On the passing of an old friend.
I consider one of the most fortuitous choices I made in my life was my decision to rent a room in a shabby Victorian house on Garden Street in Bellingham, Washington. It was 1973, I was twenty-three and had just stepped off a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles. I checked my few belongings at the station, and set out to explore my new home. I wandered randomly, and then my attention was caught by a room for rent sign – $50 a month. I was broke, I knew no one in town, so why not?
Having hauled my guitar, stereo system, and a backpack full of clothes to my new abode, I was soon greeted with the sound of John Coltrane playing in the adjacent room. Boldly, I knocked, and my 50-year friendship with Mark began.
We had a lot in common; we both were guitar players and fans of science fiction and comics. I was an artist, he was a writer, and it wasn’t too long before we were planning to collaborate on a massive comic book story about Ernest Hemingway in outer space. That came to nothing, but it was the first of our many collaborations that lasted until a few weeks ago.
We formed a band with Mark’s pals Terry and Reid, to play a weird amalgam of the esoteric old blues, jazz, and western swing music we loved. The Writhing Rhythm Matzoh Balls of Jive (Mark’s idea for a band name) only performed once in public, a local tavern, but fortunately I have some recordings to share with you.
In the meantime, I found work as an artist doing scrimshaw (don’t ask), and Mark and his first wife also joined the company, so we were in constant contact.
Afterwards we started a succession of short lived bands: Buffalo Bop, The Cowbeats, The Mighty Chameleons, and performed at various local low-rent venues. Mark eventually joined a touring country band to pay his bills, so our musical collaborations were put on hold. I plan to post some live recordings and photos of the Chameleons with Mark on lead vocal and guitar.
In the early 1980’s, I decided to go back to school to study computer programming. Mark had bought a Mac, and showed me an amazing new game called Adventure. It was all text, and reminded me of the Dungeon and Dragons games that Mark and I had recently started running. I was obsessed, and we collaborated on creating a massive text adventure game called Dust, which was never completed. Our D&D games continued for another 10 years.
I became disenchanted with programming, and after a months-long bus trip through Mexico and Guatemala, decided what I really wanted to do was create comics, a passion of mine since childhood. I contacted Mark and suggested we collaborate on a new version of Strange Attractors, a comic I had recently begun working on, influenced by the Love and Rockets comics Mark had introduced me to.
We eventually decided to self-publish Strange Attractors, each kicking in our life savings. Remarkably, we managed to publish 17 issues of the comic, and achieved some fame in the small world of indy comic enthusiasts, going to conventions and local book signings.
After twenty years in Bellingham, I was ready to move on, so Liz and I moved to New Hampshire. Mark and I continued our comic collaboration by phone, but eventually we came to the decision that it was no longer economically feasible. Over the next twenty years we stayed in touch with occasional phone calls and visits, but our paths had clearly separated. Mark continued writing horror fiction, but I was never able to convince him to show anyone his work-in-progress, and the stories remain unpublished.
Liz and I eventually moved to Italy, and the occasional phone calls continued, but it wasn’t until the Covid epidemic when we started a bi-weekly Zoom call with our old Dungeon and Dragons friends, which continues to this day. I carried on creating comics and writing music and Mark kept writing stories none of us ever read.
Earlier this year, it occurred to me that perhaps Mark and I could attempt to finish the 400-page Strange Attractors epic we abandoned in the mid ‘90’s. Mark had been very ill, and was feeling frustrated by his lack of energy, so I was happy when he accepted my offer. We started doing weekly story conferences, and I was beginning to finish some new pages, when Mark took a turn for the worse, and felt he no longer had the energy for creative activity. He asked me to carry on and finish the story without him, which I will attempt to do, though with heavy heart. Fortunately we plotted out a path to an ending, so I will have some guidance.
One of his last attempts at writing was a series of vignettes, based upon the events of the years before we met. I loved finally reading his serious work, and I will insert some of these pieces shortly.
A few days ago, we were on our regular Zoom call with Mark, when he was overcome with fatigue and left the call. The next morning I learned that he died in his sleep shortly after.
So Mark is on my mind constantly now, and I thought it would be therapeutic to share some of our adventures together, and to give you an idea of what a wonderful and creative soul he was.
R.I.P.