SAM DINGMAN: For the last couple weeks here on The Show, I’ve been exploring the various ways people find friendship and community here in the Valley, a place where it’s not always easy to do that. Today, I continue my investigation.
I’m sitting in the studio with Dane Barthule. Dane is a member of a shadowy organization here in the Valley called the Monster Rangers.
When he’s with his fellow Rangers, he’s usually in uniform: gray shirt, brown pants, an orange bandana and a pointed hat. But today, the only evidence of his membership in the Rangers is a small pin on his backpack.
BARTHULE: I have an emblem from the Order of Obscuria on my bag.
DINGMAN: Can I see it?
BARTHULE: Yeah, sure. It’s that pin right there.
DINGMAN: Oh, wow.
BARTHULE: So it’s a double-faced crow.
DINGMAN: The Order of Obscuria is a subset of the Monster Rangers. According to Ranger lore, the Order is a small but elite group, kind of a special forces unit, first formed in 1911. Like all Rangers, the Order has the uncanny ability to see monsters walking in our midst — beings most people don’t even know are there.
But the Order doesn’t exist to protect us from the monsters. It’s actually the opposite.
BARTHULE: People see, sometimes they think monsters are these terrifying creatures that will mess you up. But they’re misunderstood. They’re actually very kind beings that should be protected.
DINGMAN: Given the sensitive nature of their work, members of the Order of Obscuria and all Monster Rangers generally keep a low profile. But every once in a while, Dane says, they recognize each other in the wild.
BARTHULE: There was one time that somebody was like, “Hey, I know!” and then they threw up their Caw Claw, which is what we do. And I was like, “Oh, I didn’t realize that you knew.”
DINGMAN: So Caw Claw is like, you just held up like three fingers.
BARTHULE: Three fingers. You kind of make like a talon with your hand and you just go, “Caw!” And then that’s kind of our greeting to one another.
DINGMAN: Legend has it that the history of the Monster Rangers dates back to the early 1900s. Many of the stories about them are just that. But one of the earliest confirmed monster sightings was in 2005 in the pages of a book called “Caught Creatures.”
The book contains a series of illustrations and haikus about monsters like the Squinch, a mustachioed fish; Ms. Dowsh, who resembles a bat in a pink dress with sheep’s horns; and Rishy, a feisty little beast with sharp teeth who loves corn dogs.
The pictures and the haikus are by this guy.
DANIEL DAVIS: I’m Daniel Davis. What you’re seeing here are I’ve started to design miniatures in the Monster Rangers universe. So been making these buildings that are set in the Southwest of 1913, which is kind of the sweet spot for the Monster Rangers because we started — wink, wink — in 1903. Well, that’s when they started. We discovered it.
DINGMAN: I visited Daniel at his house in Peoria, where practically every surface is covered in paint, pens and other art making supplies.
DANIEL DAVIS: And then this is our kitchen/workshop. So around the corner here is our laser. It’s ridiculous, I know, but it’s kind of where we could have a laser.
DINGMAN: This is a laser cutter.
DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah.
DINGMAN: Daniel lives and works here with his wife, Dawna.
DAWNA DAVIS: This is my Skull Ranger uniform. So Skull Rangers speak to the dead. It’s one of the branches of the Monster Rangers.
DANIEL DAVIS: So the Skull Renagers get to wear black. So that’s their specialty is they can be a little bit more goth on the outside.
DAWNA DAVIS: Yes.
DINGMAN: Daniel and Dawna met in Spokane, Washington. Daniel was early in his career as a graphic designer. And he walked into an art supply store where Dawna was working.
DAWNA DAVIS: When I took him over to show him the pens and our eyes locked, it was like my heart skipped a beat. And I knew I was gonna marry him. I just knew it.
DINGMAN: In 2004, they moved to Peoria. Daniel had a job working in a print shop, and Dawna was a teacher. Neither of them was doing exactly what they wanted to do. Dawna wished she was making art, and Daniel was reluctantly designing logos for clients. Between jobs, he spent countless hours doodling these little cartoon monsters.
As often as they could, he and Dawna would drive to California to go to comics conventions. They would set up a booth and sell merchandise featuring Daniel’s characters. They weren’t really getting anywhere until late one night in 2005 in the car on the way back from San Diego Comic Con, when Dawna had an idea.
DANIEL DAVIS: She goes, “You know, you could make, why don’t you make a haiku monster book?”
DINGMAN: It took Daniel two months to finish the drawings and haikus of the Squinch, Ms. Dowsh, Rishy and their ilk. At the next convention they went to, someone came up to Daniel and told him the book was the best thing there.
So Daniel and Dawna started selling prints of his illustrations. They incorporated a company called Steam Crow to sell Daniel’s stuff online.
And they started dreaming about quitting their day jobs.
DAWNA DAVIS: We’re both working full time jobs, raising a kid and doing Steam Crow full time. Finally got to the point where I was like, “We can’t do this anymore.”
DANIEL DAVIS: And Dawna was a real trooper, because we were doing things like getting out of a show in Anaheim at 11 o’ clock at night, driving home, getting home at 3 or 4 in the morning, and then she goes back to school that day and teaches.
DINGMAN: It took seven more years, but they finally got to the point where they could support the themselves by selling prints, pins and books from the Steam Crow universe. By that point, Daniel had started drawing a comic called “Monster Commute,” set in the world of Monstru.
DANIEL DAVIS: Which is the monster world. It’s an industrial world much like our own, except everyone lives in their cars. And it’s all steam-powered cars, and there’s no people. Like people don’t exist. They’re all just weird monsters.
DINGMAN: From there, Daniel got the idea of a Obscuria, a place where the human world and the monster world overlap and where a mercenary group called the Monsterologists are scheming to capture the harmless and misunderstood monsters.
DANIEL DAVIS: For me, monsters sort of represent, they’re like people. And often people have problems. And for me, it’s sort of like I’ve struggled with mental illness over the years. So they’re broken. And so we have to rehabilitate them just like we do with people.
DINGMAN: That’s where the Monster Rangers come in.
The more story Daniel came up with, the longer the lines got at Steam Crow’s convention booths. They started selling Monster Ranger satchels and merit badges.
DAWNA DAVIS: When we would talk to people at shows, we were like, it’s a pretend group. And then one of our Rangers looks at both of us and goes, “This is not pretend. This is real.” And it became real for them because it was a place for them that they felt they belonged, and they hadn’t found anything else before.
DINGMAN: So Daniel and Dawna decided to host a real-life Monster Rangers camping trip. On the way to the campsite, they scrambled to come up with camp activities that would reflect the ever expanding Monster Rangers mythos Daniel had been developing.
DANIEL DAVIS: We’re like, “Oh crap. This has been around since 1903. What are our traditions?” So we make up some, like the Caw Claw. “We believe, study and protect monsters, caw!” So we make that up. We make them take a pledge and we make up all kinds of other things. We have an opening ceremony.
We have a thing called Doomwood Derby, which is our version of Pinewood Derby. We race and crash cars. We have Barter Circle, which is a place where, inspired by goblin markets, we come together and we trade things. But we all exaggerate our wares. We lie about how great they are, what they could possibly be, like a goblin might.
DAWNA DAVIS: And so that happens. We have a magic rock ceremony.
DINGMAN: So you created a world that people wanted to live in?
DAWNA DAVIS: Yeah.
DANIEL DAVIS: Yeah, I think so.
DINGMAN: The Rangers loved the first camp so much that by the end of it, they were already asking when the next one would be. So Daniel and Dawna scheduled another one, and then another. Today, the Monster Rangers are a sprawling community. To join, all you have to do is take the oath to believe, study and protect our monster friends.
From there, you can join specialized units like. Like the Order of Obscuria or the Skull Rangers. You can go on Monster Ranger camping trips, where you’ll meet people like Barthule.
BARTHULE: If I had to explain what this thing is, it’s a great social group to be a part of, and we have a theme that we go with. And so I think that’s kind of what it is for me, to be honest.
DINGMAN: Since he joined the Monster Rangers over 10 years ago, Dane has recruited his husband and his twin brother. He says it’s a way to gather with people who don’t want to be boring.
BARTHULE: We call ourselves odd, so we’re not — we’re odd people. The normal people are not odd, is what we call them, or nodds. But we’re more odd is what it is.
DINGMAN: That framing — odds versus nodds — comes, as you might have guessed, from Daniel.
DANIEL DAVIS: There are nodds and odds. Odds are people like the Rangers or Monsterologists who, for whatever reason, maybe they’ve had an accident, they got hit in the head, they could see monsters. But normal people don’t see monsters. And that’s sort of a parable for we see the world differently. We’re quirky, friendly, and wouldn’t it be great if there were monsters among us?
DINGMAN: That’s the spirit that drew Dane to the Monster Rangers.
BARTHULE: I think it kind of reflects on other things going on, like within our own world and community, that people who are people are who they are, and everyone’s different from one another. And sometimes what you think is something that’s scary and should be feared shouldn’t be just because you don’t understand it.
DINGMAN: You might think that a seasoned Ranger like Dane has tracked down lots of monsters over the years, but no.
So have you ever seen a monster?
BARTHULE: You know, I’m still trying to find them. But I thought I saw one the other day, but it turns out it was just one of my cats just running really quickly in the house.
DINGMAN: So you’ve been doing this for 10 years and counting.
BARTHULE: Yeah, close to, yeah.
DINGMAN: And you haven’t necessarily seen a monster?
BARTHULE: You know, even if I don’t see a monster, I still believe that they’re out there, you know? I will continue to look.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Dawna Davis' name.
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