CHARLES DALLAS AND HIS PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES

In his "Meet Your Artist" intro in the first issue of PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES ILLUSTRATED (Company & Sons, 1972), Charles Dallas claims his name is a pseudonym. If true (he also claims he has lived in Dunwich for almost 250 years!), it only deepens the mystery of who this person was, as Dallas remains one of the handful of enigmas who were active during the last years of the first underground comics wave, then seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

He was called "Charlie" by those who knew him while he was breaking into the San Francisco comics scene in the early 1970's. His style was striking, bold, heavy and darkly twisted, and his stories were lurid, grisly and oftentimes nearing brilliance. A devotee of horror and H.P. Lovecraft, and with few exceptions, he pushed the envelope just as far as any other underground artist of the time. He shopped the first issue of his book, PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES ILLUSTRATED to Company & Sons and they agreed to print it.

Company & Sons was owned by underground comics publisher John Bagley. Bagley published a number of titles, but mysteriously, all of them were one-shots. Titles included BOGEYMAN COMICS #3, THE COLLECTED CHEECH WIZARD, PARANOIA (includes a story by Dallas), and his best-selling YOUNG LUST by Jay Kinney and Bill Griffiths. The reason for the paucity of continuing titles became evident when Bagley closed up shop in 1973, claiming that he had a fatal disease, but it was more likely the result of a combination of poor sales and creators bailing to other publishers after rumors circulated regarding his shady accounting methods. His business partner, Michael R. Levy, high-tailed it out of California for Texas and founded TEXAS MONTHLY, which is still being published today. A devoted CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED collector, Bagley apparently lived longer than he predicted as Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner claims to have seen him in 2001 making jewelry out of a farm in Northern California.

Underground comics historian Mark James Estren wrote this contemporaneous comment about Dallas:

"...this relatively unknown artist was included in the same book (SKULL #4) as Dave Sheridan, Jaxon [Jack Jackson] and other 'big names in the field'. Dallas himself credits Jaxon with bringing him into underground comics...Dallas studied art for a year a Syracuse University, but dropped out and moved to the West Coast. Less committed to West Coast life styles than many other cartoonists, he continues to return East fairly often, and feels he lives on both sides of the country. Dallas describes himself as 'just generally turned on to comics.'"

Jay Kinney mentions Dallas in Patrick Rosenkranz's history of underground comics ("Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution, 1963-1975, Fantagraphics Books, 2002):

"People began to move away from San Francisco. A typical example was Charles Dallas, who most people don't even remember anymore. He was a fine cartoonist doing horror stuff. He was out here for a couple of years and doing a lot of work and trying to make a go of it. And then things started petering out. There weren't as many comics being published. So he moved back to Pennsylvania. That was repeated with a lot of other artists."

Kim Deitch also comments about Dallas in fellow underground cartoonist Roger Brand's tribute article on THE COMICS JOURNAL web site (October 12, 2011):

"The whole dichotomy about Charlie dallas [sic]. In a nutshell; unwholesome work, wholesome guy. Sweet natured honorable, but with a rather jaded aesthetic. He was discovered by Jack Jackson. Where I first saw his work was at Jackson's pad. All on big huge pieces of illustration board and wash shading, which made for reproduction problems, which is why Jackson sat on the fence for awhile before publishing him but the big problem for Charlie; too late to the party. Dallas wasn't a Wilsonesque [S. Clay Wilson] loud mouthed drunken braggart as one might imagine looking at his work. He was a decent guy and I'm betting he's still out there somewhere. I wouldn't even be surprised if he was still married to his equally sweet, essentially wholesome nude dancer wife. He struck me as an essentially steady guy."

Dallas himself shares his exposure to and influence of EC Comics in BLAB! #1 (Kitchen Sink Press, 1986).

At the Comixjoint website, Dallas and PSYCHOTIC ADVENTURES ILLUSTRATED is reviewed:

"Throughout the series, Dallas portrays everything from cannibalism to ruthless murder with lurid, unflinching detail, which made his work popular with some of his fellow creators and not so popular with others. But no one could deny the haunting quality of his stark, knifelike inkwork, and most of the violence presented in his stories was inherent to the plot, not gratuitous. Of course, it could be argued that the stories themselves were gratuitous, but nothing in this series suggests that Dallas was either a chauvinist or a misogynist; he was simply relaying stories with horrifying content, much like Poe or Lovecraft or any of the masters who preceded him."

One final mystery: In the indicia to this issue Dallas announces a contest and a fan club on page 47. Since nearly all underground comics were 36 pages long, this appears to be a hoax  -- maybe the same goes for his "pseudonym"?

Charles Dallas original art: