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  • Tim Eagan
    PO Box 497
    Felton, CA 95018

Tim EaganTim Eagan

Tim has been cartooning professionally since the early 70s — after discovering there weren't that many laughs to be found in the legal profession. His single-panel work has appeared in a number of alternative weeklies as well as in the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, High Times, The National Lampoon, and Penthouse. His comic strips, Subconscious Comics and Deep Cover, have run in dailies and alternative publications nationwide for over 30 years.

Eagan attended Dartmouth College and Hastings College of the Law. While working as a cartoonist, he has also found himself employed as a carpenter, teacher, editor, publisher, graphic designer, domemaker, and as a contributor of radio comedy to NPR's "All Things Considered." He also made an unsuccessful run for Santa Cruz County District Attorney in 1978 (on the Cartoon Party ticket).

Deep CoverDeep Cover

Deep Cover first saw ink as a regular feature in the San Francisco Examiner in 1994. The Examiner, which had been the flagship of the Hearst newspaper armada, was in the market for a regular editorial cartoonist at the time, and I was in the running. None of us, however, foresaw the withering of print media. The Examiner has since died, and with it, my beautiful dream.

Deep Cover lives on, though. Even at the height of my work with Subconscious Comics, I was always producing political cartoons. In fact, I’ve been drawing them from my earliest days. I can report as a matter of honor that my caricature of Nixon, posted in my sister’s bedroom window during the 1960 presidential campaign, was poisonous enough to draw an egging of our house on election night. That’s exactly the kind of pithy dialogue I’m trying to encourage with Deep Cover.

Subconscious ComicsSubconscious Comics

Subconscious Comics began in 1981 in Santa Cruz and ran weekly until going into hibernation in 2000. Subcon achieved some notoriety nationally, and I published one collection, The Collected Subconscious, in 1991.

I’m reprinting them all here on TimEagan.com, beginning with the most recent first and working backward to that very first cartoon. According to my calculations, that drawing should appear on the site sometime in 2023. If you hang on that long, you’ll see (in reverse) that the drawing style has evolved a lot over the years. The setting, characters, and concept, I’m proud to say, have not.

The setting is still inside somebody’s mind (as distinguished from the inside of his brain), and the The Boss is still the boss, which is to say in name only. Nemo is still Nemo and remains my personal hero. I added Ava in 1985 so the Boss could get in touch with his feminine side. There are some other regular characters — notably Fuzzy and The Kid — but Nemo and the Boss carry most of the load.

I’ve never stopped thinking about Subcon. Someday, I know, I’ll start drawing it again. I miss the characters too much — and the frame of mind it put me in. Another collection is also bound to happen. I might even finish that graphic novel with Subconscious Comics at its core.