Hey Dork!: The Sketchbook of Gary Panter

by Gary Panter

"MY FAVORITE ARTIST!!!" —Paul Reubens

Hey Dork! is the second in a trio of sketchbooks from pop-culture design icon Gary Panter. Letting loose his imagination, he populates the pages with hundreds of critters, creatures, and dudes that could only come from the brain behind Jimbo and the wacky environment of Pee-wee's Playhouse. Complete and unedited, Hey Dork! contains eight months of outpouring from Panter's hyperconsciousness, including test strips, doodles, and drawings of the extraordinary. Sketches of psychedelic creatures and hypnotic women buzz, skip, dance, and hop from Panter's mind and onto the pages with manic, crosshatched energy. His signature distressed, shaky line art transposes a stream of consciousness wholly befitting his reputation as the original punk rock cartoonist. Most remarkably, not a single page is amiss; each one is a fascinating world–a feat to be admired by comics fans, visual artists, and sketchbook enthusiasts alike.

Panter's comics are currently featured in the Masters of American Comics exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum and will travel to Milwaukee, Newark, and New York City.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published February 1, 2007

About the author

Gary Panter is an American cartoonist, illustrator, painter, designer, and part-time musician, widely regarded as a leading figure in the post-underground, new wave comics movement. His work, described by The Comics Journal as defining him the "Greatest Living Cartoonist," has influenced alternative comics and visual culture for decades. Panter grew up in Texas, studying at East Texas State University under Jack Unruh and Lee Baxter Davis. In the 1970s, he became a key participant in the Los Angeles punk scene, producing gritty, expressive art for the fanzine Slash and numerous record covers. This period saw the creation of Jimbo, Panter’s punk everyman, who combines influences from Jack Kirby, Picasso, and underground comics, appearing in Raw, Slash, and Panter’s own graphic novels, including Jimbo in Purgatory and Jimbo’s Inferno. These works blend classical literature, particularly Dante’s Divine Comedy, with punk sensibilities, and Jimbo’s Inferno won an American Book Award. Panter’s influence extended to television as the set designer for Pee-wee’s Playhouse, where his densely layered, chaotic designs earned him two Daytime Emmy Awards. He also created online comics like Pink Donkey and published retrospectives such as the two-volume Gary Panter. He contributed album cover art for Frank Zappa and Yo La Tengo, bridging the worlds of comics, music, and fine art. His style is expressionistic and fast, balancing painting, commercial art, illustration, cartoons, and alternative comix. Exhibitions of his work include the Phoenix Art Museum, Dunn and Brown Contemporary Gallery, and the "Masters of American Comics" show at New York’s Jewish Museum. In 2012, Panter received the Klein Award from the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, recognizing his enduring contributions to the field.