Omaha the Cat Dancer

Noticeably I see in all retrospectives of Omaha that there are Kate Worley fans and Reed Waller fans. Some of them praise Kate for pulling a sleazy pulp story out of the mire and into the light of real life. (Harlan Ellison called the first story a "goofy porn parody.") Others praise the work I wrote and express boredom at what followed.

This is pretty much what Kate and I expected, but we were in total agreement about where to go when the first arc was complete -- to explore the issues brought up by the first story, and to continue the nose-to-the-ground narrative and the classic 9-panel page. I was never sorry I handed it over to her to steer it round the corner into what i think of as "nouveau soap opera." Skeptics might call it "Woke Soap Opera." Let them. Kate's two literary models were Dorothy Sayers and Colette -- a perfect combination for where Omaha should go. But she never abandoned the story, or the ground-level viewpoint.

I see no need to defend Kate, whose own reputation is secure among the great writers of comics. But in defense of both of us, i think I should say something about the origin of the material that started this. 

It really is just one story.

I find it endlessly amusing that most reviewers think I arbitrarily made up all the salacious stuff in the first story arc (strip club shutdown, crackdown on adult businesses, "Campaign for Decency," crazy father, mob connection, conspiracy to demolish downtown by secret cadre of local businessmen, etc.). 

Any longtime resident of Minneapolis could tell them otherwise.

All of it was in the air in Minneapolis in 1978-79. I built the story from news, rumors and first-person accounts I gathered while playing local strip clubs in a smalltime rock band. I really don't have that kind of imagination. The racketeering charges against adult bookstore owner Ferris Alexander. Rosalie Butler. The Donaldson Fire. The questionable goings-on with Block E, City Center, and the gentrification of Downtown. Is this a "cleanup?" Or is it a hostile takeover? And everything that happened to Downtown Minneapolis also happened to Times Square, thanks to a now-well-known slumlord. Everything in Omaha was always rooted in what I heard on the street, and the personal testimony of friends and lovers I will not name. Okay there was no mob hit, and no Charlie's Underground -- but rumor had it that it was being discussed.

Even my publisher was skeptical of what I wrote. Denis didn't believe there was a stretch of road in the mostly-flat Twin Cities with a cliff that a car could be forced off. We had to drive him out Hwy 169 (then County Road 18) on the way to Flying Cloud Airport to show him where it "actually" happened.

Now the book is getting new readers again. And they will take from it what they want. Even though the story, like real life, does change genres, it is still just one story.