Hashman

Multiple Award-winning graphic novel about Criminal-turned-psychologist JoeL Berman whose complicated past, extends through East Coast mobs, the psychedelic 60s, the New York celebrity drug culture, Berkeley Peace movement, the Paris riots, Altamont, Woodstock, laundering money in Southeast Asia, and sitting meditation courses in Tibet. Join Joel as he manages to escape prosecution time and time again by the seat of his pants, ultimately becoming a noteworthy shrink in Seattle where he manages to find himself as a central figure in the worldwide cannabis legalization scene as its most notorious authorizing doc, dispensary financier, and industry stalwart. Will he make it thru? Or will the law finally catch up with him?

Hashman is important because it offers a true snapshot of life as a hustler in the late 20th century American pop culture landscape, and how he enters the modern era, offering a view of the underground world of cannabis, and how it evolved for the last 5 decades from its seedy roots to a sterile and legalized corporate venture. Get a front row seat in how the massive need for security, rooted in a childhood trauma, can mix with greed and an obsession for vice to eventually lead to one's personal destruction.

Based on a series of interviews with eye witnesses, court reports, and newspaper articles carefully used to construct an authentic and visually visceral ride through the life of a well connected cannabis pioneer.

Alex Grand is an internationally established comics historian, founder of the Comic Book Historians, and a regular panelist at Comic Con International: San Diego, Wonder Con, and San Diego ComicFest. He has been featured in comics-based documentaries, television, and radio appearances and has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Hollywood Reporter, The Comics Journal, The Jack Kirby Collector and Alter Ego. He lives in Sacramento, California.

Joshua S. Berman has been a part of the Seattle entertainment scene for his entire adult life, and arch-designer of the Washington cannabis industry, which went on to become the blueprint for legalization across the United States. He was co-founder for 4evergreen Group, founder of PDA Magazine and Lounge, and originator and operator of the Hash Agency, which is on the cutting edge of defining the industry on the West Coast, and now in New York.