In partnership with The University of Florida Samuel Proctor Oral History Project, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Museum, Spit and a Half and more

The 80s / 90s Mini-Comics

Oral History Project

 
 

What is this…?

Imagine…

Imagine waiting two weeks to know if you got a LIKE.

Imagine pulling an all nighter, doing a bunch of stapling and taking two trips to the copy store and post office in the cold to make a POST.

In the decade before the internet, people made comics, and reached out to each other. They shared, they liked and loved. They connected through the mail, and through meet-ups and festivals.

This project aims to collect the stories of ANYONE who made self-published mini-comics in the roughly 10 years before the broad acceptance of the internet (the 90’s, give or take.)

These audio/video archives will exist at the University of Florida’s Digital Repository as well as the Sequential Artists Workshop’s Youtube channel and podcast links.

In partnership with the University of Florida Samuel Proctor Oral History Project,The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum,and Spit and a Half Distribution.

Project Head: Tom Hart, Sequential Artists Workshop

Assistant Director: Emma Jensen, Sequential Artists Workshop

Consultants: Megan Kelso, Tom Devlin, Matt Madden, Jessica Abel, Caitlin McGurk, Rob Clough

 

-> Want the simple upload page? It’s HERE <-

 

HOW TO CONTRIBUTE YOUR STORIES TO THE ARCHIVES

SELF RECORDING

  1. Get a phone or recording device and record yourself answering the questions at the bottom of the page. (PDF link here.)

  2. Fill out THIS FORM (it’s also at the bottom of this page.)

  3. Upload your audio file here. (Blue button below.)

  4. We will be in touch (with one more form) to tell you your contribution has been processed!

 

DUAL RECORDING

  1. Find a colleague who has similar stories and interview each other. (Using the questions at the bottom. PDF link here.)

  2. Fill out THIS FORM (it’s also at the bottom of this page), once each of you.

  3. Upload your audio file once here. (Blue button below.)

  4. We will be in touch (with one more form) to tell you your contribution has been processed!

 

This is the form to fill out

 

these are the questions

—>PDF version here<—

90s-era Mini-Comics Oral History Archives 

LIST OF QUESTIONS

Intro

  1. Please say your name, the date and where you are recording from

  2. Some comics publications that you created or were a part of in the pre-internet era.

  3. Locations worked from in 80s/90s

  4. How would you describe your comics work?




Comics Production

  1. Tell us how you made your comics. what tools, did you use etc.

  2. Tell us how you readied your comics for print. 

  3. Tell us how you printed them

  4. How many did you print of your first comic, and how did that change over time?




Noticing / Awareness

  1. Tell us when you first saw evidence of people making their own comics

  2. Tell us a story of getting a comic that surprised or inspired you

  3. Did you ever read an issue of Factsheet 5 in the 80s or 90s?

  4. Did you ever order a comic or write to someone as a result of seeing it in Factsheet 5, SPCE, Comics F/X or any other analogue aggregator?

  5. Did you ever advertise in one of the above or was your work reviewed in it?




Community

  1. Tell the story of how you met your closest friend or peer in comics?

  2. Tell us about the first show/con situation where there were other people doing what you did?

  3. Tell us when you felt the most connected in the community, or the least connected, or both

  4. Who were/are your most significant peers in comics?

  5. Did you ever do collaborations or jams with them?

  6. How did they affect your own work?



Distribution

  1. Tell how you traded or sold your comics. 

  2. Tell us about some other comics you remember.

  3. Did you feel connected to a particular store or venue that supported you/community?

  4. Were you ever part of any kind of distribution collective like Puppy Toss or did you submit to small distributors like Fandom House or Spit-and-a-Half?

  5. If you were involved in distribution, tell us how you found and chose what to distribute.



Wrap Up

  1. What were you thinking in that time?

  2. What do you miss about that time

  3. What do you not miss about that time

  4. Tell us one more memory. smother us with anecdotes!

  5. Tell us 3 people we should contact for these archives

 
 

-faq-

Where can the public watch or listen to these?

They live in our public streams.

Audio Podcast for Archives are here:

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/90s-mini-comics-oral-hist

RSS feed: https://anchor.fm/s/f37044ac/podcast/rss

Here’s a recent one embedded here:

Youtube Video Interviews (a segment of the archives) are here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6nZBKexfhvsgN5sZ6b5owXU-RhfrjWpp

These are all included in the podcast audio archives as well.

They are embedded here in the video link all the way at the bottom.

Archive links at Samuel Proctor Oral History Project and UF Institutional Repository LINKS are pending

QUALITY.

These are really rough? Don’t you care about audio/video quality?

Nope!

Seriously, we are a small non-profit, and one of our governing principles has been: Do It Now, Or Watch It Not Get Done. So we are doing it now. That’s how we did things in the 90s anyways!

AND: AI will probably edit all these in the future anyway! ٩(◕‿◕)۶ GO AI!

Categories

Some are video and some are audio, what’s up with that?

SAW is relying primarily in self and duo-interviews for these archives, but will occasionally coordinate to interview some people for the YouTube stream. Video takes a lot more resources to process and host, etc., so some histories are done via interview and might have a highlighted place on Youtube.

ALL files will be given even equal treatment as histories in the SPOHP archives and the audio podcast.

WEB PAGE

This webpage is a mess! Can’t you make this any easier?

Nope! This is Squarespace 7.1 and we can’t figure it out!

 
 

YouTube playlist of selected interviews

Other sites collecting these stories:

Poopsheet Foundation

Talking Mini-Comics with Larned Justin

Do you want to include some Existing Youtube/Vimeo Videos or other kinds of links?

Want to submit a relevant Youtube/Vimeo video or other kinds of links for the archives? Do that with this form.

Here are the current Existing Mini-Comics Submitted Links.

This is an unmonitored spreadsheet. SAW takes no responsibility for submissions.