PAUL SCHRAG: BEWARE OF THE CLAW >>>

It’s a sign of Tacoma’s maturity, and it’s about time. Though the details are necessarily hazy, a small group of locals has created Tacoma’s first secret society. Currently comprising four adepts of the dark visual arts, the Cartoonists League of Absurd Washingtonians, or The CLAW, is coming for your kids.

Well, maybe not your kids. Not yet anyway.

Without hesitation or coyness, co-founder Elliot Trotter heralds the group as heroes of sorts. They wear Fez, meeting in smoke-filled rooms surrounded by strange, musky women and ashy, pinched-faced old Mullahs, chanting to forgotten gods through the ambient mist of whiskey breath and candle wax. They are bent on ridding the world of zombies (not the undead kind â€" the “you’re probably one of them” kind). They scheme to prepare humanity for its inevitable transmutation into a race of robots, says Elliot.

Plus they draw stuff.

Read the full story on the Weekly Volcano Web site.