Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 7, 2024 | 1 comment

MORRISON MONDAYS!

By BILL MORRISON

When I was around 12 years old I became obsessed with black-light posters. There was a cool store in my hometown named The Poster Pit, and they had a mysterious room with a curtained entrance that beckoned to me the first time I saw it. Inside I found florescent posters covering the walls from floor to ceiling, and the only lights in the room were ultraviolet “black lights” that illuminated the ink on the posters. It was magnificent, and I had to replicate this mind-blowing effect in my bedroom at home! I got a black light and began to collect fluorescent posters, and eventually, to my parents’ dismay, turned my room into a psychedelic crash pad.

Among my favorite posters were the eye-popping Marvel images from Third Eye. I had a few of those back then, and have managed to collect all 24 of them over the years, plus the two store display posters. I also had other comics-related posters, all printed in fluorescent ink, like Robert Crumb’s classic Keep On Truckin’ and Looney Tunes’ Road Runner. I remember having an ecology poster — ecology was big back then; it even had its own symbol that rivaled the peace sign — and one of Laurel and Hardy (nostalgia for movie stars from the ’30s and ’40’s was also popular in the early ’70s.)

My love for black-light art remained with me into adulthood, and during my years at Bongo Entertainment I was always looking for a way to use fluorescent color in the products we published. I remember pitching a black-light poster book, which never came to be, though we did produce some stunning fluorescent posters for Futurama Comics that were included in six consecutive issues of the series.

But the project that finally allowed me to scratch my psychedelic itch was the chase set of “Simpsadelic Blacklight Cards” that were part of the Inkworks Simpsons Mania card series produced in 2001. With the guidance of Matt Groening Productions’ art director, Mili Smythe, Bongo produced the Simpsons Mania cards, and as Bongo’s creative director I was able to pitch ideas for the subset cards, such as the “Bart Gallery” and “Fold-’Em” cards. So naturally, I pitched a set of nine black-light cards based on the beloved posters of my youth! And harkening back to the Topps Batman cards of 1966, I suggested we have the backs of the nine cards form a suitably psychedelic puzzle!

Riffing on Milton Glaser’s famous Bob Dylan poster

Thankfully, Mili loved the idea and we worked together with the Bongo crew to conceive and produce the mind-boggling cards you see here. We packed the copy for these mini-posters with Easter eggs from The Simpsons TV show, so they’re also a lot of fun to read (if you can decipher the tiny psychedelic lettering, that is!)

I think I drew seven of the nine cards, and regular Bongo inker Tim Bavington drew the magnificent Beatles Yellow Submarine puzzle image. I believe Serban Cristecu handled the fluorescent coloring, and I’m sure Mike Rote, Jason Ho, and Nathan Kane pitched in on additional art. But everyone at Bongo deserves a heartfelt “Far out, man!” for producing these terrifically trippy mini masterpieces!

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