Bar room scrawl

Things that start in bars often end badly. Every drinker has a story about a near-death hangover, a night in the holding cell or a morning after he regrets.

But not every drinker has a way to put it on paper -- which is what inspired the graphic novel Drunk: A Comic About Bar Stories. Naturally, the idea surfaced over pitchers of beer and shared baskets of nachos at a weekly get-together of graduate art students.

"We were drunk at a bar and we thought, 'Hey, we should do stories about this,'" says Sean Russell, one of the three instigators of the book. "The seed was planted. It just took a while to grow."

He talks while he pours. The group, which numbers almost a dozen and meets every Friday, is into its second round of beers at the venerable Stake Out near UNLV, one of the group's regular hangouts and a minor character in one of the comics.

Jim Pink, the retired director of UNLV's graduate program in the visual arts, sits at the end of a column of tables. He started organizing the weekly outings in 2003, advised his former students during the making of Drunk and also contributed a piece that consists of characters based on the book's makers. All but two of the contributors are former students of Pink's.

"It's nice to see that something solid came out of all our drinking Fridays," Pink says.

Like most of the artists, Pink doesn't consider himself a comic book guy. He's familiar with R. Crumb and the other big names, but he started as a sculptor and taught printmaking and advanced drawing at UNLV. But his initiation to the world of art came via a neighbor, Norman Pettingill, whose proto-comical scene sketches appear in the book.

"Crumb is at UCLA right now giving a lecture on Genesis. Something like that adds a lot of artistic credibility to the world of comic books," Pink says.

Aaron Sheppard is a painter, performance artist and Friday evening regular who peppers his speech with references to painters. For his comic, he traded in his usual gestural style for disciplined line drawing influenced by images from Alice in Wonderland.

"You get to a place where you become comfortable and you have to break out of that. It's been an adjustment but it was one of the most eye-opening experiences I've had in a while," Sheppard says.

The artistic styles in the book range from the conventionally comic to indie autobiographical and almost painterly. Likewise, the stories cover the spectrum of intoxicated experience. Russell's comic is autobiographical, a fond recollection of the years he spent behind the bar of a VFW post in Menomonie, Wis. The piece contributed by Kim Deitch, on the other hand, is a chaotic account of alcoholic delirium populated by cartoonish hallucinations.

All but a couple of the artists live in Southern Nevada, a fact that contributes to the variation among the stories in Drunk.

"Because this is Las Vegas, most people who are here are from somewhere else initially. So you're going to get a wide variety of artwork when you're working with people who live in this city," he says.

Mike Ogilvie, one of the other masterminds behind Drunk, produced two comic books before this. One of the reasons he and his friends chose to do a comic dedicated to drinking is to change the way people think about comics.

"Graphic novels are still very young and cater to a crowd that's below the drinking age," he says. "One of the reasons we did this is to show that you can read graphic novels if you're over 21."

Some of the bar stories are pure fantasy, but others are rooted in reality. Erin Stellmon, who works at the Neon Museum, wanted to do something that captured the unique history of downtown Vegas. Her comic features a former bartender at the Huntridge Tavern who has a way with unruly customers. A violent way. The comic captures her triumph over an abusive drunk three years her junior. Since the bartender left, the area and tavern have changed. Now it caters to the more upscale community that's begun to inhabit new condominiums that sprang up nearby.

"It's really a timepiece about the rich history of that area," Stellmon says.

Rich history aside, how does the Vegas bar scene stack up to other cities? Its 24-hour accessibility is a plus, but it's outweighed by the lack of public transit.

"When I came here as a tourist, it blew my fucking mind," Sheppard says. "We ended up staying here two or three times longer than we thought. But I prefer New York, because you can always get a cab, and get out and puke, and then call another cab."

In Vegas, the inebriates tend to park themselves permanently at the bar. That's where they stay, along with all the grand ideas that emerge from the haze of booze and cigarettes. Which is part of what makes Drunk such an interesting project to consider.

In the end, the most impressive thing about the book may be that it turned out at all. After all, most people go to bars to escape their responsibilities, not create more of them.

"You tend to get a lot of brainstorming done while you're drinking, and not a whole lot of execution," Sheppard says. "This book turned out to be a great marriage of the two."

The crowd around the table is already kicking around stories for the sequel, but Ogilvie doesn't want that getting out. After all, there are some things that are better left in bars.

Drunk: A Comic About Bar Stories book signing and release party happens at 5 p.m. Nov. 6 at Frankie's Tiki Room, 1712 W. Charleston Blvd. Afterward, there will be an exhibition reception with original artwork from the book at Atomic Todd Gallery, 1217 S. Main St.