. The owner and proprietor was Earl Segal, a.k.a. the Mole because he had a mole-like appearance. He also published the Chicago Seed, a kind of druggy, peace & love underground newspaper. But Earl was also a junkie, and he had priorities.
By then the Great Counter-Cultural Migration was under way. The Youth were moving en mass to San Francisco, and the road came through Chicago. A group of young, Jewish radicals from New York City headed west, but ended up laying down roots in Chicago where they took over the publishing duties for the Chicago Seed from Segal, who needed to spend more time with his needle and spoon. Before you knew it, Ed Segal had died from an overdose and the Chicago Seed had become a firebrand broadsheet for anarcho/communism.
I started creating covers and cartoons for the Seed. We maintained an unsteady, yet primarily, friendly relationship. One that became increasingly tenuous as stern radical feminism spread and festered though the Radical Left.
I developed friendships with Abe Peck, Eliott Wald and Paul Zmievski. I also got to know and enjoy the company of Marshall Rosenthall, Bill O'Brien, Flora Johnson, Leon Gusow, Lester Dore´, Marcia Hardy, Blind Al Rosenfeld, John Gunther, Kathleen Hogan and Mike James. Not all were Seed-staffers, but they were all fellow travelers
It was through the Seed staff that I got to know Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. When they were in town plotting sedition they'd hang out at the Seed office. Eventually I did illustrations for Rubin's "Do It!" and "We Are Everywhere", and chapter-head illustrations for Abbie's "Steal This Book". Both became frequent acquaintances, but not real friends. Their datebooks were full, and their agendas were not exactly aligned with mine
Of the two of them Jerry Rubin was more friendly and congenial. But Abbie was edgier and more volatile, making him more interesting.
***
In the Autumn of 1967 Jay Lynch and I produced the first issue of The Chicago Mirror. The primary influences behind the Mirror were Paul Krassner's The Realist, Kurtzman (of course) and -- to a considerably lesser degree -- psychoactive drugs.
The cover for the first issue was drawn by Peter Green, a friend and a fellow Art Institute student of Jay's. Peter was a master draftsman, much more accomplished than me or Jay. But he was not a comic-strip artist, that peculiar amalgam of writer and draftsman.
His cover art was titled "Bob's First Trip", a beautifully rendered drawing of a naked young man (Bob). His suit and tie hung on the limbs of a tree, he is on his knees as a long-haired, bearded and pot-bellied God character in a "King Cosmos" crown lays comic hands on his head. Disneyesque animals -- a doe, a bunny rabbit and a butterfly -- bear witness.
The issue was dedicated to the recently deceased Jayne Mansfield. There was an introduction to a new proto-religion called Scientology written by its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. There were, of course, cartoons by Jay and me as well as articles, poetry and jokes. And a comic strip centerfold by Spiegelman extolling LSD and proclaiming that one should "Play with your cells, and become your own food".
Jay and I would head down to Old Town nightly and hawk the books on the street.
The second issue of The Chicago Mirror was published in Winter 1968. Again the cover artist was Peter Green (This time the subject was Gene Autry, the singing cowboy). There was a fan letter from Harvey Kurtzman (In the third issue we published letters from Woody Allen and famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair.) and a cartoon by MC5's lead singer, Rob Tyner. There was also a satirical article by Jay Lynch about the psychoactive properties of dog poop ("...a seventeen-year-old shithead told MIRROR reporters 'The high is kind of like grooving on psilocybin , but more warm and human.'") Jay was alarmed by the hippies' lack of a sense of humor when he was approached by a toothless love child who told him that -- after reading about it in the Mirror -- he had rolled up a joint of dog shit. And what a great high it was.
The third issue was scheduled for publication in the Summer of 1968. The cover and interview featured The Realist publisher Paul Krassner -- who, by then, had become one of the founding members of the Yippie party. The idea was to sell copies to the thousands of war protesters and hippies who were certain to show up during the Democratic convention that August. Unfortunately the printer was late and we missed our window of opportunity.
Fortunately, though, Robert Crumb had sent Jay a copy of the first issue of Zap Comix. Inspired, Jay decided to change the format of The Mirror to a comic book and rename it Bijou Funnies. Robert Crumb, after completing the art for Janis Joplin's "Cheap Thrills" album cover, got a free ride on a bus of protesters headed for the Democratic convention and we all, fairly rapidly (Along with contributions from Jay Kinney and a reprint from Gilbert Shelton.), produced the first issue of Bijou as the Democratic convention raged around us.
I created the cover art for the second issue of Bijou. It featured my character, Snappy Sammy Smoot, standing amidst a group of radical firebrands asking "Would any of you young people like to subscribe to the Reader's Digest?" The back cover was art from one of Robert Crumb's sketchbooks.
I had Cecilia produce the color separations for the back cover art. In those days, color separations were work-intensive. Acetate overlays were created for each color--magenta, yellow and cyan. They needed to be perfectly registered with the black and white original. Then rubylith and zip-a-tone percentage screens were precisely cut and burnished down on the acetate. The person cutting the separations had to have an almost instinctual knowledge of how colors mixed, and what percentages over what percentages produced other colors in the printing process. Not to mention that the dot patterns on the zip-a-tone need to run in the same direction on each overlay in order to prevent a moire´-- tricky because there could be as many a ten different percentages of dot patterns cut separately for each of the four color plates.
Cecil had a knack for art and she did a decent job for the Bijou back cover.
She'd never created art as an avocation or a hobby, but she had a natural talent. She was genetically disposed to it. Her father was an excellent artist, who had been discouraged by his father against art, as it was an unmanly pursuit. Cecil picked up the talent through blood but also -- for whatever reason -- chose not to develop it.
***
Simultaneous to the publication of Bijou #1, Gilbert Shelton (in Austin, Texas) published Feds 'n' Heads. Meanwhile cartoonists were swarming into San Francisco. The line-up for subsequent issues of Zap Comix included Crumb (of course), the dense, violent and sexually deranged art of S. Clay Wilson, the absolutely beautiful surf-culture and LSD-inspired comics of Rick Griffin and the high-art and hot-blooded drawings of castilian Victor Moscoso And with Zap #4 the line-up was complete with the addition of the exquisitely detailed, chrome-plated hotrod art of Robert Williams and the politically radical, sexually electric Marxist art of Spain Rodrigues.
No slackers ourselves, Bijou also developed a line-up of top-flight cartoonists. Besides Jay, Crumb and me, Jay Kinney continued his lefty American cultural examinations and Art Spiegelman moved from his psychedelic phase through his predatory child murderer phase. Bijou also published the intellectually shocking sexual angst art of Justin Green, and the twisted, pimply-faced high-school trauma of Dan Clyne . Not to mention guest appearances by the primitive teddy bear horror 'toons of Rory Hayes, the whimsical yet street-savvy art of Kim Deitch, the psychotropic other-dimensional cosmic art of John Thompson and the darkly-detailed Satanic cartoon ravings of Jim Osborne.
***
In 1969 my day job was as a junior designer at Playboy Press, Playboy's book publishing division.
And by that time underground comix were at large in the countryside. They were rife with incest, misogyny, sexual mutilation, murder and sedition. So imagine our surprise when Jay Lynch and I saw Mom's Homemade Comics, a G-rated comic-book from a young Milwaukee cartoonist named Denis Kitchen.
Denis sent a copy to Jay when Robert Crumb was in town working on an issue of Bijou. So we organized a road trip to Milwaukee to meet with this upstart who had broached such a shocking and seismic change in the direction of comix.
It was a fortuitous meeting. Not only did we meet a talented artist whose main influence was the great minimalist cartoonist from the 1950s, Ernie Brushmiller, creator of Nancy and Sluggo. But Denis shared, with Robert, a love of 78 rpm records from the 20s and 30s. And, because Milwaukee was city of breweries, Denis was well-supplied with beer, which pleased me.
A camera was produced and photographs were taken of our goofy behavior. And Robert Crumb, aware that I'd been drinking significant amounts of beer and was susceptible to suggestion, thought it would be amusing if I'd masturbate over a Playboy centerfold. And that they photograph me throttling the Bishop over Miss September. I declined, so we found other mischief to occupy the evening.
The most significant result of the meeting of underground cartoonists in Milwaukee was that it led to the genesis of Denis Kitchen as a publisher.
Most of the initial underground comix were distributed by the Print Mint in San Francisco. So, more out of convenience than anything else, Jay had the Print Mint distribute Bijou Funnies. But we were half a continent away, and due to the hippie ethos and the distance involved, it was problematic getting a reliable accounting of books sold and cash owed.
So Jay approached Denis Kitchen and talked him into publishing and distributing Bijou. It also helped that Crumb placed Home Grown Funnies with Denis. So what would become Kitchen Sink Publishing sprouted and bloomed into a major underground comic book publisher.
***
"Grease", the musical about leather-jacketed, duck-tailed teenagers was in its initial Chicago performances at Kingston Mines, a store-front theater on Lincoln Avenue.
One of the actresses in the show was a fat redheaded girl named Lori who harbored a fetish for underground cartoonists. She was determine to fuck one of us, and it didn't matter which one. She wanted to do us all. After all, Free Love was widespread and unchecked.
All chubby and lascivious, she had chased an aghast Jay Lynch down an alley. He barely escaped.
Once Lori cornered me when I was drinking at Wise Fools tavern on Lincoln Avenue. Pressing her fleshy self against me, she grabbled and groped at me, insisting that I let her suck my cock. If the woman hadn't been so aggressive I might have relented. But she was so unrelenting that I instinctually panicked, and knew I had to escape.
Feigning a need to urinate I darted toward the toilet, but I slipped out the back door.
Finally, she nailed Robert Crumb and fucked him silly for a couple of days. But Crumb has a more of a prurient interest in female mass and girth than Jay or I.
Jay, Robert and I were at Jay's apartment working on a issue of Bijou.
Robert sighed and said "Lori really liked fucking me. She was very complimentary toward my cock. She said not only is it long, but it's also thick".
I regret not going for the blow job. On the other hand, if I had gone for it I'm sure I would have also regretted that. Existential sexualis.
***
Things were not going well on the home front. Shortly after moving to Chicago Cecilia and I -- not wanting to miss out on all the Free Love fun -- agreed to an open relationship. I quickly learned that in a open relationship girls get laid, and guys get blue balls. That's not to say I didn't harvest a bit of extracurricular nookie. There were a couple of women over a period of five years who allowed me vaginal access. My problem was that I'd become too attached. Cecil, on the other hand, had the ability to enjoy the physical thrill. And then move on to the next victim.
Radical feminism also took its toll. Women began regarding men as oppressors, as their nemesis.
Empathic partnerships and mutual support was replaced with hostility and recrimination. This is not to say that the fundamental inequities of the patriarchal status quo weren't specious and needed to be addressed. In the process the sins of our fathers were visited on us, and the seismic shift occurred on my watch. It created a lot of harm and ruin that demolished many a conjugal union.
***
In July 1971 Jay Lynch, Robert Crumb and I were young cartoonists hard at work drawing up an issue of Bijou Funnies in Jay's Chicago apartment.
A week earlier Jim Morrison had been discovered dead in his Paris residence. A month earlier the Pentagon Papers had begun publishing in the New York Times and Attica was right around the corner. It was post-Altamont, post-Manson. "The Bell Jar" was flying off the bookstore shelves and the Rolling Stone's "Bitch" was getting airplay. Clearly, Peace and Love had been stillborn.
We were listening to the radio as we labored on our cartoons. But we dropped our rapidographs in unison when the newscaster announced that Ub Iwerks had died.
"It's the end of an era" said the newscaster about the death of Disney's seminal animator.
Robert sighed and said "I wonder if they'll say that when I die?"
--S. Clay Wilson
In the late 50s Robert and his brother, Charles, published, Foo, a fanzine homage to funny animal comics -- in particular, Pogo -- and "bigfoot" cartoons like Smokey Stover.
But Jay Lynch and I inhabited the anteroom of comics fandom that celebrated satire and bohemian savior vivre. Like the humor of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, and the hip urbanity of Playboy magazine. We had in common with the brothers Crumb an obsession with the work and publications of Harvey Kurtzman. However we somewhat disdained funny animal comics as juvenile. So we dismissed the endeavors of the Charles and Robert as unsophisticated, even as we admired the fine craftsmanship of their art.
Around this time, after charging and prodding his younger brother Robert to be a cartoonist, Charles renounced art and life. He became disconnected and a recluse until his suicide in 1995.
In 1961 Harvey Kurtzman, editor of Help! magazine, began publishing my single-panel, clumsy cartoons. Also the cartoons and comics of Jay Lynch and Gilbert Shelton. But, most importantly, the fully-blown artistic virtuosity and intellectually fluent art of Robert Crumb. His adventures of Fritz the Cat, his sketchbook reports from Bulgaria and Harlem were transcendent. More sumptuous and remarkable than what the rest of us were up to. And were, to us who were in the process of choosing life as a corporate wage-slave versus life as a insubordinate artist, influential in tipping the balance in favor of the vulgar arts.
Help! magazine folded in the summer of 1965, just as Robert Crumb was to become an editor. He had disappeared from our radar screen.
In the vacuum between the death of Help! magazine and the birth of the underground comix movement, as Jay Lynch and I laid feverish plans for our publishing empire and subsequent international media conglomerate, we wondered "Whatever became of Robert Crumb?"
***
In 1963 a kid named Joe Pilati -- from Pearl River New York -- decided to publish a fanzine called Smudge. Smudge was primarily focused on satire magazines of the time like Mad, Cracked and Sick, but its real purview was the work of Harvey Kurtzman. Pilati wrote a letter that was published in Cracked about his pending fanzine. The letter included his address.
Jay Lynch (living in Florida), Art Spiegelman (in New York) and I (in Canton, Missouri) all contacted Joe Pilati, and before long we were all publishing our nascent cartoons in Smudge. Then, within months, there were several hectographed and mimeographed fanzine homages to Harvey Kurtzman. They included Wild! (published by Don Dohler in Baltimore), Jack High (published by Phil Roberts in Detroit ) and Blase´ (published by Artie Spiegelman). And I published -- with the help of my high-school buddies Tim Blickhan and Richard Baily -- a 'zine titled Squire.
None of these little magazines had circulations much more that 100, but they became the network for savants like us -- those obsessed with cartoons and worshipful of satire -- to coalesce.
***
By the Spring of 1967 I was becoming impatient. Cecilia and I had been married for a year. And Culver-Stockton College was tedious and -- for the direction I was heading -- useless. I'd stopped attending classes around the first of the year.
I'd been contributing cartoons to the Detroit Fifth Estate since 1965, Carlos Cortez (anarchist, member of the I.W.W., poet and artist) had solicited me to do a cover for the Industrial Worker and I had been doing cartoons for The Realist. In the meantime Jay Lynch, Art Spiegelman and I had been experimenting with surreal comic strips.
In New York City the East Village Other was churning out bohemian anarchy every week. In San Francisco the underground newspaper was the San Francisco Oracle, which published dizzyingly beautiful graphics to illustrate psychoactive non-sequitur, even as Stanley Mouse and Rick Griffin were producing dazzling poster art for bands like the 13th Floor Elevators, the Charlatans, the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. It was time for me to do something, and it wasn't going to get done in Canton, Missouri.
I got a job painting a mural on the walls of the Palmyra State Bank. Palmyra is a small Missouri town about 30 miles south of Canton. The bank wanted something on their wall that would depict the history of the town, in particular "the Battle of Palmyra", a Civil War skirmish that -- after living a decade in the area -- I was ignorant of. Other highlights of the mural were grain silos, fields of corn, hogs and cows. I was being paid three-hundred dollars for the job, in those days a tidy sum of cash for college students. Cecil, a fair artist in her own right, helped me paint the cows. And we conspired to use the money to blow out of the rural midwest and move to Chicago.
I'd asked Jay Lynch if we could spend a short time with him until we could get our own place. He said "No problem" so we packed our bags and hopped a train to the Hog Butcher.
When we arrived at Jay's place we were greeted by Jay and Linda.
Jay was a student at both the Art Institute and Roosevelt University. He lived in a dark and cluttered apartment, surrounded by his paintings that were acid visions of morphing clowns and heads exploding into paisley anti-matter.
Linda was Jay's girlfriend, an audacious Puerto Rican chickadee from upstate New York. Linda was a feral thrill ride, a rebel-child with a taste for speed. Intravenously injected. She and Jay would spend their time doing their drugs of choice (She: Speed, intravenously injected. He: Lysergic acid diethylamide-25.) and fucking their chemically-altered brains out which, as we would discover, young people all over town were doing.
LSD was legal until early '67. At Roosevelt University The League for Spiritual Discovery was one of the official school clubs. The members would drop acid and discuss their revelations, awakenings and mystic visions.
Jay popped some LSD on his tongue and offered a dose to Cecil and me. But we were acid virgins, and we were apprehensive. LSD in those days was not the weak-kneed, strychnine-laced drug the kids use these days. It was a high-octane mind fuck, an excursion into elaborate enlightening darkness. I knew of its potential psychoactive insanities, so I was a bit afraid of the drug. And that it was probably not a good idea to embark into the phantasmagorial outback haunted by trepidation. Jay, on the other hand, was a seasoned traveler. It would be a year before I worked up the nerve to trip the blacklight fantastic. Cecilia didn't take acid until after we were divorced and she'd moved back downstate.
As he was coming on to the acid Jay crouched in a corner, pointed at the two of us and started laughing a demented cackle. It was a bit unnerving, especially for Cecilia. She started pleading with me that we call a cab and get back on a train to Missouri. I said "No. We're here and I'm sure as hell not going to turn tail and run back to Canton after being in Chicago for less than 24 hours. Let's just wait until the light of day and see how things sift out."
After awhile Cecil and I climbed into the fold-out couch in the living room and fell asleep as Jay and Linda fucked their addled brains out.
I the middle of the night Cecil nudged me awake. She said "I need something to drink. I need a Pepsi."
I sat up in the dark and called out Jay's name.
"Hey Jay, wadda you have to drink?"
When I called out Jay's name he left his bed and came into the living room. He knew that civilized behavior dictated that he cover his nakedness. However, lysergic acid often confuses the issue. So instead of covering his nudity with a blanket, he came out with the blanket over his head and his genitals fully exposed. Cecil --already apprehensive due to the grim urban turf and the overt consumption of exotic drugs -- became even more distressed by Jay's peculiar raw display.
In those days Jay was beguiled by acid's cosmic revelations. He'd take it recreationally but it wasn't just a hallucinogenic roller coaster ride. He'd glean divination and pick through the hoodoo for truths.
Jay had a problem with rodent infestation and toward morning he wandered into the small room that was his studio. A rat had been caught in a trap and, in it's dying throes, was dragging itself across a sheet of acetate next to his drawing table.
Jay read this as an omen. If there's a rat in the house, it must be removed. Metaphorically speaking, Linda was a rat in his house. She kept a bag of disposable syringes in his living room closet. And the appearance of the rat indicated to him that he had to get Linda and her bag of needles out of his house before he got busted.
So he took some Thorazine, in order to come down from the LSD, and escorted Linda and her bag of spikes out of the house and put her on an el train.
Jay told me "I had to follow the rat omen. Otherwise we'd never have started doing the Mirror, as I would have been too busy porking and taking acid with Linda to get anything done."
The next day things had returned to relative normality. But there was a dead rat that needed to be dealt with.
"Rats carry disease," I said. "We need to find some way to disinfect it and then dispose of it."
Jay looked around for some kind of disinfectant and came up with a can of Draino. "Good idea" I said. And we sprinkled the white crystals on the rodent carcass. Then we gingerly carried the deceased animal behind Jay's apartment and dumped it in the alley.
Later in the day Jay and I were walking around the neighborhood discussing our plans to publish a magazine.
"I think we should call it 'The Chicago Mirror'," Jay said as we turned the corner and passed by the alley behind Jay's apartment building.
Two kids were in the alley. They were tossing the dead rat back and forth to each other, occasionally punting the inanimate furball through the air, trailing entrails and crystal particles as it soared.
Jay was unmoved by the young boys' sport, as if it were normal urban youth activity. "We should be able to print ten thousand copies for around $500," he opined.
"Hey, kids!" I yelped. "Put down that dead rat!"
"Howcome?" asked the older boy.
"You could catch a disease and die!" I warned.
"So what," said the older boy. "What have we got to live for anyway?!" And they continued their existential play.
A bit later, as we were still walking the neighborhood, we came across an empty lot where young girls were playing jump rope with barbed wire.
***
We stayed at Jay's place while I looked for work.
Jay was a short-order cook at Little Pleasures, a sandwich shop in Old Town. We'd stop by when he was on duty and feed on corned beef sandwiches and Cokes for no charge. But after a week of bumping into each other in Jay's apartment it became obvious that we needed to find other accommodations.
I'd found a job working as an apprentice at Art Programs, Incorporated, a small advertising art agency on Ohio Street about a half a block from Michigan Avenue. But it would be three or four weeks before I'd have enough money to rent an apartment of our own.
A friend of Jay's had a sister, Mary, who had a roomy apartment. She was willing to let Cecil and me have a room until we could afford get a place.
On the weekends Mary entertained a boyfriend, a psychedelic negro, head bandana-wrapped, Fu-Manchu mustached, bell-bottom panted, shirt opened to the navel, love-beaded kind of guy. They'd drop LSD and sequester themselves in her bedroom for a couple of days. Very early Monday morning he'd be off about his business only to return every Friday for another druggy romp.
The first Monday morning we were at Mary place I prepared for work at Art Programs, Incorporated, headed through the kitchen and out the door.
Mary was at the stove preparing her morning coffee. She was bleary-eyed, rumpled and naked. When I walked into the room she squealed "YEEEK!," covered herself with her hands and ran into her bedroom.
"Er..uh...Excuse me," I said and left out the door to catch the bus to work.
The following Monday I was leaving for work, walked into the kitchen. And there was Mary. Naked.
"Oh, shit! Not again!" she yelped, covered her nudity with her hands and scurried off to her bedroom.
"Sorry," I apologized and went off to work.
The third Monday morning I was heading through the kitchen to the door. Mary was standing, stark naked, at the refrigerator. This time she didn't attempt to cover herself. "'Morning, Skip," she said as she retrieved the milk out of the fridge and walked over to the table, poured a little into her coffee and sat down and started reading the newspaper.
The following week Cecilia and I rented an apartment of our own.
The night we moved in there was a commotion in the street. I peered out our bedroom window and witnessed some guy pistol-whipping another guy under the street light across the street.
***
The only headshop in Chicago in 1967 was the Molehole on North Avenue. The owner and proprietor was Earl Segal, a.k.a. the Mole because he had a mole-like appearance. He also published the Chicago Seed, a kind of druggy, peace & love underground newspaper. But Earl was also a junkie, and he had priorities.
By then the Great Counter-Cultural Migration was under way. The Youth were moving en mass to San Francisco, and the road came through Chicago. A group of young, Jewish radicals from New York City headed west, but ended up laying down roots in Chicago where they took over the publishing duties for the Chicago Seed from Segal, who needed to spend more time with his needle and spoon. Before you knew it, Ed Segal had died from an overdose and the Chicago Seed had become a firebrand broadsheet for anarcho/communism.
I started creating covers and cartoons for the Seed. We maintained an unsteady, yet primarily, friendly relationship. One that became increasingly tenuous as stern radical feminism spread and festered though the Radical Left.
I developed friendships with Abe Peck, Eliott Wald and Paul Zmievski. I also got to know and enjoy the company of Marshall Rosenthall, Bill O'Brien, Flora Johnson, Leon Gusow, Lester Dore´, Marcia Hardy, Blind Al Rosenfeld, John Gunther, Kathleen Hogan and Mike James. Not all were Seed-staffers, but they were all fellow travelers
It was through the Seed staff that I got to know Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. When they were in town plotting sedition they'd hang out at the Seed office. Eventually I did illustrations for Rubin's "Do It!" and "We Are Everywhere", and chapter-head illustrations for Abbie's "Steal This Book". Both became frequent acquaintances, but not real friends. Their datebooks were full, and their agendas were not exactly aligned with mine
Of the two of them Jerry Rubin was more friendly and congenial. But Abbie was edgier and more volatile, making him more interesting.
***
In the Autumn of 1967 Jay Lynch and I produced the first issue of The Chicago Mirror. The primary influences behind the Mirror were Paul Krassner's The Realist, Kurtzman (of course) and -- to a considerably lesser degree -- psychoactive drugs.
The cover for the first issue was drawn by Peter Green, a friend and a fellow Art Institute student of Jay's. Peter was a master draftsman, much more accomplished than me or Jay. But he was not a comic-strip artist, that peculiar amalgam of writer and draftsman.
His cover art was titled "Bob's First Trip", a beautifully rendered drawing of a naked young man (Bob). His suit and tie hung on the limbs of a tree, he is on his knees as a long-haired, bearded and pot-bellied God character in a "King Cosmos" crown lays comic hands on his head. Disneyesque animals -- a doe, a bunny rabbit and a butterfly -- bear witness.
The issue was dedicated to the recently deceased Jayne Mansfield. There was an introduction to a new proto-religion called Scientology written by its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. There were, of course, cartoons by Jay and me as well as articles, poetry and jokes. And a comic strip centerfold by Spiegelman extolling LSD and proclaiming that one should "Play with your cells, and become your own food".
Jay and I would head down to Old Town nightly and hawk the books on the street.
The second issue of The Chicago Mirror was published in Winter 1968. Again the cover artist was Peter Green (This time the subject was Gene Autry, the singing cowboy). There was a fan letter from Harvey Kurtzman (In the third issue we published letters from Woody Allen and famous atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair.) and a cartoon by MC5's lead singer, Rob Tyner. There was also a satirical article by Jay Lynch about the psychoactive properties of dog poop ("...a seventeen-year-old shithead told MIRROR reporters 'The high is kind of like grooving on psilocybin , but more warm and human.'") Jay was alarmed by the hippies' lack of a sense of humor when he was approached by a toothless love child who told him that -- after reading about it in the Mirror -- he had rolled up a joint of dog shit. And what a great high it was.
The third issue was scheduled for publication in the Summer of 1968. The cover and interview featured The Realist publisher Paul Krassner -- who, by then, had become one of the founding members of the Yippie party. The idea was to sell copies to the thousands of war protesters and hippies who were certain to show up during the Democratic convention that August. Unfortunately the printer was late and we missed our window of opportunity.
Fortunately, though, Robert Crumb had sent Jay a copy of the first issue of Zap Comix. Inspired, Jay decided to change the format of The Mirror to a comic book and rename it Bijou Funnies. Robert Crumb, after completing the art for Janis Joplin's "Cheap Thrills" album cover, got a free ride on a bus of protesters headed for the Democratic convention and we all, fairly rapidly (Along with contributions from Jay Kinney and a reprint from Gilbert Shelton.), produced the first issue of Bijou as the Democratic convention raged around us.
I created the cover art for the second issue of Bijou. It featured my character, Snappy Sammy Smoot, standing amidst a group of radical firebrands asking "Would any of you young people like to subscribe to the Reader's Digest?" The back cover was art from one of Robert Crumb's sketchbooks.
I had Cecilia produce the color separations for the back cover art. In those days, color separations were work-intensive. Acetate overlays were created for each color--magenta, yellow and cyan. They needed to be perfectly registered with the black and white original. Then rubylith and zip-a-tone percentage screens were precisely cut and burnished down on the acetate. The person cutting the separations had to have an almost instinctual knowledge of how colors mixed, and what percentages over what percentages produced other colors in the printing process. Not to mention that the dot patterns on the zip-a-tone need to run in the same direction on each overlay in order to prevent a moire´-- tricky because there could be as many a ten different percentages of dot patterns cut separately for each of the four color plates.
Cecil had a knack for art and she did a decent job for the Bijou back cover.
She'd never created art as an avocation or a hobby, but she had a natural talent. She was genetically disposed to it. Her father was an excellent artist, who had been discouraged by his father against art, as it was an unmanly pursuit. Cecil picked up the talent through blood but also -- for whatever reason -- chose not to develop it.
***
Simultaneous to the publication of Bijou #1, Gilbert Shelton (in Austin, Texas) published Feds 'n' Heads. Meanwhile cartoonists were swarming into San Francisco. The line-up for subsequent issues of Zap Comix included Crumb (of course), the dense, violent and sexually deranged art of S. Clay Wilson, the absolutely beautiful surf-culture and LSD-inspired comics of Rick Griffin and the high-art and hot-blooded drawings of castilian Victor Moscoso And with Zap #4 the line-up was complete with the addition of the exquisitely detailed, chrome-plated hotrod art of Robert Williams and the politically radical, sexually electric Marxist art of Spain Rodrigues.
No slackers ourselves, Bijou also developed a line-up of top-flight cartoonists. Besides Jay, Crumb and me, Jay Kinney continued his lefty American cultural examinations and Art Spiegelman moved from his psychedelic phase through his predatory child murderer phase. Bijou also published the intellectually shocking sexual angst art of Justin Green, and the twisted, pimply-faced high-school trauma of Dan Clyne . Not to mention guest appearances by the primitive teddy bear horror 'toons of Rory Hayes, the whimsical yet street-savvy art of Kim Deitch, the psychotropic other-dimensional cosmic art of John Thompson and the darkly-detailed Satanic cartoon ravings of Jim Osborne.
***
In 1969 my day job was as a junior designer at Playboy Press, Playboy's book publishing division.
And by that time underground comix were at large in the countryside. They were rife with incest, misogyny, sexual mutilation, murder and sedition. So imagine our surprise when Jay Lynch and I saw Mom's Homemade Comics, a G-rated comic-book from a young Milwaukee cartoonist named Denis Kitchen.
Denis sent a copy to Jay when Robert Crumb was in town working on an issue of Bijou. So we organized a road trip to Milwaukee to meet with this upstart who had broached such a shocking and seismic change in the direction of comix.
It was a fortuitous meeting. Not only did we meet a talented artist whose main influence was the great minimalist cartoonist from the 1950s, Ernie Brushmiller, creator of Nancy and Sluggo. But Denis shared, with Robert, a love of 78 rpm records from the 20s and 30s. And, because Milwaukee was city of breweries, Denis was well-supplied with beer, which pleased me.
A camera was produced and photographs were taken of our goofy behavior. And Robert Crumb, aware that I'd been drinking significant amounts of beer and was susceptible to suggestion, thought it would be amusing if I'd masturbate over a Playboy centerfold. And that they photograph me throttling the Bishop over Miss September. I declined, so we found other mischief to occupy the evening.
The most significant result of the meeting of underground cartoonists in Milwaukee was that it led to the genesis of Denis Kitchen as a publisher.
Most of the initial underground comix were distributed by the Print Mint in San Francisco. So, more out of convenience than anything else, Jay had the Print Mint distribute Bijou Funnies. But we were half a continent away, and due to the hippie ethos and the distance involved, it was problematic getting a reliable accounting of books sold and cash owed.
So Jay approached Denis Kitchen and talked him into publishing and distributing Bijou. It also helped that Crumb placed Home Grown Funnies with Denis. So what would become Kitchen Sink Publishing sprouted and bloomed into a major underground comic book publisher.
***
"Grease", the musical about leather-jacketed, duck-tailed teenagers was in its initial Chicago performances at Kingston Mines, a store-front theater on Lincoln Avenue.
One of the actresses in the show was a fat redheaded girl named Lori who harbored a fetish for underground cartoonists. She was determine to fuck one of us, and it didn't matter which one. She wanted to do us all. After all, Free Love was widespread and unchecked.
All chubby and lascivious, she had chased an aghast Jay Lynch down an alley. He barely escaped.
Once Lori cornered me when I was drinking at Wise Fools tavern on Lincoln Avenue. Pressing her fleshy self against me, she grabbled and groped at me, insisting that I let her suck my cock. If the woman hadn't been so aggressive I might have relented. But she was so unrelenting that I instinctually panicked, and knew I had to escape.
Feigning a need to urinate I darted toward the toilet, but I slipped out the back door.
Finally, she nailed Robert Crumb and fucked him silly for a couple of days. But Crumb has a more of a prurient interest in female mass and girth than Jay or I.
Jay, Robert and I were at Jay's apartment working on a issue of Bijou.
Robert sighed and said "Lori really liked fucking me. She was very complimentary toward my cock. She said not only is it long, but it's also thick".
I regret not going for the blow job. On the other hand, if I had gone for it I'm sure I would have also regretted that. Existential sexualis.
***
Things were not going well on the home front. Shortly after moving to Chicago Cecilia and I -- not wanting to miss out on all the Free Love fun -- agreed to an open relationship. I quickly learned that in a open relationship girls get laid, and guys get blue balls. That's not to say I didn't harvest a bit of extracurricular nookie. There were a couple of women over a period of five years who allowed me vaginal access. My problem was that I'd become too attached. Cecil, on the other hand, had the ability to enjoy the physical thrill. And then move on to the next victim.
Radical feminism also took its toll. Women began regarding men as oppressors, as their nemesis.
Empathic partnerships and mutual support was replaced with hostility and recrimination. This is not to say that the fundamental inequities of the patriarchal status quo weren't specious and needed to be addressed. In the process the sins of our fathers were visited on us, and the seismic shift occurred on my watch. It created a lot of harm and ruin that demolished many a conjugal union.
***
In July 1971 Jay Lynch, Robert Crumb and I were young cartoonists hard at work drawing up an issue of Bijou Funnies in Jay's Chicago apartment.
A week earlier Jim Morrison had been discovered dead in his Paris residence. A month earlier the Pentagon Papers had begun publishing in the New York Times and Attica was right around the corner. It was post-Altamont, post-Manson. "The Bell Jar" was flying off the bookstore shelves and the Rolling Stone's "Bitch" was getting airplay. Clearly, Peace and Love had been stillborn.
We were listening to the radio as we labored on our cartoons. But we dropped our rapidographs in unison when the newscaster announced that Ub Iwerks had died.
"It's the end of an era" said the newscaster about the death of Disney's seminal animator.
Robert sighed and said "I wonder if they'll say that when I die?"
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Comment by Alan Page on November 8, 2009 at 5:55am -
http://www.jaykinney.com/art.html
Talking of the other Jay.
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