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Underground Comic Publisher Last Gasp of San Francisco turns 30 on April Fools Day
For thirty years, Last Gasp of San Francisco has been the premier publisher and distributor of comics, graphic novels, and all other forms of wacky and weird information.
"I grew up hating the idea of owning a business--my dad's bankruptcies had thrust our family into abject poverty many times over. It did give me a wonderful insight, not into running a successful business, but into life," says Last Gasp owner and founder Ron Turner. This helps explain how he has defied expectation and survived the ups and downs of business and culture to continue being a portent force in international publishing for 30 years.Turner traces his love and appreciation for comics to a cross-country trip on a troop train in 1945 to meet his father who was serving in the Marines. "GI's were hitting on my mother, and they'd give me comics to distract me. I had a huge stack of them when we got off the train."
"I got an innate appreciation of art while in high school, I remember clipping out a Salvador Dali painting from Time magazine and taping it to my cement block bedroom wall. Something in that painting spoke to me through all the pomade and pimples." The road to publishing art books was beginning to be paved...
Years later, as a graduate psychology student and working as a railroad brakeman, Turner first saw the infamous Berkeley Barb, and soon he was producing his own underground newspaper in the Fresno area. Then, at a New Year's Eve party in the Berkeley Hills, someone handed a very stoned Turner a copy of the infamous underground comic Zap, and sent him on a course that would alter the landscape of comic book--and later book publishing--in America. "I remember reading it and remarking how close it came to the heightened mind-experience. It all made sense, the humor, the satire--I thought this could be the answer to all mankind's problems. Over the years I sent them as peace offerings to the Hanoi Hilton, and to Fidel Castro," recalls Turner, "It brought back all my childhood love of comics, but in an adult form that I could appreciate."
Turner borrowed $2,500 from a friend to print 20,000 copies of a benefit comic for the Berkeley Ecology Center called Slow Death Funnies #1, featuring artwork from Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. Unfortunately, the staff at the Center was not ready for so many copies, and Ron was forced to travel around the country selling and bartering the comic himself to payback the loan. Last Gasp was thus founded.
The fledgling Last Gasp company started distributing other publications that Ron received as payment for his comics, and the company began to evolve into the successful and innovative publishing and distribution company that it is today. Over the years Turner and company have published the work of the world's most famous illustrators, artists and writers, including R. Crumb (Weirdo), Bill Griffith (Zippy the Pinhead), and Frank Kozik (Man's Ruin). Today, the Last Gasp office walls are decorated with large carnival sideshow banners (including images of both Alligator Girl and the Frog Boy), oversized prints by underground artists like Crumb and Mouse, and a collection of WWI & II propaganda art. Turner's Santa-like appearance, his unique products, and the artful setting make his company one of the most exotic businesses in the Bay Area. "Without the great help and dedication of all my current and former employees, none of this would be here," he says. "I've been blessed, being surrounded by brilliant artists and writers, and somehow have been able to sell their stuff like drugs on a playground."
Last Gasp sells some 21,000 titles from 637 different publishers, including 200 different comic books. They have published 200 books under their own imprint. Ron's current pet project is the newly-released Leeteg of Tahiti by John Turner and Greg Escalante. It's the story of Edgar Leeteg, known as the father of black velvet painting. "It was a great project, from the moment we got with the curators of a museum show of his work and decided this would make a great book, through all the research and tracking down more paintings."
Last Gasp is especially known for publishing the autobiographical work of cartoonists like Crumb, Justin Green, and Dori Seda, in which the artists bare their souls in words and drawings. "These books are so great because the artists give you their whole story, in both words and images, similar to the way a movie director supplies all the elements and shackles your imagination. The cartoonist has shown you exactly what is there, all you have to do is feel."
Keeping his political edge, another publishing project underway is Compassionate Conservatism for Complete Dummies: The Wit and Wisdom of George W. Bush. Whether this timely title will get the right kind of treatment from the trade is something Turner has always battled. "One of my criticisms of the modern book trade is that you've gotta follow the rules, and I just can't follow the rules. You know, things like giving your distributor advance notice of upcoming titles for cataloging. I think traditional booksellers have got to learn to change as fast as things do on the Web."
The informative and entertaining Last Gasp Web site is proof of Turner's fascination with the online medium. There's an abundance of artwork and information about the books, comics, graphic novels, t-shirts, and even lamps available for sale, along with hilarious interviews and letters from customers. "The books we carry range in subject from anarchy to fetish fashions, horticulture to occultism, beatnik literature to erotic manga, avant garde graphics to artistic terrorism, and incomprehensible works of Continental philosophy to funny comic books," says a description on the site's home page. And where else can you find all 15 of Timothy Leary's books?
"I get a great kick out of this current phenomenon with the Harry Potter series, and I think it's great that another generation now knows there are good things to read out there. I'm afraid that for the past twenty years or so we've gotten used to being dazzled by special effects, and our own innate imaginations don't get exercised," says Turner. "J.K. Rowling has single-handedly re-ignited millions of imaginations, and assured us of a book-reading public for generations to come. Kids are discovering the magic of their imaginations, which is the biggest turn-on in the world."