Sunday, February 11, 2007

Kalamazoo, MI

Mark Says:

Hi. I just sent a bunch of pictures from the ILL! comic to Christina Pearson, and BOY am I happy! She sent me a nice email, and all!
Anyone interested, I'm willing to send copies of these for use in other remembrances. Checked with the Todds at Rip Off Press, and the short version of why the comic failed is Marvel killed it (note that THEY took over the Illuminati...)



Contact Bryan Steele for more information. 249-343-6707

4 comments:

icarus_23 said...

Oops -- I screwed up a missing letter in that poste. RRRRRRR....

Oh, Well, Hail Eris, my name is Mark Steele, and the email link should say icarus_23@hotmail.com ... note the underscore.

I'll repeat an offer I made elsewhere -- there are scanned images from the ILL! comic that I ade available to Princess Trichster for the ashes launching, and to Dr Jon in Australia. Anyone else wanting copies can request them for dispay at their remembrance. WARNING -- they're BIG -- I used the 600 DPI jpg ...

icarus_23 said...

I just posted this on my Amazon blog for "Daughter of Fantomas', and have also submitted it as a review for the Illuminatus! trilogy:

Author Robert Anton Wilson, co-author of the ILLUMINATUS! trilogy, passed on this past January from complication related to post-Polio disease. Remembrance observances will be held Feb 18, on his 75th birthday, around the globe. The main obsevances will be held near San Francisco, CA, where he will be sent off in style.


Blog for the varios sendoffs: http://rawremembered.blogspot.com/
___________________________________________________
I first met Bob in Chicago, when he was on the lecture circuit. He was giving a speech on "Finnegan's Wake" and how the images of Larry, Moe, and Curly recur in this work, acompanied by profound blackboard diagrams that I'm sure no one understood.
This lecture was hosted by the Heartland Pagan Association. The late Jack Armstriong, who I'd just met at an Elf Lore Family event, allowed me to stay there at their house, where Bob Wilson was staying.
I pitched the idea for the ILLUMINATUS! comic to both Bobs (Robert Shea had a radio interview with Bob Wilson that same weekend), and they got me in touch with their agent at Writer's House.
Eventally, I pitched the book at Mike Gold, then at First Comics. When going over my scripts, Gold's comments on some of my scripting techniques was: "You can't do that! No one can do that except Alan Moore, and that's only because he's Alan Moore!" As I was not following Swamp Thing at the time because Len Wein wasn't writing it, my reaction was "Who's Alan Moore?"
On the strengthe of my meetings with Gold, I managed to get a contract for doing the ILLUMINATUS! comic. The deal fell through when Gold moved to DC (he stated at a convention later that they offered him his own prvate jet...).
With contract having a 5 year deadline, I then produced the 'Garage Band' edition of ILLUMINATUS! (#0) out of Kalamazoo -- to my knowledge the 1st comic published out of this town. Prepared during the black and white boom, it was released during the black and white bust. Numerous copies from the printer, Southern Dutchess, never ended up arriving at the distributors, and to this day I don't know where they are.
Meanwhile, there were several other times I met Bob over the years. One was at Winterstar symposium, held by the ACE people out of Cleveland. The Bobs became honorary 5th degree Knights of the Falcon of Malta during that time, and the fitrst World Trade Center bombing was being shown on TV in the bar while I drank with Bob Wilson. Another was at Starwood Festival, where Isaac Bonewitz was also a guest.
Bob Shea gave a reading of the sequel to ILLUMINATUS!, 'Bride of Illuminatus!', at an SF convention in Chicago during that time also.
And Rip Off Press piched up the publishing end of the ILL! comic. Three issues were published, with wonderful cover colors, before the speculative bubble of comics in the 1990's burst.
Another publisher, who released Bulk Comics (with work by later "Fairly Oddparents" producer John Fountain) was going to publish the book, but that fell through after we helped expand their distribution base to national levels.
Bob Shea passed on in the early 1990's and now the last of teh legendary Four Pillars of Discordianism has followed. They will not see a complete comics adaptation of their work in their lifetime.


Selected art from the comics version will be on display at some of the memorials listed at the blog spot.
Goodbye, Bob, we'll miss you.


Permission to repost this given to al who get it with link to original posting site.

Unknown said...

I would be very interested in images from the IT comic, if only to show them to the discordian community on myspace... andrewkanninen@gmail.com

icarus_23 said...

Well, I now have a fairly active myspace account, and recently posted some of the art there. The URL is: www.myspace.com/icarus_23