California Love Tree

Last week we saw a couple of covers from California Comics in our Non-Verbal Blue post. These two covers, to be precise:

These beautiful covers by Ed Watson come from a title most never encountered. California Comics is another of those books published by a comic shop with limited distribution. These came from Bob Sidebottom's shop in San Jose which, i believe, was also named California Comics. He also published Barbarian Comics and Barbarian Women Comics. Ed did some pin-up work for them as well, some of which appeared in that same post linked above.

The subject featured on the two covers above is the wizard Love Tree, who also starred in strips by Ed in all 3 issues of California Comics. I'll bet you can guess where this is leading, hm?
To this week's edition of

Meet Love Tree -

While Ed Watson also provided the painted cover to the 3rd issue, it didn't feature Love Tree.
It was Pure California - 

There is an Ed Watson doing comic artwork these days, but i get the impression that he's too young to be the same Ed Watson.

artwork by Ed Watson for California Comics #s 1-3 (1974, 1975, 1977)

Non-Verbal Blue

A couple weeks back a post entitled Non-Verbal In The Groovy Age ran in the primary The Voice Of ODD! blog, looking at a bunch of splash page artwork from underground comics & comix. Of course, underground artists, being underground artists, frequently like to let loose when working free of the restrictions imposed upon mainstream work. And so we have a theme for today's

While not entirely non-verbal, the words are few and far enough between on these two dozen images that i believe we're past time to shut up and look at the pics -

Okay - this may or may not involve sex, depending on how you look at it...

...and so it went...

art by (Ask!) from American Flyer #1, A-Plus #1, Armageddon #s 1 & 3, Barbarian Comics #s 2 & 3, Barbarian Women Comics #s 1 & 2,  California Comics #s 1 & 2, Eternal Comics #1, Greaser Comics #1, Heavy TragiComics #1, Illuminations #1, Jiz Comics #4, Laugh In The Dark #1, Man From Utopia #1, Pork #1, Purple Cat #1, and Snatch Comics #s 1 & 2 (1960s, 1970s)