A Short History of the Seattle Comics Scene

Based on an essay for The Stranger

by Clark Humphrey and James Sturm

3/15/95

Nearly two decades after central Seattle native daughter Lynda Barry first snuck a small comic strip onto the classified pages of the old Seattle Sun, the Seattle comics scene boasts a diverse and vibrant community of artists, writers, and publishers. Perhaps not in a generation has there been such a gathering of comics creators in one place. These artists’ lives weave together at work and play. Seattle has been, and continues to be, a mecca for a generation of cartoonists who are more concerned with the exploration of their craft than the demands of the marketplace.

First off, let’s offer an attempted definition of “alternative comics.” A simple definition would be comics created for their artists to express themselves. Another definition involves works that derive direct or indirect inspiration from the 1967-73 underground comix explosion–when artists like R. Crumb, Bill Griffith, S. Clay Wilson, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, Seattle native Shary Flenniken(Trots and Bonnie) and scores more mingled, penning and publishing hundreds of black-and-white comic books in the process. That scene fragmented, along with the rest of the “counterculture,” and sputtered along for several years.

As the ’80s dawned, so did a new distribution system that helped make post-underground comics publishing more feasible. Under this system, known as the “direct market,” specialty stores bought publications on a non-returnable basis. This scheme led to a network of mom-and-pop comic book stores, many of which found shelf space for works by small publishers with non-action-adventure subjects.

This anti-corporate stance may be the most important link among the Seattle comics community. Just as first Seattle theater groups and then Seattle bands broke with their respective established industry hierarchies to start doing and promoting their own thing, so have Seattle cartoonists.

And just as there never was one singlular “Seattle Sound,” despite the national music-press hype of one, there isn’t one “Seattle Look” in cartooning. What there is, is an attitude of cooperation, self-expression, and relatively hype-free promotion.

It’s also a place where living, working and getting around are still practical: One former New Yorker noted that there were at least as many alternative cartoonists in New York as here in Seattle; but back there, the city itself was such a demanding presence that fostering a community in such a hectic environment was difficult at best. Some artists even claim the local weather makes it easier to stay home and keep concentrating on their drawing.

History of local cartooning

There’s at least been newspaper cartooning since this place was settled. Washington’s most famous politician, the late Sen. Henry Jackson, got his nickname “Scoop” from an Everett Herald comic strip about a lazy paperboy. Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham grew up on Queen Anne Hill. Basil Wolverton, a resident of southwest Washington, is acknowledged today as the first master of hideously funny caricature. Other Northwest artists of national note included Uncle $crooge creator Carl Barks and Broom-Hilda creator Russel Myers.

But the force that really got local kids from the late ’50s to the early ’70s turned on to the possibilities of funny drawings came not from the papers but the tube. KING-TV had a succession of three “Cartooning Weathermen”: Bob Hale, Bob Cram, and Tom Davie. In the pre-minicam years they added a visual dimension to what were often static talking-head newscasts. They chatted to the audience about the day’s weather and other light topics while making funny drawings with felt markers on big sheets of paper. Their nightly real-time demonstrations helped demystify the creative act, and instilled the cartooning bug into local kids like Lynda Barry,Mike Lukovich (now a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist in Atlanta), and Tacoma native Gary Larson. (Berkeley Breathed, who moved here after establishing his career, isn’t related to this history.)

More recent roots

The more specific origins of the local comics scene began in the mid-’70s. The Evergreen State College (specifically, its radio-station program guide and its student paper) provided a training ground for Barry, Portland native Matt Groening, Charles Burns, Steve Willis, and Dana Squires (whose hip yet lighthearted images helped inspire the “innocent” graphic look associated with the K Records scene).

Barry was known at the time as a typical comics loner, who preferred the company of her pen and paper to the companionship of other artists. Still, she appeared in a lot of places before she left town in the mid-’80s. After leaving Evergreen, Barry contributed to the UW Daily (alongside her high school buddy John Keister) and to the Seattle Sun, an alternative weekly published from 1974 to 1982. The Rocket began as a Sun spinoff in 1979, publishing Barry, Burns, Holly K. Tuttle, Mark Zingarelli, Michael Dougan (who moved here from east Texas), Ron Hauge (later a writer for Ren & Stimpy and Seinfeld), and Triangle Slash. The Rocket also commissioned strips and covers from out-of-town alt-comics stars like Gary Panter (who married former Rocket art director Helene Silverman in New York), Drew Friedman, Raymond Pettibone (famous for his Black Flag album covers), Carel Moisievitch, andHarvey Pekar. Local publisher Michael Dowers was printing mini-comics (including Willis’s Morty the Dog) from 1982 on.

But despite all this activity, there was not much of an interacting community of cartoonists here in 1984, when Peter Bagge arrived from New York (because his new wife got a job at her parents’ deli in Kirkland). Bagge describes the Seattle cartooning scene at the time as stuffy and Victorian, a city of loners and hermits. The cartoonists didn’t see themselves as a group. No one wanted to meet anybody. Bagge was editing Weirdo (a quarterly anthology comic book founded by R. Crumb) at the time, and sought out cartoonists as a way of making friends. Weirdo began to take on a Northwest flavor, with artists like Dougan and Zingarelli appearing in it regularly. Taking it upon himself to build a community, Bagge hosted parties and gatherings with people like Dowers, ex-Rocket writer Dennis P. Eichhorn, and Bruce Chrislip.

As Eicchorn remembers those times, “I’m not going to mourn for the good ol’ days. Cartoonists were starving to death then and they’re starving to death now.”

The coalescing of it all

Bagge persuaded the publishers of his solo comic book Neat Stuff, Fantagraphics Books, to move from L.A. to Seattle in 1989. Over the previous eight years, Fantagraphics had become the preeminent U.S. publisher of alternative comics. Besides Bagge, its stars included Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets), Daniel Clowes (Lloyd Llewellyn, Eightball), Roberta Gregory (Naughty Bits), Joe Sacco (Yahoo, Palestine), and Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo). Its magazine about the business, the Comics Journal, was recognized and/or castigated throughout the alternative-comics world as the chief vehicle for news and criticism about the field.

Fantagraphics honchos Gary Groth and Kim Thompson set up house in a remote suburban split-level near the King/ Snohomish county line. They held parties there for their staff and local and visiting cartoonists about once a month or so. Because many of them had to carpool to get there and back, the Groth-Thompson parties forced many typically-shy cartoonist types to learn to become social, to keep talking to their fellow guests over the course of an evening. This furthered the local comics scene’s evolution from a bunch of individuals isolated at their own drawing boards, toward a mutually-supportive group.

Gregory, Pat Moriarity, and Jim Blanchard came to Seattle specifically to work in the Fantagraphics production department. Other creators began to move here to become part of the community forming around the company: Julie Doucet, Ed Brubaker, Jeremy Eaton, and Al Columbia.

The Stranger brought James Sturm and Jason Lutes here, and has given freelance work to such creators as local kid Megan Kelso and newcomers Ward Sutton and Ellen Forney.

Posters, advertising work, record covers, and Rocket and Stranger illos provided work for several local cartoonist/illustrator crossovers, including Triangle Slash, Friese Undine, Carl Smool, and Ed Fotheringham (who’s gone from Sub Pop covers to the pages of the New Yorker).

The current scene

The work of Seattle’s cartoonists varies greatly in content, style, ambition, and maturity. Some, for instance, are inspired by Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), others by underground creator Joe Coleman. There are various factions and, like in most communities, a fair amount of gossiping.

The scene has continued to grow on its own momentum, as cartoonists move here to be part of it. Some (like Doucet) leave; others (like Forney) settle in for the long haul. Cartoonists like Jim Woodring and Bagge own houses and have children.

Despite the hype and media exposure some alternative comics creators have gotten in recent years, theirs is still a fairly underground cult milieu. If this medium is ever going to break through and be taken seriously by a larger public, better work needs to be produced. Perhaps the conditions here in the Northwest will allow comics to take another step forward.