I took the whole small business model pretty seriously, and had stationary, envelopes, invoices, etc. professionally printed. In addition to the business envelopes, I had these comic-sized craft envelopes printed, both for individual orders, or for the massive bulk mail campaigns I did in 1987-1988. I spent many evenings at the library cultivating a list of 3,000 comic book stores from telephone books, and was constantly sending out free samples of back issues and flyers (hundreds per months via bulk mail) to drum up business.



Fellow animator Brian (Robotnobots) Andersen, provided me a scan of this old letter I sent him, which was kind of cool since I have no remaining copies. The orignial 1986 letterhead, going from memory, would have been the crosshatched style UK image from #2 (catching the jet). Since my style was evolving, apparently I redrew the image in brush just for the stationary, and for the letterhead had it screenbacked in grey as seen here.


Typically the flyers or posters I made were just for bulk mail, or for distributors to circulate. Below is the Elements poster I compiled from the "alphabet ad" series. I also printed up a special version later without the ad copy and signed and numbered them for convention sales or mail order. I think I did 100 of them? I no longer have a copy of that version.



Over the years I would find a stray copy of UK that snuck through the printer's quality control, with serious off register problems. Here are a couple examples.





This one takes the cake. UK 81 was gang printed with other underground comics from Last Gasp and Rip Off Press. Here somehow the inside covers of an issue of Rip Off Comics was printed over the outer covers of UK 81. Look carefully and you will see reference to Wonder Warthog and images of Fat Freddy's Cat.



I must have been nostalgic for the immediacy of the zine format, because even though I was pumping out the monthly UK comic in December 1986, I created this little zine, which I think only went out to subscribers or with mail orders that month (signed and numbered edition of 40 copies). The interiors were a lot of black and white art (mostly non-Ultra Klutz) that I happened to have in my files.




For the Parody Press issues of Ultra Klutz (which were never published), in addition to drawing 13 new covers, I also went to the extent of making full mockup photocopies of the first four issues. CLICK HERE to see the original editorials to these things, as well as the old editorials to the Ultra Klutz and Other Tales zines.




Original Ultra Klutz logos: When digging for the best logo to ape for Ultra Klutz 1986, I was pleased to find these originals were still intact.
The upper sheet, left, is the actual hand inked logo source (with lots of white ink corrections) that was used on UK #1-28. It’s on a transparency drawing paper so it was probably traced from a mutant of the somewhat different Ultra Klutz & Other Tales 1984 logo (which is on the original #1 cover, which was sold). On the right is a PMT (photo mechanical transfer) of the logo with some ink and mostly ruby lithe to create the blacks. The lower sheet is the flip side of the transparency with the logo in reverse, and on its right is a PMT of the ruby lithe treatment, both of the PMTs being waxed for pasting and repasting. The reason for all the waxed PMTs was all the original cover mechanicals had the white or black/white logos slapped on them, and then re-shot as transparencies for the marker colored covers (such as #1-13, 16), or onto the B&W art for the cut color covers (such as #14, 15, 17-28). For the latter, I was probably using photocopy by then, and those would still be on the B&W covers that were sold. For the older ones, only the transparencies would have been affixed to the hand colored covers. The logos, price box, borders, etc. would have all been mechanical trash that was thrown away after the issue released, unless it could be modified and recycled.
The only covers whom I personally know the owners of, are for UK ’81 #1, UK&OT #1, UK #11. All the other covers, whomever owns them out there, I would love to know and maybe see some photos if you are willing to share. They were all sold pre-internet days. .



BACK