Last Stop Ttown Press Release!

For Immediate Release: August 30, 2011
Contact: Andrew Farago, 415-227-8666, ext. 309
Images available on request

Last Stop: Troubletown
Cartoon Art Museum Exhibition: September 17, 2011 – January 01, 2012
Alternative Press Expo party with guest Lloyd Dangle Saturday, October 1
Opening reception Thursday, October 6

San Francisco, CA: For over 22 years, cartoonist Lloyd Dangle entertained, educated, and occasionally outraged audiences worldwide through his weekly comic strip Troubletown. Dangle retired the feature in April 2011, and the Cartoon Art Museum is pleased to present Last Stop: Troubletown, a comprehensive retrospective featuring the first and last Troubletown strips—and 22 years of highlights in between.

About Lloyd Dangle

Lloyd Dangle grew up in Michigan and, after attending the University of Michigan school of art, tossed his BFA out the window to draw cartoons for Michael Moore’s muckraking newspaper the Michigan Voice.

He moved to New York City during the go-go 80’s and worked for magazines, including the Village Voice which was in its heyday. Dangle landed a cartoon feature at upscale Manhattan, Inc. Magazine, lampooning the high living antics of Wall Street’s youthful elite (some things are timeless). After landlord larceny caused Dangle’s apartment building to literally collapse, he moved to San Francisco and earned his underground hipster cred, befriending Robert and Aline Crumb and appearing in their classic depressive übercomic, Weirdo.

Dangle is an multi-disciplined writer, designer, and artist whose works, over the past 20 years, have appeared in over 100 magazines and newspapers of every type, from the crusty corporate mainstream, to the altruistic not-for-profit, to the loftiest academic journals, to the bleeding, subcommercial gutter. He is now universally regarded as a big-money marketing genius for his branding of Airborne, the world's number one cold remedy, and one of the fastest selling products in retail history (according to Airborne's own data). His weekly comic strip, Troubletown, was first published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 1988 and has grown to become a widely-syndicated cartoon feature in alternative newsweeklies and lefty political magazines. He has published several books and exhibited his work in the United States and abroad.

Lloyd Dangle lives in Oakland, California with his wife, the powerfully-successful and attractive graphic designer and fine artist, Hae Yuon Kim, and their handsome and overachieving son, Oscar.

Praise for Troubletown

“Say it ain't so, Lloyd! Troubletown has stood alone for 22 years as the only political cartoon with a real sense of humor. Troubletown—and all of Lloyd's work, really—delivers its commentary and satirical jab with a finely honed jokester voice. After all, isn't laughing at corrupt and powerful targets what hurts them the most?

“Some political cartoons make me feel like I'm being lectured to. Lloyd Dangle, on the other hand, entertains me while I'm being lectured to. He makes his point, but I come away chuckling--at his punchline AND its intended victim. Here's hoping Lloyd's wit and wisdom will be entertaining and lecturing for another 22 years!”

-Bill Griffith, Zippy the Pinhead

“Lloyd Dangle is one of my all-time favorite political cartoonists. I've long admired Troubletown's offbeat sensibility, its unique way of wringing humor and silliness out of these, well, troubling times. It's a classic alternative comic, one that deserves its rightful place in history.”

-Jen Sorensen, Slowpoke

Another Dose of Dangle

Death defying cliff jumpers at Indian Falls

I’ve missed a couple weeks of Doses, partly due to vacation, yes, more vacation for Dangle, and partly due to the way things go.

I’ve been writing like mad. I’m so over comics, but I’m more creative than ever. I had my own writing workshop up at Oakland Feather River Camp up in the mountains. I wrote all morning every day and broke some new ground on my book. Some really weird stuff bubbled up from my unconscious that was very vivid and powerful. Of course it puts more kinks in the plot and structure that I have no idea how to fix, but that’s another issue.

I wish I could write as effectively here at home but I’m constantly getting waylaid. I should probably turn off the computer and internet. I’ve been having to knock off work at 2:30 each day to pick up Oscar from science camp and take him swimming too. It’s the end of summer and finally hot so we’ve got to get our water play in.

More Troubletown History
The other thing that’s been going on is that I’ve been sifting through twenty-two years of Troubletown cartoons to pick the ones for my show at the Cartoon Art Museum. There’s over a thousand cartoons on the floor of my studio. Andrew, the curator, offered to have some interns help me with the restoration of the cartoons that are falling apart but I just couldn’t hand them over. I did it all myself and it was sort of meditative but mostly a giant pain in the ass.

More Glue Issues
I asked my friend Karthik, a collage artist, what glue he uses because the UHU sticks were just so fat and clumsy. He said get the PH balanced special glue they sell at Blick’s that’s formulated to last centuries and brush it on very thinly. I started using it, but then my other friend, Lee, a big comics collector said, never use the PH balanced special glue because the paper’s porosity soaks it up and then the paper becomes wavy. Wavy cartoons are the worst, he said, he wouldn’t buy them. Well, it’s too late now, unless maybe I weigh them down with an anvil or something.

Show Details So Far
Hey, the show starts September 17th, goes straight through Alternative Press Expo (there’ll be a party that Saturday) and the reception will be on October 6. Mark your calendars! More info to come.

Next week I go in for surgery. As anybody who has ever drank beer with me in a bar knows, my prostate is the size of a Christmas ham, so I am going to have it fixed. One scene in my novel involves a surgery so this will be excellent research. If I go into cardiac arrest and die on the operating table, as happens to fifty year olds who have eaten pork ribs and ice cream all their lives, please buy my cartoon originals to support my poor little wife and child.


Daredevils

Weekly Dose of Dangle

A panel from the comics job

Oscar went up to Lake Tahoe with Ben and Clyde so Hae and I had the whole weekend to ourselves for the first time in I think about ten years. We went wild. Happy hours and movies and all sorts of illicit activity. Sunday we went to see my favorite band the Sons of Emperor Norton at a bar in Hayward.

Actually we spent part of Saturday trying to tackle the horrendous squalor that was Oscar’s room. I started with the intention of throwing away about fifty percent of the crap in there, but Hae went through and carefully sorted every bit of it like the perfectionist she is. In the end we only threw out two garbage bags full and moved three or four boxes of old books and clothes and stuff out into the living room where it will sit until we figure out what to do with it. We really have to make Oscar start taking care of his room and pulling his weight around here before it’s too late. I’m afraid our lax parenting (especially mine) is turning him into a spoiled brat. Talk about attitude!

But then we rewarded ourselves by playing. We threw our vegetarianism out the window and ate some pork at the Oakland hipster hangout, Mua. Delicious. We went to see Midnight in Paris at an actual movie theater and it was pretty good. Then we went to see Super 8 the next night, which turned out to be one of those formulaic monster movies. We ate popcorn from a giant shopping bag-sized bag and shared one of those cups of soda that holds about two gallons. Between the two of us we drank less than a gallon of it. The mall was full of teenagers on Saturday night, just hanging out eating pizza with their braces and zit-covered faces. It won’t be long before our son is one of them. Jesus Christ that’s scary!

There is finally light at the end of the tunnel with the big comic strip job I’ve been complaining about––for which I was already paid at the end of 2010. I cranked all week and made great headway. Because of the lack of monetary incentive I have no desire to do the work whatsoever. I’m running on pure professionalism here, folks, pure professionalism. I’ve got at least a half dozen proposals out there for new work, graphic recording and jobs making those RSA-style whiteboard videos for scientists and universities. They are fun to do except that in order to keep your shoulder out of camera range you have to draw in an odd stance with your arm extended way out to the right. Try drawing that way, it’s very awkward. I sure hope these jobs come through and things pick up in the fall. I’m enjoying summer but I’d enjoy it more if I had some gigs on the calendar for September. It’s the freelance dilemma.

I’ve been too busy to work on the book and I have to workshop some pages by this weekend. I’ve been so stuck lately and out of touch with my creative unconscious. I’ll write some pages this week.

Update on Oscar’s room cleaning. When he came home he was pissed. We destroyed his fort that he had worked so hard on. That’ll be a subject for him and his therapist someday.


I just won an award from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for this cover illustration I did for Tucson Weekly! Actually I shared it with Jim Nitzel who was my editor. Click it to see it bigger.