Anti-nuclear group hires Port Orchard artist to design cartoon-style billboard in Gorst

Peiyu Lin, Kitsap Sun
Updated ·4 min read
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Anti-nuclear weapon organization Ground Zero hires Port Orchard artist Pat Moriarity to design and produce a cartoon-style billboard to raise awareness of how close Gorst is to Naval Base Kitsap, Bangor. The billboard is displayed near the intersection of highways SR 16 and SR 3.
Anti-nuclear weapon organization Ground Zero hires Port Orchard artist Pat Moriarity to design and produce a cartoon-style billboard to raise awareness of how close Gorst is to Naval Base Kitsap, Bangor. The billboard is displayed near the intersection of highways SR 16 and SR 3.

PORT ORCHARD — Despite living in Port Orchard for 23 years, cartoonist Pat Moriarity didn't realize the extent of how many nuclear weapons are stored just a few miles away at Naval Base Kitsap Bangor, close to home. Now, his unique style of artwork will draw attention to that fact for others.

Moriarity was hired by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action to design and produce a cartoon-style billboard now located in Gorst, the first time the 45-year-old anti-nuclear weapon organization has used a medium more common to comic books than controversy.

The billboard is placed near the intersection of Highways 16 and 3, visible to those driving southbound.

On the paid advertisement centered a little boy with an ice cream cone in hand and a shocked impression. Surrounded by the boy is a map that marks the distance from Gorst to Bangor, some illustrations of nuclear warheads and submarines, and words that say "Did You Know we’re only 15 Miles from the largest concentration of deployed nukes in the USA!" and "Let’s Abolish Nuclear Weapons."

"We're not surrounded by, but so close to these weapons and don't know it, so I just kind of liked the idea of an innocent little kid with an ice cream cone, and he doesn't know," Moriarity, a longtime cartoon illustrator with a lengthy list of credits in the Northwest and beyond, told Kitsap Sun about his art. "I thought maybe that would be something that would show right away when you drive by even if you don't read it."

"I think it works," said Moriarity, who got his start in the mid-1980s doing punk rock posters in Minneapolis, according to his website, before moving to Seattle and become art director for Fantagraphics, which led to a career working with clients that range from Nickelodeon and National Geographic Kids to Columbia Records, Sasquatch Books, the Stranger and more.

The billboard was installed on August 21 and it will be displayed for four weeks, through September 17, according to Ground Zero.

More cartoon-style anti-nuke materials planned

This was the first time Ground Zero hired an artist to do a cartoon-style billboard to draw public attention, and the organization is planning to do more, said Glen Milner at Ground Zero. Future ideas may include changing the number of the distance and the map to Bangor on the existing cartoon-style design so that the same art can be placed on billboards in different areas in Seattle.

Milner said the history of the Poulsbo-based organization doing such advertisements in public started when the group bought ads on the metro buses in Seattle. This approach lasted about three years until bus ad policy was changed to exclude the display of what was considered controversial issues. Then, the group moved on to purchase ads on billboards for a few years, though they knew it was easy for people to drive by and not look at one.

"Basically, what we're trying to do is (to) educate people that the base is so close to them," Milner said. "With our outreach, we kind of discovered that when we're trying to talk to people about nuclear weapons and they don't even know the sub base exists."

The cartoon-style billboard is planned to be the first of a series of billboards Ground Zero places across Washington State that will inform people of the distance at each billboard location to Bangor, the organization said.

Also, Ground Zero is preparing to publish a 32-page comic book about nuclear weapons issues in Washington. Five artists, including Moriarity, who is designing the front cover of the comic book, are working on this project, Milner said.

"It's pretty close to completion," Milner said of the comic book. "It should be published before the end of the year— probably sooner."

According to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), NBK Bangor is the largest concentration of deployed nuclear warheads in the United States. The nuclear warheads are deployed on submarines and are stored in an underground nuclear weapons storage facility on the base. Bangor is home to 8 of the nation's 14 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Ground Zero hires artist to design cartoon-style billboard in Gorst