Minicomics, Chapbooks and Zines[]
Demon House Theatre minicomic by Will Dockery
During the years 1969-70, Will Dockery created hundreds of hand made, unpublished minicomics, which included over 500 issues of the adventure serial Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim Comics and Stories had a spinoff comic strip called Tonight Show Starring Uncle Jim, which filled many episodes in which guest hosts filled in for Uncle Jim in a parody of Johnny Carson's television series of the time. In May of 1970 Dockery made his return to music, performing a cover of the Tiny Tim song Tiptoe Through the Tulips.
Recently rediscovered are well over a thousand newspaper style comic strips made by Dockery at around the years 1969-71. The main number of these are the comic strip series The Assemblers. which can be looked at as an Alternate Universe to our own real life history of comics, including influence from [Marvel Comics]] and their "team" series, such as The Fantastic Four, The Avengers, X-Men et cetera. The Assemblers series itself ran until #1005, the first episode so far found has been #136, by Dockery's son Clay Dockery. Influences found through the Assemblers comic strips (made in the form of strips, as found in newspapers) are elements from [Dark Shadows]], Dick Tracy and the history of The Beatles. Main characters were Major Liberty (usually referred to as The Major) The Witch, Tin Boy, Splut, Hermes and at least a dozen others. Work is currently underway by Clay Dockery to document and restore these comic strips.
From The Who's Who of American Comic Books 1928-1999 Entry on Will Dockery
DOCKERY, WILL [small press]
Name and vital stats DOCKERY, WILLIAM (publisher; editor; writer; artist) RICK HOWE Covers (pen/) 1991 > 91 CROSS CURRENTS~ (pen/) 1991 > 91
WILLIAM DOCKERY DEMON HOUSE THEATRE~ (publ/ed/wr/pen/ink/) c1990 > 90 GEON~ (publ/ed/wr/pen/ink/) c1990
"The Who's Who of American Comic Books is a database designed to document the careers of people who have contributed to or supported the publication of original material in U.S. comic books in the years 1928-99. It is not a checklist, but rather a resume of a person's creative career. Each resume covers not only a person's comics career, but as much information as could be located about his/her other creative and professional work in advertising, prose, TV, animation, syndication, and other sister fields and professions. The scope of the Who's Who includes anyone known to have contributed directly to or supported the field of original U.S. comic books..." -Jerry Bails
The Small Press Years 1980s-1990s[]
A "slim volume" of poetry can be "published" for far less than expected, /and/ with your title and by-line on the cover... a cover that you've designed and illustrated (or a good place to showcase an artist friend)... back in the 1980s I "published" dozens of chapbooks, minicomix and zines, several hundred copy print runs at under 10 bucks each, then sold/traded through the fairly large small press snail mail network that thrived (and apparently still does, somewhat, though the internet has taken much of the thunder over the last decade or so) in the 1980s-90s.
My first poetry chapbook came about when the punk band I was in suddenly splintered, and I had a batch of lyrics (poems) and no immediate band to perform them with, so I typed them up, and using the method I'd seen others in the DIY-music scene do, pasted them up on folded sheets of paper, photocopied them, folded, stapled and trimmed them, and began distributing them to friends, in the zine bins at record shops, giving them away (the concept is to sell them, but if someone showed an interest in the work, they were so low priced to print and put together I say get the work out, as you wrote earlier), and during that interesting summer, trading them for sandwiches and beer.
More information on self publishing and its history, including how to do it and where to distribute it can be found here:
Anyway, to save typing time, here's a capsule description of the era by me from the archives:
I printed up my first poetry chapbook in Summer 1983 and carried them around person-to-person, and the only thing close to a zine I knew of, or had contact with, at least, was ''Trouser Press'', which, amazingly, I could buy right here in Shadowville. I new of comix & sci fi zines from the 1970s, and still read ''Comics Journal''... I drew comix as much as I wrote poetry & songs, in those days, hardly at all, now.
Through Comics Journal, I discovered Clay Geerdes' Comix Wave newsletter, but that focused exclusively on comix, no other zines... but since the zine I did back then, Shaman Newspaper included everything, comix, poetry, stories, et cetera, I got involved in 1984, along with fellow Shadowville artists Tom Snelling, P.D. Wilson, Jonathan E. Jones.
By 1985, the mini-comix small press was booming, Matt Feazell got that going, and there was a pretty sucessful reviewzine called S.P.C.E. from Tim Corrigan, which, though I didn't know at the time, was patterned closely on Factsheet 5. It was through S.P.C.E. that I learned of F5, actually, through a small somewhat dismissive review from Tim... and that's when the lights came on: *here* was full out small press, of *all* kinds... it turned out that the hundreds of mini-comix were only a small part of a scene where there were hundreds of poetry zines, music zines, personal zines, and what were known as "crudzines"... where at S.P.C.E. there were, that I can remember, about three poets among the comix creators Ian Shires with Mysterious Visions, still being put out today, btw, and Rick Howe, who several years later moved to Shadowville for a few years, and me] at Factsheet 5 there were at least hundreds of poets, each issue bringing more in.
1985-1991 were great years for "snail mail", always trading, and once in a while selling stuff back and forth. It came to a crashing halt in Summer 1991 when Gunderloy handed it over to Hudson Luce, who put out one pretty crappy issue, and vanished. By the time Seth took over [I wonder if anyone remembers Roller's "bootleg" F5 that attempted to fill the void after Luce? I'm sure Seth does, because it got ugly for a while, there, legal actions threatened, et cetera...] over, the momentum was gone for me, and I drifted more and more into the "real world" again, making music and poetry in the local scene, helping kick start live music and poetry in Shadowville, eventually leading me to the place I am now. I avoided the internet until 1998, and didn't run across Usenet until sometime in 2002... which was as much a revelation as F5 was in snail mail days.
I met Rick Howe through the snail mail small press.
Show George Sulzbach this video, he was the cameraman, Lisa Scarborough...
My friend Rick Howe passed away in 2007, but his words and thoughts are heavy in my mind this evening he was never one t tire of watching "Renaldo and Clara" repeatedly with me circa 1989-1996, Howe was also a major fan of Rolling Thunder Revue artists such as Roger/Jim McGuinn, Joan Baez and so many others.
Some of his vast body of writings are online, but very little, alas.
His critiques of my poetry were many, and one of those survives to cyberspace, I'll find and post some of that for you.
Meanwhile, here is a video of Rick Howe, simply strumming on his old guitar, which hardly ever left his hands... always providing a soundtrack to our lives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qbj_axVvM&t=11s
One Day In Shadowville #3
Rick Howe was a poet, singer-songwriter and early member of the current local music scene, performing at places like The Loft during 1994-96, the earliest days of their focus on local original music, which they have somewhat strayed from lately... Hmmm. Pleasant memories of long ago times... Mike Gunderloy's ''Factsheet Five'' and the golden age of small press.
Never surrender! Take no prisoners!
Partial List of Minicomics[]
- Uncle Jim's Comics and Stories (1969-1970) unpublished minicomic.
- Various unpublished comic strips including Splut, Virtue Peak, Vulture's Beak, The Assemblers, Tin Boy and Tonight Show Starring Uncle Jim (1967-1970)
- Terror Time (1970-1974) unpublished horror anthology minicomic.
- Le Glass Dildo (1978) mixture of minicomic and poetry.
- The Torchbearers (1979-1980)
- Shaman Newspaper (1984-1996) minicomic anthology
- Demon House Theatre (1985-1988)
- River Mutants (1985-1988)
Shaman Newspaper #46, created and edited by Will Dockery in the 1980s.
Will Dockery with Debby Smith at Chattahoochee River, 1977.
Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project[]
Artificial Intelligence Project
The Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project is the concept of a computer program that in theory would contain the poet Will Dockery’s thoughts, concepts, and mannerisms and interact as the man would himself, a “Will Dockery” AI, which is in a constant state of evolution and "learning". The Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project welcomes communication, feedback and input from everyone, and most specifically those with a knowledge of Will Dockery, his life, art, poetry songwriting and other details, to be incorporated into the memory of the AI Will Dockery