Brian Walsby
Punk Rock Meets Comic Books
By: Adam Bernard
Last updated July 30th , 2009

The year was 1986 and the Melvins were in the midst of a major US tour. A young illustrator named Brian Walsby, who had just moved to North Carolina from California, happened to be in the crowd for the band's Raleigh date and was enthralled by their performance. "I thought they were just great," he remembers, "it was kind of like a side bonus that they made all the people with triple Mohawks sick to their stomachs." 

Melvins drummer Dale Crover remembers another aspect of that show: the sparse crowd. "Brian was one of maybe three people that liked our band." Perhaps due in part to that fact, the Melvins and Walsby have been friends ever since. Friendship, however, wasn't the only thing that came out of that night, as the punk band from Washington and the illustrator in North Carolina began one of the more interesting relationships in rock history.

Much in the same way Walsby was a fan of the Melvins' music, the Melvins turned out to be fans of Walsby's work. In the late 80's and early 90's, Walsby, while penning comics for publications such as Maximum Rock n Roll, began doing the artwork for some of the Melvins' 7'' records. At the same time he was also playing in a number of bands as a drummer, which is something he still does to this day with Double Negative. In fact, Walsby's musical resume includes playing with the likes of Ryan Adams and Mac McCaughan. In 2004 all of Walsby's creative energy came to a head and he created his first Manchild book.




The idea behind Manchild was to combine slice of life topics, personal history, and satire, with the centerpiece being rock related. According to Charles Cardello, who is the founder of Bifocal Media, the company that's put out books 2-4 in the Manchild series (the first was released on Matt Owens' Volume One), it's a perfect mix. "Brian's work is a bit enlightening, visually pleasing, and requires only a short attention span. These are all good things if you're the type of person who appreciates punk rock."

Walsby contributed to the Melvins' 2004 book Neither Here Nor There and when he asked to use some of their old discarded music for a CD that he could package with an edition of Manchild they were all for it. "They basically did me and Charles a favor for our last two books," he explains, "the third Manchild book had these unreleased demos from '87 that Dale had taped for me from like 20 years ago and we cleaned them up and put them out. The newest Manchild (#4) has two of their live shows, one from their last tour and one from 1991. It's historically really relevant."

While the music can be described as relevant, Walsby's material can, at times, be fairly caustic. Cardello is 100% behind that biting style of humor, though, as he points out, "if satire doesn't ruffle a few feathers then it's probably not very good satire. Plus, whoever sad punk rock was about being ‘nice?'' Crover seconds this, adding "some people take themselves too seriously. No one should be off limits."

In the past plenty of people have taken Walsby's artistic creations too seriously and quite a few feathers have been ruffled. One of the most notorious of these incidents happened after Walsby drew a cartoon that poked fun of the band Fugazi and their label, Dischord Records, for a 1990 issue of Maximum Rock n Roll. "The cartoon was basically making fun of Dischord Records because even though I admire their integrity I just don't think they have any sense of humor." He would quickly find that assumption to be true.



The comic didn't seem overly mean spirited to Walsby, who says "it made fun of the fact that a lot of their bands broke up before they put out records and they usually came from well to do families and they were very artistic and sensitive." Six months after it ran Walsby was in a record store in San Francisco with Maximum Rock n Roll founder Tim Yohannan who, almost giddily, told him that Fugazi had just been in the store and they were still upset about the cartoon. Walsby later found out what is supposedly the full story.




"The story that has been circulating is that my cartoon had enraged them so much that Guy (Picciotto), I think it was him, broke down and openly wept. I never knew if this was true or not, so my reaction is a combination of secret glee and horror. Secret glee that anything as stupid as a cartoon like that can make somebody break down into tears, and this is somebody I like, and that's where the horror comes in, like oh man, those guys think I'm a jerk now." Apparently they also knew how to hold a grudge.

Years later, after Melvins lead singer Buzz Osborne and his wife had befriended Fugazi bassist Joe Lally, they took Walsby to a show with them in Los Angeles. Already feeling awkward, Walsby was shaking hands Lally when he found out just how much of a marked man he was. "We were shaking hands," Walsby remembers, "and I was like I've met you before, and he was like oh yeah, what's your name? In the middle of the handshake I said Brian Walsby and as soon as I said that it seemed like his hand turned into a dead fish. He went oh, I know you, and then he just kinda let go of my hand and walked away." Dischord Records still refuses to advertise in any of Walsby's projects.

On the other side of the reaction spectrum, Walsby also lampooned Mudhoney in the same comic and the band loved it.

The handful of angry bands are just as welcome as the ones who enjoy his brand of satire, though, as Walsby points out, "if you get hate mail it probably means you're doing the job."




To listen to The Melvin's, check out their music here.

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