
30 YEARS OF HOOFSIP
The Mike Pipper Interview
by Jerry White Jr.
September 2024 / $1.50
From its first issue, HOOFSIP featured a regular comic strip called Stick Men. Written and drawn by Mike Pipper (who will be referred to as “Pipper” for most of this piece), Stick Men helped solidify a tone and vibe for the first year-plus of the zine’s run. I caught up with Pipper the morning after a late-night, up north, bonfire/party/get-together and here’s a tastefully edited transcript of our conversation. . .
JERRY: I’m here with Michael Richard Pipper.
PIPPER: Good morning.
JERRY: Good morning. September of 1994 is when the first issue of Hoofsip came out, so we are at the thirty-year mark. I’ve been talking to a few people involved. When Dan and I chatted about the people who come to mind as major parts of the zine, you were one of the first names mentioned.
PIPPER: Really?
JERRY: For sure! Stick Men launched with Hoofsip and ran monthly for a year and a half! First thoughts, just off the top of your head — what do you remember, and what are some fond memories or vibes about those days, specifically in making the zine or in making your comics?
PIPPER: Fond memories, like it was all fond memories. I don’t think there was anything that was negative about Hoofsip that I ever did that wasn’t fun. I think one of the most fun memories that I have of Hoofsip though, is something really obscure. It’s that “Big Fan?”
JERRY: Oh, yeah.
PIPPER: For some reason, I still can see that picture in my head. [Laughs] Like, do you know who that guy is?
JERRY: I forget his name now, but I got a phone call late one night on my landline — I had my own phone number in my room and it was this guy who had seen 30 Minutes of Madness on cable and then called information to get my phone number back when all of these were a thing.
PIPPER: Oh, wow.
JERRY: And that’s how it started. Then he got into Hoofsip and started hanging out at Kinko’s where I worked. Before long it became apparent that this guy was full of shit because he was talking about all these connections he had. Like “I’ll get you guys in New York and I’ll get you–”
PIPPER: [Laughs]
JERRY: It was just a bit delusional. And so once we realized it, we’re like, oh God. First we were super stoked to have a fan and then it was like we were cursed. Because this guy wasn’t really a fan so much as someone who glommed onto us. And so, yeah, we did slightly mock him in the pages of Hoofsip in a way that he wouldn’t even have caught or understood.
PIPPER: No, not at all.
JERRY: It was subtle. And then at some point he did go away. But what sucked was, I worked midnights at Kinko’s and he would come in and I couldn’t escape him. He just kept talking at me forever and promising me bullshit.
PIPPER: [Laughs]
JERRY: I don’t remember his name. . .
PIPPER: Big Fan.
JERRY: Yeah, “Big Fan.”
JERRY: Like a lot of things that we did creatively, you were doing Stick Men before Hoofsip. Just as a fun thing to do.
PIPPER: Yeah, something to do in the middle of class because I just wasn’t going to pay attention in school.
JERRY: So it was born as a classroom distraction.
PIPPER: Yeah, exactly what it was. Like I had just, hands down be like, no, I’m not doing the work — I’m just going to draw.
JERRY: Nice. So how did you feel that this thing you never really meant for publication necessarily, got put in zines and Dan’s mailing them around the world? And people were like “when’s the next one!?”
PIPPER: I never even thought about it like that. No, I never really actually put it into perspective like that. Wow. No, I never actually thought about that. To me, it was just mostly something for our tight group. You know, it’s just something that we were into, that we enjoyed. And it was so many of us that we’re enjoying it. So I never thought about, like, other people outside of our group enjoying it. It just — that didn’t sink, that hasn’t sunk in.
JERRY: And who knows how many? We would put them in stores around Metro Detroit too, so who knows how many. It’s like websites before websites. I mean, really, a zine is like a website that reaches far less people and is a lot more work to make.
PIPPER: Yeah, a lot.
JERRY: [Laughs]
PIPPER: I think I still got all the issues.
JERRY: Really?
PIPPER: Yeah, they’re in a trunk somewhere.
JERRY: I remember back in the 90s, I collected all of the Stick Men together in their own volume. And then you had also done a Stick Men interview as a piece.
PIPPER: Did I? What the fuck was I doing?
JERRY: They’re all online now, they’re all scanned. Stick Men was always one of my favorite things. Do you recall a point where you’re like, “yeah, I just don’t feel like doing Stick Men anymore,” because I don’t really remember a specific time.
PIPPER: I’m trying to think, because I don’t think I was doing the Stick Men after I moved in with Jessey and Dennis.
JERRY: No, but by then we had Pezz Wurld going. Which you did an installment of that.
PIPPER: Well, because that was the thing. That was a hand-off comic.
JERRY: Right.
PIPPER: Hand it off to somebody and then they’d pick it up from what was left off.
JERRY: I think if I recall, it’s like you had done a bunch of Stick Men, again, as you said, just for something to do in class and to make our small group laugh.
PIPPER: That’s probably why, because I wasn’t in school anymore.
JERRY: Ah!
PIPPER: I wasn’t bored off my tit, fucking in the classroom.
JERRY: Right. And you did do a couple of new ones, but it wasn’t the same. Now it was like “can you do the new Stick Men for the next issue?”
PIPPER: Because now that felt like an actual like, hey, responsibility/job kind of thing. It’s like, oh, fuck, I don’t want to do that.
JERRY: Like that was antithetical to the whole purpose of Stick Men, which was made to avoid doing something. And now it became the job.
PIPPER: Yeah. So yeah, that’s probably where it just fell off and died there.
JERRY: Yeah. But it was a solid run.
JERRY: Do you recall if, other than Stick Men and that Pezz Wurld, you contributed any other stuff to the zine? Did you ever do interviews with any of the bands?
PIPPER: I didn’t do the interviews, but I sat in on some of them, which was cool.
JERRY: Do you remember any?
PIPPER: I think The Descendents.
JERRY: Oh, really?
PIPPER: Yeah, I think it was me, Dan, and Sprague. I think I was there. Yeah. But I remember doing that. And yeah, that’s cool. That’s a big band to get to talk to. I remember that they were really super cool about it and shit, too. They weren’t like all cocky and shit.
JERRY: Right. I mean, again, that’s the funny thing — we did this small thing, full of inside jokes, we’re not trying to cross over to mainstream appeal. But through Dan’s vigilant efforts of calling these labels, mailing this, getting on the guest list, we got to interview these bands. Like he interviewed Moby and The Descendents is a pretty big get.
PIPPER: I remember a cover that has a bunch of different band names on it, I think. And I think those were all interviews. And I think Rancid was on there.
JERRY: Yeah. The Rancid logo.
PIPPER: I mean, that was big, that’s fucking huge. It was early 90s and stuff and that’s when they were like getting huge themselves.
JERRY: Right. Like Pennywise, I think he did at one point.
PIPPER: Yeah.
JERRY: So having not looked at them for a while, what were some of your favorite aspects of the zine, other than like the creative part of just collaborating with friends? If you were going to read it, what were you like interested to read?
PIPPER: Well, the one thing that I always looked forward to, and it’s the most important thing, was always the cover, because it’s the creativeness that you guys came up with with all these different covers. That’s what I always looked forward to first and foremost was: What’s this cover going to look like? Are they going to push a button here or like what’s the deal? Like what are they going to do with this one? And then, after that, it was “The Things I Have Zine.” I always always looked at that.
JERRY: Dan’s reviews of zines, because that was a big part of zine culture.
PIPPER: Yeah.
JERRY: You trade zines, you review each other’s zines, and that’s how other people find out about you.
PIPPER: Crowley’s Corner. I mean, God, I haven’t seen one of the zines in fucking years, but those are things that I remember, you know, like some of this shit was like really funny, some of it was off-putting and disturbing.
JERRY: Yeah. And you kicked this off: it would always end with a comic. As Joe Hornacek said, “Dan was the type of guy who wanted to put comics at the end of the thing.” And we had some other comics that we got through the zine community. People we never met that were some really great artists. I think for me too, ultimately, the covers were important. And then I loved the comics at the end. Whether it was Stick Men or Pezz Wurld, because then that became like, okay, what’s the next person going to do with this story?
PIPPER: I think Dan’s purpose behind the zine was not to be popular and not for huge success, it’s just like something he was interested in that he could do with his friends. It was something we enjoyed, he enjoyed, it wasn’t just to be like “okay I’m gonna do this and then move on to bigger and better things, like I’ll put this behind,” it’s like, no, it was his child. That was his kid. It’s really impressive when somebody does something like that, you know?
JERRY: Yeah. I’ve only done a couple zines since then and I’ve retained an interest in doing it, but I get in my own way like being a perfectionist about. . .because having started with print-it-out, cut-it-with-scissors-and-tape-it layout era, I kept wanting to level up and get really really professional and I lost myself in that.
PIPPER: I think it loses the appeal when it becomes something like that. When it’s, you know, like a mom-and-pop kind of thing, just hands-on-paper kind of shit.
JERRY: When I was working at Kinko’s that did help because there were times where, especially the midnight shift, Dan comes over, you would come over —
PIPPER: I remember many nights, where it was a deadline kind of thing like it’s gotta get out. It’s like the last minute, got everything that you needed from everybody that was contributing. I remember the rushes at midnight at Kinko’s — and that’s part of it too, that was fun. That was good time, it didn’t feel like a job. That was something that we enjoyed doing.
JERRY: Exactly, and that’s what I feel like I missed later in both trying to really perfect my graphic design skills and the other missing ingredient was, I was doing it alone. I’m like “I’m gonna write a zine and I’m gonna make it really fancy.”
PIPPER: That is a huge load, that is like just too much.
JERRY: And the real thing that was fun was — at the end of the day, we could have been playing D&D, we could have been playing cards — it was like the social aspect, similar with making skits and stuff.
PIPPER: It was just another one of those things that we enjoyed doing like skits and D&D. It was like, all right well, this is the D&D night maybe whatever, but this is what we’re doing tonight because this is what we need to do, we want to do this. This is something we enjoy doing.
JERRY: Yeah, and making each other laugh, you do a goofy drawing or a funny —
PIPPER: Half the shit that we came up with have never been in a Hoofsip. Just brainstorming off each other’s spitball and shit, coming up with stuff that never made it into the zine.
JERRY: Yeah, just the process of coming up with stuff was fun, so yeah that social aspect, which again, with the internet can connect people together, and you can collaborate. I did a collaboration zine a little over 10 years ago. But I got artists that I found through the web and everything and they sent me really cool shit, but I never met them in person.
PIPPER: Yes, so it was never a personal thing, it’s just like a job kind of thing.
JERRY: Yeah almost, and then I mail them the zine and like, okay cool, but like there’s no. . .it comes back to either being at Kinko’s, or at Denny’s, or whatever the fuck it was –
PIPPER: Ram’s Horn.
JERRY: With some scissors and glue or a journal and you’re passing it around and we’re doing it — that’s such joy and I don’t know how to quite replicate that as middle-aged people.
PIPPER: Yeah, it’s because we don’t have the energy to do it now. I mean we might have the energy to do it, I don’t know how motivated I’d be to do it now.
JERRY: And how do you align the schedules? This weekend we’re up at the cabin, and we planned that weeks ahead of time.
PIPPER: People are parents now.
JERRY: Shit, people are grandparents now. [Laughs]
PIPPER: This whole week is just really making me feel old dude. [Laughs]
JERRY: I know. And this is the youngest we’ll ever be again. It only gets older from here.
JERRY: I will forever miss the particular creative energy of our group for many reasons, but there was a sensibility, which maybe it just comes from being Midwesterners, you know, being all into Ween, Beastie Boys, Mr. Bungle just to name a few — like the sense of humor and the references are still references I love. So I have my friends group out in LA, we bond and stuff, but the music tastes. . .no one knows who the fuck I’m talking about when it comes to that.
PIPPER: We would never like actively shun people that weren’t like us, but we weren’t oblivious to the fact that we had a bunch of inside jokes and they just wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t enjoy it. It’s not that we couldn’t get along with people. It’s just, we had so many just inside things.
JERRY: Right. We found our own language. But I will say what I have to some degree recreated — like I have a lot of people that I collaborate with. So I work on a song and someone plays guitar on it or something. And so, what I had to let go of and I think I was only able to do this in my 40s, in my 20s and 30s I’d meet people and it was like this group isn’t that cool. And not that we were “cool,” cool. We weren’t Fonzie, cool. It was that they weren’t weird enough. I wanted them to be weird. Now I do think everyone’s fucking weird in some way, but the flavor of weird that we were, is like such a vintage wine.
PIPPER: Yeah. I don’t want to use the word mainstream, but it wasn’t the mainstream. We took part in mainstream things, like we went to these concerts, listened to Nirvana and grunge. But we had our niche part of it, that we made ours, that we did our things.
JERRY: Even just looking at the comics, whatever Stick Men and like Crazy Man and Fort Corp was, it’s so random and bizarre. Finding that particular vintage of weird, I was like looking for it elsewhere and then ultimately realized like, oh, it is like a vintage wine — it’s only grown in that region of the world at that time. I’ll never find that vintage elsewhere, it is just who we are. So I have to let go of that a little bit and find other weird, but there’s always the warmest part of my heart that our weird slots into, and part of that’s the age we were and all of that too. I recently directed a film and it’s with a community — I’m such a broken record — like if I’m going to make shit, I make it with friends.
PIPPER: It’s lucky to find like another group like that, you know?
JERRY: And it took a long time. What helps with this one, too, for me is like, if I have a reputation for being a control freak or the ringleader or something, it’s like, actually though, I would be very happy to not be the ringleader — like with Dan and the zine. I was happy for someone else to be cracking the whip.
JERRY: We started this in ’94 and the internet did exist then, but none of us were making websites quite yet. And it had not proliferated yet in the way that it would. So what do you feel like you miss about zines? And what do you think could be their relevance or use in 2024, in a world where everyone has a fucking cell phone and all that?
PIPPER: But there are still people putting in the work, isn’t there?
JERRY: Yeah.
PIPPER: There’s still zines out there. People still fucking doing the hard shit, you know? It’s a niche group of people that read zines. And it’s not something that they’re going to just go online and look up because that’s not it. It’s the work you’re putting into it, the physical, hand and paper, printing copies and shit like that.
JERRY: If someone was looking to start a zine with their friends today, would you have any advice for them?
PIPPER: Yeah, stay dedicated. Fucking do it. Fucking do it. Don’t sit there and just shoot the shit and like “we should,” like do it then. Fucking do it.
JERRY: I love it. That’s a great note to end on: fucking do it.