comic zine appears in Portsmouth

An unusual new literary publication hit Portsmouth this week. The cover depicts a cackling skeleton wearing a U.S.A. top hat and what looks like a tattered straight jacket. The black-and-white pages are lettered instead of numbered, with illustrations of the letters in sign language. Each page is splattered with wild political art and anti-consumerist philosophy, like Vietnam-era propaganda. 

Riddled with poems, illustrations, comic strips, political cartoons, snippets of text and historical quotes, the first volume of “Basement Ink” emerged from the underground and appeared in odd spots around town on Tuesday, May 1. The comic zine sprang from the anarchic mind of 25-year-old Nick McClung, an artist who lives on State Street and works at Federal Cigar. 

A Hampton native, McClung has lived in Portsmouth for about two years. His apartment serves as both home and studio, where he produces commercial and personal artwork. McClung’s surfing paintings can be seen at Dos Amigos Burritos in Dover, and he has served as resident artist at Cinnamon Rainbows Surf Co. in Hampton. But he has struggled to find an appropriate outlet for his personal artwork, which includes politically inflammatory material that is too edgy for most public venues.

“All the artwork I had was political, really obscenely so,” McClung said. “I like to offend everyone if I can, just to have an even ground, and there was nowhere that I could put it up around here.”

Motivated by a desire to publish his artwork and spread his radical viewpoints, McClung spent about three months assembling the first volume of “Basement Ink.” Aside from a couple of contributions from like-minded friends, McClung generated the drawings and text himself. He also paid for the entire publication out of his own pocket, spending $90 to print 200 stapled copies of the 20-page zine.

The free publication includes a variety of sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing sketches, along with quotes ranging from George Orwell to John F. Kennedy to Mikhail Bakunin. Sections of text, sometimes handwritten and sometimes typed, address topical issues such as the war in Iraq and global warming. While these issues are heralded in almost every mainstream media outlet, McClung tackles them with a sense of humor and cynicism that reflects his anarchist ideology.

“I like to make an abstraction of what’s truth and what’s untruth,” McClung said. “I don’t really care about making it very honest with real life facts about how things are going wrong. I’d rather have it be as much of an exaggeration as the rest of the papers are and have people suss it out themselves.”

The most dominant theme in the first volume is an overarching anti-war sentiment. In fact, McClung refers to the issue as a “community anti-war zine.” Page j features a drawing of George Bush waving a cowboy hat as he rides a bomb toward a map of the Middle East—a spoof on the famous closing scene of the 1964 Stanley Kubrick film, “Dr. Strangelove.” The words “Mission Accomplished!” are stamped alongside the illustration.

But McClung also addresses local issues, including what he calls Portsmouth’s “war against the homeless.” A paragraph on page f references the recent police action to tear down a makeshift homeless dwelling near North Mill Pond, which McClung satirically refers to as a “homeless training camp.” The artist said his work was largely motivated by the writings of radical thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Karl Marx. A self-described anarchist, McClung said the goal is simply to generate discussion among people with differing viewpoints. “I really wanted it to be kind of a shock to upper classes,” he said. “I asked myself a lot what the goal was throughout the creation of it, and at this point it’s just to get people talking. Whether they like it or not, it kind of brings out all the demons.”

So far, most people have been receptive to the zine, McClung said. Federal Cigar, Bull Moose Music and a handful of other Portsmouth businesses agreed to offer free copies on their shelves, and the author plans to distribute additional copies to locations in Dover, Durham and Boston.

Future volumes of “Basement Ink” will appear on a monthly basis, and McClung hopes the publication will grow as it garners more attention. He also hopes to reel in more contributors, bringing in additional voices and offering local writers and artists a chance to get things published. The next issue will include a list of “how-tos,” such as how to go dumpster diving or make your own soap.

Another one of McClung’s goals is to mobilize people to work toward various causes. While many Portsmouth area residents are conscientious and opinionated, people rarely put their philosophies into practice and take action. Although such alternative publications were common in the 1960s and 1970s, and culture-based zines flooded the country in the early 1990s, they have largely vanished from the Seacoast. McClung hopes “Basement Ink” will help give people a sense of purpose.

“I’ve been around this country a lot of times, and I feel like it’s something that’s happened over the last eight years where people are afraid of either working together or getting on some list,” he said. “There’s a lot of ‘Big Brother’ fear out there.”