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Opus 163: Opus 163 (June 8, 2005). This year's NCS Reuben winner is, at
last, Pat Brady, creator of the cartoon masterpiece, Rose Is Rose. We
take a look at his strip and why I call it a masterpiece, but first,
a report on the Reuben Awards Weekend-lists of winners and glimpses
of the seminar presentations by the likes of Scott Shaw, Glenn and Gary
McCoy, Gahan Wilson, a trio of editoonists (Mike Luckovich, Ann Telnaes,
and Joel Pett), Jay Stephens, Lalo Alcaraz and Darrin Bell, as well
as a tedious discussion of the NCS Foundation and its scandal-ridden
origins. Then we conclude with a review of Cartooning Success Secrets,
a compilation of favorite articles in the 30 year run of Cartoonist
PROfiles, selected by its founding editor, Jud Hurd. Finally, as always,
our usual Solicitous Rejoinder: Remember, when you get to the Members'
Section, the useful "Bathroom Button" (also called the "print
friendly version") of this installment that can be pushed for a
copy that can be read later, at your leisure while enthroned. Without
further adieu-
The Reuben Awards Weekend of the National
Cartoonists Society, May 27-29 It's
about time! Rose Is Rose creator
Pat Brady, seven times a bridesmaid, was
finally named Cartoonist of the Year by his peers at the 59th
annual awards banquet of the NCS on May 28. Also at the meeting, NCS
announced the establishment of the NCS Foundation with a $1 million
endowment, and President Steve
McGarry, concluding his two-term stewardship of the Society, passed
the gavel to his successor, strip cartoonist
Rick Stromoski (Soup to Nutz). Brady's nomination for the Reuben this
year was his eighth consecutive time being a nominee for the distinction.
And every nomination for the Reuben is a signal recognition because
the three finalists each year are determined by vote of the entire membership
of NCS, balloting individually without the prompting of a slate of candidates.
Only Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury), who won in 1995, is reputed to have been nominated more
times than Brady before winning. Although Brady retired from writing
and drawing his strip in March 2004, just six weeks short of a 20-year
run on the strip (working single-handedly, without an assistant, the
entire time), he continues to be actively involved in guiding his successor
on Rose,
Don Wimmer. (For
more about Rose and Brady, scroll down.) At the Memorial Day Weekend celebration
in Scottsdale, Arizona, emcee'd by Dan Piraro, whose stand-up comedy
has made him the annual ringmaster, NCS also recognized the achievement
of other cartoonists in the various cartooning genre. Each of them received
a plaque depicting, in bas relief, some Reubenesque characters cavorting
around the edges. These are sometimes called "Reubens" but
they aren't. Technically, only the Cartoonist of the Year receives a
Reuben; other winners are winners of "Reuben Division Awards,"
which I, in the interest of brevity and clarity, have dubbed "Rubes."
Because every nomination is a distinction, I'm listing all the Rube
nominees in each division here, marking the winners with an asterisk.
Advertising
Illustration: Roy Doty, Sean Parkes, and *Mike Lester, who varied
the usual acceptance speech ritual by singing, in full, a Randy Newman
song, "Political Science" (which he's been singing for years
in other venues); Animation Feature:
*Brad Bird, Director (The Incredibles), Tony Fucile, Character Design
(The Incredibles), Lou Romano, Production Designer (The Incredibles);
TV Animation: Tim Bjorkland (Brandy and
Mr. Whiskers), *Craig McCracken (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends),
Glen Murakami (Teen Titans); Book
Illustration: *Geefwee Boedoe, Jenna Lareau, Emma Magenta; Comic Books: Tom Bancroft (Opposite Forces), *Darwyn Cooke (DC's The New Frontier), Roger Langridge (Fred the Clown);
Editorial Cartoons: Jim Borgman,
Gary Brookins, *Jeff Parker (interestingly, they all moonlight on comic
strips: Borgman on Zits, Brookins
on Shoe, and Parker on Blondie); Magazine Gag Cartoons: Sam Gross, Glenn McCoy, *Robert Weber, who
was not present, but Mort Gerberg, a fellow New
Yorker cartoonist, accepted for him and said he'd give Weber the
award at the weekly luncheon where the magazine's cartoonists congregate
after their Tuesday visit with the cartoon editor, Robert Mankoff; Greeting Cards: Oliver Christianson, Benita Epstein, *Glenn McCoy;
Magazine Feature Illustration: Glenn McCoy,
Steve McGarry, *Jack Pittman; Newspaper
Illustration: Tom Kerr, Peter Kuper, *Michael McParlane; Newspaper Comic Strips: Tom Batiuk (Funky Winkerbean), Jef Mallet
(Frazz), *Glenn McCoy
(The Duplex). Newspaper Panel Cartoons: Steve Moore (In the Bleachers), Jeff Stahler (Moderately Confused), and *Marcus Hamilton (Dennis the Menace), whose acceptance remarks were both funny and touching.
Standing at the microphone center stage,
he began by saying that he thought he should be behind the emcee's podium
with Dan Piraro because he was so excited he was afraid he might pee
in his pants. "I might even have a heart attack," he continued,
"-I hope not because I sure don't want Dan Piraro's lips on mine
even to perform CPR." He then recounted how he had volunteered
to do the Dennis daily panel after seeing the late creator Hank Ketcham on a tv program, where he
indicated he'd like to retire if he could find a successor. Hamilton
then expressed his gratitude to Ketcham for his patience and guidance
during Hamilton's apprenticeship, to Dottie Roberson who runs the Ketcham
studio in Monterey and to Ketcham's widow and Ron Ferdinand (who does
the Sunday Dennis) for their continuing support, and,
finally, he thanked his fellow Charlotte resident, cartoonist Jim Scancarelli (Gasoline Alley), who had given him Ketcham's phone number when Hamilton
had decided to phone him after seeing that tv program. Bil
Keane (Family Circus), whose emcee'ing of the Reuben banquet is legendary,
made a brief appearance at the microphone, to announce one of the Rube
winners. "It's more than a thrill to be here," he barked in
his gravelly voice, "-it's a damned inconvenience." He also
made note of the Arizona weather that was recording temperatures of
102 degrees, which, he said, doesn't take into account the wind chill
factor that reduces it to 101 degrees. And then, endeavoring to explain
the significance of the division award, he launched into one of his
famed double-talk tirades, ending by saying, "I hope I've made
that clear." If you were counting as you meandered
through the foregoing listing, you found four nominations for Glenn McCoy. In previous years, McCoy
has won in Gag Cartooning three times, in Greeting Cards twice, and
in Editorial Cartoons once. McCoy and his older brother (by two years)
Gary, also a frequently nominated cartoonist
(but not, yet, a winner), have just launched their first collaborative
effort, a daily newspaper panel cartoon that they take turns producing,
alternating days, The Flying McCoys
(Universal Press). The brothers live just ten minutes apart in Belleville,
Illinois, and they often work with the same editors in greeting cards,
magazine cartoons, and other projects, but this is their first formal
joint enterprise. "We both like gag cartooning probably
more than all the others," said Gary in a recent interview in NCS's
The Cartoonist. Said Glenn: "Yes, definitely.
It's a thing we both enjoy the most. For me, you get to create every
single aspect of the cartoon, and then change it the next day. I don't
have that luxury with the strip [The
Duplex]. Each day [with a gag cartoon], it's totally different.
You just wipe the slate clean and start over." Although they haven't shared a byline
before, Gary wrote gags for The
Duplex for about a year-and-a-half. Both are traditional craftsmen:
they admitted that they haven't yet resorted to the computer for drawing.
"We're pretty far behind on the
technology curve," said Glenn. "Not only do we draw in the traditional
way," said Gary, "but we'll work with the cheapest materials
available." "We also make our own butter,"
added Glenn. "And lye soap." "Which we use in place of white-out,"
finished his brother. Other awards on the weekend included
the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Gahan Wilson, whose macabre sense of humor has embellished Playboy and The New Yorker (among other venues) for years. Arnold Roth, another of the Reuben banquet's
legendary emcees, made the presentation, saying: "Gahan Wilson
enjoys the distinction of having one of the most legible signatures
in all cartooning-which is why so many people call him Graham Wilson."
The other big news of the weekend was
announced at the Membership Meeting on Saturday morning. This was the
establishment of the NCS Foundation with an endowment of $1 million
"to support education concerning the art of cartooning, to provide
financial assistance to cartoonists and their families in times of extreme
hardship, and to support other nonprofit organizations that help further
the purposes of the Foundation." The formation of the Foundation
has been announced a few weeks before in the March-April issue of the
Society's newsletter, The Cartoonist, which also outlined the
origins of the endowment. Magazine illustrator and cartoonist
David Pascal, a long-time member who had
been the Society's "first foreign affairs chairman" and had
organized the first (and "only," as he said) NCS American
International Comics Congress in 1972, had died, naming the Society
as his beneficiary. "The estate," reported President McGarry,
"consisted, in the main, of two small, adjoining apartments in
Manhattan." Although Pascal's will was contested by his relatives,
the final settlement resulted in 60 percent of Pascal's estate falling
to NCS. The value of Manhattan property being what it is, NCS's share
came to over $900,000. Two other recent bequests, $50,000 each from
Herblock and Toni Mendez, raised the purse to over $1 million. McGarry
and the NCS Board decided to "protect" this money, as McGarry
later said, by establishing the NCS Foundation. The objective, McGarry
explained, was to create a financial resource that could be used "to
promote the art form and the profession, while doing worthy works,"
referring to the Society's $25,000 gift to the Cartoon Research Library
at Ohio State University to create an acquisitions endowment and to
similar gifts to comic art museums in the past five years. But the problems
created by the formation of the new Foundation were not publicly addressed
until the Scottsdale meeting- most notably, its outright conflict with
the Society's long-standing Milt Gross Fund (MGF). The most frequently invoked purpose
of the MFG, which was formed decades ago, is to provide financial assistance
to cartoonists and their families in times of extreme hardship. But
the MFG's charter also includes promoting the profession through educational
projects. At the membership meeting, Larry Katzman, secretary-treasurer
of the MGF, pointed out that the mission statements of the two entities
were identical in two areas-as a source of charity for needy cartoonists
and in promoting the art form with educational programs. Katzman said
he couldn't see why there should be two agencies within NCS providing
the same sorts of services. Moreover, he said, there was another problem:
if someone wants to leave money to the organization (a not infrequent
occurrence), which fund would they leave the money to? The other problem created by the establishment
of the NCS Foundation was largely personal (or, to put it in corporate
terms that might be equally accurate, it was a personnel problem). As
McGarry acknowledged when he yielded the floor to Katzman, through an
oversight, Katzman, secretary-treasurer of the MFG, had not been informed
about the new foundation in advance of the announcement made to the
membership in the newsletter. McGarry was generous in his praise of
the MFG and of Katzman's dedication to the financial causes of NCS and
loquacious in apologizing to Katzman for the oversight. Katzman, taking
the microphone, attempted to make the best of the awkward situation
by speaking of it lightly, but it was also clear that his sense of injury
and his concern for the future of the organization were deeply felt.
He remembered when, as a young member of NCS years ago, he and others
of his generation had referred in jest to the senior members as "old
farts." And when he continued by saying that someday today's "young
turks" would be "old farts," it was clear that he was
alluding to a circumstance that could split NCS's membership, his implication
being that the MGF and the new Foundation might well form the wedge
that would widen the gap. The MGF has, through its history, been
regularly replenished with various money-raising efforts by the NCS:
the money generated by the ads that members buy in the Reuben souvenir
program, for example, has traditionally been donated to the MGF. But
that practice ceased some years ago, Katzman said. In fact, he continued,
"for the last five years, NCS hasn't given one thin dime to the
Milt Gross Fund." This time frame was not remarked upon
at all during the meeting, but I suggest that exploring its implications
may explain why McGarry and the NCS Board created a new Foundation instead
of simply turning Pascal's bequest over to the Milt Gross Fund, which
is how most such gifts have been handled in the past. During the meeting,
McGarry explained that there was no institutional relationship between
NCS and MGF. Because the MGF is a not-for-profit organization with a
501( c) (3) designation with the Internal Revenue Service, its operation
must be completely separate from the so-called parent organization,
NCS. In effect, NCS cannot legally determine how any of the MGF money
is spent. This is exactly how it should be, McGarry said. And no one
questions the motives or operations of the current MGF management. But,
he asked more than once, what of the future? How can the NCS be sure
that future MGF board members will continue to act in the best interests
of the profession and the Society? He and the Board, he said, didn't
want to give $1 million to an agency over which NCS had no control.
So they set up the new NCS Foundation. Since the new Foundation will
have the same status with the IRS as the MGF, it is difficult, on the
face of it, to see how NCS will have any more control over the decisions
of the Foundation's 15-member board than it does over the operations
of the MGF, but McGarry and his Board clearly believe NCS will have
more say in the administration of the new Foundation than they have
in the MGF (sounding suspiciously like Young Turks elbowing the Old
Farts out of the picture). At this point, the five-year time frame sheds
a little light on these events. Five years ago, NCS gave $35,000 to
the International Museum of Cartoon Art. Founded in the 1970s in Connecticut
by Mort Walker, the IMCA
had moved in the 1990s to Boca Raton in Florida where it built a brand
new home but soon experienced daunting financial difficulties. Explaining
the $35,000 donation, Daryl Cagle, then president of NCS, said:
"One of the purposes of the NCS, as stated in our bylaws, is: 'To
advance the ideals and standards of the profession of cartooning through
education, exhibitions, publicity and such other means as may seem desirable.'
I can think of no better way to do that than through support of the
Museum." In that spirit, Cagle approached the MGF to match the
NCS donation, dollar for dollar, and in reporting the outcome, he noted
that the MGF charter is broader than simply helping indigent cartoonists,
that it also contemplates "providing support to other non-profit
organizations"-like the IMCA. The MGF, in short, matched the NCS
donation, and the two organizations sent $70,000 to the financially
strapped IMCA. This money, Cagle said, would be used for operating expenses
while the Museum negotiated its future. "I should add," he
continued, "that Mort Walker did not request either donation. I
requested the donations from both boards when we learned about the Museum's
current circumstances." The IMCA, subsequently, was not able to
survive in the Boca Raton environs, and it closed. Walker is presently
negotiating for a home for it in Manhattan. While the NCS Board's motives in 2000
were surely commendable and the use of the money well within the bounds
of the purposes of the organization, there were vague rumblings of discontent:
some members, hearing of the MGF's matching donation, questioned the
use of MGF money in this manner because they mistakenly thought the
MGF was to be used soley for the benefit of needy cartoonists and/or
their families. Once the charter of MGF was fully explained, the rumblings
ceased. But, as Katzman noted in his remarks in Scottsdale, NCS stopped
giving money to the MGF five years ago, and my guess is that the hiatus
began with the IMCA incident. It may be, also, that NCS leaders found
they didn't like going, hat in hand, to MGF to ask for money that the
parent organization had been largely responsible for drumming up in
the first place. Hence, the motive for creating a new Foundation, separate
from the MGF, may have its origins in these adventures five years ago.
Although neither Katzman nor McGarry
made direct reference to this ancient history, they engaged, briefly,
in a well-mannered exchange, each attempting to clarify the remarks
of the other. Then Mort Walker, who chairs the MGF, came to the mike
and gracefully brought an end to this exchange by calling for everyone
to forget the past in an effort to create a future that would be a worthy
one. The specific dimension of the future for the two funds was indicated,
first, by Katzman, who said that the only way he (and others) could
see to eliminate the apparent duplication of missions was for the MGF
to be "folded into" the NCS Foundation. And that, in fact,
had already, apparently, been accomplished behind the scenes the day
before. (Some of the younger of us thought, for the briefest of moments,
that we would be asked to vote on the question, thereby revealing our
ignorance of the ways of oligarchy.) Once the paperwork has been accomplished,
the NCS Foundation will exist as a sort of umbrella organization under
which the Pascal money can be found-and the MGF, as well as the separate
sub-funds created by the Herblock and Mendez gifts, which are ear-marked
for specific purposes. And, finally, in the hopes, I suspect, of assuaging
the bruised feelings all of these machinations may have created, McGarry
took the occasion to announce that the NCS Board had decided to acknowledge
the long and dedicated service of Larry Katzman to the Society and to
the Milt Gross Fund by awarding him the Society's Gold Key Award, thereby
inducting Katzman into the Hall of Fame which is presently rather thinly
populated by the likes of Hal Foster and Herblock-that is, by
Edwina Dumm, Raeburn Van Buren, Rube Goldberg, Milton Caniff,
and Arnold Roth. And now, Larry "Kaz" Katzman, magazine cartoonist
and creator of Nellie the Nurse, a gag cartoon character who has been
running in magazines and book collections for over 52 years. In the new business segment of the
business meeting, Jerry Robinson
arose to announce that the San Diego Comicon would inaugurate a
new award this year to recognize the achievement of those who write,
rather than draw, comics. The award is named for the writer who co-created
Batman but who was never given recognition for it during his lifetime-
Bill Finger. "But it is probably not be a good idea to call
it the Finger Award," Robinson remarked to me earlier. An award
so-denominated would have its August purpose rather severely impugned
every time it is given. At the end of the meeting, the new NCS president,
Rick Stromoski officially took office. Before that, however, McGarry
took the occasion to list the major achievements that he thought distinguished
his two-term occupancy of the presidency. He believes he has (1) "set
the form" of the annual Reubens Weekend with an assortment of professional
presentations, cocktail parties and dinners, (2) inaugurated the NCS
presence at the San Diego Comicon, where members staff a booth and make
a presentation on the program, (3) established the NCS Foundation, thereby
putting all NCS monies more at the disposal of the NCS Board than they'd
been previously, and (4) initiated a pattern of giving of monetary bequests
to such non-profit institutions as the Cartoon Research Library and
the Comic Art Museum in San Francisco. I suspect he also had a hand
in raising new criteria for membership in the organization, an expression
of professional concern over the plethora of web cartoonists and their
dubious qualifications as professionals. In other words, McGarry has
virtually given NCS its present shape and purpose, bringing it into
contemporary times. No wonder everyone applauded him. (Those who didn't
were promptly taken out and shot.) At the presentations, or "seminars,"
on Friday and Saturday, selected members of the profession supplied
insights into their working methods and attitudes. Scott Shaw presented his Comicon screening
of "Oddball Comics," a display of the strangest covers, including
one memorable one by Bob Oksner in which Supergirl is apparently battling
a space vehicle the configuration of which clearly approximates male
human genitalia. Glenn and Gary
McCoy discussed the astonishing variety of their cartooning endeavors
and showed samples. And on a panel entitled "Fear of a Brown Panel,"
Lalo Alcaraz (who produces the Hispanic rooted La Cucaracha strip) and Darrin
Bell (who draws Rudy Park
and writes and draws Candorville,
another strip about racial minorities) talked about reader and editor
reactions to the racial and ethnic content of their strips. "My
goal," confessed Alcaraz, tongue in cheek, "is to rip off
Doonesbury -I even call my strip Doonesbarrio." Bell, who also produces editorial cartoons, wondered
why comic strips don't ask more questions about the dilemmas we all
face. He showed a picture of one of his Candorville
strips that depicted a woman expressing saccharine grief about the plight
of a stray dog while, just around the corner (and conveniently out of
her sight) a homeless man slept in a cardboard box. Both cartooners
assumed an incredulous stance when speculating about the dearth of comic
strips by minority cartoonists. One newspaper rejected Candorville
because, its editor explained, it already had three "black"
comic strips and he didn't want to "over represent" the minority.
Ironically, his paper is published in Oakland, California, where the
African-American population is in the majority. Next up was Jay Stephens, who talked about how his
comic book creations were transformed into tv animated cartoons. On Saturday, three Pulitzer-winning
editoonists- Mike Luckovich of
the Atlanta Constitution, Joel Pett of the Lexington
Herald-Leader, and Ann Telnaes, syndicated by the Washington
Post Writers Group- discussed the plight of political cartooning in
the U.S., where the dwindling number of full-time practitioners suggests
the profession is an endangered species. Charged to comment on their
Pulitzer experiences, Pett began by saying that he envisioned the Pulitzer
Prize "competition" as a sort of lottery, "a random event
that anyone could win, and when I won, I thought it proved just that."
Later, as they discussed the almost religious reluctance of newspaper
editors to publish cartoons that are critical of ideas or attitudes
dear to any of their readers, Pett constructed the day's most memorable
metaphor: "Newspaper editors," he said, "act as if they
own a shoe store, and they ask themselves-why should I pay somebody
to sit at the door and tell people their feet stink?" Jim
Borgman, who editoons for the Cincinnati
Enquirer as well as drawing the comic strip Zits,
rose in the audience to relate a recent development at his paper,
a link in the Gannet chain. The entire staff was instructed that, hereafter,
they must make a concentrated effort to connect whatever is published
in the paper to the lives of their readers-with particular attention
to the interests of working mothers who live in the suburbs. The chain's
management believes that the only way newspapers will survive is to
engage its target demographic, readers age 18-35, but especially suburban
working mothers, which, according to surveys, is a portion of the target
demographic that is mostly overlooked. As the paper's editorial cartoonist,
Borgman said, he is expected to help, to link his cartoons to the sensibilities
of that target audience whenever possible. He wondered if anyone else
had been subjected to the same "advisory." No one had, but
the handwriting is on the wall. It's not an entirely unwelcome message.
While the editorial dictum to tailor political cartoons in ways that
make them appeal to a specific demographic sounds, vaguely, like some
sort of prior restraint-or, horrors! censorship! -it isn't, yet. And
in fact, it's not a bad idea at all as far as it seems, at the moment,
to have gone. Most serious newsmen believe that the news media, print
and electronic, have become obsessed in recent years with the trivial
and the sensational. Newsmen know that they should be informing their
audience about many more things than the audience itself seems overtly
interested in, but, they say in their defense, they can't sell newspapers
or attract viewers by broadcasting the news their audience ought
to be interested in; they must appeal to an audience by telling the
stories that audience finds fascinating. Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson,
Paris Hilton, and the Runaway Bride. These are the things the audience
seems most interested in. Well, yes, but-. But canny and accomplished
newsmen ought to be able to make the news interesting-any news, all
news. Newsmen ought to be able to make otherwise boring news about foreign
capitals appealing to the consuming public. The Gannet message to its
minions is to connect the news of the day to the lives of the audience.
And it seems to me that this is a step in the direction I've just extolled.
If you can connect the news to people's lives, then you can take the
next step and make even news not connected to their lives interesting
enough to read. And a better informed public might well emerge as a
result. But I don't mean to discount Borgman's
point. He told me his editors haven't rejected any of his cartoons because
they fail to target the valued demographic. But he and other members
of the staff are complimented when they hit that target, and that sort
of reward will keep them aiming where management wants them to aim.
And given the skill with which public opinion surveys and the like can
isolate demographic targets and identify the things those demographics
like best, it does not require a leap of logic to imagine a day when
the only editoons that are acceptable (and therefore published) are
ones that engage readers on the basis of their interests rather than
the interests and opinions of the cartoonist. If that day comes, it'll
be a sad day. But it's not here yet. The final presentation of the day was
by Gahan Wilson, who showed
pictures of his cartoons and read the captions in whatever "voice"
the speaking character seemed to require -a squeak, a growl, a whisper,
a snarl. As he spoke, his rubbery visage contorted and writhed in tune
with the mood of the character and cartoon. He also spoke of his fascination
as a youth with Chester Gould's Dick
Tracy, particularly, he said, in a high pitched little old lady
voice, Mrs. Pruneface, who had captured the stalwart detective and,
seeking to avenge her son's death at his hands, tied him to the floor
under a weighted plank suspended on two blocks of ice. A huge spike
in the plank was pointed directly at Tracy's heart, and as the heat
of the room slowly melted the ice, the plank with its skewer descended
towards its human target. "And then," he went on, "the
old woman made a mistake- all villains do -she left the room- to feed
her dog or something- and while she was gone, Tracy realizes that the
floor of the room slants!" Conspiratorially, Wilson continued:
"And he began hitting his heels on the floor, jogging the blocks
of ice, which, as they melted, became somewhat slippery, and they slipped
away from him, taking the lethal spike with them." He also told of his first meeting with
Playboy's Hugh Hefner. Now a regular in the magazine, Wilson had at first sought
publication in the short-lived Trump,
which he saw as Harvey Kurtzman's
vehicle. On a trip to Chicago to visit his parents, he went to the
Playboy office with a portfolio of cartoons. When he was ushered in
to see the art director, he learned that the Trump office was in New York, where he lived. But, said the art factotum,
"Hef is looking forward to meeting you." Wilson continued:
"I had no idea who Hef was. So I went up this narrow little staircase
and into this dark room with a thin man at the desk. The only light
was from a lamp on the desk. He was on the phone, smiled at me, and
waved me to a chair. He went back to whoever was on the phone and said,
'We really liked your article very much. It was intelligently written.
The problem is that it was anti-sin, and," Wilson paused then dropped
his voice an octave, "we're pro-sin." Wilson laughed. "Hefner
then said a few nice things and hung up. And then he stood, took my
hand and said, 'I've been waiting for you.'" Hefner had been following
Wilson's work in other publications. "Talk about luck," Wilson
added, during the interview printed in The Cartoonist (which published the Hef
story just as Wilson told it in Scottsdale), "-that's luck. It
had never crossed my mind to try
Playboy. It's been a hell of a ride. Wonderful." Sunday evening of the Reuben Weekend
was the finale- a roast of Sergio
Aragones. The preamble was one of Sergio's patented "quick
draw" exercises, presided over by his long-time collaborator and
friend, Mark Evanier, just as they are at the
San Diego Comicon, where, I suspect, they originated. I missed the first
two roasters but returned to the room in time to hear Mell Lazarus speaking. He was directing his remarks directly to Sergio,
who was seated in the audience in front of him, and Lazarus was speaking
mangled Spanish. After numerous references to "mucho dinero,"
Lazarus resorted to English to discuss "your work." Sergio
needed to improve in his work, Lazarus said: "I've told you time
and again," he scolded, "to fertilize the begonias twice,
once in the spring and once in the fall. And you're mowing the grass
too short." Ah, those illegal alien gardeners, you just can't get
dependable ones anymore if they also draw cartoons. Nick
Meglin , Mad's editor,
showed photographs of Sergio in various compromising situations, accompanying
the display with running commentary. When Sergio rose to respond, he
was brief. Assuming his slightly dim-witted peasant persona and speaking
in his patented broken English, he expressed his deep gratitude to the
roasters- saying he was honored to be the subject of their abuse but
he was particularly thankful that they didn't say anything about how
small his penis was. And then we all went home. And a good
thing, too.
Reuben Winner Pat Brady A
master of the medium, Brady created magical comedy that was highly visual,
both in its origins and in its effects: comprehending the strip's humor
depended usually upon understanding the pictures as well as the words.
In fact, many of the strips seem to be visual puzzles. The punchline
is the solution to the puzzle. I made this observation to Brady when
I interviewed him in September 1996: "I look at the pictures in
the first panels, and I say, Oh, what is this? And then-all of a sudden-the
last panel shows me what it is, explains it, and the explanation is
the punchline. Do you do this deliberately? I suppose you must." "Yes, I do," Brady said.
"I've never heard it expressed like you have, but I'm pleased to
hear it. I just think it makes it more interesting to try things like
that. It's another way of making the work as interesting as it can be.
It's definitely something that I do consciously. It's not one of the
first things that I think about, but as I'm toying with the idea, as
I do a thumbnail sketch, I'll see a possibility to add that dimension,
and if I can, I do it. Most of my ideas, probably 99% of them, come
from active daydreaming. I'll come into my studio in the morning, and
I'll have a cup of coffee, and I'll toy with words and phrases and I'll
doodle until something starts to emerge." I asked if the act of drawing itself
ever produced ideas. For many cartoonists, it does: "You start
drawing the picture," I said, "and as that is going on-a character
takes shape, his personality, already established, emerges, and an idea
comes out, a joke or gag-" Brady said he does that, too, but "more
often than not, the ideas will emerge from words rather than doodles.
I think Sparky [Charles Schulz
of Peanuts fame] told
me that he gets his ideas from doodling. And I do that. But for me,
it's mostly words." Still, pictures play a large part,
he said. "What I find works for me is to try to think of something
that will be visually interesting, that will look visually exciting
or pleasing. And then I try actually to write a strip-or a joke-around
it. A moonscape, for instance. Ahh, it would be great if I could do
a really realistic moonscape, or space scene. Now what can I do with
that? I end up writing a joke to accommodate the art. I don't know if
other cartoonists do that. But it works for me." And what happens when it works, as
almost any of the published Rose
strips amply demonstrates, is magic. Launched April 16, 1984, Rose Is Rose is a warmly human strip about a young family, the Gumbos:
Rose is the wife and mother, Jimbo is the husband and father, and Pasquale
is their small son (originally about two years old; now, a couple years
older). "Pasquale was my nickname when I was very young,"
Brady explained in Cartoonist
PROfiles No. 63 (September 1984). "My father called me Pasquale
for several years. I think it's Italian for Patrick, but I've never
been quite sure." One of the early devices in the strip
was that Pasquale spoke in unintelligible baby talk (another kind of
puzzle) which his mother understood and translated for us. But Brady
left that device behind long ago. In recording the daily doings of his
characters, the strip is always gentle and its humor often sweet. The
comedy would be cloying if it weren't for the visual inventiveness that
inspires so many of the gags. The pictures are the wit in the strip's
humor, and the wit imparts to the proceedings a patina of magic by which
the strip transcends comedy and The last compilation of Brady's Rose strips, Rose Is Rose: Running on Alter Ego (128 9x9-inch pages in paperback,
$10.95),
Civilization's Last Outpost I
flew Southwest to Phoenix. No seat assignment-just rush in and grab
what's nearest. Okay by me: the airfare is lower than other airlines
by at least 30 percent on this trip. As soon as we were airborne, the
stewardess came around and dropped a little box of snacks on our trays.
It contained a bag of pretzels, four Oreo cookies, two Honey Maid graham
crackers, and a bag of cheese nips. While this was being distributed
on my Southwest flight, United Airlines announced that it was curtailing
and eliminating pretzel service from all its flights; it will save $2
million a year this way. Lemme see if I have this right: the airline
that sells tickets for less than anyone else can afford to give out
boxes of snacks (not just pretzels, but cookies and graham crackers
and cheese nips too), but the biggest airline in the world can't afford
to give out even pretzels anymore. Something's wrong here. Profiles of the Modern Greats In
March 1969, cartoonist Jud Hurd
launched a quarterly magazine called Cartoonist
PROfiles. I don't know how long he expected it to last, but it's
still going, the longest-running magazine devoted to cartooning in the
history of American periodicals. Thirty-five years' worth. And now the
"best of Cartoonist PROfiles," Hurd's own selection
of his favorite articles, has been published by Andrews McMeel, Cartoon Success Secrets (350 8x11-inch
pages in hardcover, $29.95)-almost three dozen in-depth interviews with
cartooning greats like Mort Walker,
Hank Ketcham, Charles Schulz, Johnny Hart, Bill Watterson, Lynn Johnston,
Jim Davis, Greg Evans, Ray Billingsley, Jeff MacNelly, Aaron McGruder,
Cathy Guisewite, and more, from a 1969 interview with Stan
Drake, then doing the spectacularly realistically rendered Heart of Juliet Jones, to a 2002 encounter
with Hector Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, who team to produce
the Latino strip, Baldo. Hurd's own engagement with cartooning
is hinted at in the book's opening 68-page section, which records his
encounters, mostly by exchange of letters, with such seminal figures
in the field as E.C. Segar, Rube
Goldberg, George Herriman, and Harold
Gray. (For more detail on Hurd's own career, consult Opus 131 by
clicking here.) The prehistory of
Cartoonist PROfiles began
in 1964, shortly after Hurd moved to Westport, Connecticut, when Bob Dunn (They'll Do It Every Time), then president of the National Cartoonists
Society, asked Hurd if he would take over the editing of the Society
newsletter- "guessing," as Jud usually puts it, "that
I could spell." The assignment appealed to all of Jud's instincts
and employed many of the skills he'd honed over the years, and he consequently
poured more of himself into each successive issue. By 1968, it was consuming
too much of his time as volunteer, gratis employment. Jud offered to
continue if NCS could find a way to pay him something. Happily, the
NCS Board of Governors proved to be fiscally conservative (which, in
those days, meant they didn't want to spend any money, now regarded
by conservatives as a somewhat quaint trait), and Jud then had the idea
of continuing in much the same vein with a publication of his own, giving
birth, in the winter of 1969, to the first issue of Cartoonist PROfiles. It and Jud's two syndicated
cartoons have absorbed his energies ever since, and we are the beneficiaries
of the NCS Board's benign neglect. Every issue of the magazine reflected
Jud's intensity as a reporter, his passionate curiosity about cartooning,
his compulsive desire to understand everything about it and about those
who make their living at it. He was perfect for the job, and it created
him just as he created it. The Publishers
Weekly review of Cartoon Success
Secrets applauded the "well-rounded portraits of professional
cartoonists [written] from within the industry and with real affection
(making this collection ... a compelling portrait of the comic strip
industry past and present)" but couldn't find any "success
secrets" in the volume. The reviewer is undoubtedly as inept at
hiding things as he (or she) is in finding them: the best place to hide
something is out in plain view, and that's where this book's secrets
are. In every interview, Hurd asked his subject to explain how he (or
she) got into cartooning and how he/she achieved syndication ("success").
He also asked what the cartoonist's working methods were and discussed
daily routines and sources of ideas. All of which, for successful cartoonists,
are the "secrets" of that success. For all of its run thus
far, PROfiles has served as
inspiration and edification for hundreds of young aspiring cartoonists
who yearn to make their livings at the craft. By this time, a couple
generations of them have learned about the profession by reading PROfiles. But the magazine is also a sort of shop talk marathon. In
a profession whose practitioners labor, mostly, in solitude, the talk
has been invigorating as well as gratifying. Good for the soul of cartooning.
Among the nuggets of insight sprinkled
throughout the book is Stan Drake's
in 1969: "I've reached the stage where what I do doesn't give
me a lift anymore. I've drawn over 55,000 figures in seventeen years
of Juliet Jones ... There is no position,
no layout, that I haven't done. All the strip men reading this will
laugh because it's so true. I can lay out a panel without even thinking
about it after all this time. It's not difficult for me to conceive
a setting anymore. You look at the paper. The balloons go in first because
they have to be there. Then you look at the blank space [that's left]
and think who's talking first and do you want a close-up or a long shot,
and then you say to yourself, 'Well, a long shot means I'll have to
draw all the trees, the houses, and the cars,' so you draw a close-up
of the guy's nostril. In this way, you wipe out a whole city block!" And here are Dik Browne (Hi and Lois)
and Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey), long time friends and professional
cohorts, conversing about their craft. Walker has just opined that cartoonists
drawn themselves into their comic strips, and Browne says: "I think
there must be something there. I'm no theologian, but I believe only
God can make something out of nothing. Cartoonists have to depend on
themselves. Wasn't it Jimmy Hatlo
who used to draw with a mirror propped on his desk? Well, we all
have mirrors. Some of them are more conspicuous than others. I don't
think anybody could doubt that Al Capp was Li'l Abner. And George McManus must have been Jiggs's
double. I see things in you, certainly, in Hi and Lois, especially in the writing
of Hi and Lois. You say you're
Lieutenant Fuzz, but I see your ideas coming out through all your characters." In response, Walker says, " I'm
a lot like Beetle Bailey, but as I get older, people tell me I'm like
General Halftrack." Says Browne, "I didn't want to
say it." And from Bill Watterson on getting syndicated: "It took me a while, but
I finally learned this lesson: Draw what comes most naturally to you.
This had never dawned on me until a syndicate suggested I draw up a
strip focusing on what had been two minor characters in one of my earlier
submissions: a small boy with a rampant imagination and his stuffed
tiger. These were the two silliest characters of the strip, and the
ones I had obviously had the most fun with. So I began working on Calvin
and Hobbes." And if that's not a "success secret,"
I'll never be able to track one down in the wild. In the article from Dilbert's Scott Adams, we learn that Dilbert would doubtless never have appeared
on the scene had not Adams' car broken down one winter's night on the
road half-way between Syracuse and Oneonta, New York. Jogging through
the freezing night looking for help, Adams vowed that if he lived, he
would "sell my traitorous car for a one-way ticket to California
and never see another snowflake as long as I lived." He lived,
and he went to California, where he found a boring job in a big bank
"and set about the business of crushing little people on my way
to the top. But cartoons kept oozing out of my fingers, sometimes during
business meetings, always while I was on the phone. A dumpy-looking
character with glasses began appearing in my business presentations
and on my office blackboard. I wasn't conscious of creating him; he
just evolved. The cartoon dumpy guy gained popularity around the office...."
And Adams decided to try to get syndicated. Presto: Dilbert. And when Hurd interviewed Ray Billingsley (Curtis), we all learn that Billingsley was a professional cartoonist
at the age of twelve. Said he: "I was twelve years old and my art
class was into recycling even in those days. My art teacher was quite
creative, and we were constructing a fifteen-foot aluminum-can Christmas
tree outside a hospital. While the other kids were busy with the tree,
I sat on the side, took out a pad, and started drawing. There was a
small amount of media coverage of this project, and a woman approached
me and asked to look at my efforts. She asked if she could keep the
drawing and wanted my name and phone number, so I gave it to her. Back
in that time, I figured that since I was only twelve years old, she
wasn't hitting on me. A couple of days later, the woman called my home,
and it turned out she was the editor of Kids magazine! She asked if
I would come down to her office and do some sketches. Believe it or
not, they liked my drawing and hired me as a staff artist. From that
day on, there would be a car waiting for me as I was about to leave
school, and I'd be taken to the Kids office. ... from three-thirty to
five-thirty p.m., Monday through Friday, and I took work home on weekends." Hurd's magazine regularly included
interviews with editorial cartoonists and, occasionally, animators,
but Cartoon Success Secrets concentrates exclusively
on syndicated newspaper cartoonists. Every interview is liberally illustrated
with selections from the cartoonist's work and with photographs. The
book is a treasure trove of history and lore as well as "success
secrets." Forthcoming:
one of these fine days, we'll have an index to the entire run of
Cartoonist PROfiles up here, and you'll
be able to purchase off-prints of specific articles. Stay 'tooned. To find out about Harv's books, click here. |
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