"Hot Doughnuts Now" - Catharsis #11 Cover Illustration

CATHARSIS #11 - June 1990

There once was a fine monthly alternative publication called "Catharsis" that existed from the late 1980s until the mid-1990s. It was the cranium offspring of Don Harrison, a writer/publisher/radio personality from Richmond, Va area. "Catharsis" was a garage rock melange of music, art and literature that helped the young and hip keep pace with what was cool. Don had found me through my "Reluctant Sadist" comix and profiled me in the fourth issue. This image is the cover of the eleventh issue of  "Catharsis" from the summer of 1990. It is the infamous, "Hot Doughnuts Now" cover that grabbed eyeballs all over the region. My favorite story of how this image infiltrated the local culture came from one of the photographers from "Catharsis" who had a part-time gig shooting high school yearbook photos. Reporting for one job at a small High School in North Carolina, she was greeted with hallways plastered with xeroxed copies of this cover image altered to include information for an upcoming dance!

In the stream-of-conscious rambling intro from that eleventh issue, Don made a predication:

"Future pop culture critics will unanimously agree that the kicker to a fine publication is -- of course-- the cover. For this reason and more, the work of sculptor/cartoonist/filmmaker/man-about-town Hal Weaver will be rediscovered in the far-flung future when copies of this notorious issue surface amid decades of rumor (a whole stack of Catharsis #11 found in a trunk up in the attic of Henry del Toro estate in the year 2088??? Who'd a figure?)"

I'm too impatient to wait until 2088 for this art to be rediscovered, so judge for yourself in 2014.

While researching this article, I was surprised to find little to no information about "Catharsis" on the old inter-tubes. Hey Don Harrison, time to get a web site set-up or better yet, how about a "Catharsis" book!

Side note - Henry "The Bull" del Toro was a local Rock'n'Roll DJ for FM-99 at that time who left us all too early in 2002 at the tender age of forty-four. Click his name to read an obit. RIP.

Zahdah!

OK HW