FROM THE VAULT #2: ASHTRAY: 2002-2003
When we last left off I had spent the better part of four years struggling to create a 200+ page magnum opus called Soft Malleable Underbelly. It was clear I was hitting a wall and this fact put me in a loop of frustration. I’d also started working at a new restaurant in Toronto’s Queen West area called La Hacienda and had moved into working in a small studio in Kensington Market, which I shared with musician Andre Ethier.
Around this time I started to feel more urgency to get my life together and to make something of myself in the world comics. I was in my late twenties and my relationship with Lesley-Anne was getting more serious. I was sick of making minimum wage and barely scraping by. I’d been making comics in a total vacuum since leaving film school and I knew that I needed to take a step and to actually try and publish something. The problem was, Soft Malleable Underbelly was the only thing I had worked on and it was so big and unwieldy I knew I would never finish it. I think all of this frustration led to me finally putting SMU aside in 2002 and starting to bang out a bunch of short experiments. It had taken me years to finally clue into the simple idea that doing shorter projects may be a smarter way to start, and to actually finish some comics that I could share. It also allowed me to experiment with different approaches and styles. So, working in the small stuffy studio in Kensington market before my night shifts at La Hacienda, I started writing and drawing some short stories.
Back then, the internet was not a thing yet. So, I knew if I wanted to share this work, I would need to actually print them up. There was a big zine/mini-comic scene in Toronto back then and I saw this as the way to go. Taking the first dozen or so pages of Soft Malleable Underbelly, and complimenting them with several short comics, I assembled my first mini-comic. The interior pages were just photo-copied at Kinkos (Remember them? If not, Google it youngsters) and I had this idea of printing the covers on a cardboard stock. Making it a simple black and bold image on these brown cardboard covers. I had taught myself how to do basic silkscreening, so I bought 500 brown cardboard folders at Staples and trimmed them to comic size. Then Lesley-Anne and I silkscreened the covers ourselves and let them out to dry in our backyard.
I don’t really know where the name Ashtray came from, other than the fact that I chained smoked back then. I think I wanted a name that was non-specific and would act as an umbrella title for this anthology comic, the way Dan Clowes had Eightball or Seth had Palookaville.
I recently published some of the comics from Ashtray in the Gideon Falls Deluxe Hardcover. But in that book, I only published the Soft Malleable Underbelly chapter that was a prototype for Gideon Falls. Here for the first time is the entire first issue of Ashtray #1.
I printed 300 copies of this first Ashtray and they were all numbered and signed. (I only have 5 copies myself these days. The rest are out there in the world somewhere and worth quite a bit the last time I checked).
I walked around Toronto to all the small indie bookstores and comic shops and asked them to sell copies on consignment. I think I probably sold about 30-50 copies this way. This is also when I started doing my first small press and comic conventions. I’d set up my table and sell Ashtray and do commissioned drawings of super heroes for $5 or $10 bucks.
This is me in 2002 or 2003 at one of these shows.
These were huge steps for me. I had been working my myself with no feedback and no interaction with any other comics creators for four years. I was finally making an effort to connect with the wider comics scene in Toronto and to get my work out into the world. These were small steps, but huge for me. I can specifically remember my very first comic convention. I sat next to Ramon Perez. And ironically, years later we would do a run on Hawkeye together at Marvel. Chip Zdarsky was also there, each day he wore a different costume. One day he was Garfield and the next he was a cowboy (never change, Chip). Ray Fawkes was there selling his mini-comics too, but we didn’t connect yet.
I also really found a sense of community at the restaurant. The staff of Laha were almost exclusively local musicians. Jeremy Masden from Deadly Snakes worked there as did Tara White from Elevator and Lonnie James of Royal City, Super Friendz and many other Canadian bands. These insane and lovely people became as perfect surrogate family. We drank too much, partied too much, and worked really really hard but it was fun as hell.
It was also around this time that I got back into hockey in a serious way. Along with a couple of the waiters from LaHa we started playing hockey on outdoor rinks in Toronto and eventually formed our own team in the Good Times Hockey League For The Arts (GTHLA). I had played hockey growing up, but was always sort of an outsider. I was nerdy and quiet and a mediocre athlete. I loved the game itself, but the culture around it and the jock attitudes that dominated really turned me off as I became a teenager. But now I had found a bunch of like-minded people who were all musicians, artists, weirdos, and who all also loved to play hockey. The restaurant sponsored the team and The La Hacienda Flying Burritos were born! We played every week and I still play on the very same team now, twenty years later! Here’s our first hockey card. I’m in the lower right corner with the Assistant Captain letter on my chest.
Around this time I really started to focus and take big leaps in my work. I did a Ashtray #2 after this, but I actually only have 1 copy of that left. I only printed 100 copies of that second issue and it is even more rare. It had various short stories in it. I’ve never reprinted it anywhere. It’s easy to be embarrassed by this early work. It’s crude and weird. But it is still interesting to see how it would pop up later in my more mature work.
All of this would play a huge part in the birth of my Essex County graphic novels.
Speaking of Essex County, my story The Man With No Eyes features a crow who would become a fixture in Essex County as well as many of my other books. My other short story, The Big Escape is basically a prototype for Essex County’s Lester and Uncle Ken. So here for the first time ever is Ashtray #2…
I had intended to cover Lost Dogs, my first full-length graphic novel in this post as well, but as I have been writing this I realize that Lost Dogs was really a whole other thing that came next and likely deserves its own post.
So next month I’ll open the Vault on Lost Dogs, my year going back to school to take an Illustration post-graduate course and the birth of Essex County along with another long lost, never before published graphic novel that I have never spoken about before…The Adventures of Hawker Hurricane! - Jeff
I'm pretty sure I have a copy of Ashtray in my box of zines. Will have to excavate and see if I can't dig it out. I've kept most of the zines/mini-comics I bought and traded from 94 through the 2000s.
Until you started posting about it, didn't realize it was a book of yours.
So I've been meaning to share this story with you Jeff. I have a cover you did for a magazine I would suspect most aren't aware of. But let me start at the beginning.
I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan and a couple of years back I was on a sales trip to the Pacific NW. My typical sales trips back then was setting up meetings with current customers and knocking on doors of potential clients. One of my meeting with a customer happened to be in Everett. This just happens to be were Laura Palmer's house is located.
The morning of the meeting I pick up 3 boxes of donuts. I have no ideal how large my customer's company is since this is my first time visiting. As it happened I just needed 1 box and I decided to just give out the others to prospects to help me get in the door. In hindsight this was a great ideal; I just didn't know whose door it would end up opening.
Anyways after the meeting I head to Laura Palmer's house. I just thought it would be cool to take some pictures outside and take it in. When I get there I do just that. It's such a weird experience to see something you love actually existing out there in the world. For a while I just looked up and stared in awe.
Well on this particular day the owner of this wonderful house was getting their carpets clean. The door was wide opened when I got there and the whole time I was outside. I tried to keep my distance to not create an sort of commotion. At some point though someone locked eyes to me and I felt I probably needed to explain myself. I grabbed one of the boxes of doughnuts and headed towards the owner. I didn't recognize her at that moment but as I get closer I'm amazed that it's the same lady who opened the door at the very end of season 3!
Still trying to keep my distance I get 6 feet from the door and explain myself and extend 1 hand with the donuts while the rest of my body tries to remain as far away as possible. For this person I'm just a random stranger and don't want to disturb her at her home.
I found out she's incredibly sweet and takes my donuts and keeps thanking me. Likewise I keep thanking her until I say good-bye and start walking away. As I do I hear the question "Don't you want to come inside"?
I was shocked and even tried to remind her this is her home. She laughed and told me to come inside. She took me around the rooms. I got to go upstairs while staring at the fan as I go up the steps. I turn the corner and I'm peaking into Laura's bedroom. When I come back downstairs she shows me Bob's axe on a table in the living room.
So I promised a point to the story other than one Twin Peaks fan story to the another. This woman was incredibly sweet and she told me I couldn't leave without a souvenir. I pleaded that this experience was more than I could have hoped for and that I still feel that I'm intruding. She ignores me and after looking around she came back with a magazine. She explains it's her personal copy of a fanzine that is sent to her. It is the Blue Rose Vol. 1 #5, March 2018. The cover is Fireman drawn by none other then my favorite artist.
It is so strange; so Twin Peaks that these two things in my life would join together. I like to think I have the Palmer's personal copy of magazine that Jeff Lemire drew the cover for. And it is, excuse me, a damn fine cover!