Arts movements require proximity and a shared outlook. Comics has long been big on the first and not so hot on the second. Since the medium's cohesion into an active artistic outlet late in the 19th Century, cartoonists have frequently huddled in the same place. Early cartoonists were bound by their common identity as newspapermen, and many spent at least some time in a bullpen working elbow to elbow with their peers. The early comic-book industry was dominated by New York City, and if you squint, the stories of studios being thrown together and artists working on each others' pages sound like the beginnings of the kind of back and forth that galvanizes certain approaches to the form. But commercial concerns didn't merely override more ambitious concerns; they steamrolled them. More importantly, these were not the kind of commercial concerns that left much if any room for artistic expression.

After a few decades, as industry relationships deepened and mail service improved, more comic-strip cartoonists and comic-book artists began to drift back into their natural state of self-isolated productivity. Many of the strip artists began slinking down to Florida after World War II while a big cross-section of working comic-book people would eventually move West. Later, artists and writers entering the industry could avoid moving to New York City altogether. The underground-comix cartoonists of the 1960s shared geographical close quarters (most were in the Bay Area, or spent some time there) and a resistance to corporate expressions of and limitations to art. They remain the closest thing comics has to a recognizable true movement. The idea that sharing between peers might be valuable has been echoed in most recognizable groups of cartoonists that have popped up ever since -- from the bearded, ball-capped second generation at Marvel and New DC to the Seattle Story Ark crowd of the early to mid-1990s to what I'm assured are close-knit smatterings of burgeoning talents in St. Louis, New York City and Los Angeles today.

Fort Thunder was different. The Providence, R.I., group has achieved importance not just for the sum total of its considerable artists but for its collective impact and its value as a symbol of unfettered artistic expression. In terms of ambition, skill and the ability to bring together vaguely like-minded artists and present them as an artistic whole, Fort Thunder was closer to something like the French publisher Le Dernier Cri than anything in American comics. Yet much in the way they presented and carried themselves reminded less of a European-style arts scene than it did a local crew of skateboarders, or maybe a regional recording studio with a loose, rotating stable of bands. Fort Thunder not only existed in several artistic worlds at once but managed to exist only in those worlds' best parts for an impressive length of time.

The key to understanding Fort Thunder is that it was not just a group of cartoonists who lived near each other and socialized. It was a group of artists, many of whom pursued comics among other kinds of media, who lived together and shared the same workspace. As an outgrowth of the Rhode Island School of Design [RISD] where nearly all of them attended (some even graduating), Fort Thunder provided a common setting for creation that imposed almost no economic imperative to conform to commercial standards or to change in an attempt to catch the next big wave. They were young, rents were cheap, and incidental money could be had by dipping into other more commercial areas of artistic enterprise such as silk-screening rock posters. Fort Thunder was also fairly isolated, both in terms of influences that breached its walls and how that work was released to the outside world. This allowed its artists to produce a significant body of work that most people have yet to see. It also fueled the group's lasting mystique. The urge -- even seven years after discovering the group -- is not to dig too deeply, so as not to uncover the grim and probably unromantic particulars.

In The Fort

Fort Thunder was a key player in several arts scenes. In terms of its place in comics, Fort Thunder describes the group of artists who made minicomics and cartoon art while living in Providence's Fort Thunder work and living space in the mid to late 1990s. Although several of the artists working there dabbled in comics, as did many like-minded artists not in the space, there are six artists who comprise the core group of talents to emerge from the Fort in its initial flowering:

• Mat Brinkman was born in Texas. He attended a special high school for the arts before entering RISD, where he studied printmaking and sculpture. His comics contain monsters and other fantasy-tinged creatures exploring elaborately constructed, roughly textured environments.

• Raised near Philadelphia, Brian Chippendale was Brinkman's roommate during their freshman year at RISD. His comics, often drawn in pre-printed journals, feature sequences told in panel progressions that favor a snake-like pattern rather than conventional left-to-right storytelling.

• Jim Drain met Brinkman in classes at RISD and moved into Fort Thunder with a second wave of artists and cartoonists. Acquaintances call Drain the most socially assured and charismatic member of the group. His comics feature thin lines, awkward figures and sparse backgrounds.

• Leif Goldberg was raised in rural areas in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States. His comics feature vibrant color and musings on ecological themes.

• Brian Ralph was born and raised in New Jersey. His comics are metaphorical fantasies set against lush backgrounds and drawn with an animation-ready line. He has thus far enjoyed the most traditional comics-publishing success of the group, with two books released, comics-industry-award nominations and gigs with comics-friendly magazines.

• Paul Lyons became friends with Ralph early on during their time at RISD, knew Brinkman through skateboarding and moved into Fort Thunder with Ralph and Drain when the space expanded to its full size. Many of his comics are drawn in a traditional illustration style.

Before being appropriated by fans of comics, music, performance and printmaking, Fort Thunder was the name of a place: a living and performance space located in the Olneyville neighborhood of Providence. It began in 1995, when Brinkman and Chippendale sought an industrial location where Brinkman could book shows. That it would also be a living space for those involved was never in question: "We couldn't afford both," says Brinkman. It would also house the studios for any other arts the residents wished to pursue. Extra studio space would cost more money than many of them could afford, and space provided by RISD was available only as long as the students stayed enrolled, never a guarantee. Many of the artists living there also needed a way to make art that would in some way pay for their modest portion of the rent. The original residents were Brinkman, Chippendale, Rob Coggeshal and Freddy Jones.

The name "Fort Thunder" was selected by the quartet almost immediately upon moving in, as the space needed a name in order to advertise its music shows. (Brinkman says its first show was held within a month after opening.) The name is related to the fact that the space, on the outer edge of a sparsely populated neighborhood near downtown, allowed the music to be played as loudly as they wanted. Brinkman also liked the idea of a Fort where "you're there to defend yourself from the quietness of American bullshit." Another explanation given in a local newspaper article years later is that the words provided a play on nearby "Howell Lumber." The name proved appropriate, acting as the kind of buffer intended, but also encouraging the same type of isolation and absolution from responsibility that traditionally leads kids to build treehouses or dirt forts. Fort Thunder was a place where the aspects of adult life unnecessary for sustained artistic output could be kept from walking through the door.

The Fort flourished. Several months later (testimony differs whether the year was 1995 or 1996), the group of artists living there -- primarily Brinkman with Chippendale's assistance -- had been successful enough scheduling shows that the Fort's role as an important Providence-area performance space took on a life of its own. When their landlord threatened to rent the remaining floor space to an outside tenant, those living there took exception and invited like-minded artists to move in so they could subsume the rest of the area. This cartoonist-heavy group was Andy Estep, Brian Ralph, Jim Drain and Paul Lyons. Upon settling in, the new members found that the original residents had been working on their individual living areas as if each was an arts project just as important as any of the traditional work being done in the studio areas and performance space. The new members worked hard to catch up, the old members took advantage of the expansion and eventually the once entirely empty space would be transformed into an indoor city of sleep areas, living spaces and working areas -- more science-fiction "terra forming," the creation of an alien environment, than legitimate interior decoration.

The Fort took up the entire second floor of a building in Eagle Square. Visitors who entered the building did so through a door over which remained a large painted arrow, the detritus of some long-forgotten painted advertisement. Several visitors recall a massive pile of bicycles and bicycle parts in the front room. The performance space just beyond that was most like the original warehouse. It has been described as having 25- to 30-foot ceilings and a massive length of floor (one visitor guessed "half an acre"). Wooden columns intermittently placed stretched from floor to a shadowy ceiling. Bands could set up in the middle of the room if they wanted to, rather than squeeze up against a wall as was the norm in other privately owned performance rooms. Other parts of the room might even accrue their own sets of debris: One show attendee described a seating arrangement in one part of the space of 50 to 60 mattresses, strewn about the base of one of the columns, formed into a pile ten feet tall and 40 feet wide. Some of the uniquely constructed bikes lying about might be ridden in this area. The open space sweeps into the kitchen, which connected to the living spaces through one of the more memorable design flourishes; a refrigerator door, or as it was described by one visitor, "a fucking refrigerator door."

[To read the rest of this essay, please see The Comics Journal #256.]

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