Closing Out A Banner Year

I know.  It's not even December.  But this weekend wraps up a year of pushing myself creatively, participating in some stellar festivals and celebrating the last two of the 5 or 6 comics publications that I've participated in that were printed in 2016.

Future Forward:  Extruder 2 Party and Kissing Coyote Goodbye

The cover of Extruder 2, by Ben Horak.

I am  excited to have been invited to participate in Seattle's own Extruder.  Extruder 1 was put out as a sort of "Best Of" anthology from former Seattle free comics paper, Intruder,  and presented as the cream of the crop of Seattle alternative comics.  Intruder sun-setted after 4 years, but a few affiliated artists put together an Extruder 2.  There's a different stable of artists with some cross over, and I think it's REALLY a good, fun sampling of Seattle cartooning! 

You can get a copy at the Extruder 2 Release Party this Friday, November 11th at Push/Pull Art & Comix.  Push/Pull is located at 5484 Shilshole Ave NW in Ballard.  I created a one-pager for the anthology and will be at the party, which runs from 7 - 9.  A lot of Seattle's finest fringe creators will be there, and the copies of Extruder 2 that I had for Short Run literally flew of my table.  You'll have a good time if you come, and you'll leave with a great comic.

Love fresh takes on Fairy Tales and myth?  I'll be returning to Push/Pull just two days later, on Sunday, November 13th to celebrate the publication of Coyote and Butterfly Woman at Anne Bean's Modern Tales Party. This will be a more intimate affair, celebrating the comics written by Anne Bean, funded by Artist Trust, and illustrated by artists such as Ben Horak, Ted Closson and Laura Graves.

Cover art for Coyote and Butterfly Woman.

My own contribution to Anne's Modern Tales is the art for Coyote and Butterfly Woman.  I've already posted about it A LOT.  I did not know how all-consuming of a project it would be.  Not only did I become obsessive in my research for the story, I pushed really hard to create a cleaner, highly-graphic look to the story.  I've never focused so much on the spaces in-between the lines as I did with Coyote.

It's been great to work with Anne and I feel like I learned a lot in the process of drawing her vision.  We also sold a ton of these at Short Run.  So, it's a "Hello" to the world for Coyote and Butterfly Woman!  But I am somewhat sad to say goodbye to the story. 

If you are interested in the book, but can't make the party, you can purchase it on my ETSY at https://www.etsy.com/shop/NoelFranklinArt

Recap:  Rocking Short Run 2016

 

It's been a busy few months!  I'm grateful to everyone who came out to the Rock Is Not Dead party at Fantagraphics on October 22nd.  The anthology has been a long time in the making, and it was great to see my 5-page collaboration with Mark Campos in print.

Special thanks to Amy Denio for the music, Cait Willis for the inspiration and to Larry Reid, Lilly Beaty and Fantagraphics for hosting the party.

Anne Bean and yours truly at our table at Short Run.

Of course, the big event this month was Short Run Comix and Art Festival 2016.   I don't even know where to begin, except to say that it was hands-down the best tabling event that I've attended to date - including past Short Runs.  The exhibitor list was diverse and wildly talented, there was a steady stream of attendees throughout the day and everyone seemed to have brought their wallets. 

Truthfully, sales were so brisk that I barely was able to leave the table.  But every time I did, something wonderful happened.  Jonathan Horn handed me contributor packs for my drawing of Mirabai for his Supramystic Saga - Luminaries trading card sets.  The Ghosts of Seattle Past revealed the t-shirt they printed using a panel from one of my comics as part of their fundraising efforts.  Cullen Beckhorn delivered some art I left at BELCAF on accident. 

Fine cartoonist Annie Murphy, eating a donut, and
rocking my "Seattle, you have left me for a
wealthier woman" t-shirt design.
The sign to her right reads:
"God knows when you don't tip."

Looking at everyone's photos of the event, I sometimes ask myself if I was even there.  I'm seeing photos of friends and special guest artists that I would have loved to run into, but didn't even see.  I'm grateful to the friends like Margaret Ashford Trotter, Annie Murphy, Henry Chamberlain, Jennifer Daydreamer and other great cartoonists who came to the table to say hello, because I couldn't get away for more than a second.

Kudos to Kelly Froh, Eroyn Franklin, the board, advisory board and volunteers who make up the festival implementation team.  They make it look seamless, but I know how much work goes on behind the scenes.  What a great year!

Shout Out To The Press Peeps

 

There were a couple of great articles and blog posts that supported the flurry of activity this Fall.  Thanks to Paul Constant for publishing an interview in Seattle Review of Books (Talking with cartoonist Noel Franklin about her new award, Short Run, and her next book) and working with Kelton Sears to cover the Rock Is Not Dead show in Seattle Weekly (This Weekend, Seattle Cartoon Overload).  Gratitude to Henry Chamberlain for the ink in his Short Run recap for Comics Grinder (Short Run 2016: The Big in the Small) and to the Fantagraphics FLOG (What’s in Store: Rock is Not Dead). Much love to Sarah Galvin and City Arts for the listing.

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

From Recession to Concession

The Original Artwork for my Seattle Weekly Comic.
You can see the completed story here.

I'm a big fan of the human eye.  I love how well-adapted our vision is in picking up subtleties and a lot of my decision-making in comics plays to this.  It's why I don't use panel borders on my pages, and why I very rarely outline anything in a scene.

Also, just this year I fell in love with white space.  I don't think I've ever used it as efficiently as I can.  As a woman who works exclusively in black and white, I've been neglecting half of my palette.

Today, I have a comic out in Seattle Weekly.  It's my second comic with them.  While it's my intention to do comics journalism about Seattle's music scene - like this one about The Crocodile - this week's comic is an autobiographical story about my decision to go back to school for web development.

The decision was driven by how expensive Seattle has become to live in, and is fueled by my disillusionment with the nonprofit sector.  There are several programs that the State of Washington offers that pay for job retraining, and I'm working with WorkSource to get my tuition paid.

I think the editor was excited about it because so many artists are having to make tough choices, now, in Seattle and a lot of them are choosing to leave.  I'm hoping it will resonate with people.

Finished panel, with text covering
up the signage.

What I am excited about with this comic is that it's the first time I didn't outline narrative boxes or word balloons.  I'm seeing how much I can pare away, visually, and still move the story.  I want people to feel totally and naturally immersed in the art.  It was a fun experiment, and Seattle Weekly didn't bat an eye at the missing outlines, so I'm assuming it worked ok.

I am pseudo-obsessed with making good-looking original art, and I draw entire panels even though I know I will be covering up a lot of the visual details with words, so I'm posting the orginal art here.  You can see the completed story at the Seattle Weekly's website, or pick up a physical copy from the stands before next Wednesday.

I do want to add that I totally riffed the art of John Criscitello and his Woo Girls in one panel.  Credit where credit is due! 

I'll be doing another comic for Seattle Weekly on the Macefield Festival in September.

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

Crocodile Rock

The original illustration for "The Crocodile's 25th Year"
before re-arranging and cutting imagery and covering
much of it with text.  View the completed comic here:
http://tinyurl.com/j239b8f

This week marks the three-year anniversary of my comics publishing adventures, and I'm happy to announce that I have a comic appearing in the Seattle Weekly.  The comic tells a brief history of The Crocodile, a Seattle music club that is celebrating its 25th year anniversary this year.

The image on the left is the original illustration before I tweaked things and covered a lot of it with text boxes.  You can acquire the original up at my Etsy shop.  You can check out the final story at Seattle Weekly - and feel free to share the link - here: 

http://tinyurl.com/j239b8f

The Barrett Martin Group is hosting one of several anniversary shows for The Crocodile on Friday, June 17th.  I write more about this below, and you can get full details on The Crocodile website here.

Because there is so much more to the story than I could fit into the comic, and because I was able to interview Scott McCaughey and Barrett Martin - two musicians who feature prominently in the venue's history - I'd like to share more of the story here.

Crocodile Cafe & Live Bait Lounge

It was the early 1990s, Seattle music was coming alive and a music-loving lawyer by the name of Stephanie Dorgan decided she wanted to open a rock venue.  She threw in with several other investors and procured the former home of a Greek cafe called The Athens, on 2200 2nd Avenue, which had stood empty for over a decade.  Renovations were made and the first show was played on April 30th of 1991 by The Posies and Love Battery. 

Crocodile Cafe management was devoted to supporting local music, as well as creating a welcome stop for prominent touring acts.  Seattle PI's John Marshall reported "A now-legendary Croc double bill, with a $3 ticket, took place on Oct. 4, 1992, and featured Mudhoney and Nirvana (billed that night as Pen Cap Chew). A 1996 gig by Cheap Trick included a surprise appearance by Pearl Jam."

Some of the fellows from Young Fresh Fellows.
Scott McCaughey went on to play with
REM, The Minus 5, The Venus 3
and The Baseball Project.

Stephanie started out as a hands-on owner, enlisting her sisters in the venture, including hiring Constance Dorgan as the venue Manager.  It's one of the details mentioned by Scott McCaughey.  "It was always great to have one of the Dorgan sisters around.  They practically lived there."  Scott's band, The Young Fresh Fellows, has been referred to as Crocodile Cafe's house band and he served as a talent buyer there for several years.

He said that management lived up to their claim of going out of their way to treat bands well.  "Bands received 90% of the door after a reasonable fee.  If you had any kind of draw at all, Crocodile Cafe was an oasis for touring musicians."  He also noted that if an act DIDN'T have a draw the first time you played at "The Croc," you'd likely have one the second time around.  "Guided by Voices is the perfect example.  They played their first show to less than 100 people.  The Crocodile Cafe lost money, but it was an amazing show.  Guided by Voices sold out every Seattle show they played after that."

Death and Rebirth of The Crocodile

Did I mention the Crocodile Cafe had art?  In the truly grungy back bar they sometimes rotated out art shows.  Last I was there, the ceiling was adorned by sheep that seemed to be constructed from spray foam, farting neon lightning bolts as they swayed from their wires.  I think the sheep were still there at the last show of the old Crocodile, a Saturday night set by Robin Pecknold (Fleet Foxes), J. Tillman (Fleet Foxes, The Lashes) and David Bazan (Pedro the Lion) in December of 2007.  

A tiny 2.5 x 2.5 inch portrait of Stephanie Dorgan and
Peter Buck that didn't make the Seattle Weekly comic.
There wasn't enough room to give it the context it deserved.

The next day, staff received voicemails from Stephanie Dorgan telling them that they were terminated, immediately, as the Crocodile was closed due to financial difficulties.  No formal statement regarding the closure was issued to the press, and this cartoonist doesn't have the story.  There's a good summary of the chain of events leading up to the closure on the 10 Things Zine website here, complimented by many other articles you can find on the web.

Of note, Stephanie had two children with REM's Peter Buck in 1994.  The couple divorced in 2006.  It's easy to imagine the rigors of family life taking energy away from a founder's original labor of love.  It's possible to believe that a spouse with considerable income might take the urgency out of budget balancing and penny pinching to keep a club operating in the black. 

Whatever the reason, Stephanie Dorgan was finished running the Crocodile.  She sold the business to a group of partners led by bar owner Marcus Charles.  The investing group renovated the facilities, bringing it up to speed with both Seattle's new codes for night clubs and Belltown's fancier feel.  The bar became a little more upscale (the farting sheep replaced by giant glossy performance photos from the Grunge Era glory years), and the show room was developed to be a more accommodating performance venue.  The sound system was improved, a lush green room added, and the bands played on.

Barrett Martin Celebrates 25 Years of The Crocodile

The Crocodile opened again in March of 2008.  One of the first performances was a semi-reunion

show by Soundgarden.  It featured Soundgarden with a notable exception: Seattle musician Tad Doyle standing in for Chris Cornell.  With the appearance of "TADGarden" it was clear that The Crocodile was still a place for local artist to perform, try out new things and showcase side projects.

Barrett Martin
Photo by Dean Karr

Barrett Martin was one of the musicians who performed during the early years of Crocodile Cafe as a member of Skin Yard and Screaming Trees.  In 1994 he joined musicians from Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains for a surprise performance at Crocodile Cafe that signaled the birth of their new band, Mad Season.   In 1996, Barrett worked with Peter Buck, Skerik and other musicians on a project they called Tuatara.  Tuatara expanded and changed over the years, eventually engaging Scott McCaughey.  (Note to reader:  I was not aware of this at the time that I decided to interview Barrett and Scott independently.  The more you know...)

Barrett is producing a 25-year celebration showcase to The Crocodile on Friday, June 17th.  "I wanted the show to engage old Seattle, new Seattle and something that is new to Seattle.  That's what The Crocodile is about." he said.  "Noelle Tannen, for example.  She's a singer/songwriter from Brooklyn, but with roots in Seattle.  She's opening.  Vaudeville Etiquette are a Seattle band and one of the best bands I've worked with as a producer."

An iteration of Tuatara will appear as well as the Barrett Martin Group.  While I am unsure of who will be performing in what constellation, you can expect to see some really good collaboration between musicians like Barrett with Skerik (Critters Buggin), Chris Ballew (The Presidents), Ayrone Jones, Tyan Waters (Prince, Sade's bands) Kathy Moore (The Guessing Game), Jen Ayers (Teatro Zinzanni) and more.

Tickets and additional information about the show can be procured here. 

This was difficult.  I could only put the tiniest fraction of information in the Seattle Weekly comic.  But at least I got to draw some awesome artists and organizers and hopefully get people interested in a bit more of Seattle's music history. 

Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.