In 1968 it’s said a young guy traded hipster poet Charles Plymell a stereo for use of a Multilith 1250 to to publish Zap Comix 1, Robert Crumb’s first comix. He later bought the Multilith and that’s the lore of how Apex and the underground comix world was born.
The young guy was Don Donahue, a good fellow well met I hear and the publishing house he founded, Apex Novelties, put out some of the books that my father first shared with me, that led to me drawing and publishing my own and in a way, to this blog.
Donahue was himself a man of stories [sic], and there are more than a few about him. Some of his peers have shared some by way of paying their respects after his recent passing.
Bob Levin on the digitally reincarnated TCJ got as far as hello on his last visit to Don in the hospital, it sounds like the end was rough. Robert Crumb himself commented there about a mummified human head, and in the fifth act of this posting on his site tittled “MINDS ARE MADE TO BE BLOWN: COMIX AND LEGEND” he tells of how it all started back in the day.
Comics Comics’ Dan Nadel posted about what he learned from Don and there’s some interesting looking comments there. And Marc Arsenault shared his last drink with Don with us on the Wow Cool site. Hopefully there will be more, Don frankly deserves a nice big book, or two. He may not be a Canuck, we usually stick to things north of the 49th. But he’s behind too much for his passing not to be noted.
Update: Jason A. Quest noticed as i did the previous lack of a bio for Don on Wikipedia, he did something about it and started a stub, i’ve pluged in a few reference links and added his name to the entry for Zap, which had been completely omitted along with Brian Zahn’s. Comix historians reading this, go check it out and add some information or send it to us to put in the entry.