Please click on the image for full-size. |
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Here's Ace Backwords. I'll bet Duncan was Ace's best friend. They were always sitting in front of the now defunct Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley hawking their merchandise. |
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Here's a picture of B.N. Duncan that was hanging on the wall of Cody's. |
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Here's "Bone". I like this guy. Friendly chap. He came up to me at the memorial and said, "You're one of the few people who make me smile." Oh wait. Actually he said, "You're one of the few people who make me puke." Only kidding. He said "smile".
Then again it appeared that he had ingested a few adult beverages. Rock on, Bone! |
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Here's a shrine to the great man below his picture. |
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Here's the full picture. I don't know who that kid is with him. |
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How'd this get in here? Oh, this was the first picture I ever took with a cell phone. I think it's a year old. And yes, it's in San Francisco. Not the Castro, though. The Sunset. I guess it's a Chinese restaurant. |
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Another shrine (with audio.) |
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I like this guy. I forget his name, but he took care of Duncan near the end. I think he also started a contest about who could imitate Duncan the best. |
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Berkeley's ubiquitous Hate Man made the scene. |
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I don't know who this, but she was there. |
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This memorial stuff is getting too depressing. Here's the lead singer from a San Mateo band called Sweet Talk I saw perform at the Burlingame Art and Wine Festival in August. I forgot her name, but she was great. It was like seeing Janis Joplin in person. I guess the fact that she was born and raised in Haight Ashbury is what did it. Check them out if you get the chance. Okay, back to gloom and misery... |
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That's Hate Man in the middle, some guy I don't know on the left, and that's yours truly on the right. Yessiree, there I am yucking it up at a memorial. At least I wore black. I always think a tank top makes me butch but I end up looking really gay. |
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There's acclaimed "plop" artist Richard List. Nice guy. A successful landscaper, too. Has his own business. |
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I tried to take a picture of Hate Man so he grabbed a mirror and flipped me off. A real quick thinker. |
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I ran out of photos so we'll end this cyber photo scrapbook with a picture of Ace again (better him than Big Wong).
Ace was Duncan's best friend (at least I assume he was), and though his buddy may be gone, his (in)famous sense of humor isn't. When I first approached him at the memorial he pretended to cry and told me about how a reporter from the Oakland Tribune had stopped by earlier to cover the service.
"He asked how Duncan died," Ace said. "I told him it was horrible, that he died in a bizarre sexual ritual in Thailand."
"Ace, Duncan died of cancer," I replied. "You're thinking of David Carradine."
"Oh yeah," Ace cried. "That's right! Oh well, too late now. Look for it in tomorrow's edition."
I remember the first time I met Duncan (and Ace). It must have been in late 1987 or early 1988. My comic strip "Good Clean Fun" had been appearing in Berkeley's The Daily Californian along with Ace's Bezerkely Comix, and the freelancers had to go to a meeting to plead their case for getting renewed.
Ace walked in with this guy who looked like R. Crumb's Mr. Natural (yes, Duncan). We made our cases (though in vain as a bunch of militant feminists on the staff voted us off) and afterwards we went out for drinks with another Daily Cal cartoonist, Shannon Wheeler (who went on to draw the successful Too Much Coffee Man comic book).
Later that night as I headed back to the Bay Bridge, I noticed Duncan sitting at a bus stop, so I pulled up and drove him home.
I don't remember much of the conversation except
"What do you do for a living, Duncan?"
"Uh, a living? Uh, you mean work? Oh, uh, no, I don't work."
Even though I found his cartoons - crudely drawn depictions of S&M culture with a deep misogynist tone - rather unsettling, there was something I liked about him. I just can't put my finger on it.
And I must have cared what he thought. I remember his indifference to my Doonesbury/Bloom County inspired comic strips that appeared in the Daily Cal. A decade later I recall how excited he would get by the more risque comic book type work that I drew in the San Francisco Herald.
I wish I could end this with something witty and poignant, but I'm drawing a blank.
We'll end it here before it gets too sappy.
Duncan would have hated that. |
