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On a return visit to the club I learned that living on the second floor were a pair of underground comic artists named Jim Franklin and Gilbert Shelton. I purchased (or perhaps liberated) a copy of a comic by Shelton called "Wonder Wart Hog." I immediately fell in love with that character and others the talented Texan drew. Fast forward ten years or so to 1975. My summer in Austin is a muddled memory except for the Vulcan Gas and Light Co and Gilbert Shelton. I'm now a journalism major at a small Midwest college and a devout follower of Hunter S. Thompson and gonzo journalism. While laboring on that college's newspaper as a sportswriter, a package comes across my desk marked "Comix" My interest to parrot actor James Coburn is peaked! I open the package and out slide comics by Gilbert Shelton. Among the topics on the so named "comix" was "Wonder Wart Hog Goes to the Indianapolis 500" and something called "Gilbert Shelton's Motoring Tips." The staff at the college newspaper disdained using the "Comix" so I took them home with me along with the address for buying more of the same. About a year later myself and my best friend, Scott Brown, and my somewhat reluctant wife, Kay, started a local racing tabloid called Midwest Racer. In many ways it was the precursor (or is that pre-curser) to Drag Racing Online. We applied what we had learned in Dean Barr's journalism classes plus a dash of Gonzo to auto-racing reporting. We also skipped the last two weeks of the last semester for an extended road trip to Indy but that's another story and I do digress. At any rate the first thing Scott and I do is send the Comix Consortium a check for the rights to run Gilbert Shelton's works. We started running Gilbert Shelton panels and strips on a regular basis. In the late 1970's and the early 80's there was more than one of our Midwest circle track and dragstrip customers whose eyes glazed over when they got to the Midwest Racer's comix section and I don't think they appreciated Wonder Wart Hog's take on the revered Indy 500! One more fast forward to 2000. Once again I find myself embroiled in a magazine/newspaper kind of startup with another best friend who reminds me a lot of the late Scott Brown. We are struggling, just as we did the first year of Midwest Racer, but now as then, all of us do it as much for the love of journalism and racing as for the money. Which brings us to the Gilbert Shelton panel you see below. I was going through some stuff and these unpublished panels came into view. I immediately took it as a sign and, since I paid for the rights long ago, I figured why not run these in the latest effort. I like them just as much now as I did then. I just hope that your eyes don't glaze over when you read them, at least not from not understanding them. I can't think of a better way to start the second year of Drag Racing Online. Oh, what a long, strange trip it has been. I'll see you at the races!
Editors Note: "Motoring Tips" will be in their own section in future issues. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
photo by Kay Burk
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Copyright 1999-2001, Drag Racing Online and Racing Net Source |
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About 35 years or so ago as a young hippie I traveled to Austin, Texas for a summer of drugs and debauchery. Upon my arrival a friend took me to a joint somewhere close to the capitol building called the Vulcan Gas and Light Company. On the bill that night was one Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton and a skinny, white, albino blues guitar and singer by the name of Johnny Winters. That night changed a young boy's life forever as far as music is concerned. 
