Did you Know? Artist/cartoonist, Jack Jackson, (1941-2006) was born in Pandora, Texas (Pop 200) but migrated to Austin in the early sixties where he landed a job at the Texas Ranger humour magazine. Jackson became friends there with Gilbert Shelton. (Another 60's icon) and the two soon found themselves heading off to San Francisco to join the "flower power" revolution. In 1969, Jackson, Shelton, and two other Texans, Fred Todd, and Dave Moriaty bought an offset printing press and started the infamous, Rip Off Press, the original underground comix publisher. (Photo-Jack Jackson)The press published cult favorites from Shelton's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to R. Crumb's Comix and Stories. But history and Texas were never far from Jackson's mind and later set out to produce works of Texas in "real historical terms." Jackson's graphic novels include stories of Juan Seguin and other Mexican-American heroes of the Texas revolution - Los Tejanos; the Karankawa tribe's massacre of the Spaniards - God's Bosom; Sam Houston's time among the natives -Indian Lover: Sam Houston & the Cherokees; the way the Mexicans remember the Alamo -The Alamo: An Epic Told From Both Sides. And my personal favorite: Comanche Moon -The Story of Cynthia Ann and Quanah Parker.
It must also be noted that Jackson is the inspiration behind Texas Tales Illustrated, produced by myself and fellow Mineral Wells native, Mack White.
Mike Kearby's Texas Copyright 2012
