External links
- Frank Stack at IMDb
- Stack bio at Lambiek's Comiclopedia
- Frank Stack Collection at the University of Missouri Libraries
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| Frank Stack | |
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| Born | October 31, 1937 Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Area(s) | Cartoonist, Printmaker, Painter |
| Pseudonym(s) | Foolbert Sturgeon |
Notable works |
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| Awards | Harvey Award, 1995 Haxtur Award, Artist That We Love, 2006 Inkpot Award, 2011 |
| Spouse(s) | Mildred Roberta "Robbie" Powell [1] (m. 1959–1998; her death) |
Frank Huntington Stack (born October 31, 1937, in Houston, Texas) [2] is an American underground cartoonist and fine artist. Working under the name Foolbert Sturgeon to avoid persecution for his work while living in the Bible Belt, Stack published what is considered by many to be the first underground comic, The Adventures of Jesus, in 1964. [3] [4]
Stack's main artistic influences were Gustave Doré, Roy Crane, and V. T. Hamlin. [5] He is widely known as a printmaker, specializing in etchings and lithographs, and his sketchy comics style evokes Stack's background as an etcher. (His technique of creating etchings on-site was featured in American Artist magazine.)[ citation needed ] His oil paintings and watercolors mostly feature landscape and figure compositions. He lives in Columbia, Missouri, where he was a longtime professor at the University of Missouri.
Stack graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in 1959. [6] He received his M.A. at the University of Wyoming, and also studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière of Paris. [5]
He was a long-time professor of art at the University of Missouri, where he taught from 1963 to 2001, and is now a professor emeritus. In addition, he did teaching stints at Appalachian State and Virginia Tech.[ citation needed ]
While at the University of Texas, Stack joined the staff of The Texas Ranger student humor magazine in 1957, [7] and was editor of the magazine in 1958–1959. As editor, Stack aspired for the Ranger to emulate the humor exemplified by The New Yorker and Punch . [7] He published comic strips by fellow UT student Gilbert Shelton, later known for Wonder Wart-Hog and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers .
Soon after graduating from UT, Stack entered the U.S. Army, stationed at Governors Island, New York, in 1961–1962. [7]
Although he had already graduated in 1959, starting in 1962, (using the pen-name Foolbert Sturgeon) he published The Adventures of Jesus in The Texas Ranger (as well as early counterculture publications like The Austin Iconoclastic and The Charlatan). In 1964, then Texas Ranger editor Gilbert Shelton collected about a dozen of the Jesus strips, designed a cover, and made 50 photocopies of the collection, giving them to associates around the UT campus. [8]
Stack's most prolific period as a cartoonist was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, Rip Off Press (co-founded by Shelton and fellow UT cartoonist Jaxon) published three issues of Stack's Jesus Comics, as well as such solo titles as Feelgood Funnies and Amazon Comics. In 1972 Stack contributed to The Rip Off Review of Western Culture with "Jesus Goes To The Faculty Party." In addition to publishing several articles in The Comics Journal , Stack contributed comics to such anthologies as Zero Zero , Blab! , Snarf , Rip Off Comix , and Weirdo . His strips The Case of Dr. Feelgood and Dorman's Doggie were syndicated by the Underground Press Syndicate in 1976–1978. [5]
From 1986 to 2001, Stack was a regular contributor to Harvey Pekar's American Splendor . He also illustrated the acclaimed nonfiction graphic novel Our Cancer Year , written by Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner, which won the 1995 Harvey Award for best original graphic novel. [9]
Stack met his future wife Robbie Powell at the University of Texas, where they were both staffers on The Texas Ranger. Stack and Powell were married from 1959 until her death in 1998. [7]
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Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books that are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality, and violence. They were most popular in the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s, and in the United Kingdom in the 1970s.
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers is an underground comic about a fictional trio of stoner characters, created by the American artist Gilbert Shelton. The Freak Brothers first appeared in The Rag, an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas, beginning in May 1968, and were regularly reprinted in underground papers around the United States and in other parts of the world. Later their adventures were published in a series of comic books.
American Splendor is a series of autobiographical comic books written by Harvey Pekar and drawn by a variety of artists. The first issue was published in 1976 and the last one in September 2008, with publication occurring at irregular intervals. Publishers were, at various times, Harvey Pekar himself, Dark Horse Comics, and DC Comics.
Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic, and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a well-received film adaptation of the same name.
Gilbert Shelton is an American cartoonist and a key member of the underground comix movement. He is the creator of the iconic underground characters The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, and Wonder Wart-Hog.
Fat Freddy's Cat is a fictional orange Tabby cat, nominally belonging to Fat Freddy Freekowtski, one of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, a trio featured in Gilbert Shelton's underground comix.
Paul Mavrides is an American artist, best known for his critique-laden comics, cartoons, paintings, graphics, performances and writings that encompass a disturbing yet humorous catalog of the social ills and shortcomings of human civilization. Mavrides worked with underground comix pioneer Gilbert Shelton on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers from 1978 to 1992. Mavrides has been noted for "adding new dimensions to the political comic" in the underground comix press of the 1970s and '80s.
Jack Edward Jackson, better known by his pen name Jaxon, was an American cartoonist, illustrator, historian, and writer. He co-founded Rip Off Press, and some consider him to be the first underground comix artist, due to his most well-known comic strip God Nose.
Wonder Wart-Hog is an underground comic book character, a porcine parody of Superman, created by American cartoonist Gilbert Shelton and first published in 1962. Over the years, Shelton has worked on the strip in collaboration with various writers and artists, including fellow UT Austin alums Tony Bell, Bill Killeen, and Joe E. Brown Jr.
Rip Off Press Inc. is a comic book mail order retailer and distributor, better known as the former publisher of adult-themed series like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Rip Off Comix, as well as many other seminal publications from the underground comix era. Founded in 1969 in San Francisco by four friends from Austin, Texas — cartoonists Gilbert Shelton and Jack Jackson, and Fred Todd and Dave Moriaty — Rip Off Press is now run in Auburn, California, by Todd.
Joyce Brabner is an American writer of political comics and the widow of Harvey Pekar.
Michael Terry Gilbert is an American comic book artist and writer who has worked for both mainstream and underground comic book companies.
Rip Off Comix was an underground comix anthology published between 1977 and 1991 by Rip Off Press. As time passed, the sensibility of the anthology changed from underground to alternative comics.
Dave Sheridan was an American cartoonist and underground comix artist. He was the creator of Dealer McDope and collaborated with Gilbert Shelton and Paul Mavrides on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. As creative partner with fellow underground creator Fred Schrier, using the name "Overland Vegetable Stagecoach," they worked on Mother's Oats Funnies, published by Rip Off Press from 1970 to 1976.
Fred Schrier is an artist, writer, and animator, best known as partner to the underground comic book artist Dave Sheridan. Together, using the name "Overland Vegetable Stagecoach," they worked on Mother's Oats Comix, published by Rip Off Press from 1970 to 1976.
Dennis P. Eichhorn was an American writer, best known for his adult-oriented autobiographical comic book series Real Stuff. His stories, often involving, sex, drugs, and alcohol, have been compared to those of Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, and Charles Bukowski.
Theodore Richards was an American web designer and cartoonist, best known for his underground comix.
God Nose is a 42-page American comic book produced in 1964 by Jack "Jaxon" Jackson and is considered one of the first underground comix. God Nose centers on philosophical discussions between God and the "fools he rules".
Willy Murphy was an American underground cartoonist. Murphy's humor focused on hippies and the counterculture. His signature character was Arnold Peck the Human Wreck, "a mid-30s beanpole with wry observations about his own life and the community around him." Murphy's solo title was called Flamed-Out Funnies; in addition, he contributed to such seminal underground anthologies as Arcade, Bijou Funnies, and San Francisco Comic Book, as well as the National Lampoon.
The Texas Ranger was the undergraduate humor publication of the University of Texas at Austin (UT), published from 1923 to 1972. A number of people who later went on to become key members of the underground comix scene — including Frank Stack, Gilbert Shelton, and Jaxon — were Texas Ranger editors and contributors during the period 1959–1965. Other notable contributors to The Texas Ranger over the years included Robert C. Eckhardt, John Canaday, Rowland B. Wilson, Harvey Schmidt, Bill Yates, Liz Smith, Robert Benton, Bill Helmer, Robert A. Burns and Wick Allison.
