THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER - 129 - SWAMP WIZARDS
I’m working on my second DUNGEON DEGENERATES short story, this one focuses on the Bog Conjuror & is called Swamp Wizards. In it the Bog Conjuror meets up with a bunch of eccentric characters in the depths of the wetlands - The Swamp Wizards! The name comes from this association of artists that used to exist, with Tallboy & Krusty who did Nightwatch zine along with a bunch of other notables: Thomas Fernandez/Liverad Studios, Chris DOGT, Mikey Bosssdog, Repop Manufacturing, Burritobreath, Sketchy Tank & more. The Swamp Wizards don’t exist any longer, but I thought I’d give them a shout out. The Bog Conjuror’s name is a modified version of Swamp Wizard. The other reference point for these characters are an assortment of Berkeley, specifically Telegraph Avenue people. In thinking back on these characters I realized that even though I was way younger than any of them, I lived in East Oakland & only went to Telegraph like three times a week, I was one of the street characters too. I had never considered this, as my goal was just to be “more Punk” than everyone else, but in doing so I stood out enough to gain notoriety as a street character. Just to point out a little history, Berkeley was strangely the ground zero for American Punk in the mid-90s. This seems strange as I type it, but it’s true. Things were really going on, there would be whole Cometbus window displays at Comic Relief - a great comic store that devoted its entire back shelving to zines. MRR & Cometbus had counter displays at multiple record stores & even though San Francisco was a much larger, more sophisticated city next door, with a lot going on, it didn’t have it going on like Berkeley did, especially in a Punk scene. I remember seeing Lint from Rancid hanging out on the Ave multiple times. Jake from Filth sold t-shirts at a tye-dye stand & the entire UC Berkeley trash management team were Punks. Zeb from Skaven worked there & then worked at Tower video with Oronzo. I could walk down Telegraph & see at least a dozen people I knew & was happy to see. Much more than I could say about highschool. The streets were populated with people who were actually doing things or would go on to be somebody. Of course there were some casualties of the street, but a really high percentage of people were amazing.
x SEAN