A Brief History Of The Smudge
The Smudge was a sort of a newspaper that I published while I was in high school (Bay City Central High School, MI, 1979-1983). It was copied on the school mimeograph machine and I and my staff sold it for 25 cents in the hallway during lunch periods and in classes. The cover price was 25 cents, and we usually sold about 50-100 of each issue. Unlike most school publications, the contents of The Smudge were actually quite irreverent for a high school publication. Instead of articles on the school football team and stories about the cafeteria, the Smudge featured "humorous and bizarre stories" and cartoons and ad parodies, and the like. While working on later issues, I was heavily influenced by National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live, and it showed in some of the stories and parodies. I was also reading magazines like Heavy Metal and Warren publications like Creepy and 1984. And of course, Playboy magazine (once I was 16, old enough it seems in them days), whose contents page was the graphic model for the layout of The Smudge's contents page. I don't think the school administrators ever realized that these types of influences were apparent in The Smudge. They must have thought it was harmless cartoons, and for the most part, it was. But stories "I Am Joe's Finger" (The Smudge Vol. 2, No. 10) or "The Riot Squad" (The Smudge Vol 2, No. 11) are not usually found in the school paper.
The Smudge actually started out as "The Daily Smudge ." It was not published at all, but drawn on one sheet (both sides) of loose-leaf filler paper and passed around to my friends. It began when my older brother Ron did it first. It was September of my freshman year; he was a junior in the same high school. He came home from school one day and showed me a parody newspaper that he and a friend had come up with, with humorous news stories making fun of events at school and around Bay City. I immediately grabbed some paper and did one of my own. After two or three days, my brother went on to other things; little did either of us know, I was just getting started.
The first issue of The Daily Smudge was dated September 20, 1979. The headline was "Garf the Human Green Bean is Unleashed on City." Don't forget, I was only 14 years old and a freshman just starting high school - we're certainly not going to be talking Kafka at this point. Still, the first issue contained many things that became a staple of the humor of The Daily Smudge ; the above mentioned headline story of the first issue introduces Captain Smideo, who reappears in news items for the next two years; the local movie theatre ad, always showing some variation of "Smut City" or it's endless sequels; and of course the comics section, consisting of one comic: Kingfish, a daily strip about a group of fish that I had already been drawing on and off for several years.
I was surprised at how immediately popular it was. After the first couple of issues, it never occurred to me to stop producing it. I quickly ammassed a "staff," a group of friends who were very creative and really into it, most especially Bob Moorhead and Mike Symkowiak. Later contributors included Andy Lieber, Cindy Claes, and my brother Ron. I was still doing most of the work, including all the layout and making sure an issue got completed every single day. Occasionally one of the other staffers would jump and and complete an entire issue, giving me a much needed break. The humor at this point was a bit scatalogical and at times silly, being the 14 year olds we were. But some good ideas came through in some of those early issues, like the ad for "Eraser Mates," and headlines like "Mr. Bill Invades Play-Doh Factory; Builds Woman," and "Exam Week Arrives; 3 Dead."
And so I continued laboring on The Daily Smudge for two years, until I was getting ready to start my junior year. At this point, I was excited to resume creating the Smudge after summer break, but I was starting to get bored with the format. I created 2 and half issues of The Daily Smudge with slight changes to the format, then got a new idea. Why not just make it into a magazine format, 6 pages, and make it weekly? It sure would relieve a bit of the grind, and would provide space better suited to expanding on the artwork portion of the publication. I immediately switched gears and created this new version. Instead of headline stories as if in a newspaper, I could actually now put in all manner of cartoon, parody, story, whatever. And each issue could have a cover, featuring a joke or piece of artwork, just like a real magazine. And I could drop "The Daily." It became just The Smudge.
At first people were a bit surprised, and some weren't happy that it now would take upwards of 10-15 minutes to read the thing (a long time when you are supposed to be in class working). but it worked out well in the end. I would just give it to soemeone in the hall before their class oand get it back an hour or two later. It was kind of an interesting honor system that I always got it back, even after 300 issues over two years.
The humor in these new pass-around magazines was a bit more adult-oriented than in the previous two years of daily newspaper parodies. References to drugs, sex and Heavy Metal music - things Tipper Gore would you sent away to a rehab camp for - were all over this thing. I had been reading stuff like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Robert Crumb, and National Lampoon. I felt that The Smudge was an underground thing - after all this time, no teachers really even knew about it yet, and I felt if they didn't see it, I could print anything I wanted. Then one of my friends who was reading it actually gave one to a teacher to read.
The teacher was Mrs. Pat Serresseque, one of the art teachers, not even a teacher that I had ever had for a class yet. I was a bit mortified at what some of the contents might be; I'm sure it was littered with foul language and counter-culture references. I was a bit surprised when, instead of chastising me for lewd content, she arranged for me to actually have the thing printed and sold at school, with full sanction of the school, on the school mimeograph. For me, this was a dream come true; I had been drawing comic books my entire life, and The Daily Smudge for two years, but had never actually been able to have one of them printed so that people could actually keep it and take it home. Of course, it would be expected that I would monitor the content and make a publication that everyone could read and enjoy without pressing too many hot-buttons. Realizing that was the only way I would actually get it printed, I made the decision to go forward, and began creating the first actual printed publication of my life.
The first printed issue of The Smudge was 10 pages long, and was dated "Christmas 1981" and numbered No. 335 (which I later posthumously adjusted to Vol. 2, No. 1). 335 was the actual correct number issues from that first copy of The Daily Smudge two years earlier. The content was scaled back considerably from the pass around magazine version - no swearing, no drug references, no imflammatory statements - what I thought was a pretty tame issue. Off the presses it came, one hundred copies, and I began selling. The cover price was 50 cents - at that price I would have to sell 25 copies to pay for the printing, as I was being charged the cost it cost them for each sheet of paper used and the approximate amount of ink. I found out very quickly that 50 cents was not a good price. It wasn't really selling. People were not quick to buy something they had been getting for free, and how come it cost so much?
The staff (Bob Moorhead and new additions Ron Przeslak and Brian Smith) worked hard at selling that first issue to try to get enough to pay for the second issue, which was already being worked on, when I got further bad news: The school principal had read it, thought it was not a good thing, or too offensive, or whatever, and was going to close the school print shop to further issues. I was given a copy of the first printed issue with red circles drawn around everything that was found to be offensive or innappropriate. That particular copy of the Smudge looked like it had a bad rash on every page.
I guess I was reading such off-the-wall stuff that perhaps I was a bit desensitized to some of the content that I had put in that first printed issue. Looking back, I can certainly see how "The Adventures of Super-Pimp" was certainly innappropriate for anything a high school could sanction. But most of the references that were singled out as offensove or inappropriate were filler - they were added fuel to the fire once you got past the glaring offenses - red pen fodder, so to speak. One story, "David's Goodbye To Romance" by Ron Przeslak, was actually quite a sophisticated story for an 11th grader, with an ironic Hitchcockian twist. It was singled out because the main character commits suicide. And every mention of any kind of adult theme or innuendo, even if it were no more offensive than something on a Three's Company episode, was circled.
Determined not to let The Smudge die, I promised that I would further prune back the offensive and/or innapropriate references, and proceeded to lay out and print the second printed issue, number 336. Upon seeing the second issue, the principal did a complete about-face, and suddenly acted like it was the best thing she'd seen in her life. I found out later that she when she saw things like "Super-Pimp," she thought we were just trying to be vulgar or shocking. By the time she finished the second issue, she seemed to arrive at the conclusion that we were actually doing something very creative and not trying to waste the school's time, resources or reputation. From that point on, I never saw another red circle. And the prinicipal, Ms. Jean Fischer, bought every issue, handing me a dollar in the hall for it, and taking her copy before I could give her any change.
Over the next two years, 11 printed copies of the Smudge were produced and sold. Most were 10 pages long, but some issues expanded to 12 or 14 pages, depending on how much content I had to work with or could create. New contributors included Ed Mochrie, Dan Witbrodt, Mick Fernette, Willy Narvaiz, Steve Austin and Tim Weber, although I was still doing all the editing and layout and most of the writing and drawing. Ed Mochrie was listed as "Sales Manager," and, true to his title, was a big help in getting most of the issues sold. The last issue was dated May 27, 1983, and numbered Vol. 2, No. 11, and the cover of each copy had an actual silk-screen print that I created in Mr. Teenier's art class, with the help of some of the staff members. I graduated shortly after that, and after four years, the original run of The Smudge came to an end.
--Randal Huiskens, January 14, 2002
