ON THE SUBJECT OF MY FRIEND, DYLAN WILLIAMS

It’s confusing. Right now I don’t really want to write anything about Dylan, because, frankly, it hurts too much, but at the same time, I don’t want to not write anything about Dylan, because he’s worth writing and thinking about. And it’s all I can think about right now, anyway. And maybe it’s better to write a little of this out. A little, but I feel like I could write a book.

One of the things about Dylan, it seems to me, is that he loved life, culture, art and people more than anybody else I’ve ever known. That’s one of the things that bums me out the most, that somebody who seemed to appreciate so much being in the world, ended up pulling a pretty short straw.

Maybe it’s a little funny, but I can’t even remember exactly when or how I met Dylan. Probably in 1993? Maybe he wrote me a letter, or maybe I met him in Comic Relief? My first distinct memory is meeting him in Berkeley and going to a Puppy Toss meeting. I’d had a comic book or two published by then, but comics for me was also a very isolated, weird thing I was trying to do. This was pretty much my first exposure to a whole group of creative people trying to work together and encourage each other to accomplish art - collectively - and it kind of blew my mind. I didn’t really understand the community aspect, but even way back then, I think that was something important to Dylan - not just his own work, but the other people around him. Not just in Berkeley and San Francisco, but the weird people all around the world doing this stuff that Puppy Toss tried to help distribute through their own massive catalog and mail order operations. This wasn’t about making money, but about supporting what you loved and believed in, and thereby changing the world in little, but important ways. And it seems to me that Dylan loved comics, and the comics community, more that anybody I’ve ever met.

I really got to know Dylan over the next couple of years, when we were both working at Comic Relief on Haight Street in San Francisco. In a way, this was the most vibrant period of my life, when the world seemed to really expand before me and I dived in. A lot of what I learned during that period, I learned because of my friendship with Dylan. He was a bit of a culture pusher and I was starving. For instance with comics. Up till then my idea of comics was pretty much Hate, Eightball, Love and Rockets and Weirdo Robert Crumb, but Dylan’s enthusiasm and vast knowledge of the classics was infectious and opened up my mind to a diverse selection of cartoonists like John Stanley, Bernie Kreigstein and Hergé. He took me out to Bill Blackbeard’s newspaper strip museum and we looked through giant, beautiful, turn of the century newspaper comics. In fact, we were talking about just this when I was briefly visiting with him in Portland this July - how back in the 90s and earlier you really needed to talk to people, put in some effort and have some good guides to learn what you wanted to know and how that has changed so much this last decade, thanks or curses to the Internet - how you can now find out about pretty much anything and with much more depth with just a few clicks of a mouse. I think he was worried about the distance this was creating between people - I know it worries me (at the same time as I embrace it).

Puppy Toss published some comics by me, I published some comics by Dylan. Then Dylan became a big part of the comics zine I was putting out (and later Slave Labor published some issues). For sure, without Dylan, those Slave Labor mags I (poorly) edited, would never have existed. He also pushed and encouraged me tremendously in my own efforts. Always gently prodding me to improve and keep going (especially when it was a real struggle for me). But also understanding, I think, in the different periods when I’ve had to step away.

He was a great person to talk to and we did get into hanging out after work, drinking coffee, and seeing all the old movies we could afford in San Francisco and Berkeley’s many rep theaters of the time. See, Dylan wasn’t just about comics and the comics community. For me at least, that became the least important thing (though I was still asking his advice about Dick Tracy volumes to pick up last December). He was also crazy about movies, music, books and art too (though he did often relate back what he learned from those other interests to his comics). Especially in later years, classic and art house movies became the area where we had the most common interests.

I’d say our closest period was in mid-1995 to mid-1996. A period of a lot of personal upheavel for both of us and a sort of course correction / rethink. It seems to me that this is when we hung out the most and had the longest, best conversations - along with connecting up with another key figure for the two of us, Frank Santoro. Many pints of coffee were drank at the cafe on Divisadero behind my apartment in the midnight hours. I do remember one late night in particular (like 3 a.m. late) when Dylan and I strolled up & down Divisadero to the bay and watched the waves in the moonlight.

But things changed fast... way too fast. Dylan had started working at the Castro Theatre. Frank split home to Pittsburgh. Comic Relief went out of business and I hit the road for a while too and ended up in North Carolina. So began the period of great letter writing! Frank was back in San Francisco. Dylan and Emily moved to Olympia. Frank was back in Pittsburgh. Somewhere in there Frank, Dylan and I met in Los Angeles for a week when I was out there to do some writing! This was when the three of us went to the Silent Movie Theater and saw some Laurel and Hardy shorts - one of the great movie going experiences of my life - and I never laughed so much.

In 1998 I tried moving back to San Francisco and spent three impossible months couch surfing and in misery, before giving up and heading “home” to Portland, Oregon. And like magic, Dylan and Emily also moved to Portland at right around the same time. Again we got to hang out, seeing movies, talking books and zines. Dylan could be such an inspiring person just to hang out with. He was also an amazingly hilarious shopper - he’d walk out of every bookstore with ten times more books than anybody else, even saying, he knew there wasn’t enough time to read but a small percentage of the books he was buying - they were just too compelling to pass up. Same with music - in those days, despite not having tons of money, he’d never buy one or even a few CDs or LPs, but always a huge stack - always great stuff. He was also the first person I knew who bought VHS tapes, and this was when they were expensive. He loved culture. He also really loved pot, and I do have a particularly fond memory of one afternoon spent with Dylan and Emily getting terribly stoned on some bridge in Portland and then going to see the Wizard of Oz(!) at the Lloyd Center Mall.

But, I don’t know, things weren’t really working out for me in Portland and in 1999 when I got a job offer in Los Angeles, I grabbed it. Also my brother lived in LA and Frank and Katie were moving there too - so it was appealing and I was sick of the rain. Of course Frank and Katie left for New York six months later, but that’s how it goes. Even more unfortunately, somewhere around this time Dylan and I had a bit of a falling out (probably my fault), which really hurt my heart, but I didn’t really know how to fix it. Maybe we never did quite fix it, but eventually we did re-connect (at a convention in San Francisco?) and he even ended up publishing some new comics he encouraged me to draw - I doubt they would have happened without him, for whatever that’s worth. In any case, those comics he published are the one’s where I think I finally figured out my own limitations as a creative person and am able to look back on them and feel okay, instead of the burning embarrassment of my 90s output (even if very few people rate my 00s work compared to the 90s stuff - oh well).

I guess Dylan and I weren’t as close in the 2000’s as we could have been. I was thinking about this, but we still hung out a fair lot and had some amazing times - particularly centered around movies. We actually met several times in in Berkeley for no other reason than to watch screenings at the PFA archive of silent Naruse films, Mizoguchi films and others (well, he was also there to visit his mom) and we both hung out with Landry Walker & Eric Jones (more old cartoonist friends) at their place for some amusing late nights (as Dylan snored and we played Mario Kart till dawn). Dylan also visited in LA to see film noirs for a week at the American Cinematheque and several other times. And of course we also hung out some at various comic shows in San Diego, San Francisco and Portland. Dylan was amazingly easy person to hang out with and talk to - even if we hadn’t talked for maybe a year, it felt like no time had passed - just a very comfortable and chill guy, especially in later years when I think maybe he really found himself after first fighting off cancer and getting super healthy (no drink, drugs or eventually even coffee - instead Tai Chi and jogging).

The thing about Dylan was he was really smart. He thought extremely deeply and when he made up his mind about something - he felt good with his decisions and he would act on them with pure conviction. That’s part of how he accomplished so much - so much more than anybody else I’ve ever met. And he would never budge (I know sometimes this annoyed certain people). But he had a vision of how he thought things should be and he didn’t tolerate bullshit or waste his time on things he didn’t believe in or feel were important. He had conviction, compassion and a genuine global vision. He really fought for what he thought best and spent his energy in directions he was convinced were positive.

The thing about Dylan was he was a really funny guy - not overly earnest or annoying - he accepted people for what they were. He loved a corny joke. I remember him laughing and giggling and chucking a lot. He loved the old fashioned comedy of Ernie Kovacs (and introduced me to him). But he had really broad tastes. He loved everything musical from hip-hop to country to metal and he knew a ton about it. He was engaged in life and getting the most possible out of it. He knew a ton about art and I treasured the times we visited museums together. I particularly remember the days we went to the Hammer Museum in LA where there was a René Magritte exhibit (I don’t think he cared for it), then all the way out to Pasadena to look at a bunch of Edgar Degas stuff (which he loved), and looking at a bunch of amazing Japanese prints and fashion at the Berkeley Art Museum.

This July, when I was taking a trip up to Portland Oregon to visit with my mom and step-dad and Polly, I of course also wrote Dylan to see if he would be around and have some free time (he was often travelling in these last years, to conventions or to visit scattered family). He wrote me back saying there was a problem. He’d been in the hospital, but not for cancer, for something else. He’d had serious, life saving surgery, and was pretty messed up - the recovery time was going to be six to nine months! But he was at home, and if he felt good enough, a visit would be great.

Luckily that July 18th he said felt good enough and I walked over to his and Emily’s nice little house and we got to have a good two hour visit. It had been a while, but conversation came as easy as ever. Yet I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t tough to see somebody who was normally so vibrant and healthy, now in such a frightfully thin and weakened state. To hear of the surgery and recovery process he was going through really made me feel for him (and Emily). We drank tea and chatted about books and soccer, and about his dislike of the movement towards digital culture and iBooks and digital comics and his belief in the superiority of print. Just a normal everyday kind of chat that I enjoyed very much. As I left, he propped himself up weakly from the couch and we shook hands, and I’m sure he said something like, and now we’ll try to stay in better touch. I left saddened by what he was having to go through, but at the same time, impressed by his strength and convinced in six to nine months he was going to be back to his old self, and doing the things he loved and cared about the most.

A little over a week later when I read there was more troubles and they didn’t know what it was, but he was back in the hospital and they were going to figure it out - I got pretty worried and Dylan was much in my thoughts. Later, when I read that they figured out what was really wrong this time and it was a return of the cancer I got REALLY worried. I’d just been watching my friend Alan going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments and saw how they diminished an incredibly healthy man to a very weak and frail man - cancer is a tough battle. In Dylan’s case I really was fearful for him, because he was already in such a tremendously weakened state - I worried, did he have the reserves to fight yet another battle. When another week or two passed and I read a new post from him on the Sparkplug Comic Books blog saying, “I figure I should check in and let people know I'm doing okay. I've got more treatments ahead but I'm doing well. And me and Sparkplug owe a giant thank you for all the help everyone has given us during me being conked out. I'm a lot less worried about the way things will go now,” for the first time in a long while I felt like, maybe things will be okay after all, and thought to myself, why are you always so negative Jeff...

A couple of days later, on Saturday September 10th, at around four in the afternoon I heard my phone ring, but I wasn’t able to pick it up in time. When I checked to see who had called and saw that it was Landry (one of Dylan’s oldest and closest friends, who hadn’t called me in ages), I knew. I didn’t have to call back, but I did. Felt like shit ever since.