Omaha the Cat Dancer - Just One Story

Category: Omaha news
Published: Monday, 04 May 2020 22:05
Written by Super User
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chuck at kitty korner   It's exciting that after 40 years Omaha the Cat Dancer still generates comment, most recently by Markus Binder on the German comicsite "Allesfresser" (see here: <http://www.allesfresser.eu/die-sieben-leben-der-omaha/>)

Noticeably I see in all retrospectives of Omaha that there are Kate Worley fans and Reed Waller fans. Some of them praise Kate for pulling a sleazy pulp story out of the mire and into the light of real life. (Harlan Ellison called the first story a "goofy porn parody.") Others praise the work I wrote and express boredom at what followed.

This is pretty much what Kate and I expected, but we were in total agreement about where to go when the first arc was complete -- to explore the issues brought up by the first story, and to continue the nose-to-the-ground narrative and the classic 9-panel page. I was never sorry I handed it over to her to steer it round the corner into what i think of as "nouveau soap opera." Skeptics might call it "Woke Soap Opera." Let them. Kate's two literary models were Dorothy Sayers and Colette -- a perfect combination for where Omaha should go. But she never abandoned the story, or the ground-level viewpoint.

I see no need to defend Kate, whose own reputation is secure among the great writers of comics. But in defense of both of us, i think I should say something about the origin of the material that started this. 

It really is just one story.

I find it endlessly amusing that most reviewers think I arbitrarily made up all the salacious stuff in the first story arc (strip club shutdown, crackdown on adult businesses, "Campaign for Decency," crazy father, mob connection, conspiracy to demolish downtown by secret cadre of local businessmen, etc.). 

Any longtime resident of Minneapolis could tell them otherwise.

All of it was in the air in Minneapolis in 1978-79. I built the story from news, rumors and first-person accounts I gathered while playing local strip clubs in a smalltime rock band. I really don't have that kind of imagination. The racketeering charges against adult bookstore owner Ferris Alexander. Rosalie Butler. The Donaldson Fire. The questionable goings-on with Block E, City Center, and the gentrification of Downtown. Is this a "cleanup?" Or is it a hostile takeover? And everything that happened to Downtown Minneapolis also happened to Times Square, thanks to a now-well-known slumlord. Everything in Omaha was always rooted in what I heard on the street, and the personal testimony of friends and lovers I will not name. Okay there was no mob hit, and no Charlie's Underground -- but rumor had it that it was being discussed.

Even my publisher was skeptical of what I wrote. Denis didn't believe there was a stretch of road in the mostly-flat Twin Cities with a cliff that a car could be forced off. We had to drive him out Hwy 169 (then County Road 18) on the way to Flying Cloud Airport to show him where it "actually" happened.

Now the book is getting new readers again. And they will take from it what they want. Even though the story, like real life, does change genres, it is still just one story.

Recycled art chosen for German print

Category: Omaha news
Published: Tuesday, 14 January 2020 21:13
Written by Super User
Hits: 1462
Omaha Art Print 2
This one is going.

Well, the German collectors were confused by my first submission, so I had to come up with something new and less cryptic, in not very much time, since the German Vol. 1 is scheduled to hit the stands in the beginning of March.

Phillip asked me if I had any standing art that could be colored, and I showed him an old bookplate that I did 30 years ago, that was never re-used. I was just reminded that it was actually done as a black-and-white limited print in 1989, by some friends who still have one.

He liked that, and suggested that they could have someone on their end color it for me, but I demurred on that. "If i'm going to sign something, I want it to be my work," I said.

I got to work fast and did this in about 3 hours. I thought I'd share it with you. This will be made available to the German buyers in a limited edition of 150. Or is it just 100. I'm not sure yet.

Doing things like this puts me in the spot again, of having to live up to how good I was 30 years ago, when my eyes and hands were much nimbler.

Have any of you had the humiliating experience of laying something down, picking it back up years later, and having to painstakingly relearn a skill from your former self?

 

Omaha to Germany!

Category: Omaha news
Published: Saturday, 27 April 2019 18:56
Written by Super User
Hits: 1644

 

Okay, I just heard from Denis, and apparently, we have a deal with the German publisher to reprint the Complete Omaha the Cat Dancer in Germany (in German of course). We have to get our digital originals to them, but it looks like it's going to happen, and the money is reasonable. This comes at a great time when both Jodi and I have some medical bills to pay, as do we all. More news as available. (I will also be posting this on my blog and website and Yahoo group.)

OMAHA THE CAT DANCER REFUSES TO DIE continued

Category: Omaha news
Published: Friday, 13 September 2019 06:47
Written by Super User
Hits: 1374
 Well, here we go. After decades of isolation, i thought I was safely dead and buried for the second time, but someone has goaded me into activity at my advanced age.
While I am assisting in the production of a German revival of Omaha the Cat Dancer, I am now also hard at work on a new project and reviving my signature character.
Heaven help me, it is turning out to be science fiction story! I didn't mean for it to happen, but that's how things go. Now I'm up to my cat's ears in research, not just on the recent trend of Cli-fi, but several other story-related things such as the zigzag history of feminism, alternative economies, and other controversial topics that have a dizzying range of possibilities.
The new star, a probable descendant of Omaha, will be the head of an unusual conclave (some will say a cult) within a future city-state. More later. Egyptian mythology will be involved, in the same metaphoric way that the woman is a cat. More later when I have art.

Omaha the Cat Dancer Refuses to DIe

Category: Omaha news
Published: Thursday, 25 April 2019 22:05
Written by Super User
Hits: 1492
FROM FACEBOOK:
Omaha the Cat Dancer simply refuses to die. Despite the fact that the final volume produced by me and the late Jim Vance came out in time for Comicon in 2013, NBM's promotion didn't last much longer than that, and we were in the position of having a last volume (which took us 7 years to finish} that practically no one realized existed. And now, of course, it's out of print.
The material is back in the hands of the authors, c/o our agent Denis Kitchen, but with me busy with the newspaper and the others deceased, there's been little motivation to keep the books available.
Nonetheless, I keep getting inquiries about "how can I get these books?" and "have you considered digital publishing?" I have to confess that I don't know anything about this new business.
Meanwhile there has been some overseas interest and it's ironic to think that there might be a new publication of Omaha the Cat Dancer in Europe but not in its native country.
I am now investigating new options for the digital publication, and the reprinting of these books. After 20 years of exile, I think I owe this property some permanence, for the sake of Kate and Jim, and to preserve a view of a different world than we have today.

(Reprinted from my blog)

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Reed Waller
309 Division Street W.
New Richland, MN 56072
email: rwaller@hickorytech.net

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