'Real Stuff', artwork by Michael Dougan.
Dennis P. Eichhorn was a comic writer with a lot of true stories to tell. He has been a bartender, dishwasher, cook, doorman, process server, stable hand, sailor, bouncer, taxicab driver, phone interviewer, hod carrier, publisher, firefighter, and paralegal investigator. In the comic series 'Real Stuff', published in the early 1990s, his stories are collected, with artwork by a host of comic artists, including Peter Bagge, Dave Cooper, Jim Woodring, Joe Sacco, Chester Brown, Peter Kuper, Terry Moore, and J.R. Williams.
Eichhorn, originally from Boise, Idaho, started writing for his university's student paper. He also edited an underground comic book called The Moscow Duck Review during this period. He moved to Seattle in the 1970s, where he started writing and editing for the Seattle Sun newspaper and the entertainment tabloid The Rocket, through which he met most of the cartoonists that he would eventually work with.
Eichhorn did his first professional comix work for Peter Bagge's Weirdo magazine in the early 1980s. His anthology series 'Real Stuff', containing autobiographical stories in the tradition of Harvey Pekar, was published by Fantagraphics from 1990 to 1995. Eichhorn's stories were action-filled tales of sex, substance abuse, and violence, especially the ones published in his other series, 'Real Smut'. Sections of his comic stories for 'Real Stuff' were later collected in the books 'The Legend of Wild Man Fischer' (Top Shelf, 2004) and 'Real Stuff by Dennis P. Eichhorn and a Host of Artists' (Swifty Morales Press, 2004).
Eichhorn further wrote comic stories for Scram magazine (1992-2006), and he funded the publication of a couple of underground comix through Starhead Comix. Dennis Eichhorn passed away in October 2015, at the age of 70. Eichhorn was an influence on Matt Groening, who placed 'Real Stuff' on nr. 67 in his personal list of '100 Favorite Things'.
'Real Stuff'.