A small profile on Fort Thunder

I have to confess that i don't know everything about comics. I have gathered bits and pieces of knowledge along the way but in reality there are probably a lot more people who know a whole lot more about graphic arts than me. That's normal of course but since I am the one selling comic books and teaching comics analysis at the arts academy of Tampere I should be an authority figure or a godlike know-it-all concerning my field of expertise. But I am not. And sometimes it's a lot nicer like that, for many reasons. Like for example I am not bored yet with the medium. Or, I feel that the best comic books are being made nowadays, certainly not in sixties, seventies or eighties. And, I am even optimistic about the future of comics. But most important of all: I still get to discover and get excited about new things.

I want to now do a small profile Fort Thunder. I first heard about them when Tommi of Glömp mentioned it to me one time, that he liked the artists of Fort Thunder. I said "What, who?" Apparently it was an artist collective. I did some checking and come across their website www.fortthunder.org. A very bizarre, userunfriendly website, the menu just states "mmm", "ff" "cmx" "brnk" and you have to just guess what it stands for. Of course this just enhances the feeling of finding a hidden treasure. Browsing through the website you come across strange pictures of mazes, bizarre comics, reassembled strange looking bicycles, poster art, people dressing up like bears or mummies performing on stage etc. It was like entering a strange universe, a whole new world that I knew nothing about. There is not a single face recognizable on the site, it is always masked or invisible. This was true underground, I thought. The only names I knew were some bands on posters, arab on radar, lightning bolt; bands that play an abrasive maelstrom of noise or punk. But it was too much. Since I couldn't make any sense of it what so ever and because I couldn’t listen to the music on the site (don’t have speakers) my interest waned and I let it rest.

It was only later I found out the comics journal had dedicated a whole issue about it which can be read partly online here http://www.tcj.com/256/e_thunder.html. They summarized it very well "Fort Thunder was closer to something like the French publisher Le Dernier Cri than anything in American comics. Yet much in the way they presented and carried themselves reminded less of a European-style arts scene than it did a local crew of skateboarders, or maybe a regional recording studio with a loose, rotating stable of bands. Fort Thunder not only existed in several artistic worlds at once but managed to exist only in those worlds' best parts for an impressive length of time."

Paul Lyons was part of the second wave of artists settling in the fort and lived there for five years. He had this to say about living in a building where "you're there to defend yourself from the quietness of American bullshit." "ok, fort thunder WAS a warehouse in the olneyville, a section of providence, RI (i’ll get to the WAS part of that later). brian chippendale, mat brinkman, rob coggeshall and fred jones found it in... oh crap I cant remember. it was a long time ago. im going to say the winter of 96. it might be later than that, ill have to check up on that. olneyville is rife with neglected, isolated warehouses, so its the perfect place for making lots of noise, and putting on "underground" shows. i think the first show that took place there was during that first winter. the band was karp, and they played in the kitchen (we had maybe 40 or 50 shows there over the years, and multiple bands practiced there. our "house band" was called lighting bolt. they are pretty good, i think...). about a year after they moved in, the landlord offered them another space on the other side of the wall that was almost as big for an extra 500 dollars (it was 1000 for the first side). that was when they invited me, brian ralph and jim drain. andy estep moved in soon after that, and many, many more came after him. there have probably been around 20 something people living there over the years, but no more than 12 at any one time. im a poor judge of sizes and that sort of thing, but id guess that fort thunder was about the size of a football field, with 12 foot high ceilings. when we moved in, it was pretty bare bones, just a couple of white walls. by the time we left, it was a maze of corridors and rooms, and every surface had been painted on, glued on, stuff nailed to it, carved up etc etc. i guess we all suffered from an inability to throw things out, so pretty much when we were done with something, it got nailed to the ceiling or glued to a wall. it was kinda like living in a collage. there are some pictures on the website, but there are also more pictures in an issue of "nest" magazine and a book called "extreme interiors". about 5 or 6 years after the fort started, we were all evicted and the building was torn down for a new shopping plaza. we tried to fight it, but lost horribly. thats how the fort thunder egroup started. for a while though, there was a really beautiful, colorful pile of rubble in the spot, but now its just a parking lot."

After some half asses attempts to get my hands on that particular Comics Journal (read: going to the library) my interest in finishing this article faded quite fast. I mean, it's obviously been written down by somebody with more knowledge then me so what's the point of me rehashing the facts here.

But just to show how popular these guys have turned out: editions of early Kramer's Ergot easily go for about 100 dollars on ebay just because they contain works by these fort thunder guys. Matt Brinkmans Teratoid Heights i even saw going for 70 dollars and it's not even out of print (but, granted, not so easy to pick up from your local comic store).

Anyway, some fort thunder comic artists
Matt Brinkman (Teratoid Heights) His comics contain monsters and other fantasy-tinged creatures exploring elaborately constructed, roughly textured environments.
Brian Ralph (Cave in, Climbing Out) was born and raised in New Jersey. His comics are metaphorical fantasies set against lush backgrounds and drawn with an animation-ready line. He has thus far enjoyed the most traditional comics-publishing success of the group, with two books released, comics-industry-award nominations and gigs with comics-friendly magazines.

Raised near Philadelphia, Brian Chippendale was Brinkman's roommate during their freshman year at the arts academy nearby Fort Thunder. His comics, often drawn in pre-printed journals, feature sequences told in panel progressions that favor a snake-like pattern rather than conventional left-to-right storytelling. And let’s not forget he is an ace drummer in the noise duo Lightning Bolt. "Doesn’t everybody feel alive when seeing Lightning Bolt?"