Trina Robbins is Looking for Her Stolen Artwork

 

Larry’s Comic Art Memorabilia

While we are all ‘confined to quarters’ during this terrible pandemic, many of us are doing some version of spring cleaning—sifting through the debris of our life.

I’ve been attempting to organize/clean/purge my studio-office (aka Larry’s Cartoon Vault). It’s a slow going process to be sure.

I’ve also received a couple of old-cartooning-days blasts from the past of late.

Here are a couple.

Kevin Brady sent me this scan of a cartoon drawn by another Kevin—Kevin East.

The drawing commemorates the first encounter of a handful of young, neophyte cartoonists. We all met at the first Bay Con held at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley in 1975.

Me, Marc Miyashiro (who at the time drew ‘Xeno’ for the Berkeley Barb), Michael T. Gilbert (of Mr. Monster fame and various mainstream enterprises including, Superman, Dr. Strange and Mickey Mouse), Kevin Brady (a Dan O’Neil cartooning student who became host and/or wrangler of the soon to be GroundUnder Cartoonists and still making art up in the foothills of the Sierras) and Kevin East (another former Dan O’Neil student and Berkeley Barb cartoonist).


Speaking of the GroundUnder Cartoonists: I just rediscovered, in the Cartoon Vault, a tattered, torn, poorly printed official “GroundUnder’ T-shirt.

The late Roger May instigated the creation (and silk screening) of the meat-grinding T-Shirt featuring cartoon self-portraits of most of the core members.

‘Membership’ was a loose distinction, in deed. We met every Thursday night at Kevin Brady’s place in the Sunset district of San Francisco. We ate, drank, did a lot of show-and-tell, and created some very rambling cartoon jam sessions (many saw print in various Roger May self-published comics such as Vibratory Provincial News). 

Right to left, top row are: The amazing Melinda Gebbie as an amazing squid, Trina Robbins, Marc Miyashiro, Shelby Sampson, Roger May and Dot Bucher. Center: Kevin Brady. Right of Kevin: Michael T. Gilbert. Bottom: Me.


Michael Gilbert dug up a photo (circa 1977?) previously unknown to me.

Right to left are: Hairy Me again, Al Gordon (Marvel, DC inker), then Mary Gordon (a good calligrapher), Michael T. Gilbert, Steve Leialoha (another well-known DC and Marvel artist) and (legendary underground comix pioneer and comics “herstorian”) Trina Robbins.

I don’t know what the heck were supposed to be doing or why.  It looks like an out-take from an Austin Powers movie.

Stay Healthy

The Troubled Troubadour

Back in the olden days of the Underground Comix scene in San Francisco, Barry Siegel & Bruce Simon were a creative comix team (not to be confused with Siegel and Shuster or Simon and Kirby, or Simon and Schuster, for that matter) who created comic books such as People Are Phony, Savage Humor and Party Comics.

Barry Siegel was also a budding filmmaker, or at a least film student, at the time and decided to make a film short—in the spirit of a 1930’s musical comedy-- employing a mostly cartoonist cast. The result was The Troubadour starring Leslie Cabarga with a supporting cast including Trina Robbins, Bruce Simon, Kim Deitch, Sharon Rudahl, Billy Boop and me among others.

This item was shown here and there. I recall seeing it premiered at some comic con (Bay Con? San Diego? I don’t recall which). But otherwise in the pre-internet, pre-DVD, pre everything-digital era The Troubled Troubadour seemed to disappear for about 3 decades…

And now it’s on Youtube.

I’ve contemplated posting this a number of times with more than a few reservations but what the hey. It’s a piece of history now....