Gary Panter blog

The Rozz Tox manifesto was written in 1979 and run, item by item, in the LA Reader's free personals, week by week, for free.

Back then getting something set in type cost money. By running it in the Reader, it got set in type for free. Plus people could begin to see it. After all the items ran, I pasted the collected bits of paper onto a sheet of paper, well, actually I used wax. That's what you did in the 20th century. You had an electric waxer. You waxed it down right after you cut yourself with the Exacto knife.

The next stop on the media infiltration campaign was Steve Samiof's STUFF magazine. This was Steve's first venture after Slash magazine, a free oversized tabloid full of hipster ads. He had a blank spot and is a swell dude and so he gave me a free ad. These days, he has a fab motel in Desert Hot Strings, CA, called Hope Springs, and another in South Palm Springs called Desert Star. Check it out. The desert will change your mind. Plus, it smells really good in the desert.

After STUFF appeared the manifesto was picked up by NEW WEST magazine in LA and BOULEVARDS in SF. Now 25 years later, if you google it, it's still floating around. Sheesh! Who knew?

Being called a manifesto helps. Collectors of manifestoes post it and protect it.

The Rozz Tox manifesto was written for fun and entertainment. It does contain some pet peeves that still rankle me, namely bad cartoons or the wrong cartoons or not enough cartoons on TV. Or shamelessly shoddy animation production or writing. You saw that a lot back in the seventies. Five million Popeye and Brutus cartoons with the same single aimless tune and no plot. GRRRRR!!!!!!

Kids today have never seen MIGHTY MOUSE or WOODY WOODPECKER, HECKLE and JECKLE, CRUSADER RABBIT or all the early FLEISCHER cartoons, because someone is broadcasting only HANNA BARBERA cartoons night and day.

Some nice young people came over and tried to join the ART POLICE. I told them I wasn't forming any, but that there were some ART POLICE in Chicago they could join.

I did a ROZZ TOX logo to accompany the text: a Piccassoid head with a cubist pompadour, and had stickers and buttons made. That was my big expense.

Another step in the media infiltration campaign was through the RESIDENTS. I approached the CRYPTIC CORPORATION with the manifesto and they were kind and swell enough to include it on some of their record releases. On these releases the image appeared without copyright as an anonymous logo of a pseudo movement, free to pass along. And that was the spirit in which the Cryptics accepted it. And many people reproduced the manifesto from the cover art or from insert flyers in their records which were distributed worldwide.

Later, when I made t-shirts, I put the copyright back on after talking to some t-shirts dudes and seeing that they didn't respect copyright at all anyway, so I figured I might as well get a free ride from them if they ran my art unmodified or at least make them "stage out" the copyright info.

Once I introduced myself to the owner of one of the most interesting galleries in LA, in those days, and she said that the manifesto was seen as an affront and that galleries thought I didn't want to show in them. I can see how they could easily get that idea, and shouldn't be surprised, I guess; yet I thought the tone of the writing, the voice, was so shrill and silly that no one would take it seriously.

Animation did get a lot better, because kids that wanted to see better cartoons grew up and went and made them. Not because of the ROZZ TOX manifesto. But because they got sick of those horrible 70s Popeye cartoons, is my theory.

HERE I COME TO SAVE THE DAY.....
THAT MEANS THAT MIGHTY MOUSE IS ON THE WAY!!!!