Although Evergreen is now known for being a hotbed of cartoonists, it wasn't always that way. TESC is a college with a curriculum chiefly based on collaboration and cooperation, seminars and group work. Cartoonists by nature are solitary beings, geeky basement apartment dwellers who must stand apart from the crowd in order to observe and record.

The CPJ didn't really have any regularly appearing comic strips until Kathleen Meighan, under the pen-name "Katy Did," produced Da Boidz 1975-76. The first real page devoted to comix appeared in Oct. 1975, but it wasn't until Matt Groening became editor a couple years later the comix feature started being consistent.

More on the flip...

It is curious to note that many of the Evergreen cartoonists, myself included, have gone on record stating that if it wasn't for Evergreen we probably never would've gone to college. Also, the most famous of the cartoonists attended at a time when the College was still very experimental, before many of the parts of the school that attracted us were watered down by the CPE in 1979.

For you comic bibliographers, here is a list of the cartoonists and illustrators for The Paper and The Cooper Point Journal and when their work appeared 1972-1979:

Dianne Senn 1972
Solo 1972
Pete Wilson 1972
Dan Youra 1972
Mary Coyle 1973
Tommy Lenon 1973-1974
Sandy Mae 1973
Paul Murphy 1973-1974
Jody Sandford 1973
Matt Groening 1974-1978
Trey Imfeld 1974
Lynn Robb 1974
Sandy Baugher 1975
Boo Dinnison 1975
Flicky Ford 1975-1977
Kathleen Meighan 1975-1976
Dan Owens 1975-1976
Lynda Barry 1976-1977
Charles Burns 1976-1977
Jim Chupa 1976-1979
J.M. Ferron 1976
Hansen 1976
Steve Willis 1976-1979
Joan Maneri 1977
Dana Leigh Squires 1977-1978
Gareth Bolt 1978
Patrick Carr 1978
Chez 1978
Rob Fromm 1978
Dave Williams 1978
M.L. Hunting 1979
Randy Hunting 1979
Kathy Knutson 1979
Eric Martin 1979
CDR 1979
JER 1979
Maggie Resch 1979
T.J. Simpson 1979

Some of these names are familiar, others faded away. During his enrollment, probably the most widely read and popular cartoonist on campus was Jim Chupa. Borrowing the graphic style of Robert Crumb, Chupa had a real gift for poking fun at campus politics, frequently using slugs as his characters for commentary. Charles Burns' cartoons generated the most controversy in the 1970s, but by the later quarter of the decade it wasn't hard to offend people as the campus grew more polarized.

In 1981 a comic entitled Tales From The Steam Tunnels featuring CPJ reprints and some new work (including Olympia artist Tucker Petertil and future animator Craig Bartlett) was released. It was the first real recognition that the 1970s had produced something special in the world of comix. By the mid-1980s, as TESC cartoonists started making their mark in the outside world, cartoon editors across the country were using the term "Evergreen Mafia" to describe the group. A copy of Tales From The Steam Tunnels sold on eBay in May 2004 for over 127 bucks!

To this day I enjoy having the talent of looking like I'm paying attention and taking studious notes at some meeting when in fact I'm drawing a picture of a guy with a frog growing out of his head, or something along those lines.