A Sleepyhead Tale: Riding the Bludgeoning Carousel

Having been interviewed only very rarely in the twenty years that I have been a published, working cartoonist, I have a less than tenable relationship with the form and its experience. This absence of external narrative I must partly attribute to my stubborn adherence to content over form. I have always allowed for story to dictate drawing, resulting in a wide variety of styles, which I am sure has helped dilute any lasting impact I may have had on the collective memory of the comics reading public. Add to this a hesitancy to share too much of myself outside of my art, and the dearth of interviews in my resume is quite understandable.
     In the summer of 1990, at the outset of my cartooning journey, before this trend of unintended silence had crystallized, I was approached by a tiny art fanzine from Los Angeles called Inklings & Musings, interested in learning more about my weekly strip, A Sleepyhead Tale, which, at the time, was running in both the LA Reader and the San Diego Reader. The request coming during the pre-internet age, and the print run of Inklings being extremely limited, this peek into the twists and turns of my creative mind has subsequently been seen by very few.
     Recently having reread the interview, not having looked at it since it was first published, I was surprised to see how little I have changed, while, conversely, the world about me so drastically has. During the time of the interview, I was regularly riding my bicycle some nine miles, to the only decent photocopy store, making copies of my art, then pedaling back home to package it, before riding another three miles to the post office. Now, I simply scan my originals and e-mail them to their destination. I can only wonder what has been lost in this transition, apart from the obvious sweat and toil.
     A Sleepyhead Tale, which ran from April 1989 to March 1992, attaining a height of only four papers, was fueled by the ambition and the anger of being young, the energy that one simply cannot sustain through life, the burning of resources that one learns to moderate in order to survive. Each strip was an exercise of literal self-flagellation. I allowed my general disgust and bewilderment towards life to take form in Sleepyhead’s outrageous anxieties, letting him explore a particular issue, always making a fool of himself, if not ultimately killing himself. This was not an arc of self-destruction he traveled alone. I was consciously following, staring down the reality I saw, prodding it relentlessly, until it inevitably struck out, knocking me for a loop, every last time. I survived this personal bullying by learning to laugh at the darkest of discovered truths, a refuge that made my cartoons – well – cartoons – and not some exhausting series of profusely-illustrated suicide notes.
     Eventually realizing I had created a narrative structure akin to a carousel where the operator heaved a bludgeon, a course from which I, and my characters, would never return, I set about rectifying Sleepyhead’s repeating dilemma and, in the final year of the strip, offered the imperiled protagonist of the poisoned pratfall a chance to grow, to overcome the impetus for never-ending ruin that had so defined him. I was, in essence, giving my cartoon creation a way out of his “cartoonhood”, something, which, through fifty-odd episodes of a serialized novella I entitled “The Island of Dr. Moral”, he did, finally reaching the point of self-awareness that I had engineered to be his escape (albeit his enlightenment was no guarantee against the whims of fate). Finishing the final strip in the Spring of 1992, I vowed to never again write or draw the character, something I have held to for the last sixteen years, apart from one pre-written appearance in the second issue of my quarterly comic Whotnot!.
     Presented here now, for the first time since its initial publication, is the aforementioned interview, my very first, conducted at the height of my ride on the “bludgeoning carousel”. I have slightly edited certain passages for clarity.

Inklings & Musings: How old are you?
Jeremy Eaton: I’m 26 years old.
Where were you born?
England.
Did you attend Art School? College?
Nothing like that. Just doing it for myself, year after year.
Did you collect comic books? Which ones? Do you collect anything else?
My first American comics were those sold in plastic bags, three to a pack, at KOA camper’s shops, next to the miniature soaps and disposable toothbrushes. Titles like Strange Tales, Jungle Action, The Invaders, Kamandi, War of the Worlds and, oh, many others. I read them in the back seat of the car on long trips, traced my favorite figures, put new costumes on them. Pretty normal stuff. This was all back in the 1970s, of course, with The Osmonds and The Jackson 5 bubble gum cards, Wacky Packages, those little, bug-eyed parachuting toys, the “fuck you” cover of MAD magazine, banana seats and popping wheelies…
Were you into “punk” music? What kind of music do you like? What was the last record or CD you bought?
Throughout the late 70s and early 80s I was too stupid and too shy to notice. I knew the names of some obscure bands but not their music. But I did once hitch a ride on a potato truck into London to see the Bad Brains. If music doesn’t inspire my mind, it sweetens my tongue. I’d be embarrassed to divulge my fancies.
What jobs did you have before you broke into cartooning?
Oh, many silly things; bicycle messenger, clown, artist’s model, sign painter, children’s storyteller, puppeteer, staff illustrator at a daily newspaper and, well, I was a giant Andrew Carnegie, making my appearances at various museum functions. A lot of hot and bothersome things.
Is “cartoonist” a title you accept? Is there a title you prefer? Like “Graphic Novel” vs. comic book, is a rose by any other name just as sweet?
I strive to become a cartoonist. This may sound goofy, but at this stage I feel like I am really just illustrating my stories. Cartooning is a massive language I am beginning to learn, in bits and pieces.
How did you break into a syndicated comic? Do you distribute it yourself? How do you do it? Is the pay OK? Worth it?
Sometimes it’s hell, real hell. Other times? It’s the best thing in the world to me. It’s always worth it in the end though, always. I didn’t have any great moment of inspiration and I didn’t have to pass any life-threatening audition. A Sleepyhead Tale exists in its own little way purely because one person wanted it to. I started by working up a batch of about ten strips, this took about four months, maybe five. I didn’t have any addresses at the time, didn’t know where to send it, other than the Village Voice. I called their art director and learned that there was such a thing as the A.N.N. (the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies). I wrote to them and told them of my objectives and they sent me their latest membership roster. I’d suggest anyone with a strip to shop around should write to them like I did. So, with my list of about sixty newspapers printed on a weekly basis in north America, I started stuffing envelopes and awaited any replies. I also found the courage to cold call people like cartoonist Ben Katchor, to get any advice I could. I was once told, by Lynda Barry’s business assistant, that for every one hundred submissions sent out, you will be lucky to receive one positive response. Does quality have anything to do with this? The answer terrifies me. Don’t even think about the mental competency on the receiving end of your submission, just persevere. Don’t stop and your chances won’t either. When it first happens and you suddenly find yourself having to produce a weekly cartoon, then you quickly learn a system and become a vegetable, strapped to a drawing table. Make your deadlines comfortable and find the best way of getting your work there safely. Recently, I’ve shouldered the extra expense of having to overnight my work. The U.S. Mail sometimes puts deeps creases across my brow. I’ve lost my faith there and try to stay away from it as much as I can.
     The money earned from this cartooning is purely based upon momentum. To start with, you shouldn’t expect to earn very much. I earn little more than one hundred dollars a month. Yes, a month. I have earned as little as eight dollars a strip and as much as fifty dollars. The rules just don’t exist. Expect everything and everything will be expected. I manage financially by currently living at my parent’s house and by doing one or two newspaper illustrations each month. But, with me, the inspiration does not come from the potential bags of money beyond the horizon. I cartoon because there is nothing else I can do at this time. I guess I lied about this being a real “hell”, heck, when you don’t have any choice about it, life is easy! I rarely take a day off and when I do I begin to itch to get back to my work. Initially, this as a choice that I made, but, now, sooner you ask me to chop off my left arm than to quit cartooning/storytelling. I guess I’m just sick.
What size is your original work?
My originals are about 11“ wide by 13“ deep. I can’t go any larger than that because I send out photocopies to the newspapers and most copiers won’t take an original wider than 11“.
Who carries A Sleepyhead Tale? If my Chicago friends want to see it…
It currently runs in the San Diego Reader and the Los Angeles Reader. It has also appeared in the first two issues of BUZZ, a comic magazine put out by Kitchen Sink Press. It ran in a paper out of the Boston area, but that paper died very quickly. A Sleepyhead Tale in the Chicago Reader? I wouldn’t mind it. They’ve yet to take a bite. I guess you’d have to write to the editor and just demand it. Who knows?
What gave you the original idea?
It started out as direct interpretation of dreams, Sleepyhead was a nameless figure who suffered the travails of my own dreams. Quite different from where the strip is now. I let it take its own course.
When did the first Tale see print?
It first appeared in late April, 1989, in the San Diego Reader.
If I wanted to buy an original, what would it cost? Do you have a dealer or a gallery to get in touch with? Is there a waiting list for them?
Ahhh…no, no gallery, no dealer, no waiting list. Just a stack of Bristol board to my immediate left. I couldn’t bring myself to part with any of the originals because, well, they’re important to me. Sorry. (NOTE: I’ve since fitted myself for the heels of a whore, offering a few select pages of this strip at Comic Art Collective).
Who are your art/illustration influences? Walt Kelly’s Pogo? Will Eisner?
Many, many subconscious influences, I’m sure. Conscious ones? Let’s see, first and foremost is Jack Kirby (from way back to my KOA days), his composition, dynamics, spotting of black areas, storytelling, all really solid. I don’t care what sort of comics you are drawing, you can learn from Jack Kirby. Also Roy Crane (building a consistent reality, a sense of atmosphere, his subtly), Ronald Searle (letting your hair down and letting the ink flow), and Robert Crumb, of course (for all those sweat beads, tear drops and other things), and others, I’m sure I’m forgetting, like, oh, of course, Wally Wood and Bill Elder (sound effects and that ethereal language of cartoon action). How’s that? I feel like some Tinkertoy creation looking back on that list, not that I’m able to match the above-mentioned, but I am aiming, or at least I think I’ve spotted the target.
Which comic strips do you like now? What do you think of Lynda Barry? The Simpsons? Are there any comic books you like or buy?
I really like Ben Katchor’s Julius Knipl and Julie Larson’s Suburban Torture. Bill Watterson understands cartooning better than most today. Bill Griffith is an inspiration, with stamina from another planet (I sometimes fear I’m stepping on his toes, or maybe stuck between his toes). The same goes for Kim Deitch. Lynda Barry is a great writer, a great cartoonist. She’s created her own sort of cartoon. That’s really something. The Simpsons? Honestly, I’ve never watched The Simpsons, but I have heard it from another room and it sounded quite funny. I don’t buy comics right now, haven’t for a long time, but I would like to find some issues of JIM and Yummy Fur and Dirty Plotte. I’m curious about these. Also Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell.
Do you do any painting, writing, or anything else art-related? What do you do for fun?
I am writing constantly, but at the moment it’s all unconstructed phrases and ideas and chunks of dialogue. One day I’ll bring it all together. The illustrations that I do for various newspapers are usually an interesting diversion, but I do feel a need for something completely non-structured. I used to make painfully horrible homemade recordings, but that has stopped. I sometimes do get the time to make doll-like sculptures from discarded plastic. Painting is something I have never done, but the interest never goes away.
How far do you see this going? Sleepy-themed Nintendo games? Bootleg T-shirts? Molded plastic, battery-operated toothbrushes? Do you want to do it as long as possible or do you want to get into other things?
No products, please. Please? I think the cartoon is enough in that regard. At the moment, this is my outlet for the stories that I want to tell. Who knows what may change? Will the pictures become redundant? Will the words? Will it all? I’m glad that I don’t know.
Are you interested in animation?
Not really. Cartooning is cartooning, animation is animation, you know? It’s apples and oranges. I don’t think the apple is sitting there waiting to be an orange. And I can’t imagine trusting my stories and characters to anyone but myself. It just wouldn’t work. I know I’d regret it.
How is Sleepyhead being received now?
I hear very little from the outside. Doing a short interview like this is quite a “stepping out” for me, believe it or not.
Do you have trouble coming up with ideas? Do you get most from newspapers, television?
No. I’m actually afraid of having too many ideas and losing the better ones in the pile. The input comes from anywhere and everywhere, but what I rely upon is the filter in my head that distills it all.
A cliché question, I know, but do you have any advice for anyone interested in entering the cartooning profession?
Well, I don’t want to sound presumptuous, I’m a novice who’s just finding his own legs, but there is one thing I have to stress and that is perseverance. It’s essential. Unless, of course, you happen to land smack into the nation’s warm embrace with your first doodle, a situation I can’t even ponder. The blood drains from my body. Other than perseverance, I’d suggest finding out just what a cartoon is, why it is, so that you can ask yourself if it’s really a necessary thing for you to do. I don’t think that a cartoonist is someone who can draw a funny face and I don’t think a cartoonist is someone who can tell a funny joke. That’s a caricaturist and a comedian, respectively. A cartoonist is something else completely. I guess that’s about all the advice I have, oh, one more thing – find yourself a hard, straight-backed chair. Your posture will be the better for it in the long run.

An Open Letter to George Clooney (in the form of Stan Lee's infamous Marvel Bullpen Bulletins)

ITEM! Great gregarious greetings, Gorgeous GEORGE CLOONEY! By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the noisily notable news of this year’s biggest, most bombastic, superific hit of the silver screen, the cinematic debut of a certain gold and red iron-clad avenger, the irresistibly Invincible IRON MAN! Then again, being twice voted the “sexiest man alive” (where was my placing, I most humbly have to wonder?), perhaps you’ve been too busy, tanning your ten million dollar toes poolside, in all your popular pimpin’ playboy splendor. Well, Georgie Boy, let me tell you, the marvelous minions, from coast to shining coast, are literally going lunatic, lapping up Rip-roaring ROBERT DOWNY Jr. in his career-changing role as millionaire inventor, industrialist Tony Stark (Momma Stark’s mustachioed pride and joy). This dandy little picture show has already raked in a cool two hundred and ninety million buckaroos! And that’s just the sauce around the beans, effendi, because everybody’s green-skinned gamma-gilded giant is next, followed by a whole healthy helping of four-color goodies (doth someone sayeth Asgard?), culminating in an epic only Camera-wieldin’ CECIL B. DEMILLE could have conceived. That’s right, my aggressively attractive Armani armadillo, the AVENGERS themselves will be assembling at a theater near you, just a few short summers from now! It’s a complete and utter Marvel Universe lovefest out there, Georgie, one a wise and savvy Hollywood auteur like yourself should be a part of. No, I’m not, in all my humble cunning casting capacity, suggesting that you doff your Ralph Lauren for a tight-fitting bodysuit (though I gotta say you’d make a terrific Nighthawk). No, friend, what I’m suggesting is you turn your keen directing skills in the direction of this accelerated adrenal action and tell the story everyone in America is going to be clamoring for. That’s right, I’m talking about the Marvel Story itself, the overwhelmingly outta-site origin of the omnipresent HOUSE OF IDEAS! Of course, this is a tale centering around one Stanley Martin Lieber, STAN “THE MAN” LEE to all his true believers. Trust me, Georgie, Stan Lee’s made for the big screen, he’s a flamboyant, eccentric, linguistic, ego-rich milkshake, equal parts Pugnacious P.T. BARNUM, Horny HUGH HEFNER, and Bookish BILL MOYERS. You’ve already proven yourself with such intelligently insightful and energetically entertaining documents of our country’s media culture as Good Night, and Good Luck and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, just think what you could do with this super-sourced slice of American publishing history. Picture Lee’s rise as the verbose public face of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, surrounded by a cast of groundbreaking genre geniuses and elusive eccentric energumen like Jolly JACK KIRBY (the absent-minded, delusional WWII vet with visions of inner-space), Shy STEVE DITKO (the reclusive, paranoid master of creepy thought and comment), and Jaunty JIM STERANKO (the suave, avant-garde ladies man), whom he sold to a generation of young readers as “the Merry Marvel Bullpen”. Now imagine his pop-art histrionics of the late 60s and early 70s, when he and Marvel were the toast of colleges and the news media, embraced by painters, rock stars and Playboy magazine, Lee himself prancing about the country like a Woodstock-flavored Peter Pan, flaunting his perpetually-groomed porn star moustache and onerously-open shirts. You’d find yourself behind the camera of a hugely entertaining, strange, and funny fable, one that made household names of Iron Man, Spider Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, and The X-Men, to name a few. But, that’s not all, for locked within this pleasantly perfect pompous parade of pop culture hoopla, fanned by Lee’s supremely sensational shrill salesmanship, would be the real story, that of the secret struggles and all-too-human aspirations of the artists and personalities involved in this “marvelous” mayhem, the lives carried, and buried, by the monstrously manic company hyperbole, most pointedly the equally respectful and rancorous relationship twixt Lee and Kirby, the prince of patter oft clashing with the king of comics, the senses-sizzling sparks they generate giving the unsuspecting world a visionary plethora of punch-ready protagonists and pulse-pounding plots! As for historical authenticity, you would be wise to play it as loosely as Lee’s own infamous writes and rants, dropping more ingenious innuendo and salacious supposition than the master of modern myth himself, drawing in such peers of popular personage as Artful ANDY WARHOL, Preening PAUL McCARTNEY, Far-out FEDERICO FELLINI, and Krazy KEITH MOON, all who were affiliated with, or enthusiastically affected by, the Marvel legend. So, Georgie, my boy, what do you say? Are you going to let such a unique chapter of our country’s cultural identity pass you by? Or are you going to grab the no-prize and see that this simply searing story is captivatingly captured for generations of true believers to come? The choice is yours! Let’s do lunch and discuss! EXCELSIOR!

ITEM! THE HOUSE OF IDEAS, the upcoming film based on the early years of the Marvel Comics Company, to be produced and directed by Gorgeous GEORGE CLOONEY, has just announced its leading cast and, boy, is it a doozy! Set your Mighty Marvel peepers on this list, pilgrims:
Smilin’ STAN LEE – Joltin’ JOHNNY DEPP (the only rationale choice)
Jolly JACK KIRBY – Wincin’ WILLIAM H. MACY (near perfect casting, I’d say)
Shy STEVE DITKO – Slippery STEVE BUSCEMI (who does “uneasy” any better?)
Jaunty JIM STERANKO – Likable LEONARDO DICAPRIO (a moustache, a turtle neck)
Jazzy JOHN ROMITA – Jocular JASON BATEMAN (goofy smile, rolled-up sleeves)
Swingin’ SAM ROSEN – Simperin’ SETH MEYERS (is that not the face of a letterer?)
Happy HERB TRIMPE – Nerdy NEIL PATRICK HARRIS (he’s got the Hulk’s forehead)
Merry MARIE SEVERIN – Heavenly HELENA BONHAM CARTER (the dark, inky eyes)
Fabulous FLO STEINBERG – Minxy MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL (one word – secretary)
Artful ANDY WARHOL – Carrot-topped CONAN OBRIEN (he can stoop to conquer)
Preening PAUL McCARTNEY – Preening PAUL McCARTNEY (you still look 21, Paul!)
Far-out FEDERICO FELLINI – Jumpy JIM BELUSHI (trust me on this one – I think)
Krazy KEITH MOON – Malleable MIKE MYERS (he’s already worn the English teeth)
Horny HUGH HEFNER – Smilin’ STAN LEE (it’s practically in the bag!)

ITEM! The above-mentioned film concept, THE HOUSE OF IDEAS, has been submitted in writing to the Screen Writers Guild of America and is therefore a protected creative property of the author of this blog, Comic, J.W.E. Any usage or misappropriation of said concept will result in a team of supremely-gifted lawyers descending upon your house, legal briefs in hand, ready to practice the ancient litigious arts they learned while studying at the Acrimonious ART BUCHWALD School of Courtroom Proceedings. ‘NUFF SAID!

Confessions of a Comic Strip Terrorist, Part Two, Friends Of the Webbed Legend

Dear Editor,
Regarding the expulsion of Donald Duck from the comics pages of the Butler Eagle: We have waited long enough! Appease the silent majority by returning Donald to his rightful place. The city of Butler has not been the same since old Don was evicted, an ill wind blows down Main Street, hear its plea.
The Growing Numbers of F.O.W.L., Butler Chapter

Catching my breath, I drop the letter into the dark bin, listening for its envelope to hit bottom. I’ve just pedaled some six miles to this particular street corner, one adjacent to a huddle of miserable-looking, red-brick buildings situated at the north east end of Butler, a tired precinct of “spit an’ comb” barbers, moribund five & dimes, and deer skinning boutiques. Pushing away from the mailbox, casting a steady eye about me, I reassure myself I haven’t been seen. Reaching the curb, the front wheel of my bicycle hitting the road with a pleasing thud, I begin to head for home, my mission accomplished.

It is late summer, 1990. I am twenty six years old, the sole member of a secret terroristic organization known as Friends Of the Webbed Legend, an affiliation that places me alongside such notorious agencies of change as The Weathermen and The Black Panther Party, the only difference being that F.O.W.L. is dedicated to reinstating change to the comics page of a daily regional newspaper, not the social and political climate of the western world. That paper, The Butler Eagle, is still helmed by the editor who, some ten years earlier, published, and subsequently possessed, my own comic strip, Flip Rhodun. F.O.W.L. is, in part, my revenge on this philanthropic thief, my method of toying with the sacred structure of provincial journalism.
     I’d begun some two months prior, penning my first letter of protest and outrage, mere days after Donald Duck had been replaced by Geech, a generally uninspired look at small town life created by the late Jerry Bittle. The Duck strip was an anonymous vehicle of the Disney Corporation, the sort of capitalist beacon a militant cabal like F.O.W.L. should have stood in defiance of, and yet, here I was, championing this faceless cartoon, claiming to admire its classic simplicity, demanding its return through a series of letters to the editor, each increasing the urgency of the matter, issued with a more strident tone.
     It is patently obvious that Donald Duck has become a surrogate for Flip Rhodun. It is the rising face of a decade-old grievance, a grudge that will take me to rare extremes as I attempt to spare the bird the axe.
     At first, I simply sign my communications with the F.O.W.L. acronym, claiming no allegiance, or affiliation, with Disney. At least one a week appears in print. Soon, desiring to more deeply insert my fabrication into the workings of the paper and its community, I begin to craft responses to my own letters, crediting them to equally make-believe inhabitants of Butler, and the greater Pittsburgh area, colorful locals like Dom and Tam Diggs, married truck drivers who profess their love for the famous duck, even asking to join F.O.W.L.
     To authenticate this expanding skullduggery, I bicycle some twenty-odd miles, posting the Diggs’ letters where the postmark will stand scrutiny. It isn’t long before I’m pedaling about the county, dropping my “feathered missives” with increasing frequency, spreading my editorial terror. Many never make it to print, but each is an integral chapter in my story, helping to realize the world I am creating.
     As F.O.W.L.’s demands become more urgent, now appearing on “official” photo-copied stationary, letters from actual supporters begin to crop up, more than one following the cryptic literary bent of my own, taking an even more strident tone, threatening to cancel their subscriptions and boycott the paper.
     I have quickly become Dr. Frankenstein, F.O.W.L. my duck-shaped monster. The only way to stop what I have created, it seems, is for the editor to capitulate and return the sailor-suited drake. This would have been a perfect end to my tale, but, alas, it is not to be. Donald, like Flip before him, is never again to grace the pages of the Eagle. The Friends Of the Webbed Legend fails to meet its sworn objective.

Eventually, I cease the letter-writing, my sympathizers following suit. The ink-stained campaign of public influence quickly fades from view, even as a very different crusade of coercion captures the attention of the country, George Herbert Bush pointing to his vinegary lips, American tanks rolling into Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein testing his former benefactor’s will by annexing the oil depot known as Kuwait.
     As the vicious heart of a nation reveals itself, grandmothers calling for blood, a small city in Western Pennsylvania simultaneously succumbs to the iron-fisted rule of a newspaper tyrant, an editor who sees fit to banish a webbed legend from its cultural diet.
     Wisely recognizing that my days as a comic strip master of terror are over, I bid the rascally fowl adieu, unaware that my little exercise in media manipulation will one day come in handy, when I am to venture fresh escapades of literary deception, letting my mind run in wild new places, but that is yet another story, for another time.

Confessions of a Comic Strip Terrorist, Part One, “Flip'ed Out” (A Prelude)

It was early summer, 1981. I was a seventeen year-old high school graduate, living near the small Western Pennsylvania city of Butler.
     Named for Major General Richard Butler, a loser in the 1791 Battle of the Wabash River (the worst defeat in U.S. military history), it was a faded, but proud, no-nonsense, predominantly white, working class municipality, birthplace of the Bantam Jeep, the first all-steel railroad car, professional wrestler Big John Studd, and Bret Michaels, lead singer for the rock band Poison. A community steeped in the legacy of its manufacturing past, it was left brewing in its current economic woes. Its main street, imaginatively named Main Street, was less than two miles long, an impoverished stretch of vacant storefronts and dying businesses, buttressed on one end with patriotic car dealerships, the other with an aging steel bridge straddling the second most polluted river in North America. Situated in the middle of this grim gauntlet of collapsing commerce was the Butler Eagle Building, its beaux-arts, white stone eagles perched in testament to past prosperity. The Butler Eagle, one of the few family-owned newspapers in the United States, was a highly-functioning organ of an otherwise expiring system, an eighty year-old daily boasting a circulation of nearly twenty two thousand. It was within these austere walls of parochial journalism that I was to sow the seeds of my future reign of domestic terror.
     There I was, on a warm May afternoon, sitting in the editor’s office, perspiring nervously, trussed up in an uncomfortably over-sized tweed wool suit, a copy of that morning’s paper poised unopened on my knee, a cup of unwanted black coffee shaking in my hands. “We’re going to give you Bud Blake’s spot,” the wide-faced and balding, chummy editor explained, slipping into his wide desk drawer the two large pieces of construction board upon which I’d mounted the initial twelve episodes of my masterwork, a daily comic strip entitled Flip Rhodun, one featuring the adventures of a wise-cracking space marine in the 23rd century. “That’s Tiger you’re replacing, you understand,” smiled the editor. “You’ll be on subordination, a trial arrangement. Being printed alone is quite an honor for a young man like yourself.” I simply nodded, my cup clinking on its saucer. One clumsy, sweaty handshake later, I’d naively agreed with the spendthrift, small-time baron of the fourth estate that my first contribution to the history of cartooning was worth more to the people of Butler than me, thus depriving myself the compensation due the creator of a daily comic strip in one of America’s long-standing regional newspapers. For the next eight weeks I gave him the entirety of my creative self, providing a new strip every Monday through Saturday, receiving not a dime for my effort.
     My indentured servitude going smoothly, I was more than happy, despite the fact that the transition from teenage doodler to one of America’s “premiere men of the funny pages” was not quite the bonanza of social mobility I had imagined it would be. What attention it aroused among my peers was negligible. I continued turning out my amateurish strips, perpetually bewildered to find them printed each and every day, sitting beside the likes of Broom Hilda, B.C., Mark Trail, and Blondie, until, all of a sudden, at the beginning of my second “story arc”, I was unceremoniously dumped, booted at the urging of two angry letters from purported fans of Mr. Bud Blake. The ride was over, my first career in non-profit cartooning had been cut short. I was so unworthy of my former publisher’s attention, I found it impossible to even retrieve the original art to my forty-odd strips, the editor’s office, and its complimentary coffee and papers, now seemingly closed to me forever. I was locked out, forgotten, washed-up, an inkpot has-been at the ripe old age of seventeen.
     Not surprisingly, the experience changed me.
     Acquiring a sense of injustice, I soon grew to realize how I’d been utilized by the machinery of an industry that existed, quite literally, to improve its own circulation. I was the “local boy made good” who was quickly made to disappear. I’d entered that regal building an innocent, aspiring boy cartoonist, but I’d left, almost two months later, a man with a grudge, another artist who’d faced the inevitable sparsity of a newspaperman’s soul.
     Carrying the sting of this marketplace baptism with me, I strode into the maw of the capitalist system, regularly confronting new villains and fresh adversity, biding my time, secretly plotting revenge as I methodically empowered myself with knowledge that would serve me well, a decade down the road, when I would return to the hallowed halls of The Butler Eagle, this time armed, transformed into a diabolical, terroristic mastermind.
To Be Continued

The Art of Interaction, Seattle's Cultural Black Eye

If cities were cartoons, if their personalities were engineered by cartoonists, I would put extroverted metropolises like New York City, Baltimore, and Chicago, firmly in the hands of Roy Crane and Elzie Segar, the creators of Captain Easy and Popeye, two of the most pugnacious characters in the annals of comics history.
     A city like Seattle, on the other hand, could only be the creation of a contemporary creator like Daniel Clowes or Adrian Tomine, that modern breed of cartoonist whose characters generally think the majority of their interactions, contemplating action and confrontation, rather than actually encountering it.
     I was recently reminded of this diametrical difference between North America’s urban clusters when I was accosted by three burly, bearded toughs, shanghaied on the city docks, pummeled silly in a hovering cloud of dust, arms and legs flitting about me like mosquitoes, the air blue with spirited cursing, lovingly-drawn skulls and crossbones, daggers, and little bottles of poison hanging over me, all this dynamic interaction leaving me with a battered, bruised noggin’ and popsicle stick, plus a black eye as perfectly splendid in form as anything the funny pages can offer. Really. Honest. It happened.
     OK, I’ll admit, I’m lying. I wasn’t actually roughed up by tuffs. That sort of thing happens in Hoboken, not the “comfy slipper” of urbanity we call Seattle. The truth is I received my multi-hued blemishes and muscle aches after foolishly attempting to pull on a pair of gloves, speeding down a nighttime street while riding my bicycle, the sort of prank better men than me would have accomplished with aplomb. No Buster Keaton am I. Nevertheless, my tell-tale black eye was brilliantly in evidence the next morning, growing and shifting as the hours and days passed, migrating like an epidermal oil spill, closely followed by the cuts and swelling, all forming a very “cartoony” picture, to say the least.
     Having had my moment of pulpy interaction, seeing stars, my hat and glasses flying off my head, no less, I proceeded about my business in the Emerald City, this demure town I have called home for some fourteen years. I visited the bank, the grocery store, the post office, the zoo, the bicycle shop, the tavern, even the optometrist, and not once was I asked about my royal shiner, my splendiferous shanty, my gorgeous goog. Not even a subtle hint or polite whisper did I receive. The fine, reserved gentry of Seattle simply avoided it altogether, as if it didn’t even exist. It was a systemic politeness, a courtesy unchecked, a decorum gone mad I decided, after a full week facing this deafening aphonia. I appreciate tact, of course, and don’t wish to have complete strangers poking me in the eye on a regular basis, but this stony wall of avoidance was a bit too much. It made me wonder if Seattleites have any comical spirit at all. What are they so afraid of, I had to wonder.
     Even in a fatgiued municipality like Pittsburgh, my previous haunting ground, where economic realty has taken the wind out of many a once-vociferous windbag, I would have been on the butt end of at least one good ribbing from a stranger. “Whatcha doo, buddy? Slip in the pisser? Try kissin’ a keyhole? Wake up on the wrong side of yer Granma? Haw, haw, haw.” It would have been downright unfriendly not to have been greeted, at least once in the afternoon, by such a comment. But Seattle had nothing to offer, not even a mundane “I hope the other guy’s eating hospital food.” Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Zero.
     Jet City ain’t go no zip in its lip, I tell ya. Can this town really be so twisted up in its liberal identity that it’s taken all of the fun out of the inherently comical mishaps of life? Are we so afraid of coming off as something less than a politically correct model of civility and sensitivity that we’ve lost our whimsy, our spirit, our sense of humor? Really, how bad could the truth be, how terrible, how absolutely awful that it makes a city, one known for pointing out the elephant in the room, both political and social, clam up like kids before a broken window? Was it presumed that I’d lost a fight, the subsequent embarrassment having placed me on the teetering edge of suicidal recourse? Or perhaps my wife or girlfriend had given me my “purple mouse” with an impressively-aimed remote, on account of me insisting we watch David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things in lieu of America’s Next Top Model. Maybe I did try to kiss a keyhole (meaning I caught my eye with the doorknob, for those of you who didn’t quite get that one). Or, geez, maybe I really was punched by a loved one or family member, the two being mutually exclusive in such an event. As they say in the “less-enlightened” territories, folks, shit happens, you just have to learn to roll with it. Anyone who has ever been through great adversity or grief knows how precious humor and laughter is, knows that acknowledgement, even in the form of a little teasing, is far better than uneasy silence.

My parents lived through Hitler’s bombardment of England. When I ask them about it they never fail to laugh at the memories; my mother’s father, Papa to me, with his ill-fitting helmet and unwieldy rifle, waddling off up the nettle-lined country hillocks to defend the Queen’s soil, his corn-addled feet the pride of the Home Guard, even as my mother shielded herself under the kitchen table, only a candle for light, German “doodlebugs” shaking the roof of the little farmhouse as they shattered the heavens, on their way to an explosive collision with the buildings and people of London. My father finds great humor in how inadequately prepared Britain was for Hitler’s forces, how easy it would have been, he claims, for the Germans to have crossed the Channel and have taken another sovereign nation, poor Papa not being much to object if they had. Anguish, horror, tragedy, these are the birthplaces of comedy, as any true cartoonist or comedian knows. Even the term doodlebug points to this, the comical moniker having stemmed from the sound the loose shrapnel made as it whirled about inside the Fuhrer’s missiles of destruction.

A man with a black eye wanders into a bar, see? The barkeep gives him one look and reaches out and slugs him in the other eye. “Whot you do that for?” cries the man, sprawled on his keister beneath the bar, blinking like a raccoon. “Saving,” replies the bartender. “Savin’?” asks the man, hugging a stool as he staggers to his feet. “Savin’ whot?” “Saving me the trouble,” grins the keep. “And saving you the cost of a few beers.”

You see, Seattle, you just need to loosen up a little bit. By all means, be sincere, be concerned for the welfare of others, take note of the injustices and inequalities of life, of our plundering civilization and its cadre of rubes and charlatans, and do your good deeds, please, but don’t forget where comedy comes from, don’t suppress that laugh when misfortune offers its moments of slapstick, because it’s going to, whether you like it or not. The news on the front page might well be a crying shame, and most usually is, but that’s why they put the funny pages in the back, to give you some relief. The next time you come across someone with a nice shiner, at least grin and offer them a consoling “Ouch, that’s gotta hurt!” What are they going to do? Punch you in the eye?

(In fond memory of Mike Royko, 1932-1997, a writer who knew when to laugh, and what to laugh at.)

I Held Walt Whitman in My Arms

I held Walt Whitman in my arms that day I first found him, sequestered within the dirty, dusky confines of an antique mall located in a turn-of-the-century feed barn in the tiny borough of Harmony, Pennsylvania, a settlement founded in 1804 by German pietist Johann Georg Rapp.
     It was spring and he was lying on his back, held fast beneath an overbearing J. Edgar Hoover, his spine abutting that of a haggard-looking Vincent Van Gogh. He came cheaply, costing me less than I would shell out for a decent road map today. They all, in fact, came easily, and so I took them, Walter, Edgar, and Vincent, cradling them against my chest, atop nameless others, carrying them from the barn, into the daylight of a time they would never know, a world where, perhaps, their individual wounds of repression and guilt and torment would be allowed some healing. I brought them home, opened them up, and let them into my life, each for a different reason, each serving a purpose of their own.
     Of all my new companions, I soon grew most enamored of the old man, the poet with the haywire, paper-white beard, the sleepy, morning eyes, the quietly devilish crook of a nose. I sought not to judge him, only to show respect for the effort he put forth in building a life from nothing more substantial than his own muse, but what I subsequently learned of his nature lead me to question and challenge him, just as I had done his moral counterpart, Herbert George Wells, some half dozen years before, when I found the father of modern science fiction coupling with tawdry imposters on a greasy metal shelf in Pittsburgh. For every hour of fading day that Whitman pondered the lines of the hands upon his lap, secretly picturing those of another, Wells was dragging his adulterous carriage across numerous bed chambers, letting loose his boisterous seed, a discharge of genius and pomposity.
     “There's old H.G. Wells,
lying in bed
with his new housekeeper, hot squid by their side,
glowing with pride,
flushed with exhaustion” – Robyn Hitchcock, from his song “Victorian Squid”.
     This was 1990, a time of encroaching moral repression in the rural township in which I lived. Even though the evangelical Christian crusaders of The Moral Majority had all but dissolved their organization by the time George Herbert Bush stepped into the White House, there was a righteous fever in the air about my community, a heated desire to vanquish all heathen urges, America’s puritan heart reasserting itself at the end of the century.
     These signs of a “Babylonian collapse” materialized themselves as a small, concrete-block building on the old highway running directly south to Pittsburgh. This bunker-like structure held our township’s very first adult book shop. It didn’t take long for a local, torch-wielding mob to form, gathered about the fervent ministrations of a local man of the cloth. Soon, they had the police making regular raids upon the tiny business, eventually arresting the tending clerk for selling immoral materials, a nefarious charge stemming from recently-drawn anti-obscenity laws. It didn’t seem to bother any of the moralist vigilantes that the individual who took the brunt of their attack, who spent more than a few months in prison, was a fifty eight year-old grandmother.
    Angered and frustrated by these events, I one day noticed a new billboard, appointed roadside prominence not more than two miles from where the now-shuttered bookstore stood. It was part of a national campaign designed to humiliate the “users” of pornography, to shame those who, through personal and societal circumstance, sought to facilitate their natural sexual compulsions the only way available to them: through magazines and films. One tag line of this witch hunt, “Real Men Don’t Use Porn”, was emphasized with a line-up of stern-looking women, Olympic Gold Medalist Jackie Joyner Kersee among them, all standing shoulder-to-shoulder, looking out from the gaudy tableau of outdoor signage, giving all who passed by the reproachful stare of a shocked and disapproving schoolmarm. This atmosphere of moral turgidity swirling about me, I immersed myself in the book which was resting atop the tall pile I’d exited the dark antiques emporium with that late spring day; Walt Whitman, A Life, by the masterful biographer, Justin Kaplan.
     An astonishingly intimate and admiringly thorough account of the life of America’s “poet of democracy”, this 432 page volume led to my reading and absorbing all I could of Whitman, revisiting the weathered paperback copy of Leaves of Grass I’d had since my early teens, steeping myself in what I soon realized was an ultimately sad and repressed existence, Whitman never being able to make tactile his longing for the young men who accompanied him on his various literary pursuits and undertakings. His was a desire uncorked, passion left to simmer and boil its way into the very heart of his poetry, those magnificent, earthy, delicately-rooted plots of verse that evoke so much of what he dared not speak with his tongue. It was only a matter of time before these fascinating realizations found their way into my cartooning.
     I began in 1993, with “Walt Whitman’s Super-Hero Daydream”, appearing in the first issue of Whotnot!, my quarterly comic from Fantagraphics. Here I offered a coy commentary on Whitman’s self-repression, as viewed through the lens of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s infamous Seduction of the Innocent, his investigation of the “morally-unhinged” comic book industry, harbinger to the 1954 Senate Committee Hearings to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, and the industry’s formation of its own dubious Comic Code Authority. It was a cartoon I was later informed had been enjoyed so much by a literature professor at Auckland University that he’d photocopied and enlarged it, displaying it on his classroom wall. The next Whitman piece I felt compelled to create was entitled “Young Walt Sees A Skull With Hair On It”, a somber, one-page rumination on the poet’s early career in journalism, a cartoon I shelved, deciding it wasn’t appropriate for the tone of Whotnot! I next utilized Whitman in 1994, featuring him as one of four sad sack bards in “Poetry Does Not Pay”, a centerpiece from Whotnot! #4, the last issue of the series. This was a four-page parody of the pre-Wertham crime comic milieu, specifically the title Crime Does Not Pay and its strident, righteous tone, one ironically echoed in the “Real Men Don’t Use Porn” campaign. A year later, I eventually found a home for “Young Walt”, placing it in the first issue of my new series, A World Of Trouble, published by Black Eye Productions.
     It was this story in particular that recently caught the interest of Robert A. Emmons Jr., Associate Director of the Honors College at Rutgers University-Camden, and a teacher of film, media studies, and comics history. As a regular contributor to the respected online academic journal, Mickle Street Review, a quarterly publication dedicated to the study and illumination of Walt Whitman’s work and life, Emmons has written a exceptionally thorough examination of the three above-mentioned cartoons and my work-born relationship with the man who is held by many to be America’s foremost poet of the emotional, that ever-confounding and fascinating junction of what we call the brain and the heart. I recommend visiting Mickle Street Review Issue 19/20: Sights and Sounds, where you will find Emmon’s insightful piece, as well as many other fascinating articles upon the influential poet.

Letters From Hell, You Dig?

All of the attention garnered by my post, that concerning Wendy Wilson and the letter she sent to me back in 1977, has inspired me to investigate other saved ephemera in my dusty morgue of curiosities, notably publications that feature letters from readers. Filing through a great variety, everything from a 1939 issue of Popular Mechanics, to British, soccer-themed comic books from the 60s, to the March 1970 issue of Aramco World Magazine, featuring Nabil Fawzi, the Saudi Arabian Superman, I eventually came across one periodical, the letters of which I found to be astonishingly rich, missives steeped in the linguistic, social and geo-political nuances of their time, magnificent cultural blips that flippantly, but strikingly, mark the epoch of an era we know as the Vietnam War.
     The publication in question is the July 1970 issue of Hot Rod Cartoons, a magazine-sized comic book title that was published from 1965-1974, by the Patterson Publishing Company of Los Angeles. This is an item from my own youth, part of an accidental, and temporary, divergence in my reading habits, one resulting from confusion on my mother’s part when confronted with an extensively-stocked magazine stand, intending to buy her sick, bed-ridden son something with which to ease the boredom. It was the first issue of Hot Rod Cartoons I had ever experienced.
     It wasn’t that I didn’t like cars. Quite the contrary. I had as many Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars as anyone on the block, perhaps more. I made models of Don “The Snake” Prudhomme’s famous dragster, I incessantly drew “souped-up” hot rods belching clouds of smoke. I was, like most boys my age, of the general mind that cars were pretty darn cool things. What made me unfamiliar with Hot Rod Cartoons (and its sister title, Car Toons) was its strange, off-putting nature. The content of the stories being cars, and the people who drive and race them (often at the same time), made for narratives built entirely around a mature populace. There was hardly a child to be found within their pages. But, unlike Marvel or DC, and their ever-growing litany of super hero titles, these were cartoons of a familiar, pedestrian nature, mainly featuring grown men tinkering with their garaged hot rods or troublesome, driveway-devouring jalopies. They were speaking directly to car enthusiasts. They were, in essence, comics for adults, or near-adults, an all but unique thing on the American landscape of the early 1970s.
     The end of the war still some three years away, it isn’t hard to imagine copies of Hot Rod Cartoons stuffed into the mud-caked field packs and ammo belts of young GIs, the Camaro and Charger fans mired in that wretched mess. It is their letters I’ve come across, numerous pages of them, the editors of HRC apparently recognizing the extraordinary lot of the majority of their readership, posting these war-scene missives as a public service, a newsprint bulletin board, a means by which the torn, and tired, and homesick, could share an unquestioning love for their cars and their girls, those universally-held, potent reminders of a world they had been so irrevocably removed from.
     Contemplating the fascinating variance of public correspondence, while reflecting on my own past experiences in this realm, and the recent rash of blogging comments and e-mail communications I have been receiving, I thought it might be illuminating to take a look back, some thirty-eight years, to a time when computers weighed as much as Chevy, and were about as big. The following selection of letters comes from the very issue of Hot Rod Cartoons I disappointedly flipped through that long day home from school, a seven year-old whose cognizance of the reality of war extended no farther than the tiny bandages he’d wrap about his G.I. Joe, daringly pricking his own finger to draw blood in order to authenticate his soldier’s wounds.
     In order to make things a bit more interesting, I’ve fabricated a small percentage of the letters. It’s up to you to see if you can enter the mindset of these young writers, and the epoch of their times, enough that you might be able to spot the forgeries. The list of fakes can be found by scrolling to the bottom of the right hand side column. But let me warn you, it isn’t going to be easy, for the actual letters are often as surreal and obtuse as anything I, or anyone, could imagine.
     NOTE: In keeping with the spirit of the times, I have included the full names and mainly military addresses, just as they were printed, feeling that if all were “cool” with it then, they wouldn’t mind now. My apologies to any who aren’t. I’ve left in any grammatical slang, but have attempted to fix all misspellings. It seems that good proofreaders were hard to find in 1970. Perhaps they were all in the fields and jungles of the Indochina Peninsula, desperately trying to cover over someone else’s mistakes.

• I’m a grunt in Vietnam. I’m the guy who finds the bunkers, pursues the enemy, captures the village, crosses the swamps, and kills the mosquitoes. I’m also the guy most people have seemed to forgotten. I’m infantry all the way. I found your cool mag one day (in the middle of nowhere). So, here I am. I’ll write to anyone – male or female, 5 to 500 years old.
– PFC DANNY ISLAS 

551-78-8210 1st Cav. Div. (AM) Co. D, 5th BN, 7th Cav. APO San Fran., CA 96490

• I’m 22 and in the hospital for wounds I received in Vietnam. I dig V.W.’s and Fords. Split window Volks are especially my bag, ’54 and below. Any gals 16-1600, none older please, care to write?
– SP/4 DAVID COHEN 

Dewitt Hospital 2-A, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060

• Air Force, that’s me, dropping the Uncle Sam everywhere I go. Over here for the Nam and thinking about my ‘Vette back stateside. Reading Hot Rod and Toons every chance I get, but bustin’ merits and tradin’ cigs ain’t much of a life. In dig on anyone, especially gals, who knows a Ford’s place on the road is the shoulder, dig? Write and I’ll reply, guaranteed.
– SGT. JOE KAZMAN FR 

129-96-8003 Box 9447 APO San Francisco, CA 93623

• Isn’t there any way you can keep them little kids from writing in and giving a bunch of bologna about what tuff cars they got and how they drag everybody around? Personally, I groove on Fords and V.W.’s. Last but not least, all I want to say is “shame” on all you guys that write in and beg a bunch of weird girls to send you letters, just so you’ll be getting something in the mail.
– PATRICK NICHOLS 

4900 W. 17th Ave. Denver, CO 80204

• I think your magazine is great. I am a 17 year old girl, and I would like to write to boys 18 and over, from anywhere.
– ANGELA BELTON 

185 Victorial Rd., Oulton Broad, Lowestoft, Suffolk, England

• I want to let everyone back home know that dragsters in the muck over here don’t have any chutes. It’s all straight racin’, you don’t stop until you drop. Pappy, I’m homesick and miss the girls from Cuyahoga. Write this schmuck and make it better, alright?
– PFC DREW MAGGIO (18) 

G-3 Combat Operations C USASATR, Fort Devens, Mass. 01433

• We’re just a couple of slap-dillin’-slobbies just skitchen yore rag. Durin’ our eyeballin’ session we taught about having a couple of skibby gails type friends who rubersap Fords and need Chevies to Live & Love. Help! We need scribbles from dolls!
– SCOTT HARISON, DANNY GILLIS 

U.S.N. Hospital, Pavillion 13, Newport, RI 02840

• I’m a G.I. from Florida. And I’m not having much mail coming my way. Any gals from 8 to 80, dumb, deaf, or crazy and would like to write, I’ll be sure to answer your letters. I’m 18 years old and dig fast cars. Any of you gals like Chevy’s?
– PFC TERRY L. BROWN 

263-96-4332 4th Ord. Co. APO New York, N.Y. 09059

• What a wild scene, Pappy! I’m an amateur racer and my plugs are shot! What’s a guy supposed to do to get a subscription to your groovy mag? I’m finished with Uncle Sam but track work is hard to find. Would appreciate a gurl with a home I can settle into, no steady place currently for this bug-slapper from Kentucky. I’m 27 and like them younger. Believe in the truth and I’m yours, baby.
– RICK BRADLEY 

c/o R.C.W.H Shelbyville Hwy. Murfreesboro, Tenn. 37130

• Hey, you Mini-T Dropout; what’s the bad scene with the subscriptions gig? Like I’m heading for the Great Big War soon, and then what do I do, huh Brain? You gotta help me, Pappy. A couple of well chosen words for Ford people: You had better write your will, baby, Chevy rules! Any girls, please write. Especially Debbie from Tampa, Fla.
– AIC BOB BODINE, JR. CMT 

Box 5094 Homestead A.F.B., Fla. 33030

• How goes the world? I was just setting here in my sand bagged underground bunker at F.S.B. JANE (Fire Support Base) in the middle of the jungle, killing you’d never guess, FLIES! Hoping that maybe you’d print a thank you note for the November ish of HRC. In reply to my ad I got 133 replies. Unfortunately, though, one nice looking chick that’s a movie star forgot her address. I don’t even know her name. But she lives in Hollywood Hills, California. Any girl type out there wanta write to a PFC in the Artillery that’ stuck out in the boonies right near Cam Boonies? If I can’t answer it, I’ll find someone who can.
– PFC KEVEN CABRA 

C. Btry. 6/27th ARTY APO San Francisco, CA 96221

• I’m a Mopar lover from way back, but what I miss more than those big hemi’s are the big beautiful girls that I seem to remember from back home. Memories are all I have left. Would appreciate any sweet young thing who would devote a few minutes of her precious time to refresh my memories. I’m from Indianapolis, Ind. But regretfully, have been in Germany for about a year.
– AIC R.O. BORING CMR 

Box 64436CSG AF 68114787, APO New York 09132

• To put it straight, I’m out here in Nam and need some LETTERS!
– A1C ED RAFALSKI 

19 TASS Bx 11205 APO San Francisco, CA 96227