(Page Sold) Northwest Comix Collective Club Page 6

The Northwest Comix Collective story was done to fill out Dork #6, which an Eltingville Club issue reprinting the first two installments from Instant Piano (#1 and #3). material from Instant Piano. I also did a new two-page Eltingville comic about Josh called "Captain's Log", which was made up of diary entries regarding his attempts at collecting fast food toys and eating enough Kraft Macaroni and Cheese to get box tops to send away for Batman Animated toys (or something like that, I'm going off memory, here).

The Northwest Collective was a Bizarro, or flip-side Eltingville Club, they collected independent art comics and, unlike the Eltingville Club, made their own art. So, although their work was derivative, pretentious crap, they at least took a step towards becoming involved in their hobby in a way the Club members never really achieved. They at least did stuff. Or tried to do stuff.

The Collective was a means to round out a comic but it was also a way to take some potshots at the worst of the alt/art crowd members of the comics community. The four analogs to the Club weren't based on real people, and they were in many ways much broader caricatures, but some of the behavior and a few details came from real life. Art school "geniuses" and the like I'd met at SVA, at conventions and comic shops. But by and large, the jokes were more general and less about a specific type of fan than an idea of the worst aspects of snobs, gatekeepers and jerks on the artsy side of things. It was a narrower shooting gallery and I never meant for it to go beyond the single story. I was surprised that the comic had any traction at all, some folks asked me to do more comics with the characters but for me there wasn't much else to say with them.

Furthering the idea of the Collective being the "flip-side" version of the Club, the Northwest story was printed flipped, with it's own (back) cover art mimicking the main cover.

This page was finished on May 3, 1998. There's no art patches, and not as much white correction ink as I was expecting to see. There's several lettering corrections (panel 2, first and second balloons have new lettering laid in over white ink) and general touch-ups. There's a lot of text on these pages, I'm surprised the original is as "clean" as it is. I sure do miss the days of quicker decisions, letting things stand and having a steadier hand.

I also miss old marvel Comics Bristol board. That stuff was the best to work on and I'm grateful for certain people letting me abscond with the stuff. I was using Marvel paper for years after Bill and Ted and Fight-Man were published. I once gave a stack of it to Bob Fingerman to draw an issue of Miniumum Wage (iirc) when he ran out, we both agreed the Marvel stuff was aces. Everyone hoarded it when they could. I still get some paper from Dark Horse for covers but the old Marvel paper was the best (before it got crappy). I wonder what Marvel paper is like nowadays. It's been ages.