A Very Special Logo

General Discussion
61

Okay, this falls in the category of Who-Gives-A-Flying-F-Trivia:

My favorite Griffin piece was always the psychedelic Murphy strip, (was this the last appearance of Murphy?).

A couple of years ago I was looking at a picture of Greg Noll, surfing in the 1968 Duke at Sunset (in Photo:Grannis, p. 203), and noticed that it is the first frame of the sequence where the Hopi mask guy is surfing the mystic eye waves.

At the time, I just thought  it was kind of neat to stumble across the image that he used to draw the panel from.

Griffin: nonpariel. The images are genuinely iconic.

Thanks.

62

While there is a similarity between the Grannis pic and the panel from the Murphy strip, I honestly doubt that Griffin used the photo as the basis of his image. The photo of Noll is similar to hundreds of pics you could find of a guy dropping in at the top of a wave. it’s a fairly common sight, IMO.


63

 

Not Murphy’s last appearance. Griffin did a few single and double page Murphy pieces for Surfer during the 70s. Some were based on religious themes (jesus, etc).

I have a file that lists all of RG’s work in Surfer. I can check it out and see which issues.

The two-page color spread that became known as Mystic Eyes was originally known as the Return of Murphy. He had been absent from the mag while RG was off doing his SF rock poster stuff.

 

 

I’ll look up that Grannis pic. I have the both Grannis books. You’re talking about the large one with the white dust cover from TSJ, right? I never made the connection.

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64

This is my copy of that poster. I have only seen two others. I got it from Surfer mag around 1970 for $2.

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Yes, it’s the TSJ book. I’m assuming that content-wise the basic edition I have is the same as your limited edition.

And yeah, it’s that poster. I have no idea how I made the connection, but when I checked, it seemed pretty clear.

Thanks for the background information…“The Return of Murphy”, now I know what to call it. That’s such a great piece.

66

D’oh, writing at the same time as yours.

Yeah, who knows…

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I checked my files and this is what I found.

From July '67 to March of '69 there was no Griffin stuff in the magazine.

He did four more Murphy strips in 11/70, 1/71, 5/71, and 8/71.

 

One scan from a 1971 Murphy piece.

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68

Sammy, thanks for posting all the Griffin images. Brings back memories of the day when I got those mags and saw them. I have some doodles of my name in that same lettering style above in one of my HS yearbooks.