Will Dockery wrote:

> Faraway Star wrote:

>> On Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 9:56:04 PM UTC-4, Will Dockery wrote:
>>> On Thursday, September 7, 2023 at 7:43:27 PM UTC-4, Faraway Star wrote:
>>> >
>>> > More Dan Barfield poetry from Mar 13, 1997, 3:00:00 AM
>>> > :
>>> > https://groups.google.com/g/alt.zines/c/5h6FlXRC1Lw/m/l4hS6v36fUoJ
>>> >
>>> > > I was quite impressed by this issue. The poems were quite
>>> > > well-written, in my opinion. Here's a sampling:
>>> >
>>> > > From Dan Barfield:
>>> > >
>>> > > "The earth runs
>>> > > through my veins
>>> > > Deep and black
>>> > > ancient memories
>>> > > ancient magic
>>> > > ...I am the reason
>>> > > you fear the darkness
>>> > > I am
>>> > > the darkness"
>>> >
>>> > https://groups.google.com/g/alt.zines/c/5h6FlXRC1Lw/m/l4hS6v36fUoJ
>>> I remember this one well. 1997 was a great year for local art and poetry.

>> Here is a review of that poetry chapbook from the 1997 days of yore:

>> https://alt.zines.narkive.com/z8pOq2CQ/shadowville-1996-zine-review-found-in-archives

>> ***************************** ZINE REVIEWS
>> by holy joe

>> Dreamgirls with Shaman, No. 54, $1.00. Minicomic, 32 pages. Will
>> Dockery, [P.O.Box 7394, Columbus GA 31908].

>> Review: First, the truth. My review copy of Dreamgirls with
>> Shaman is only eight pages in length. However, Dockery has prepared
>> "for sale" copies that are 32 pages long. I misplaced the letter in
>> which he details exactly what these issues consist of, but they are the
>> issue reviewed (below) plus extra issues, all bundled into a generous
>> package of poems and comics.
>> Back in the early 1980's minicomic-maker Matt Feazell pioneered
>> the ‘minicomic for a quarter' concept. A stamp cost 22 cents (never
>> mind the envelope), but somehow the whole thing could arrive in the
>> reader's hands for a quarter. Many of us, including myself, were
>> inspired to labor in this genre.
>> Then the price of a stamp rose to 25 cents. It became rather
>> difficult for a publisher like myself to sell an eight-page minicomic
>> for a quarter. Some minicomic publishers raised the price of their
>> minicomics to 50 cents. In doing so, they raised the page count of
>> their minicomics to 16 pages.
>> The tradition continues. Charging $1.00, Dockery is offering
>> his poetry and comics for the same price he would have charged you in
>> 1983! 32 pages for $1.00, which works out to 25 cents for every eight
>> pages.
>> Dreamgirls with Shaman is a long-running title dating back to
>> the previous decade. Originally it was titled Shaman. There was a
>> separate title (by me) called Naughty Naked Dreamgirls. Eventually the
>> two merged. Now the two have parted company. For the moment the
>> hybrid-title remains, perhaps to adorn future issues, perhaps not.
>> Dreamgirls with Shaman is currently on an annual publication
>> schedule. This is the new issue. It is for the year 1997 but, since
>> Dockery never made an issue in 1996, it could be considered the 1996
>> issue, although the art and poems in it didn't actually exist in 1996.
>> Perhaps later Dockery will put out an official 1996 issue containing art
>> and poems that couldn't exist in 1996, because they were created in
>> 1997.
>> Such is the way of small press publishing. The cover of this
>> issue of Shaman (with Dreamgirls) features Dockery's bizarre art on the
>> cover. Worrisomely close to Florida, home of Mike Diana, there resides
>> a whole school of ‘bizarro' artists. Will Dockery, Dan Barfield, P.D.
>> Wilson, Carol Horn, and others. This loosely-knit community of artists
>> is as odd in geography as it is in its artistic visions. It spans the
>> state line that divides Georgia from Alabama, populating both states
>> and, often, both states at once in the same day. It produces such
>> oddball gems as the current cover of Shaman.
>> Here, on the cover, we see a beak-faced man. He wears a hat
>> but no pants. He has a visible pair of testicles and he appears to be
>> directing a host of girls with a baton-sized penis. The girls, as they
>> dance, with cunts and breasts on display, sprinkle dollar bills, hearts,
>> and peace signs across the cover. Above this weird male/female
>> assemblage loom two heads. Each head contains only one eye but two
>> pairs of lips. Certainly this is a cover worth the notice of a Florida
>> district attorney. Perhaps this $1.00 comic can spawn a $100,000 trial.
>> Meantime, Dockery will eagerly accept your dollar. Currently
>> he's down on his luck. He'd be homeless, but an absent in-law has
>> (perhaps unwittingly) permitted him to live in a vacant mansion in a
>> yuppified section of town. Despite the wealth of Dockery's
>> surroundings, the mansion he's living in has no electricity. The water
>> has also been cut off. Hence, the grounds of the mansion have become
>> Dockery's toilet. I asked him recently in a (self-funded) telephone
>> call how he managed to relieve himself.

>> me: I suppose you don't just hold it?
>> dockery: No. I let it out just like everybody else does.
>> me: How?
>> dockery: Well, to pee, you just go out back and pee.
>> me: How about to poop?
>> dockery: For that, you dig a hole. Then you poop into the
>> hole and cover it up.

>> Dockery has learned to cook food over a fire, in the fireplace
>> of the mansion. This, I admit, sounded pretty great, living by
>> firelight and candlelight in a mansion, eating food cooked over a fire.
>> Wouldn't you know, of course, Dockery even has a girlfriend to keep him
>> company in such circumstances. And, together, they make art.
>> I was quite impressed by this issue. The poems were quite
>> well-written, in my opinion. Here's a sampling:

>> From Dan Barfield:

>> "The earth runs
>> through my veins
>> Deep and black
>> ancient memories
>> ancient magic
>> ....I am the reason
>> you fear the darkness
>> I am
>> the darkness"

>> From Lisa Scarboro:

>> "Words shared
>> among friends
>> ....voice after
>> voice echoes
>> like feelings"

>> From Rick Duffey:

>> "There's a spider in our warehouse somewhere
>> who keeps making webs
>> in all the worst places & she does this
>> overnight
>> webs of immense size
>> bigger than pillow cases
>> big enough to capture chess pieces
>> they only appear after five in the evening
>> & eight the next morning, punched in,
>> when we've got sleep under our lids
>> & sip at the cooled edges of
>> styrofoam coffee we always discover them.
>> We've never seen this spider in person
>> but opinions abound
>> it's a big one says Mike...
>> & she's red with yellow stripes--her name is
>> probably Amanda
>> (I say)
>> she tells fortunes to the other spiders
>> her name means ‘worthy of being loved'
>> her bite is poisonous with no puncture marks
>> she seeks out the crevasses of skin
>> attracted by the warmth
>> of your body
>> scratch an itch there
>> only if you must"

>> On the back page of this minicomic I was delighted to see new
>> comix by John Jones. He's been drawing his Retros comix for years. At
>> first I was fairly dismissive of them (back in the 80's). But like fine
>> wine they have grown on me. I have a deep appreciation for them now,
>> perhaps born of their intrinsic merit, perhaps born of nostalgia. Can
>> one ever be sure about such things? I feel nostalgia for Gilligan's
>> Island too.
>> Will Dockery produces a similar line of comix (not present in
>> this issue), titled Demon House Theatre. Suddenly I find myself
>> wondering, with regard to Dockery's comics, and Jones', and even
>> Wilson's and Horn's, "Has all their work been saved?" "Is there some
>> way it could be collected and displayed?"
>> Once you develop an appreciation for what they are creating it
>> becomes quite addictive. It's strange art, visual poetry, really, for
>> it ‘makes no sense' to the DC and Marvel-trained eye. But once you let
>> go of your preconceptions of what art ‘should' and, indeed, ‘must' be,
>> you find yourself in a new realm. Their art is unique; a strange blend
>> of human, mystical, and even superheroic creatures. And, like I said,
>> there is a whole school of them, all cross-pollinating each other, all
>> living in the same locale.
>> And all dangerously close to Disneyfied Florida. *************************