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Opus 112: Opus
112 (April 15, 2003):
The explanation lies in a story about the Denver Post
in its early, flamboyant days. Operated by two con-men, Harry Tammen
and Fred G. Bonfils, the Post was a scarlet legend in the West.
When its offices where on Champa Street in downtown Denver, Bonfils
had a fire siren installed on the building's roof. He could activate
the siren by pressing a button on his desk. And whenever he got excited
by something, he'd hit the button, and the siren would shriek out
all over downtown Denver. Someone once asked him why he did that.
"Shows enterprise," quoth Bonfils, thereby providing me with the moral
lesson of today's lecture on the news media.
Yup, we're subjected to this constant barrage of news about
every grain of sand in the Iraqi desert because the broadcast media
want to show how enterprising they are.
Wonderful.
I'm sure glad they're not in the tapioca business. War
Diary (Monday, March 31). One of the best things to emerge in the coverage of the War is the re-discovery
of the power of the picture-that-does-not-move. Several news broadcasts
(at least ABC, MSNBC, CNN, and CBS that I've seen) include segments
showcasing the still photographs from lensmen in the field. And that
reminds me that comics consist of still pictures, too—the more
memorable sequences of which often wind up stuck on refrigerator doors
from sea to shining sea. Can't top that, tv. War
Diary (Tuesday, April 1). The News Hour in PBS has the best daily war news summary. Done in the old
fashioned way by listing the battlefield action of the day in Iraq,
it puts the human interest bits from embeds on other networks in context.
The cable tv coverage is particularly frenetic, it seems to me—leaping
from this front to that front, from inside Baghdad to the Northern
frontier. CNN's pitbull anchor Wolf Blitzer, whose machine-gun monotone
goes through you like a laser, does yoeman duty steering the coverage
from place to place, but there's no context in such a whirlwind. PBS
provides a big picture for the day into which we can handily fit the
vignettes of other coverage. NOUS
R US.
Futurama, Matt Groening's send-up of science fiction
movies and tv shows, is out on a 3-disc DVD set. Groening, who has
been nominated for Cartoonist of the Year by the National Cartoonists
Society, says, "The show is still alive, even though it's no longer
supported by its original network, Fox." The show ran 1999-2003, this
last year on Cartoon Network, which hasn't decided, yet, whether to
continue running it beyond the current season. "We're working on Futurama
comic books and toys," Groening said, "and we've been talking about
Futurama movies. Just a few days ago, fans of the program submitted
a petition to save it that had 130,000 signatures. Even by tv standards,
that's pretty amazing." Interviewed by Charles Solomon at The Times,
the celebrated alternative cartoonist cited several favorite moments
in the series: "We had Al Gore on the show twice, that was a thrill,
and Stephen Hawking. But I think our finest moment was reuniting the
entire cast of the original Star Trek: William Shatner, Leonard
Nimoy and all the other actors, who played themselves. We basically
made a new Star Trek episode." He continued: "Every episode
on the DVD has what I guarantee are the liveliest audio commentaries
you'll ever hear. We have the actors Billy West, John Di Maggio and
Maurice LaMarche, along with the relatively subdued writers and animators.
They not only comment on the show, they act out their own show as
Dr. Zoidberg, the Professor, Bender the Robot and the rest."
From Fantagraphics Books, Rebel Visions: The Underground
Comix Revolution 1963-1975 (292 pages; $39.95, www.fantagraphics.com)
by Patrick Rosenbranz who lets the artists tell their own stories
in a "lavishly and luridly illustrated monument to the undergorund's
golden era of representing the unthinkable," says Ruderby Richard
Gehr in the Village Voice. I've already ordered my copy. ...
About the movie "Daredevil," Times Staff Writer Kenneth
Turan says Ben Affleck as the sightless crusader is a "casting coup":
"Affleck is the most perplexing of movie stars: the parts he's been
in haven't necessarily suited him or made him seem comfortable. Until
now. As the blind Daredevil, overmatched defense attorney by day,
fearless vigilante crusader for justice by night, Affleck is surprisingly
at home with the humorlessness, the implacability, even the sullen
obtuseness of a driven comic book superhero. Who knew?" Still, Turan
goes on, the movie "is more notable for its costumes than its drama."
And Jennifer Garner is "easily the film's most charismatic presence.
She and Daredevil immediately square off in a charming getting‑to‑know‑you
martial arts pas de deux choreographed by Hong Kong and Charlie's
Angels veteran Yuen Cheung‑yan. Unfortunately, Garner doesn't
have as much screen time as her prominence in the advertising would
indicate: 'Daredevil' has a hard time staying alive when she's not
on the scene." I wouldn't go quite that far, but, not being a particular
fan of Affleck's chin, I agree that Garner is the best thing in the
flick. The movie isn't as bad as some critics allege. In fact, it's
a pretty entertaining afternoon in the dark—different than Spider-Man
and X-Men, but engaging on a purely action-infested level.
Kroger, a national food store chain, will be the first to carry
Popeye Bread, which comes in four varieties, each identified
by a different character from the celebrated strip: Popeye White Bread
is a hearty, calcium-enriched product; Swee'Pea Honey Bread is naturally
sweet; then there are Olive Oyl Hot Dog Buns and Wimpy Hamburger Rolls
(extra large for holding larger,juicier hamburgers). The launch of
the line doughy goods coincides with the possibility that King Features
might do some promotions in connection with the character's 75th anniversary:
Popeye will be 75 next January although the comic strip he first appeared
in, E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre, had been running for
9 years when Popeye bowed on stage. Olive Oyl is the strip's oldest
character: she was there at the beginning, December 19, 1919.
Wonder Woman lost her flowing mane in No. 190 of her title,
getting a spiky boot-camp clip at her hairdresser's. Said cover artist
Adam Hughes: "If you're going to shock people, you don't give
her something sensible like a bob or make her look like a soccer mom.
You go scary short." ... According to Internet rumor, John Byrne
started drawing Tom Batiuk's syndicated newspaper comic strip
Funky Winkerbean on Monday, March 31; while I haven't been
able to verify the truth of this assertion, the tell-tale signs of
the Byrne style are in evidence.
Stan Lee is teaming with reality tv entrepreneur Bruce
Nash in concocting a new reality series in which contestants will
submit ideas for superheroes, appearing themselves in the costumes
of their creations, and the semifinalists will then witness their
concepts come alive as "fanatasy meets reality" with the finalists,
apparently, getting thrown into classic superhero situations. Lee
is likely (it sez here) to create a comic book franchise for the eventual
winners. ... Debuting on TNN (tv's first network "for men") in June,
an animated series called "Stripperella" stars Pam Anderson as Erotica
Jones, an exotic dancer who leads a double life as super secret agent
Stripperella. A Stan Lee creation, the tarty heroine will get
a sneak preview in print form early in June when a one-shot comic
book (drawn by Harry Cane) from Humanoids Publishing is due
to appear. Lee is understandably
"thrilled": "I always wanted to create a story about a sexy female
superhero," he said. "I believe that this characer is visually perfect
for both mediums. Who wouldn't want to see a drawn and animated version
of Pamela Anderson, one of the sexiest women alive?!" ... And at the
same network, Howard Stern is in talks for an animated series
based upon his tortured existence as a high school nerd, a frequent
topic of the acerbic shock jock's broadcasts.
From featureXpress: Terry LeBan and his wife Patty began
on March 17 to address in their comic strip Edge City a seldom-discussed
marital fact—namely, that busy couples with children usually
don't have time for a sex life. "Not many people want to admit to
this one," said Patty LeBan, "but it seems that sex has been
a casualty of the go‑go family life style that is so common
these days. [The strip's couple,] Len and Abby, despite their loving
marriage, are not immune to this problem, and Abby, good therapist
that she is, develops some interventions to spice up their love life."
Edge City is a collaborative endeavor for the LaBans. While cartoonist/illustrator
Terry draws the strip, character and plot development are devised
jointly with Patty, a licensed social worker. Patty's work brings
a professional and personal perspective on how people live, which
helps to ensure the authenticity of both the situations and characters
in Edge City. "We felt that the comic pages were ready for
an honest discussion of sexual issues within marriage. Though we're
bombarded with sexual images all the time through the media, almost
none of it has anything to do with whatreally goes on in committed
relationships," said Terry. Dr. Joyce Brothers, who previewed the
series, agreed with the LaBans: "The increase of sex on tv may be
because sex sells, but it may also be a reflection of the sexual fantasies
of the public"—a public that evidently isn't getting sex any
other way. Edge City paints a picture of the contrast between
the way most people wish life to be versus the reality. This special
series is a prime example of how the LaBans mine the material of everyday
life and capture the way ordinary people do things. A Detroit native,
Terry LaBan began his cartooning career in 1986, compiling an impressive
portfolio of experience in virtually every cartooning genre—editorial
cartooning, magazine cartooning, underground comic books, mainstream
superhero comic books and kids' humorous comic books. The LaBans,
graduates of the University of Michigan, live in Philadelphia with
their two children.
The European Union is publishing a comic book starring a fictitious
member of the EU Parliament, Irina Vega, "a politician with the will
of a modern day Joan of Arc," says the AP's Constant Brand.
Intended to explain the European Parliament to 12-18 year-olds, the
34-page comic book's star is "the sexiest new member of the Parliament"
according to London's Guardian. The story concerns Vega's fight
to protect drinking water from industrial polluters, and, not suprisingly,
the European Chemical Industry Council, representing some 4,000 polluting
companies, protested. Nonetheless, Brand says, "Parliament officials
say demand is growing for Irina's book, which is distributed at EU
offices and libraries. 'The reaction has been very positive—we
have had a lot of requests for more copies,' said Parliament spokeswoman
Alison Suttie, adding that the EU assembly hoped to publish a total
of 1.3 million copies by year's end. Suttie said the book would be
available in 22 languages in the 15‑nation EU and in eastern
European countries that will join the EU in 2004. The EU assembly
has budgeted 800,000 euro ($866,000) for the project. The free comic
book already has 500,000 copies printed in English and French."
Quote of the Week from Fantagraphics' Eric Reynolds:
"Comics is the only art form defined by a genre. You don't go to movies
and expect to see only westerns. But the comic industry, for a variety
of reasons, has been equated with juvenile entertainment."
And with superheroes,
I might add—that's the defining genre.
Eddie Campbell announced the cessation of his self-publishing
enterprise in February. Egomania No. 2 is the last of the crop,
he said. "I conceived Egomania in a moment when From Hell
was bringing in so much revenue that I could afford to indulge myself
and put out a magazine which made no compromises to market expectations.
I wanted to do a mag made up of my enthusiasms, pure and simple, presented
in a precise and attractive typographical setting. I also wanted it
to be such an eclectic mix of stuff that it would confound the comics
purists who attempt to oppress and stultify our medium by straight‑jacketing
it with their definitions and rules. It's time to broaden our vision
instead of narrowing it. I knew the thing had no chance in the current
market and that the clock was ticking as soon as I started. The collapse
of my U.S. distributor last year hurried things to an early conclusion.
... I take pride in the fact that in the eight years since I started
self-publishing, I have managed to get my entire catalog, more or
less, back into print. There are the four Alec, or autobiographical,
books, the nine Bacchus books, and the enormous collected From
Hell. If you haven't picked up After The Snooter yet, go
and check it out. I put everything into that one and I believe it's
the goods." Among Campbell's current projects, is a Batman book that
he is writing and painting. "The book is set in London in 1939 and
involves a complicated mystery and a very eccentric secret society,"
he said. "I'm enjoying applying myself to the full color painted pages"
wherein, "to my surprise, I am reinventing myself anew on every page."
The Herb Block Foundation, endowed with $50 million
at the cartoonist's death two years ago, has begun to exercise its
charge, according to David Astor at Editor & Publisher.
Its first big move is donating more than 14,000 originals of Herblock's
editorial cartoons to the Library of Congress. "They were in his basement—one
burst pipe away from disaster," said Foundation President Frank Swoboda.
The exhibit opened March 12. Eventually, Swoboda said, there will
be a permanent Herblock Room at the Library. The Foundation plans
include dispensing grant money and starting a political cartooning
prize and college scholarships. Also under consideration is help for
journalism organizations such as the Association of American Editorial
Cartoonists. Swoboda reported that about $20 million of Herblock's
estate is available to the Foundation at this point,with the rest
to be released when the probate process is completed.
Australian James Kemsley, the cartoonist currently holding
the Ginger Meggs franchise Down Under, has been invited to
speak at the National Cartoonists Society's 57th annual conference
in San Francisco in May on Memorial Day weekend. He's the first Australian
artist honoured in this way. Americans will hear about Ginger's history,
billycarts, stolen lunches, and the Oz cartoon industry. Ginger Meggs,
often called Australia's most loved comic character, was created in
approximately 1921 by Jim Bancks in a strip entitled Us
Fellers. "Ginge," as he is known affectionately, was but a bit
player in the strip, but as the irrepressible schoolboy, he soon assumed
the lead role in the strip, which, in 1939, surrendered to the inevitable
and became Ginger Meggs. In John Ryan's history of Australian
comics, Panel by Panel, Ryan writes: "Drawing on his own boyhood,
Bancks was able to capture all the character, warmth and charm of
a typical Australian boy. Ginge's homespun philosophy and observations
on life were a delight and represented an aspect of the strip that
was never duplicated by his many imitators. For Ginge, life was meant
for playing sport, going to the pictures, attending birthday parties
or picnics, and for gobbling down ice cream, cakes and fruit. He viewed
school homework and helping around the house as diabolical plots intended
to deprive him of the real pleasures of life." Ginger's latest
homes in this hemisphere include the Washington Post online
(one of several U.S. papers publishing him).
Jonathan Raban in The Guardian: The northwestern city
of Seattle is home to Boeing and is ringed by military bases. But
it is a Democrat stronghold and, as it enters a phase of chastened
realism following the collapse of the dotcom boom, new voices are
being raised against Bush's war on Iraq, among them, the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, where resistance to the war is rooted more
in mistrust of its moral and political objectives. The most heartfelt
and persistent criticism of the administration has come from David
Horsey, the paper's Pulitzer‑prize winning editorial cartoonist,
whose drawings of the 43rd president show him as a scrawny, simian‑featured
homuncule with a childish predilection for dressing up—now as
Caesar, now as Napoleon, as a western gunfighter, as a tin‑hatted
soldier‑hero from the Normandy beaches. Horsey took a year off
to study international politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury,
and his cartoons are more conceptually elaborate than most. Here,
for instance, is Bush the huckster‑showman, wielding a distorting
funhouse mirror to vastly magnify the small, torpid rat labelled Saddam
Hussein, and inquiring of his audience, "Are you scared enough yet?"
To which, I add my too sense: The War has inspired a relatively
robust onslaught of cartoon criticisms of the Bush League, it seems
to me. Admittedly, I regularly view online the work of editorial cartoonists
whose views I agree with, but before embarking upon this week's installment
of Rancid Raves, I deliberately looked around for George "War" Bush
supporters and found very few. Earlier this year, David Astor at E&P
counted the editorial cartoonists listed by ideology in the Universal
Press and Tribune Media rosters and found 19 liberals and only 6 conservatives,
so perhaps a tepid strain of Bushwacker enthusiasm is understandable.
Recently, however (in the March 31 issue of E&P), Astor
queried some cartooners and came to this conclusion: "A dozen years
ago, editorial cartoonists who questioned the Persian Gulf War received
death threats and lots of hate mail. Things look different today.
In the early stages of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, some antiwar artists
are getting as much positive as negative mail, or not much mail at
all. Clearly, there's more sentiment against—or, at least ambiguity
about—this war than the one waged by the first President Bush."
Ann Telnaes, whose opposition to Bushwacking is often vehement,
said she receives as much positive as negative mail: "I've gotten
the usual obscenity-filled rants—but also encouragement from
people telling me to 'keep doing what you're doing.'" She is, Astor
said, "'a little surprised' by the amount of positive reaction and
by the number of papers running cartoons (by her and others) that
question the war."
Typically, across the board, regardless of political persuasion,
the enemy, Saddam, is routinely ridiculed and belittled—the
usual stance taken by cartoonists in support of their country. But
a surprising number of cartoons also deal with the hypocrisy of the
policy that makes war on Iraq while relying upon diplomacy for North
Korea as well as an administration that has failed at the U.N., can't
muster to its cause any major power in the international community,
aims to suppress dissent, and is running up a bill that future generations
of Americans will have to pay off. If the coalition forces in Iraq
emerge, soon, victorious and without too many casualties, the general
readership support of contrary opinions in editorial cartoons will
doubtless begin to evaporate. The fog of war will disappear in the
euphoria of victory, and the voices of criticism will be drowned out
in hosannas of triumph. It is not only the media that suffers from
what Donald Rumsfield calls "mood swings." In the meantime, it's nice
to know dissent is alive and well among editoonists.
From cartoonist Scott Shaw!, this sad news: Pete
Millar, editor, publisher, hot rodder and automotive cartoonist
supreme, died while relaxing at home on Friday, February 28. Pete
had no known health problems and was still drawing regularly. Pete
edited and published (and drew a majority of the material with a spectacular
sense of draughtsmanship) Drag Cartoons. He also published
Gilbert Shelton's Wonder Wart‑hog Magazine and Big
Daddy Roth Magazine, as well as contributing to CARtoons, HOT
ROD CARtoons and other Petersen Publications. Besides Shelton,
he also published work by Alex Toth and Russ Manning, among others.
(The guy had good taste, that's for certain!) Pete even once owned
a drag race car, sponsored through contributions from the readers
of his magazine, and had recently done some one‑shot magazines
aimed at the drag racing audience. His big goal, unfortunately never
achieved, was to curate a traveling art show of the best of humorous
automotive cartoon art. Pete Millar does, however have a few pieces
on display at the Hot Rod Museum in the Fairplex near Ontario, California.
He attended the last few San Diego Comic‑Con Internationals,
which was where I got to know him a bit. Although never lionized by
fandom, Pete (who despised superhero comics) was a good guy whose
masterful cartooning influenced a generation or three of budding cartoonists
(at least) and hot rod fanatics. RIP, Pete Millar; you'll be missed.
[The history of CARtoons, which Miller co-founded, is at www.HotRod.com.]
I reported here an erroneous death some many moons ago. Contrary
to that report, Cracked is still publishing: No. 359
is out now, and the magazine sells 50,000 copies whenever it appears.
Dick Kulpa, owner and editor-in-chief, is trying to get it out monthly
but has fallen pretty far short of that goal recently--only 9 issues
in the last two years. ... Chicago's oldest comic book shop, Comic
Kingdom, which opened in 1971 as The Fantasy Shop, has closed its
doors. Own Joe Sarno says most of his business is now done
on the Internet. ... Bud Plant Illustrated Books, the emporium
of comics and popular illustration operated by Jim Vadeboncoeur,
Jr., is now into original art; the first catalog is an elegant
production, including full color on the covers and elegant prices,
too, at 3809 Laguna Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94306-2629. ... And SPEC
Productions' latest issue of Alley Oop the Magazine, No. 16,
brings V.T. Hamlin's saga to January-July 1946 with an Atlantis
story that is continued seven days a week, through the Sunday strips;
so publisher Andy Feighery ran the Sundays—in full color ($65/4
issues, P.O. Box 32, Manitou Springs, CO 80829-0032). For the next
issue, Feighery is skipping four-and-a-half-years of the continuity,
from July 1946 until November 1950. The omitted years have been reprinted
in three Kitchen Sink Press books and in the forthcoming tome,
Alley Oop and the Crusades (184 pages in paperback, $25). It's
listed in the March Previews, but if you missed it, you could
inquire at the publisher, Manuscript Press, P.O. Box 336, Mountain
Home, TN 37684. Interview
with R. Crumb.
On March 30, The New York Times Sunday magazine carried, in
its Style section, an interview with the reclusive Robert Crumb. Illustrated
with Crumb drawings, the Underground Maestro's ruminations include
his usual array of rants about his favorite female figure: "I like
big women with full figures." The skinny women of fashion are not
for him. "It's kind of an upper-class sign of affluence: You can never
be too rich or too thin. ... You know what the ultimately sexy thing
is? A Catholic-schoolgirl outfit." His wife Aline "used to dress up
to suit my fancy. She kind of got tired of that. She used to put on
white knee socks and these little schoolgirl outfits. She was a lot
chubbier in the early days. Now she's gotten quite thin. It's a little
disheartening to see her derriere go down. But she's happier being
that way, so what the heck. But she's still quite muscular. She says
her ideal body type now is Lance Armstrong's."
It wasn't the derrieres of French women that persuaded him
to take up permanent residence in France a decade or so ago. "French
women have no hips, no dierriere—nothing," Crumb said. But tushes
had something to do with his move. "Aline lured me over here to get
me away from all the big-bottomed American women. That's where the
biggest keisters in the world are—America." Considering his
fixation on the female fundament, Crumb allowed that "maybe I need
fifteen years on the couch and some Freudian psychoanalyst to figure
it out." But things are looking up: "A lot of my comics continually
plugged hideously hostile stuff toward women," he said. "When I was
young, I just had a lot of anger I had to get out. I don't have an
urge to draw that kind of stuff anymore."
He once turned down $100,000 to do a car ad. "When it comes
down to it, those people will want this done and that changed, and
before you know it, you've lost all your dignity and integrity and
you're just groveling before these people to get their money." He
steered clear of Playboy, too, for approximately the same reasons.
Publisher Hefner is a frustrated cartoonist with a well-known penchant
for tinkering with his cartoonists' conceptions. "After I got to be
well known," Crumb said, "I found that I could do exactly what I wanted
and have it published—so why do I need restrictions and directions
from Hugh Hefner?"
One of his interviewers observed that Crumb was not interested
in celebrity any more than money and "the art thing" didn't seem to
interest him either. "So what motivates you?" Said Crumb: "The work
itself is what motivates me. I like my own stuff,you know? I like
the way it looks. I do it to please myself first."
As for the iconoclastic graffiti and hip hop stuff, "It doesn't
interest me at all," he said. "I don't like any of it." Bruegel is
"my main man." REVIEW:
BARKS AGAIN.
A twinge of melancholy, a sort of woebegone wistfulness, just enough
to make me pause reflectively for a moment—I get one of those
when, at not infrequent intervals, I realize that I haven't been reading
any of Carl Barks' duck stories lately. I haven't read any
of them since I plunged into a huge stack of old comic books in the
fall of 2000 to prepare for writing a long obituary and tribute to
the famed Duck Man. (It appeared in The Comics Journal, No.
227.). And before that, I hadn't read any of Barks' stories since—oh,
maybe the late 1940s, when I was reading them as they came out in
Donald Duck Adventures and Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.
But that doesn't mean I never thought about Barks and his ducks. I
did. More frequently than I probably realize. Because Barks is a giant
in the comics medium, I think of his work every so often as I wend
my wayward way through the current crop of comics and ponder the triumphs
of yesteryear, all the dubious preoccupations of a comics critic and
historian. And whenever I do think of Barks, I remember, with a delight
palpable enough to make me squirm in my chair, losing myself in the
stories. Donald and his resourceful nephews were so real to me during
the time that I was actively reading the funnybooks that they and
their adventures reside forever in the warmest recollections of my
early years.
Theirs was a world of good-natured laughter and the giddy excitement
of rollicking adventure. In short, it was both funny and fun. And
moral. Barks' stories championed honesty, hard work, loyalty and resourcefulness.
The Puritan ethic. American values, through and through. Pioneering
American values.
Remembering all this time after time, I resolve, every time,
to read more of the Barks canon. And I usually head off in the direction
of that huge cardboard box in which I've stored so many of the duck
comics, but, alas, en route, something else catches my eye, and, before
I realize what I'm doing, I've wandered off in another direction,
momentary distraction becoming a new, full-blown Project that will
keep me, once more, from returning to Barks.
So I'm happy that Gemstone has the Disney license to publish
duck stories once again, starting in June (it sez here), with an inaugural
issue on Free Comic Book Day, May 3. The fresh appearance of these
books on the newsstands will remind me to read them, to revisit the
haunting scenes of the duck tales. And that brings us to today's topic,
Carl Barks Conversations, a collection of interviews with Barks
(248 6x9-inch pages in paperback, $18; hardcover, $46) that has just
been published by the University Press of Mississippi as the third
in a series featuring masters of the cartooning arts.
The first in this series was Charles Schulz Conversations;
the second (which I collected and edited), Milton Caniff Conversations
(all visible at upress.state.ms.us).
Assembled and edited by Donald Ault, perhaps the most authoritative
of the half-dozen Barks scholars on the horizon, the Barks book marks
something of a departure from the practice of the first two. The first
two volumes reprinted previously published interviews with their subjects;
Ault's book contains much material published here for the first time.
Some of it is entirely fresh; and some of this new material
was originally left out of previously published interviews. And some
of it, while published before, has not been available in English until
now. "Whenever possible," Ault told me, "I went straight to the interviews
and got the original tapes or transcriptions and did not rely on published
versions, except where original transcriptions were not available."
Altogether, there are 24 interviews, plus a long insightful
introductory appreciation of Barks' achievement by Ault and a Chronology
of his life and work. The interviews are arranged chronologically,
beginning with the one conducted in 1962 by Malcolm Willits, the fan
who first revealed the identity of the Duck Man, and ending with Ault's
last conversations with the artist just two months before he died
on August 25, 2000.
Among the contents, a complete transcription of the interview,
portions of which were released as a video, "The Duck Man: An Interview
with Carl Barks," in 1996. Just in case (like me) you missed acquiring
this treasure.
This is a gem of a collection, and much of its luster derives
from the subject himself. Because of the interview format, we "meet"
Barks and acquire an understanding of the man as well as the artist.
And he was a man worth knowing—a gentle, unassuming man—as
well as a storytelling genius.
"Above all," Ault writes in his introduction, "Barks valued
the originality and sincerity of his work. His commitment was to teach
his audience to read with wonderment, all the while 'telling it like
it is,' 'laying it right on the line,' and making his readers recognize
that 'nothing was going to always turn out roses.'"
Barks admitted deliberately slipping moral content into his
stories. "Often it would be something that developed as I was writing
on the story. I would notice that maybe I should just play up this
angle a little bit. Yeah, I would put them in once in a while, consciously;
and at other times, they just slid in without any effort. They were
just the stock things—like Crime Does Not Pay and Pride Goeth
before a Fall."
But he stayed clear of political themes. "It's a very uninteresting
subject to young kids," he explained, "and it's a subject that can
get you into a lot of hot water. And my own political philosophy is
that we've got a pretty good thing the way we've got it now, and we
should just leave it damn well alone. We can have Watergates and all
kinds of things, but nobody gets hurt, nobody gets destroyed, nobody
goes to prison: we just have a lot of fun as we go along. Everybody's
robbin' everybody else, but it's something you expect."
He also said: "I think one of the duck's philosophies, as near
as I could ever figure it out, was that nothing was ever so damned
important that you should worry about it a hell of a lot."
Asked who his favorite character is, Barks replied: "I guess
I better say Donald is ... because he's like all my friends, my neighbors,
myself—he's just Mister Everyman. If I ever had to write a story
real fast, I would choose Uncle Scrooge as my favorite character in
that case because I could think of a story for him easier than I could
think of one for Donald. ... You know he's either going to be looking
for money or he's going to have a battle with the Beagle Boys to save
his money. He's got a ready-made plot right there, without having
to reach out for it."
Barks tells about haunting drugstores where comic books were
sold "if I happened to be around with a little time on my hands."
He'd pretend to be looking at Popular Mechanics, but he was
really watching the kids reading comic books. "I always hoped that
I would see some kid buy a Walt Disney Comics or an Uncle
Scrooge. I never did. They always picked up Superman or
a Harvey comic or an Oswald Rabbit, but never did one of them
even look at an Uncle Scrooge or a Donald Duck. I used
to wonder what on earth did they [distributors and store owners] do
with these big stacks of Walt Disney Comics—they'd be
two feet high sometimes. Would they tear off all those covers and
send all of them back? Was the company crazy? But evidently some kid
would buy them—always on the sly when I couldn't see him."
How about having his own comic strip? "I didn't have the aggressiveness
to ever produce a strip of my own," Barks said. "Disney gave me a
stage on which to perform my little vaudeville act, and I did all
right with it. I would never have had that opportunity in any other
circumstances; he gave me that break."
And later: "I'm sure glad that I found the thing I could do
well and it was any easy kind of work. Now if I had found out that
I was the best ditch digger in the world, wouldn't that have been
a hell of a thing? Yeah, I was able to come up with these stories,
the story plots, and draw them, a nice easy job, with the cool fan
blowing on me in the summer and a nice stove to sit by in the winter.
In good solid comfort and working on my own time, and I could quit
any time I wanted to and go to the icebox. Yeah, it was a perfect
life."
A perfect life and a monumental achievement.
Carl Barks created stories for children. If comic books were
to be viewed as a species of literature, then he worked in that branch
of belles lettres dubbed "juvenile" in the book trade. But
those scoffers who pronounce "kiddie lit" with a lingering sneer have
doubtless forgotten Dr. Seuss and A.A. Milne and Kenneth Graham and
Lewis Carroll. And Barks' carefully crafted oeuvre, like that of this
revered band of storytellers, appeals to adults as well as children.
It engages their imagination. And their admiration, too. And
no author—whether Joseph Conrad or Arthur Conan Doyle or Charles
Dickens or William Shakespeare himself—can hope for a loftier
accolade or achieve greater acclaim.
For more about Barks, click right here
to be transported to our Hindsight department and a long appreciation
of the man and his work, written shortly after he died. CIVILIZATION'S
LAST OUTPOST.
Robert Redford, it was disclosed not long ago, owns an SUV. Yup, that's
right. Despite his energetic tub thumping for environmental causes,
he owns one of these gas-guzzling, atmospheric-polluting vehicles.
Uses it, he says, to navigate through the wilderness on his vast holdings
Out West. But, he says—by way of amelioration—he still
prefers the horse for reconnoitering the back country.
Nice idea, the horse. But in practice, not so nifty. Back in
those fondly invoked horse-buggy-days, New York once had a horse population
of around 150,000. Each one of these healthy animals produced 20-25
pounds of horse shit a day. In Rochester, New York, with a horse population
of merely 15,000, some mathematical whiz calculated that this herd
would produce, in a year, enough horse shit to cover an acre of ground
with a layer 175 feet high. In New York City, with ten times the horses,
the layer would be, lessee—1,750 feet high. Or deep.
Quite apart from the obstacle course these road apples made
of the streets (where "tripping the light fantastic" in those days
had an entirely different meaning than the one we usually assign to
the song) was the constant threat to health. There was no horse-shit-removal
service in those dear days of yore. The horse shit just sat there.
Sat there and dried out. Then the traffic pounded these li'l dumplings
into powder, which blew around the city like the very air folks breathed.
In fact, it was the very air we would have been breathing.
No, horses aren't all that attractive an alternative to automobiles
with their internal combustion engines. And not just because they
create a health hazard of monumental proportions. Nope—there's
at least one more thing about horses as a means of transportation.
They're uncomfortable. To put it mildly.
The last time I boarded a horse was about twenty years ago,
and it was a memorable occasion. I'd ridden horseback once or twice
before, but this time, for some inexplicable reason, I was aware of
something I hadn't been aware of before. I discovered that male human
anatomy is not entirely compatible with horseback riding. When you
straddle a large animal and sit right down on it, you suddenly realize
that you are not sitting directly on the back of the animal. Not always.
Sometimes, depending upon how tight your pants are, something is between
you and the saddle. Something delicate, a part of your body that is
extremely sensitive to external pressures not to mention actual blows.
There's a reason, I found out, for supporting your sit-uation by standing,
sort of, in the stirrups. But that didn't seem very cowboy-like, so
I'd occasionally try actually sitting. The horse, oblivious to my
discomfort, plowed on. Occasionally, as we traversed a rocky mountain
trail, he'd put his foot down wrong on a small rock, and his foot
would slip off, transmitting a jerk all over his body, which was,
in turn, transmitted to me, inflicting the very blow that I was leery
of. The ordeal lasted only an hour, but it's not an hour I ever expect
to repeat in this life. How John Wayne did it all those years without
developing a falsetto I'll never know.
If I have to choose between horse-back riding and driving an
SUV, I'll opt for the gas-guzzler over the hay-burner.
But my fundamental objection to SUVs is not their gas consumption
(although I think we're being silly to the point of criminal irresponsibility
to flock to these behemoths when we know they shorten the number of
days until we're back on horseback); my ire at these vehicles is aroused
by their size, not their fuel inefficiency. People in normal-sized
cars can't see around SUVs. And they are therefore road hazards. If
one is parked near an intersection and you're trying to turn onto
or cross over that street, you can't see on-coming traffic because
the SUV blocks your view. Happens in every parking lot, too: if you
happen to be parked next to one of these laviathans, you can't see
if there's a car coming down the lane behind you when you get ready
to back out.
SUVs are simply stupid power trips. And somewhere, some wag
announced that they are solely responsible for our current preoccupation
with oil-laden Iraq. We need those oil fields to fuel these big babies.
Phooey.
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