Logan, Jack

"Let’s take a second to talk about illustrators in the music scene. Specifically, illustrators in Athens in the ’80s. I’ve been able to identify only three of note: Devlin Thompson, Rick Berg (a.k.a. Slice Wad), and Jack Logan. Devlin is probably the closest Athens will ever have to an Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth–type artist, while Rick and Jack each leaned toward a more brutalist style. Rick’s work was that of an evolved high school student sketching at the back of a notebook. Think of Rick as an Athens version of Raymond Pettibon. His flyers for bands like Porn Orchard, Bar-B-Q Killers, Dashboard Saviors, and Mercyland are worthy of their own book—no question.

On the other hand, you’ve got Jack Logan. A musician in his own right with Liquor Cabinet, Jack came to Athens from rural Illinois amid the music scene’s explosion in the mid-eighties. Jack was far too laconic to hustle to illustrate flyers, but his work is most closely tied to Vic Chesnutt’s early band the LaDiDas. Amid the smart-assery of Athens, Jack wrote and illustrated a comic book teeming to the brim with in-jokes about the then-recently minted rock star and man-about-town Peter Buck. Logan has described himself as a poor man’s Jack Kirby—though he confesses his true heroes are Hot Rod cartoonists Pete Millar and Jim Grube as well as Mad magazine alums Bill Elder, Mort Drucker, and Paul Coker Jr. In the “Pete Buck” comic, Logan made the R.E.M. guitarist the action hero that Athens so desperately needed (nay, craved). Shortly after that first issue came out, Jack mustered up a second issue of wacky hijinks that Peter gets into.

While these comics were easy to find in Athens while they were circulating around town in the ’80s, they have largely been invisible since then, other than being remanded to a PDF that people could flip through. That is, until now. Both issues of the comic have been assembled into a single forty-page edition, with a new introduction by Jack; the 250 copies of the book are machine numbered and individually signed by the author.

This is the debut release for the Chunklet Music Preservation Project, a 501(c)3 dedicated to the celebration and study of the music scene. Fingers crossed, this is just the first of many further explorations into the wacky world of various luminaries."