Dennis Eichhorn
Encyclopedia
Dennis P. Eichhorn is an award-winning American
writer best known for his adult-oriented autobiographical comic book
series Real Stuff. Due to his energetic, sex-, drug-, and alcohol-riddled stories, Eichhorn has been compared to Jack Kerouac
, Ken Kesey
, and Charles Bukowski
.
's infirmary. He was adopted when he was just a few days old by Eileen and Elmer Eichhorn family, and reared in Boise, Idaho
. He graduated from Boise's Borah High School in 1963. Eichhorn played football on athletic scholarships at Whitman College and the University of Idaho; he graduated from the latter with a B.A. in Sociology in 1968. Dennis didn't learn he was adopted until he was in his 30s, and has never met his birth mother. (Years later, Eichhorn spent a short time in prison himself for a drug charge.)
Eichhorn is a graduate of both Boise Junior College (now Boise State University
) and the University of Idaho
.
Before, during, and after establishing himself as a writer, editor, and publisher, Eichhorn has worked at a variety of jobs: arborist, barista, bartender, bouncer, chauffeur, concert promoter, cook, dishwasher, doorman, excavator, firefighter, grant writer, hay bucker, hod carrier, janitor, legal messenger, mill worker, musician, nightclub manager, paralegal investigator, process server, restauranteur, sailor, social worker, stable hand, taxi and van driver, telephone pollster, and warehouseman. For four years, Eichhorn also served as promoter and operator of the Blue Mountain Festival, an outdoor music festival held in the spring at the University of Idaho's Arboretum, and was the primary organizer of the 1971 Universal Life Church Picnic, a large festival held over the Fourth of July weekend in northern Idaho's Farragut State Park.
Eichhorn has been married three times, to Kip Charlson, Joan Pelley, and most recently (and still) to Jane Rebelowski. He has a daughter, Sarah, born in 1977, and a grandson, Knox, born in 2004. Eichhorn lives in Bremerton, Washington.
's student newspaper, while a student there in 1968. (He also edited an underground comic book during that time, The Moscow Duck Review, writing one of the stories which was rendered by Reilly Clark.) While living in San Francisco in 1977, his interview with the band Crime
was published in New York City's Punk
magazine. This was his first national exposure. Soon afterwards, Eichhorn was briefly a stringer for Jim Wilde, a writer for Time (magazine)
, and then worked as a research assistant for writer Bill Cardoso
.
Moving to Seattle in the late 1970s, Eichorn became a writer and later entertainment editor for the weekly Seattle Sun
newspaper from 1980 until its demise in 1982, and then a writer and senior editor at The Rocket
, a monthly entertainment tabloid, from 1982 until 1991. At The Rocket, Eichhorn met a number of Seattle-area and northwestern cartoonists and illustrators who eventually became contributors to his autobiographical series Real Stuff and Real Smut.
While at The Rocket, Eichhorn was contacted by Gerry Turman, owner of Turman Publishing, a company which published literature and teachers' aids for use in remedial reading classes, and offered a position as staff writer. Eichhorn took on the assignment, eventually turning it into a lucrative side business from 1983 until 1994, writing hundreds of articles for Stars magazine and 18 biographical books about celebrities and professional athletes.
From 1988–1990, Eichhorn was publisher and editor of the Northwest EXTRA!, a "lurid, pulp tabloid" zine which ran for 15 issues. (A 16th issue was published in 2001.)
In 1994, Eichhorn became editorial director for Loompanics Unlimited, a mail-order libertarian
publishing and book distribution company in Port Townsend, Washington
, a position which he held for four years. Eichhorn was responsible for the publication of 65 books during this time, wrote dozens of articles and hundreds of book synopses for Loompanics' publications and catalogs, and oversaw contractual agreements with writers, as well as movie rights and foreign translations.
, Robert Crumb
, Frank Stack
, and Harvey Pekar
. (In fact, The Rocket had occasionally run Pekar's strips while Eichhorn worked there.)
In the early 1980s, Eichhorn met cartoonist Peter Bagge
in Seattle, which led to Eichhorn's inclusion in Weirdo magazine, which Bagge edited at that time. Eichhorn began writing autobiographical stories for sequential illustration, which he described as "regurgitations of pithy stories I'd regaled my friends with for years." The first two were rendered by Carel Moiseiwitsch and Michael Dougan. This led to Eichhorn's creation of the anthology series Real Stuff, published from 1990–1995 by Seattle-based Fantagraphics. Eichhorn followed Pekar's example of writing true stories for others to illustrate, but unlike Pekar, emphasized action-filled tales of sex, substance abuse, and violence, many taking place in Eichhorn's native state of Idaho. After nine issues, Fantagraphics experienced problems shipping Real Stuff to Canada and United Kingdom countries because of the explicit sexual content, and a spin-off carnal series titled Real Smut was created in 1992, to remove sex from Real Stuff. Stories in the Eisner Award-winning Real Stuff were illustrated by many artists, including, in addition to those named above, Ed Brubaker
, Rick Altergott
, Donna Barr
, Lynda Barry
, Jim Blanchard, Ariel Bordeaux, Chester Brown
, Bob Crabb, Julie Doucet
, Éric Thériault
, Gene Fama, Mary Fleener
, Ellen Forney
, Renee French
, Roberta Gregory
, Aline Kominsky-Crumb
, Peter Kuper
, Paul Mavrides
, Pat Moriarity, Joe Sacco
, Triangle-Slash, Holly Tuttle, J.R. Williams, Jim Woodring
, Mark Zingrarelli, and numerous others.
From 1992 until 2006 Eichhorn wrote comic stories (as well as articles and book reviews) for Scram magazine, a Los Angeles music publication.
In 1993, Eichhorn funded Starhead Comix's publication of Real Schmuck comix. He also paid for Starhead's publication of two other titles, The Amazing Adventures of Ace International in 1993 and Northwest Cartoon Cookery in 1995.
In 2004, Top Shelf Productions released The Legend of Wild Man Fischer
, a collection of comic book stories about the outsider musician (most of which had appeared in Real Stuff) which Eichhorn co-authored with artists J.R. Williams and Holly Tuttle. In that same year, Swifty Morales Press published Real Stuff by Dennis P. Eichhorn and a Host of Artists, a collection of stories from Eichhorn's comic books and other sources. Eichhorn says that the preponderance of violent stories in this book resulted from the publisher's selection of material, pointing out that the book contains approximately one-fifth of his output.
Critic Tom Spurgeon
:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer best known for his adult-oriented autobiographical comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series Real Stuff. Due to his energetic, sex-, drug-, and alcohol-riddled stories, Eichhorn has been compared to Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, Ken Kesey
Ken Kesey
Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...
, and Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
.
Early life and career
Eichhorn was born in Deer Lodge, Montana, in the Montana State PrisonMontana State Prison
The Montana State Prison is a men's correctional facility of the Montana Department of Corrections in unincorporated Powell County, Montana, about west of Deer Lodge...
's infirmary. He was adopted when he was just a few days old by Eileen and Elmer Eichhorn family, and reared in Boise, Idaho
Boise, Idaho
Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...
. He graduated from Boise's Borah High School in 1963. Eichhorn played football on athletic scholarships at Whitman College and the University of Idaho; he graduated from the latter with a B.A. in Sociology in 1968. Dennis didn't learn he was adopted until he was in his 30s, and has never met his birth mother. (Years later, Eichhorn spent a short time in prison himself for a drug charge.)
Eichhorn is a graduate of both Boise Junior College (now Boise State University
Boise State University
Boise State University is a public university located in Boise, Idaho. Originally founded in 1932 as a junior college by the Episcopal Church, the university became an independent institution in 1934, and has been awarding baccalaureate and master degrees since 1965...
) and the University of Idaho
University of Idaho
The University of Idaho is the State of Idaho's flagship and oldest public university, located in the rural city of Moscow in Latah County in the northern portion of the state...
.
Before, during, and after establishing himself as a writer, editor, and publisher, Eichhorn has worked at a variety of jobs: arborist, barista, bartender, bouncer, chauffeur, concert promoter, cook, dishwasher, doorman, excavator, firefighter, grant writer, hay bucker, hod carrier, janitor, legal messenger, mill worker, musician, nightclub manager, paralegal investigator, process server, restauranteur, sailor, social worker, stable hand, taxi and van driver, telephone pollster, and warehouseman. For four years, Eichhorn also served as promoter and operator of the Blue Mountain Festival, an outdoor music festival held in the spring at the University of Idaho's Arboretum, and was the primary organizer of the 1971 Universal Life Church Picnic, a large festival held over the Fourth of July weekend in northern Idaho's Farragut State Park.
Eichhorn has been married three times, to Kip Charlson, Joan Pelley, and most recently (and still) to Jane Rebelowski. He has a daughter, Sarah, born in 1977, and a grandson, Knox, born in 2004. Eichhorn lives in Bremerton, Washington.
Writer
Eichhorn was a contributing writer to The Argonaut, the University of IdahoUniversity of Idaho
The University of Idaho is the State of Idaho's flagship and oldest public university, located in the rural city of Moscow in Latah County in the northern portion of the state...
's student newspaper, while a student there in 1968. (He also edited an underground comic book during that time, The Moscow Duck Review, writing one of the stories which was rendered by Reilly Clark.) While living in San Francisco in 1977, his interview with the band Crime
Crime (band)
Crime was an early American punk band from San Francisco. The band was formed in 1976 by Johnny Strike , Frankie Fix , Ron "The Ripper" Greco , and Ricky Tractor...
was published in New York City's Punk
Punk (magazine)
Punk is a music magazine/fanzine created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn and "resident punk" Legs McNeil in 1975. Its use of the term "punk rock," coined by writers for Creem magazine a few years earlier, led to its worldwide acceptance as the definition for the new bands that were...
magazine. This was his first national exposure. Soon afterwards, Eichhorn was briefly a stringer for Jim Wilde, a writer for Time (magazine)
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, and then worked as a research assistant for writer Bill Cardoso
Bill Cardoso
William Joseph "Bill" Cardoso was an American journalist who was well-known for coining the term "gonzo journalism".Cardoso was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and raised in Somerville, Massachusetts...
.
Moving to Seattle in the late 1970s, Eichorn became a writer and later entertainment editor for the weekly Seattle Sun
Seattle Sun (alternative weekly)
The Seattle Sun was an alternative weekly in Seattle, Washington, USA, which ran from July 31, 1974 to January 6, 1982. It was a direct competitor to the Seattle Weekly; The Rocket began as a supplement to the Sun....
newspaper from 1980 until its demise in 1982, and then a writer and senior editor at The Rocket
The Rocket (newspaper)
The Rocket was a free biweekly newspaper serving the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, published from 1979–2000. The newspaper's chief purpose was to document local music. This focus distinguished it from other area weeklies such as the Seattle Weekly and the Willamette Week, which...
, a monthly entertainment tabloid, from 1982 until 1991. At The Rocket, Eichhorn met a number of Seattle-area and northwestern cartoonists and illustrators who eventually became contributors to his autobiographical series Real Stuff and Real Smut.
While at The Rocket, Eichhorn was contacted by Gerry Turman, owner of Turman Publishing, a company which published literature and teachers' aids for use in remedial reading classes, and offered a position as staff writer. Eichhorn took on the assignment, eventually turning it into a lucrative side business from 1983 until 1994, writing hundreds of articles for Stars magazine and 18 biographical books about celebrities and professional athletes.
From 1988–1990, Eichhorn was publisher and editor of the Northwest EXTRA!, a "lurid, pulp tabloid" zine which ran for 15 issues. (A 16th issue was published in 2001.)
In 1994, Eichhorn became editorial director for Loompanics Unlimited, a mail-order libertarian
Libertarian
Libertarian may refer to:*A proponent of libertarianism, a political philosophy that upholds individual liberty, especially freedom of expression and action*A member of a libertarian political party; including:**Libertarian Party...
publishing and book distribution company in Port Townsend, Washington
Port Townsend, Washington
Port Townsend is a city in Jefferson County, Washington, United States, approximately north-northwest of Seattle . The population was 9,113 at the 2010 census an increase of 9.3% over the 2000 census. It is the county seat and only incorporated city of Jefferson County...
, a position which he held for four years. Eichhorn was responsible for the publication of 65 books during this time, wrote dozens of articles and hundreds of book synopses for Loompanics' publications and catalogs, and oversaw contractual agreements with writers, as well as movie rights and foreign translations.
Comics
Before becoming a comics writer, Eichhorn had read the work of Justin GreenJustin Green
Justin Considine Green is an American cartoonist who pioneered autobiographical comics. He is best known for his 1972 comic book Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary....
, Robert Crumb
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
, Frank Stack
Frank Stack
Frank Huntington Stack is an American underground cartoonist. Working under the name Foolbert Sturgeon to avoid persecution for his work while living in the bible belt, Stack published what is considered by many to be the first underground comic book, The Adventures of Jesus, in 1962.He graduated...
, and Harvey Pekar
Harvey Pekar
Harvey Lawrence Pekar was an American underground comic book writer, music critic and media personality, best known for his autobiographical American Splendor comic series. In 2003, the series inspired a critically acclaimed film adaptation of the same name.Pekar described American Splendor as "an...
. (In fact, The Rocket had occasionally run Pekar's strips while Eichhorn worked there.)
In the early 1980s, Eichhorn met cartoonist Peter Bagge
Peter Bagge
Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist. He is the creator of Buddy Bradley, Hate, Neat Stuff, Martini Baton, and Sweatshop, Apocalypse Nerd and Other Lives. His stories often use black humor and exaggerated cartooning to dramatize the reduced expectations of middle-class American youth...
in Seattle, which led to Eichhorn's inclusion in Weirdo magazine, which Bagge edited at that time. Eichhorn began writing autobiographical stories for sequential illustration, which he described as "regurgitations of pithy stories I'd regaled my friends with for years." The first two were rendered by Carel Moiseiwitsch and Michael Dougan. This led to Eichhorn's creation of the anthology series Real Stuff, published from 1990–1995 by Seattle-based Fantagraphics. Eichhorn followed Pekar's example of writing true stories for others to illustrate, but unlike Pekar, emphasized action-filled tales of sex, substance abuse, and violence, many taking place in Eichhorn's native state of Idaho. After nine issues, Fantagraphics experienced problems shipping Real Stuff to Canada and United Kingdom countries because of the explicit sexual content, and a spin-off carnal series titled Real Smut was created in 1992, to remove sex from Real Stuff. Stories in the Eisner Award-winning Real Stuff were illustrated by many artists, including, in addition to those named above, Ed Brubaker
Ed Brubaker
Ed Brubaker is an Eisner Award-winning comic book writer and cartoonist. Brubaker first early comics work was primarily in the crime fiction genre with works such as Lowlife, The Fall, Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives and Scene of the Crime...
, Rick Altergott
Rick Altergott
Rick Altergott is a professional illustrator and cartoonist, residing in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, with his wife, fellow cartoonist Ariel Bordeaux. Their collaborative comic book Raisin Pie is published by Fantagraphics....
, Donna Barr
Donna Barr
Donna Barr is an American comic book author and cartoonist.She was born in Everett, Washington, the second child in a family of six siblings....
, Lynda Barry
Lynda Barry
Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author. One of the most successful non-mainstream American cartoonists, Barry is perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. Barry's cartoons often view family life from the perspective of pre-teen girls from the wrong side of the...
, Jim Blanchard, Ariel Bordeaux, Chester Brown
Chester Brown
Chester William David Brown , is an award-winning, best-selling Canadian alternative cartoonist and, since 2008, the Libertarian Party of Canada's candidate for the riding of Trinity-Spadina in Toronto, Canada....
, Bob Crabb, Julie Doucet
Julie Doucet
Julie Doucet is a Canadian former underground cartoonist and artist, best known for her autobiographical works such as Dirty Plotte and My New York Diary...
, Éric Thériault
Eric Theriault
Éric Thériault is a Canadian comics artist and writer, illustrator and blogger living in Montreal in Quebec .- Biography :...
, Gene Fama, Mary Fleener
Mary Fleener
Mary Fleener is an American alternative comics artist, writer and musician from Los Angeles. Fleener's drawing style, which she calls cubismo, derives from the cubist aesthetic and other artistic traditions...
, Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney
Ellen Forney is a cartoonist and teacher based in Seattle, Washington, whose work has been published by Fantagraphics Books and The Stranger , among other publications. Her most recent collection is called Lust...
, Renee French
Renée French
Renée French is an American comics writer and illustrator and, under the pen name Rainy Dohaney, a children's book author.Her work includes The Soap Lady , The Ticking , and Micrographica , "Edison Steelhead's Lost Portfolio - Exploratory...
, Roberta Gregory
Roberta Gregory
Roberta Gregory is an American comic book writer and artist best known for her character Bitchy Bitch from her Fantagraphics Books series Naughty Bits.Gregory's father was Disney comics artist Bob Gregory...
, Aline Kominsky-Crumb
Aline Kominsky-Crumb
Aline Kominsky-Crumb is an American underground comics artist best known as the wife of cartoonist R. Crumb....
, Peter Kuper
Peter Kuper
Peter Kuper is an American alternative cartoonist and illustrator known for his autobiographical, social, and political observations.-Early life:...
, Paul Mavrides
Paul Mavrides
Paul Mavrides is an American artist, best known for his critique-laden comics, cartoons, paintings, graphics, performances and writings that encompass a disturbing yet humorous catalog of the social ills and shortcomings of human civilization...
, Pat Moriarity, Joe Sacco
Joe Sacco
Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American comics artist and journalist. He achieved international fame through the 1996 American Book Award-winning Palestine, and his graphic novel on the Bosnian War, Safe Area Goražde.- Biography :...
, Triangle-Slash, Holly Tuttle, J.R. Williams, Jim Woodring
Jim Woodring
Jim Woodring is a Seattle-based cartoonist, comic book author, artist and toy designer. He also produces fine art works in a variety of other media, including painting and charcoal....
, Mark Zingrarelli, and numerous others.
From 1992 until 2006 Eichhorn wrote comic stories (as well as articles and book reviews) for Scram magazine, a Los Angeles music publication.
In 1993, Eichhorn funded Starhead Comix's publication of Real Schmuck comix. He also paid for Starhead's publication of two other titles, The Amazing Adventures of Ace International in 1993 and Northwest Cartoon Cookery in 1995.
In 2004, Top Shelf Productions released The Legend of Wild Man Fischer
Wild Man Fischer
Larry Wayne Fischer , better known as Wild Man Fischer, was an American songwriter in the outsider genre. He was notable for being responsible for Rhino Records' first release, Go To Rhino Records...
, a collection of comic book stories about the outsider musician (most of which had appeared in Real Stuff) which Eichhorn co-authored with artists J.R. Williams and Holly Tuttle. In that same year, Swifty Morales Press published Real Stuff by Dennis P. Eichhorn and a Host of Artists, a collection of stories from Eichhorn's comic books and other sources. Eichhorn says that the preponderance of violent stories in this book resulted from the publisher's selection of material, pointing out that the book contains approximately one-fifth of his output.
Quotes
Critic Alan David Doane:Critic Tom Spurgeon
Tom Spurgeon
Tom Spurgeon is an American writer, historian and editor in the field of comics, notable for his five-year run as editor of The Comics Journal and his blog The Comics Reporter, which he launched in 2004 with site designer Jordan Raphael.-Books:...
:
Awards
- Eisner Award nomination, Best Writer, 1993
- Eisner Award nomination, Best Continuing Series (Real Stuff), 1993.
- Eisner Award nomination, Best Anthology (Real Stuff), 1993.
- Eisner Award, Best Black-and-White Series (Real Stuff), 1993.
- Eisner Award nomination, Best Anthology (Real Stuff), 1994.
- Eisner Award, Best Black-and-White Series (Real Stuff), 1994.
- Harvey Award, Best New Series (The Spirit: The New Adventures), 1999.
- Ignatz Award nomination, Outstanding Story (The Legend of Wildman Fischer), 2005.