He and his family moved to Olympia shortly before he turned three and then onto a farm outside of McCleary, Washington when he was eight. He offers cartooning workshops for novice and aspiring cartoonists in McCleary, Washington. In addition to collecting thousands of small press and alternative comics, Willis published his own Morty Comix over unique comix, mostly portraits drawn on the backs of retired filing cards or random paper , and edited the small-press newsletter City Limits Gazette.
Willis is cited as one of the progenitors of the small press explosion of the s and of the minicomix format, drawn on 8. Out of this movement also came microcomix, an even smaller format used by a smaller number of cartoonists. Willis and other small press cartoonists exchanged their creations with fans and other cartoonists though the mail in the United States and worldwide.
The collection consists almost entirely of published items, primarily comix, issued circa to It includes approximately individual titles, often with multiple items sequential issues of comix, magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and zines.
Standard and digest size comix make up about one-third of the collection. While many of these are underground comix, they are of a more professional quality than the other formats in the collection. Among the standard comix are rare and unique issues of Zap Comics R. The minicomix format constitutes approximately ten percent of the collection, a significant volume given both the small size and rarity of the format. Especially notable are minicomix by Steve Willis Morty the Dog , Matt Feazell Cynicalman , and Maximum Traffic, all important cartoonists and collectors in the American underground comix scene.
Microcomix fill two boxes, and are well represented in proportion to the rest of the collection. Of note among the microcomix is the large collection of Chick Tracts, a form of comic Christian propaganda and ministry material. Comix advertising and catalogs fill six boxes. Approximately one-third of the collection is non-comix material, consisting of magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and zines. Of these, zines are the majority about fifteen percent of the collection and are notable for their documentation of the American music underground, counterculture, leftist and ultra-conservative politics, LGBT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender rights, and graphic poetry.
