Best of THE WHALE TIMES

Absurd World
Pete's Page
White Noise Calculus

THE WHALE TIMES
best material from 1990–1992 newsletter

An introduction
by G. Sax

I have been obsessed with publishing things ever since I can remember. At the age of 7, my friend Jon Lewis and I used to "publish" tales of "The Flying Mice" in issue format. These "books" were merely scribbles of battles and brief dialogue like "Kill it!" on any paper we could find and staple together

I still have those books. I'm a keeper of things; a curator if you will, particularly of the things that have been published by me or others close to me. Thus I still have all of my copies of THE WHALE TIMES, an advanced form of the stapled-together works of the 7-year-old me.

As I look back on the contents of the 26 issues of THE WHALE TIMES, I see much of it for the borrowed idealism of collegiate naïveté, but oh did I care about everything I was publishing in it.

I advertised relentlessly—in review publications, at my school (go Badgers), among friends and family, to strangers. I would hold "fold and staple" parties that garnered about as much enthusiasm as my "Saturday night sleepovers" when I was a paperboy needing help with the Sunday load. I once famously missed much of a final in my James Joyce class because I was finishing up a run of copies for THE WHALE TIMES (I barely got a C).

I cared. THE WHALE TIMES was my own personal internship. And then college ended and it was gone. I would like to say it was more complex than that, but I don't think it was. It got too big, it lost direction, I lost interest.

It had served its first purpose well—to bridge the gap between me and those I loved while I was away at school. It has served its second purpose better than expected—because its spirit hangs tough more than a dozen years after its run ended.

Many of those writers now reside within the Web walls of whaletime.net. You will see the first columns of Sean (E.) Rein. You will see the matter-of-fact absurdist stylings of John (Trip 20) Schmall. Tony Palermo will Present in Flintstonian vainglory. I will preach and paw.

I will try to work in other writers and artists of the day as time and scanners allow.

As a publisher, I may be proudest of "Pete's Page" by Pete Nelson. Pete was/is a transcendent talent who wrote better then than I can now. Which might not be saying much, but I'll say it anyway with the sole purpose of reverence (okay, and maybe with a promoter's eye toward luring him back into the fold).

Jon Lewis was a regular contributor throughout. He has gone on to become a respected writer and artist of comics, particularly for his title True Swamp and for the DC Comics title he wrote, Robin.

Many other talented individuals contributed to THE WHALE TIMES, and if they don't immediately show up in this archive, it is not meant as a slight. Like the culling of "Greatest Hits" from an artist's lifetime, some things will be left out to enhance that which is being highlighted.