Riding the Comix Wave

Clay Geerdes was a writer who was contemporary to the history of underground comix. He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, knew many of the artists and publishers. He was also a voice for young cartoonists. He encouraged them to draw by giving them a place to be seen and grow artistically in his dozens of mini-comix titles, published over the period of a more than a decade. He also published what he called digest-zines, like COMIX WAVE, which was also the name of his twice monthly comix newsletter.

This is COMIX WAVE #9 from 1982. It features Jim Valentino, who went on to do NORMALMAN, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and helped found Image Comics. Another artist who was just starting out was Kevin Eastman, who later with collaborator Peter Laird self-published TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, one of the biggest success stories in the history of comics. The issue is filled out by work from Steve Fiorilla (Scam), who recently died, Par Holman, Dale Oliver, and Jim Siergey. The digest comix were printed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper folded in half, so I've enlarged the pages.

Geerdes died of liver cancer on July 8, 1997.

Copyright © 1982 by the respective artists.









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