Frank Stack


Frank Huntington Stack is an American underground cartoonist and fine artist. Working under the name Foolbert Sturgeon to avoid persecution for his work while living in the Bible Belt, Stack published what is considered by many to be the first underground comic, The Adventures of Jesus, in 1964.
Stack's main artistic influences were Gustave Doré, Roy Crane, and V. T. Hamlin. He is widely known as a printmaker, specializing in etchings and lithographs, and his sketchy comics style evokes Stack's background as an etcher. His oil paintings and watercolors mostly feature landscape and figure compositions.

Education and teaching career

Stack graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in 1959. He received his M.A. at the University of Wyoming, and also studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière of Paris.
He was a long-time professor of art at the University of Missouri, where he taught from 1963–2001, and is now a professor emeritus. In addition, he did teaching stints at Appalachian State and Virginia Tech.

Comics

While at the University of Texas, Stack joined the staff of The Texas Ranger student humor magazine in 1957, and was editor of the magazine in 1958–1959. As editor, Stack aspired for the Ranger to emulate the humor exemplified by The New Yorker and Punch. He published comic strips by fellow UT student Gilbert Shelton, later known for Wonder Wart-Hog and The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
Soon after graduating from UT, Stack entered the U.S. Army, stationed at Governors Island, New York, in 1961–1962.
Although he had already graduated in 1959, starting in 1962, he published The Adventures of Jesus in The Texas Ranger. In 1964, then Texas Ranger editor Gilbert Shelton collected about a dozen of the Jesus strips, designed a cover, and made 50 photocopies of the collection, giving them to associates around the UT campus.
Stack's most prolific period as a cartoonist was in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During this period, Rip Off Press published three issues of Stack's Jesus Comics, as well as such solo titles as Feelgood Funnies and Amazon Comics. In 1972 Stack contributed to The Rip Off Review of Western Culture with "Jesus Goes To The Faculty Party." In addition to publishing several articles in The Comics Journal, Stack contributed comics to such anthologies as Zero Zero, Blab!, Snarf, Rip Off Comix, and Weirdo. His strips The Case of Dr. Feelgood and Dorman's Doggie were syndicated by the Underground Press Syndicate in 1976–1978.
From 1986 to 2001, Stack was a regular contributor to Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. He also illustrated the acclaimed nonfiction graphic novel Our Cancer Year, written by Pekar and his wife Joyce Brabner, which won the 1995 Harvey Award for best original graphic novel.

Personal life

Stack met his future wife Robbie Powell at the University of Texas, where they were both staffers on The Texas Ranger. Stack and Powell were married from 1959 until her death in 1998.

Exhibitions