Remembering Clay Geerdes

Ten years ago today Clay Geerdes died as a result of liver cancer. He was 63-years-old.

Clay was someone I met because of his work with young cartoonists. He published a series of mini-comix and a newsletter called Comix World (later Comix Wave), which covered the vibrant scene of underground comic books.Geerdes' newsletter was a hodge podge of styles, type and illustrations. Different cartoonists did his logos, and sometimes used him as the subject. Click on the pictures for full-size images.

Clay was right there from the beginning of that movement in the late 1960s, as a freelance journalist, writing about the hippie culture from his home in the San Francisco Bay Area. He wasn't from California, but was a transplanted Midwesterner. He left his home in Nebraska when he was of age and went into the Navy for four years. When he came out he stayed in California where he completed his education, becoming for a time in the 1960s a college English professor. The worlds of academe and Clay Geerdes just didn't get along. He left education, became a freelance journalist, writing whole underground newspapers, including the satirical San Francisco Ball. If there was a mover-and-shaker in the world of the underground press at the time Clay probably knew him. He took pictures of many of the counterculture celebrities of the day, and many of those photos* are still around, being used in movies and books about the era.

In the early 1970s Geerdes began to focus solely on the underground comix, because of the talent level coming out of those books. R. Crumb. Spain. Clay Wilson. The list goes on and on. A blog devoted to his photos of cartoonists is available here. Clay found out early that underground publishing, like mainstream publishing, was closed to outsiders. Anyone, even someone with talent who wasn't part of the inner circle, could expect their submitted artwork to become a coaster for coffee cups, mislaid or lost. Geerdes felt that encouraging and publishing young cartoonists was a way for them to grow and develop.

I contacted him in 1979 and sent him some of my drawings. By return mail I got a clipped funny news article and a demand to "do a cartoon of this." I went ahead and did it, and looking back on it now I can see it wasn't very good. But I got better. He made cartoonists get better over time because he was demanding and wanted them to draw constantly. He wasn't a harsh taskmaster, but he knew potential and asked something of his contributors.
The mini-comix were a mixed bag of good and sometimes very bad cartoons. The best of the artists did their job to make them hilarious.

Besides a love of cartooning, Clay and I had something else in common: heads made of solid granite. When we made up our minds it was difficult to get us to see the other person's point of view. I hope I've mellowed, but Clay never did. One time we had a screaming fight that chilled our friendship for a few years, and even when our relationship was renewed there was a remote side, an iciness to Geerdes I hadn't seen before. I had betrayed him, and could never be wholly trusted again. OK, I accepted that. But when he was close to death, he wrote and requested a present. He wanted a copy of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "Shenandoah." I was floored. The great counterculture chronicler wanted the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? What it showed was Geerdes' soft side. He had one. Like a lot of guys of his generation he just didn't like to show it.

The picture at the head of this article, taken in 1982 when Clay was 47, was by his friend Clara Felix. Clara is now also deceased. She was also a presence, one of the few people who really understood that under Clay's irascibility and curmudgeonly exterior there beat a soft heart.

For some reason Clay Geerdes is being forgotten for the work he did in his chosen field. Others who have written about the artists and early years of the underground comix have written Geerdes out, all the while using his information and sometimes his photos (illegally). Geerdes longed for recognition and for his contributions to be recognized. He was deeply hurt when it wasn't forthcoming or when he felt dismissed. Underground comix history isn't a big field, and the names of the experts can be ticked off on the fingers of one hand. Unfortunately, Clay's might be the middle finger that got cut off because it was sticking up at his enemies.
A page of one of Geerdes' newsletters that shows him in happier days, circa 1976. He's the one with the mariner's beard, sitting next to animator Bob Clampett. The bearded man on the bottom, George DiCaprio, was an underground cartoonist and father of movie star, Leonardo.

Of all of the people I've known, Clay was really the only one who did things his way, Frank Sinatra notwithstanding. Geerdes was not cut out for a 9-to-5 job, so contented himself in later years with a doorman job in a folk music nightclub near his home in Berkeley, California. It was enough to keep body and soul together. He never cared about the American dream of having a driveway full of cars and a boat, or a house full of expensive things he didn't really need. As long as his needs were met he seemed to be all right. I believe Clay knew he could not answer to anyone, no matter what it cost him. It was because of that independence that he had no medical insurance. It killed him. He ignored symptoms and by the time he saw a doctor it was too late.

Clay Geerdes was a lot of things, but the main thing he was to me is unforgettable. That is why I remember him on this day, 10 years to the day since he died.

*Geerdes' photos are still under copyright, administered by his former neighbor and best friend, David Miller. Use of Clay's photos can be arranged by contacting Dave at DMiller611@aol.com.

On Another Independence Day...

On July 4, 1967, I got dressed for a guard mount. One of my roommates, Brewster, hollered, "I'm taking a picture for your folks." Brewster was an amateur (as you can see by the photo, very amateur) photographer, who wanted to use up a roll of film so he could develop it in the darkroom at the enlisted man's club. I stuck my cigarette behind my back--no use Mom and Dad seeing that I'd taken up the filthy habit--and forced a grin.

A few days ago I remembered I had this picture and searched it out from amongst my old photos. It freezes a moment in time for me: I had been in Germany for two months; I was four days short of 20-years-old; I had a year-and-a-half left in the Army, and Dad had exactly six months left to live.

Photos can be like that, which is obviously why we want to keep them. They take time and put it onto a small piece of paper. A moment of how someone was, maybe a long, long time ago.

The picture may be grainy and Brewster's photo developing may be poor, but in this picture I see a lot of history. Not just a PFC standing by his bunk, dressed in his starched fatigues, but the guy I was exactly 40 years ago today.

Ciao for now.

Bompaw Brags

What the hell...I can brag if I want to. It's the 4th of July and we're celebrating our independence, which means our freedom of speech, which means my freedom to brag.

This is Sally's and my posterity. David, his wife, Loan, who became a U.S. citizen in May, and their two girls, Isabella and Gabriela.Bella, which means "beautiful" in Italian, is already matching up to her name, even at the tender age of 2 1/2 years. To Bella I am "Bompaw." Gabby is a smiling, happy baby who will also be a beauty.

Ah, their poor dad...I didn't have his impending problems because I only had him to worry about. In about 15 years he will have to keep the wolves from circling around his two young beauties.

See? I have every right to brag.

Ciao for now.

4th of July

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Revealed At Last! The True Origin Of The Flying Saucers!

No sooner had I posted my blog this morning than I got an e-mail marked URGENT.

"Dear Postino, I have followed your postings of the past week with a great deal of interest. You say that all who see UFOs and so-called 'flying saucers' are suffering from a need for attention or a psychosis. [Not true. I said people who claim to have been abducted by aliens to be suffering from a need for attention or a psychosis.]

'So-called 'flying saucers' are real, and they are produced right here in the United States, in a secret laboratory. I should know. My grandfather has made them since 1947. Here's his picture. I hope this will set the record straight and that you won't be condemning all those who have made legitimate sightings of 'flying saucers.'" Sincerely, One Who Knows

OK, One Who Knows…here's the picture you sent me, so now we all know the secret origin of the flying saucers.

Ciao for now.

Watch The Skies, Hang Onto Your Wallet

Alien Agenda by Jim Marrs, published in 1997, says in the first two sentences of its introduction: "The controversy over the existence of UFOs is over. UFOs are real." He then goes on for the next 600 (!!!) pages or so to regurgitate just about every story, myth, lie, misinterpretation, half-truth and canard of the Alien/UFO True Believer. I noted early in the book a statement that claims Otto Binder was an "ex-NASA space program member." Whatever that is. Otto, who I met and talked to before his death, was a prolific writer of science fiction and before that of comic books. Here's a book, under his original pen-name, he gave me during my visit to him in Chestertown, NY. Otto did believe in flying saucers, and also spirit mediums. He was very open to those sorts of ideas. Did he work for NASA in some capacity? I don't know.

In my time doing research on the UFO phenomenon I have found that most authors of these books don't really try to reach the non-believers, because they know those folks can't be convinced by their brand of evidence. They go after the folks who already believe, or who can be persuaded by accepting the author's word for it. Jim Marrs established his bona fides in those two sentences in the introduction to his book. He's a believer. It helps to know he also wrote the book Crossfire, which was the basis for Oliver Stone's movie fantasy, JFK.

Ah, conspiracy theorists and paranoids. My life would be so empty without them.

This will be my last column on flying saucers/UFOs, at least for a while. (What? Am I hearing a big sigh of relief from you?) Anyway, I have dug out some more book covers.

Jenny Randles is a prolific writer on the subject of UFOs. I especially enjoy these two covers. The first, UFOs and How To See Them has a saucer shaped object on the dust jacket which is really a lenticular cloud. I suppose if you don't know it's a cloud you could technically call it an unidentified flying object.

The second book, World's Best "True" UFO Stories is made interesting by the quotes around the word "true." Are they actually true true stories, or are they quote-true-unquote stories? Apparently the latter.

All of these books claim to tell you the truth, but in actuality are guilty of the same things I blame on the author of Alien Agenda.

And there is some sleight-of-hand in the title of this exploitation video: UFO Phenomenon: The Mystery Revealed. OK, so there's a mystery. So that needs to be revealed? Do you think the unwary might approach this video thinking it will give out any real answers to said mystery?Finally, and God bless American ingenuity. Someone had a far-out idea based on the designs of flying saucers he'd seen splattered all over the newspaper and magazine racks for a couple of years. The cover of Science and Mechanics from December, 1950 uses a technique of promising something that in real life will never be delivered. How many of these flying saucer buses have you seen buzzing over the streets of your city? And if streets were congested in 1950 how about now that we have over twice the population? We need these flying saucer buses now!Ciao for now. Watch the skies, but don't believe everything you see in them.

Flying Saucer Attack!

The excitement never ends at Paranoia Strikes Deep. Here's yet another column for Flying Saucer Week:

Saucer Attack! is a 1997 book with great graphics, showing the first half century of flying saucer pop culture. There are dozens, if not hundreds of book covers. It's usually available on eBay, and I've seen some copies on Amazon.com, but buyer beware: prices are all over the map when you shop for this out-of-print book.

I've tried not to duplicate what has already been shown in Saucer Attack! when showing some of the covers I have of saucer books.

Saucer: the Conquest by Stephen Coonts is from 2004, and it's in the thriller vein: a 140,000-year-old saucer is dug up and of course it still works. Those aliens may be dumb enough to forget where it's buried, but at least the battery didn't lose its charge. It's the second book in the series.

Saucers make for good covers, as witness these comics: Life With Archie from 1975; Death Rattle from 1988; UFO and Alien Comix from 1977.

Fortean Times is a British magazine which examines stories of this sort of phenomena, but they're also skeptical about it. I like their magazine, love their great covers.

Even New Yorker got into the act with this strange and funny cover by Bruce McCall.

This could be one of the rarest books I own, found at a thrift store. It's a hardcover edition of The Hollow Earth, a cranky 1964 book by Robert Bernard, Ph.D, who claims flying saucers come from the hollow core of the earth, accessible through a hole near the North Pole.More later! Ciao for now.

UFOs Are Kid Stuff

Yet another entry in the Paranoia Strikes Deep Flying Saucer Week blogs. Click on the pictures for full-size images.

It's easy to go through kids' books at a bookstore or used book outlet and find UFO books. You can also find kids' books about the Bible, ghosts, or any other belief adults want to indoctrinate kids into. You can teach them virtually anything. Whether or not they'll believe as adults what they've been taught is something else, but there's plenty out there once they grow up to reinforce those childish beliefs.

After going through my shelves I've come up with some UFO items specifically for kids.

Fiction is a big market. You stick a spaceship or flying saucer on a cover and it'll get a kid's attention. Stick an alien on there and you double your chances the kid will beg mom to buy it. The Spooksville series by Christopher Pike was very popular a few years ago, if popularity is measured by how many of the series I find used. I've seen less of the Mike Gonzo books, but the cover on this particular book is very eye-catching and it probably sold very well. Both of these books are published by Pocket Books under the juvenile imprint of Minstrel Books.Even Nancy Drew got in on the act. I have two editions of this book. One shows the saucer and the other just a light on the horizon. I chose this one to show you because of the saucer.
The Invaders was a popular TV series in the 1960s, and the Three Investigators was a popular juvenile detective series. This particular Three Investigators edition was published in the late 1970s, and shows the influence of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind in its depiction of the UFO.

But those books are marketed as fiction. There are books that purport to tell facts. The Isaac Asimov book is, as you'd expect, pretty much a book debunking UFOs. Asimov was not a believer. I've found that UFO "facts" are in the eye of the beholder. What seems fact to one person can easily be perceived as fiction to another.

Then there are those pesky aliens again. The stories of little gray men pulling people into spaceships and examining them has become part of our culture. Although this book looks like it's about "real" monsters from outer space, the design is mostly to draw the reader in to a carefully worded treatise on why such beliefs aren't real. The words "optical illusion" and even "hallucination" are there, which is a pretty good indicator the author isn't sympathetic with the alien agenda.
This isn't a book, but a package of valentines I found a few years ago. I don't know, but would you want to get a valentine that shows a big-eyed, insectlike alien and says, "I've got my eyes on you, valentine!" Brrr. Shudder.
That imagery repeats itself on this box of fruity snacks called Wildfruit UFOs. I saw the box and said, "OK, I'll bite." The snacks were good, too, and I hung onto the box.More later. Ciao for now.

It's Enough To Give You Nightmares...

Do people get abducted, taken into flying saucers, have foreign objects inserted into their orifices while scary-looking little men with big black eyes conduct scary tests? If I'd heard those stories when I was a kid I'd have been even more paranoid than I already was. I had more than my share of nightmares about things that spooked me.

Buy hey…what about you? How about a little story about you during your childhood? You're 10-years-old, and you're with your mom and your 5-year-old sister at the library. You don't want to be there, it's a nice summer day. Mom is looking at CDs and books from Oprah's Book Club. Your little sister is in the preschool area, listening to a nice lady read a Dr. Seuss book. You're walking amongst the shelves of the kids' books when your eye is caught by this book. There's a cover painting of a flying saucer with a ray coming out of it, zapping a man by a car! Cool! You take the book over to the reading table.

Flipping through the book you start to get a little unnerved. Here's a painted illustration of some weird-looking little guys standing over a guy on an operating table. What's that thing sticking out of his head while he screams in pain?

You turn the page quick. Then there's an illustration of some dead cows with their lips cut off. Yow.

Then you see an illustration of a lady on a table, with the weird guys little around her, and according to the caption, they are removing a "humanoid fetus" from the lady. Turn the pages, quick.

Yikes! Here's the lady, holding what looks like one of the weird little guys only it's a baby! The little guys are standing around her. She's holding it like her own baby!

You quickly flip back the pages, thinking, this might've been a mistake to take this book off the shelf. Then you see it, the picture that will be in your head for years to come:

You slam the book shut, run over to Mom who is gathering up your little sister, getting ready to check out her books and CD's. She says, "Find something you like, honey?"

"Heck, NO!" you shout. People look at you.

That night you find it hard to get to sleep because of the images in your head from that awful book. You finally fall asleep but wake up after a disturbing nightmare about little guys with big eyes, holding you down on an operating table. You know they're about to do something to you and you force yourself to wake up. In the darkness you are afraid to open your eyes, afraid that something might be in the room with you. You find you cannot move your head off your pillow. It is drenched with sweat and you are moaning softly in agony. Why, oh why did you have to look at that awful scary-ass book? Suddenly you hear a noise. The door is creaking open. Omigosh, you think. It's those little men, come to take you into their spaceship. You open your eyes enough to see a silhouette of a small person, the nightlight behind it.

You suddenly start to scream. You open your mouth and you let loose with a yell that can be heard for blocks, for miles, hell, on the moon! The little person who is silhouetted shrieks at the sound of your scream, and then you realize it's just your little sister. You hear feet hitting the floor in your parents' bedroom. In come Mom and Dad, your light goes on, you are sitting in the middle of the bed, hyperventilating. Mom and Dad see that you've had a nightmare and try to calm you down. Mom even takes your soggy pillowcase and changes it for you. Then they lead your little sister back to bed, and after some soothing talk they switch off your light.

You lie there for the rest of the night, those pictures from that book going through your mind. You are thinking about the little blond boy in the barn with the awful outer space guy right behind him, a cruel look on his face. He doesn't mean that little kid any good, and the kid doesn't know what's coming! You sure wouldn't want that to be you! "Help me, God," you moan.

Dawn comes a couple of hours later and you've never been so glad for daylight in your life. You are tired, but your mom calls you downstairs for breakfast. You can hear a CD in her player. You notice a CD cover on the table and glance at it. Best Of The Byrds, it says. Huh! The Byrds! One of those corny old '60s groups your mom and dad like. You try your best to ignore it but the lines of a song they are singing register on your brain: "Hey, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along? I won't do anything wrong. Hey, Mr. Spaceman, won't you please take me along for the ride."

You sit at the table and think, "Oh yeah…go along with a spaceman. I don't think so. That idea is strictly for the Byrds."

P.S. The blurb on the back of the this book just to show that it is intended for children:



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Interstellar Fellers

More from the files of Flying Saucer Week at Paranoia Strikes Deep:

I was joking with a coworker one day. He had a t-shirt with an image of an alien on it: the big head, the big eyes, pointed chin. I said, "The government has released this image so it'll become popular. Then they'll spring the big surprise on us and bring out the real aliens."

His response was, "Stop it, man. You're scaring me."

Years ago I read some pundit say that the image of the small gray alien with the big eyes and big head could be traced to the 1975 TV movie, The UFO Incident, about the alleged abduction of couple Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. Actually, the small gray alien image goes back a ways further than that. I found this drawing in Flying Saucers Comics #2, dated July, 1967.This is the image that has been locked onto as the occupant of UFOs, though, in the past few years.

Author Whitley Streiber has made an industry out of this alien's image and public familiarity with tales of alien abductions. His book, Communion, about his own "abduction," was a bestseller, and he's followed up with other books along the same lines.
He's even written a fictional account of the alleged UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in July, 1947.
I'm not exactly sure what the origin of "the alien" was. It goes back further than the references I have. It has the distinct look of a fetus with the huge head and huge eyes. It goes back to some primal image of ours.

I'm not a believer in little gray aliens, or alien abductions. I think people who come forward with such stories have either a need for attention or a psychosis. The media has jumped right on the idea of abductions, though. The public, in its most unimaginative state, has formed many of its ideas from TV programs like The X-Files or a movie like Fire In The Sky. The medical experiments part of the abduction sounds like something out of World War II Nazi prison camp experiments. Or my last prostate exam. Medical procedures are scary enough to people, but put those fears in a space ship with a bunch of little goggle-eyed gray guys doing anal probes and implanting devices in your nose, and the fear factor goes off the charts. And I'll bet the grays don't even have Medical School diplomas.

More later. Ciao for now.