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Archives: Edward Sorel Interview in Comics Journal

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Excerpts from an April 1993 interview with Gary Groth in The Comics Journal.


Untitled-8
Cover illustration to Superpen: The Cartoons and Caricatures of Edward Sorel © 1977

Getting back to the ’50s, did you have ambitions to be an artist? Did you enjoy illustrators or cartooning?

Yes, I was a great fan. It seems to me that my hero, my big hero when I was at Cooper Union, was André François, and Ronald Searle, and a little later Felix Topolski. In retrospect, I can see where my love of Topolski comes through in some of my drawings. Some of the people who my work reminds me of weren’t my heroes. John Groth for example. I don’t know if you know his work. He was the first art director of Esquire, by the way. Then I discovered the work of Heinrich Kley. What saved me was that I had good taste buds, by which I mean I preferred André Francois to Jack Davis. [Laughs.] One of the most distressing things in my brief period of teaching was the realization that most of the students there wanted to be Jack Davis. I was not the person to help them. [Laughs.]


You were in an issue of Raw, an issue or two ago. How would you assess the drawing skills of the people in Raw?

Oh, they’re awful. I’m so glad to have this interview because I’d never have the courage to say that to Art. I think it’s awful. I think, first of all, there is something to be said: some of my favorite artists are klutzy drawers. There was a guy named Alfred Kubin who drew for Simplicissimus who couldn’t draw, but he had so much passion in his stuff that it really didn’t matter. By the same token, Art Spiegelman, who I don’t think draws well, has so much passion in his Maus that the whole thing works beautifully. I give a lot of points for passion. I’m not particularly interested in drawing that is naturalistic.


In 1963, Simon and Shuster published Moon Missing. Can you tell me what that was?



Well, I’ll always be very grateful to Moon Missing. While I was having my nervous breakdown after my first marriage collapsed, I went to Quaker meetings. I thought it would be a good idea for me to be concerned with troubles other than my own. At a meeting, I met a woman during the coffee break, and I was able to let drop that I had a book out, which was Moon Missing. I think she assumed that I was a writer, rather than a cartoonist, and so she became impressed enough that we went out to breakfast, and we fell in love and we got married, and lived happily ever after. So I’ll always be grateful to Moon Missing for that. Moon Missing was a fantasy that was about what happens in the world when the moon disappears. It used people who were very much in the limelight at the time.

Moon Missing was published by Simon & Shuster, who had a half-page ad set to appear in The New York Times on a Monday morning. Unfortunately, it was the Monday morning that the newspaper strike started, and that was the end of Moon Missing, which was remaindered along with all of the other books that couldn’t be publicized. The story of my life is a whole series of stories like that, which leads me to believe that there is a God and he’s pissed off at me. For example, I don’t know if you know my poster of Cardinal Spellman, that was done at the peak of the Vietnam War.




“Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammo.” I was going to ask you about that.

Yes. “Pass the Lord and Praise the Ammunition.” Right. Well, that poster … that was really one of the happiest days of my life when Personality Posters said that they would make a poster out of this drawing, which everybody, every magazine refused to publish — even Ramparts refused to publish it. It was somehow too sacrilegious. Here he was going to make a poster of it and I would be famous at last. The day that poster got off the press was the day that Cardinal Spellman died, and that poster was not sold anyplace in the United States. It was sold in one store in Chicago that had its window broken for selling it.

What year was that?

That was 1968 or so.

Can you explain what Spellman represented socially and theologically?

Well, he represented the continuation of the long line of reactionary fatheads in the Catholic Church. People forget that he had gone over to Vietnam and assured the soldiers that they were friends of Christ’s simply because they were over there. A tradition, I believe, carried on by Cardinal Cook, who was his successor. Much of my cartooning is anti-clerical, which explains why I appear in The Nation instead of Time Magazine.


At what point did you learn how to use color? And how?

Well, color is so easy that it didn’t require learning. I can’t understand why anybody ever has trouble with color. Color’s easy.

Other artists say that they struggle with it, and still don’t get it.

It’s the easiest thing in the world. All you do is put down a ground. You know what a ground is?

Yeah.

In other words, you put a color …

… over the entire canvas or surface.

Yeah! And then whatever color you put over it, it holds together, because it’s got that color underneath it, especially if you’re working with watercolor. So all my color is terrific, because of this very simple trick.


You once said, “The reason I use so many lines is because in certain drawings that are done direct, when you work in a line with pen and ink, there’s a sudden death situation on reliance there. There’s no erasing it, no fudging it, so there are a lot of finding lines.’’ Can you explain what you meant by that? You have this technique where your drawings are almost composed of a series of circular linework. Can you explain how you arrived at that? And of course you’re being imitated now. There are other illustrators who are using similar techniques, but it’s uniquely yours.

Well, there’s only one guy who’s attempting to work in my style. His name is Victor Juhasz. What he’s copying are the surface mannerisms, and I wish him well. What I worry about is the drawing, what he worries about is the circles.

Can you explain what you mean when you say you work direct?

Quite simply, it’s without any pencil indication of where the drawing’s going to go. No light box, no tracing of any kind. To do work direct in a medium that is insusceptible to change like charcoal or pencil is suicidal. It’s kind of dumb. That’s one of the reasons I work on cheap paper, because it takes many, many sheets before you get it right, and if I worked on good paper I would worry too much about all the money I was losing. So I work on cheap bond, so if it takes 30 or 40 sheets of paper before I get the right one I don’t worry about it.


When you do one of your painting using pastels, do you use pencil indications?

No, I work the same way that I do with pen and ink, except I’m using charcoal, which of course you can erase. As a result of that, I don’t have to go through 30 different drawings, although sometimes I do have to go through three or four. I think the important thing is to work in such a way that accidents can happen. What’s death is knowing where everything is going to be, so there’s no excitement either in the doing of it or in the looking at it. I think every modern artist that I like has an element of accident in his work.

Almost every artist I know pencils, and then inks, and you and Ralph Steadman are the only two I know of who skip that one step.

Well, what’s great is to be a magician, to be able to do a kind of work where somebody says, “I don’t know how he does that.” Gluyas Williams, who prepared everything very meticulously, is nevertheless a magician. I don’t know how he did it. It’s still a mystery to me. The cartoons that you like best are the ones where you say, “I don’t know how he did that.” I don’t know how Crumb does what he does. To me, all the good stuff seems incredible.


Let me ask you about a few cartoonists, and ask you what you think of them. Pat Oliphant?

The best political/editorial cartoonist around, and I envy him because he has more imitators than I do.

 [Laughs.] Steadman?

The most miraculous of all. What he does is the most amazing to me. I have his Da Vinci book, which I’m sure you’ve seen. Now, how he did that, I don’t know. Just absolutely gorgeous. I mean, if we were living in any other age except this one he would be internationally celebrated, I think. I can’t speak too highly of him. And he writes well, too.

And as you know he speaks well. He’s funny. Do you know Gerald Scarfe’s work?

Yeah. Scarfe interests me less than Steadman. I’ve seen stuff by him that I admire. It just doesn’t interest me that much.

...

What about old newspaper cartoonists, like Winsor McCay?

Winsor McCay. It’s like liking movies that everybody else likes. Everybody loves Winsor McCay and recognizes his genius. It’s more fun liking Cliff Sterrett. There are some examples of his work in the Smithsonian Collection of Comic Strips. Those were the best art deco strips I’ve ever seen, and nobody writes monographs about Cliff Sterrett, although I might.


Cliff Sterrett. Polly and Her Pals. “I won't have that critter on the farm, Fat-head!” 1933


B’nai B’rith Canada Condemns Montreal Gazette Editorial Cartoon

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From the Algemeiner.



Frank Dimant, CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, who traveled with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper this week to Israel, on Wednesday condemned an editorial cartoon by Aislin published on Tuesday in the Montreal Gazette, showing the prime minister defaced with an Israeli flag.

“The cartoon is vile, grotesque and simply offensive,” Dimant said.“It is therefore inexcusable that the Gazette would deem it appropriate to publish.”

On Monday, Harper addressed Israel’s Knesset, the first time ever for a Canadian leader, saying that Canada would stand by Israel “through fire and water.”

“It is disrespectful, not only to the Prime Minister, but everyone who supports the democratic principles highlighted in his speech in the Knesset,” Dimant said.

“It is all too similar to perverted images vilifying Harper which we have seen during his trip to the Middle East. It treads close to borrowing the age old canard that Jews wield undue influence to silence critics of Israel. The broader spectrum of Canadians supporting Israel, and the Jewish community in particular, deserve an immediate and unqualified apology.”



Aislin's response:

One of the most exasperating aspects of being a political cartoonist is the predictable, knee-jerk reaction from some readers whenever Israel is referred to in a cartoon. It is an issue worth addressing. Below, for example, is a letter from a Gazette reader – and my response to it. (Out of courtesy, I have not included the reader's name.)

LETTER:

I was horrified upon opening up the Gazette this morning and seeing your insulting and clearly anit-jewish-Israel caricature of Stephen Harper. I cannot believe my eyes nor your audacity to have this in public view. You will be reminding people of caricatures of jews depicted in Nazi propaganda that were debased and ridiculed. How dare you. Disgusting and disappointing. My subscription with the Gazette ends today.

MY RESPONSE: 

We are all welcome to our own opinions and are entitled to express them. That is why I rarely respond to any criticism of my cartoons. In your letter below, though, I feel I must answer to your reaction to today's Stephen Harper cartoon. Your outrage is quite frankly – a bit much.
It is no secret that Stephen Harper is a big fan of Israel. Fans tend to wrap themselves in flags – or paint their faces with sports or patriotic symbols. Thus today's cartoon. And for some of us who do genuinely care about Israel, but would prefer to see more balanced sympathies on the part of Canada towards all peoples in the Middle East, Harper's love affair does seem – a bit much (as stated in the cartoon). This is a legitimate point of view that is as you surely must know held by many, many Canadians.
Therefore, for you to compare my cartoon to Nazi depiction of Jews is absolutely ridiculous! Better, the cartoon was drawn in the same spirit as the good political cartooning that is being done today in Israel itself. Freedom of the press there allows for highly critical inward looking at Israeli society and its politicians – as is the case here in Canada.

Below is part of an article from The Jerusalem Post on local cartooning there:

"For a tiny country like Israel, some 30 working political cartoonists may seem a disproportionately high number compared to other countries, but this wasn't always the case. In the state's early years and through the 1960s, the Israeli press was largely nationalistic. Despite a few cartoonists like Arieh Navon, who developed charming or funny Israeli characters; there were not many critical political cartoons or even a lot of satire in the media itself. But soon enough, and with great ferocity, Israelis learned to let their hair down. By the 1970s, it was fair game to take your best shots at just about anyone through cartoons. This trend was partially inspired by the first television satire program, Nikui Rosh, which pioneered anti-establishment humour."

Terry Mosher (Aislin)


More from Aislin:

Regarding the reaction to today's cartoon of Stephen Harper in The Gazette, sensitivity about anything at all having to do with Israel is nothing new. Here is a cartoon from 22 years ago that my editors at that time declined to publish (even if they all loved it)…


Let it snow

Fleg Cartoon Goes Viral

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More than 6700 people have so far shared Fleg's "Bieber @ Ford" cartoon published in Yahoo! and Yahoo Québec. Facebook figures also show that more than 200,000 people have seen it.

Revolution in Kiev

The visual identity to mark Canada's 150th anniversary in 2017

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Steven Heller on the Print website.

The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada asks: “As proud Canadians, do you want something truly memorable for Canada’s 150th anniversary logo? Help us send a loud and clear message to Ottawa about the identity development process for Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations. Use the form below to send your message and sign the national petition:”

Canada’s Centennial Logo. Stuart Ash FGDC

Canadians are using this website to petition the Government to develop a Design Advisory Board for the 150th celebrations identity. We are recommending that the board have representation from each of Canada’s three design associations (GDC, SDGQ, RGD). Use the petition form to make your voice heard, show your support for Canada’s professional design community, and send a clear message to Ottawa about the development of the identity for Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations.

Reprint on "Yahoo Canada" (2)

How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet

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From Wired.




A skull which is also an ampersand: the monthly reference magazine of new technologies has selected a visual shocker.

In a major survey, the magazine tells how the revelations about the National Security Agency ( NSA) have shaken the giants in the technology sector: Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others. NSA programs using data stored by these companies threaten the very foundation of their activity: trust placed in them by users .

But the biggest fear of the sector is that the revelations based on Edward Snowden documents will involve a movement of " balkanization " of the web. Indeed, some countries are tempted to store the personal data of citizens in their own territory , free from intrusions of the NSA. This has an economic advantage: nationals are forced to use local technology services. And a political appeal : it is easier to spy on its own citizens. Malaysia has recently passed a law to that effect . Brazil and India are considering measures of " data protectionism ." This type of system is even mentioned in Germany.

If this trend is confirmed, it could "destroy the open nature of the web" , creating "dozens of independent Internet that do not communicate with each other ," says the magazine. It is "the future of the Internet " that is at stake.

The article here.

Video: Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum Archives

I Wish I'd Drawn... (25)

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This wonderful caricature of Pete Seeger.

Pete Seeger (1919-2014) by Taylor Jones

Bill Watterson wins Grand Prix at Angoulême

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Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson received the Grand Prix award this weekend in France at the 41st annual Angoulême International Comics Festival, honoring his lifetime achievement.

The prize is awarded to a living comics creator, and traditionally the winner serves as president of the jury for the following year’s festival; previous honorees have included Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman

Watterson, Alan Moore and Katsuhiro Otomo (who incidentally received a lifetime achievement award of his own this weekend) were the three finalists this year, with Alan Moore stating late last week that if he won, he would decline the prize

It will be interesting to see if Watterson accepts the prize or attends next year. 


Chester Gould family donates Dick Tracy collection to Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum

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Alan Gardner in The Daily Cartoonist.


From the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum:
The family of the late Dick Tracy cartoonist Chester Gould has donated a substantial collection of original Dick Tracy comic strips and related materials to The Ohio State University Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (BICLM). Gould wrote and drew Dick Tracy, one of the most popular and successful newspaper comic strips of all time, from 1931 until his retirement in 1977.

Chester Gould’s daughter, Jean Gould O’Connell, along with her son Tracy O’Connell and daughter Sue Sanders, made the decision to gift the Chester Gould Collection to Ohio State. The collection consists of more than 850 original Dick Tracy comic strips along with 64 original Sunday strips. Highlights include the original art for the first 30 days of the strip and Gould’s drawing board on which Dick Tracy was created, written and drawn for 46 years.

Chester Gould’s drawing table and tabaret, on display at the entrance to our Treasures Gallery.

Chevron sues political cartoonist Mark Fiore

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Lindsay Abrams in Salon.


The oil conglomerate is claiming injuries from a satirical video:

How desperate is Chevron to get out of paying billions in damages for oil contamination in Ecuador’s rain forest? Very, according to Mark Fiore. The Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist claims the company has filed court documents over a satirical video he made in conjunction with the environmental nonprofit Amazon Watch.

The papers, which Fiore posted yesterday to his personal blog, accuse defendants of having “unleashed a barrage of near-daily press releases, letters to government officials and shareholders, web videos, and cartoons in an effort to extort a payoff from Chevron.”

This is the cartoon in question:


In an article for Earth Island Journal reposted at Salon, Jason Mark explained the problem with Chevron’s strategy to countersue the victims of its own pollution– or, as Fiore put it in the video, to “RICO their ass”:

…some independent observers also have expressed concern about Chevron’s legal tactics. Most worrisome is Chevron’s use of RICO — the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — against Dongizer [the lawyer representing the Ecuadorians harmed by the oil spill]. RICO is used most commonly to prosecute mafia figures. Some lawyers and legal scholars say that employing RICO against a plaintiff attorney could set a dangerous precedent.

Susan Bozorgi, a Miami-based criminal defense lawyer, told Newsweek that she worries about what it will mean if Chevron wins: “[RICO] was meant to be used against the mob. The danger about a case like this is that it could send a message to a lawyer who wants to take up a cause for an underdog that Big Brother, the big corporate entity, is going to start coming after you for criminal conduct.”

UC-Hastings law professor Roht-Arriaza said to me: “I’m not a RICO expert, but I don’t know of any case that involves the behavior of companies abroad, where the company has turned around and sued under RICO. Chevron has been sued before, but they haven’t done this, even when it looked like things weren’t going well for them.” She continued: “It’s interesting the number of levels on which Chevron is fighting back. They are not only doing this, they are also bringing all of these arbitration cases, basically trying to say that the Ecuadorian court shouldn’t have brought any judgment.”

Chevron, by the way, is being represented by Randy Mastro, whom Chris Christie hired last month to clean up his own mess.

Reprint on the iPolitics website (15)

Artist Re-Creates Iconic Portraits With Thousands of Found Objects

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From Demilked.



British artist Jane Perkins calls herself a re-maker, as she uses found objects of various shapes, sizes and hues to replicate the most famous paintings and portraits of our times. In her gorgeous mosaic series “Plastic Classics”, Perkins combines all sorts of plastic objects – buttons, LEGO pieces, beads, figurines – and matches their shapes and authentic hues so well that the works look strikingly similar to the originals. These artworks resemble the impressionistic tradition, as they can be appreciated both from a distance as well as up close.

Source: bluebowerbird.co.uk

Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer (circa 1665)


Bill Watterson Interviewed in Comics Journal

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Excerpts from a Richard Samuel West interview in The Comics Journal #127 (March 1989).



Bill Watterson values his privacy and only rarely gives interviews. He agreed to do this one on the grounds that Calvin and Hobbes be the center of discussion. The interview was conducted, transcribed, and edited by Richard West, editor of the late and lamented political cartoon journal Target, and longtime friend of Watterson.

Isn’t it ironic that in a profession that’s become so formulaic you have created the most successful comic strip of the ’80s by not trying to fulfill a formula?

But in a way, I’ve ended up with the old tried and true. It’s a strip about a family — a familiar, universal setting that’s easy to identify with. I’m trying to put a unique twist on it, but it’s well-covered ground. The trend nowadays in comics seems to be to zero in on a narrow, specific audience, like divorced parents, baby boomers, and so on. I guess the idea is to attract a devoted special interest group to the comic page who will scream if the strip is ever dropped. That way, the strip stands a better chance of survival than a strip that aims wide but doesn’t hit deep. Generally, I don’t like these trend-of- the-month strips because they’re usually the product of some market analysis rather than the product of any honest artistic sensibility on the part of the cartoonist. Still, with any strip, it’s not the subject that’s important: it’s what you do with it. A family strip can be hackneyed drivel just as easily as any other kind of strip.


Let’s talk about Hobbes a little bit. He seems to be older and wiser than Calvin, but not much. Which of the following more accurately describes him: a pet, a brother, a friend, or the father that Calvin never had?

Hobbes is really hard to define and, in a way, I’m reluctant to do it. I think there’s an aspect of this character that’s hard for me to articulate. I suppose if I had to choose from those four, the brother and the friend would be the closest. But there’s something a little peculiar about him that’s, hopefully, not readily categorized.

Well, in a way that says more about Calvin than Hobbes because Hobbes is implicitly, explicitly just a product of his imagination.

But the strip doesn’t assert that. That’s the assumption that adults make because nobody else sees him, sees Hobbes, in the way that Calvin does. Some reporter was writing a story on imaginary friends and they asked me for a comment, and I didn’t do it because I really have absolutely no knowledge about imaginary friends. It would seem to me, though, that when you make up a friend for yourself, you would have somebody to agree with you, not to argue with you. So Hobbes is more real than I suspect any kid would dream up.





You do a lot with the visuals of the strip. Do you make a conscious effort to vary the visual, as well as the storylines?

I enjoy the drawing more than the writing, so I try to think of ideas that will allow me to develop the visual side of the strip as fully as possible. Some ideas don’t lend themselves to that. Even then, I try to make the drawings as interesting as I possibly can, given the very limited constraints of the format. In other words, if I’ve got essentially two characters talking in a daily, I’ll try to put them in an interesting location, have them walking through the woods. I’ll try different perspectives. If I’ve got several days’ strips that are essentially talking strips, one day I’ll eliminate all background, have it as sparse and clean as I can; the next day, try to make it a little lusher or develop the setting more. This is probably done more out of boredom than any conscious decision to do this one day and do this another day. The Sundays are the one day that I have a little more freedom with the visual aspects. The fun of a Sunday is that I have more space. Sunday strips lend themselves to longer conversations or visual things or, best of all, both: although if you have much conversation then you don’t have room for much visual. Sundays are more consciously chosen to reflect those two interests.




You’ve rejected licensing your strip’s characters. Why?

Basically, I’ve decided that licensing is inconsistent with what I’m trying to do with Calvin and Hobbes. I take cartoons seriously as an art form, so I think with an issue like licensing, it’s important to analyze what my strip is about, and what makes it work. It’s easy to transfer the essence of a gag-oriented strip, especially a one-panel gag strip, from the newspaper page to a T-shirt, a mug, a greeting card, and so on. The joke reads the same no matter what it’s printed on, and the joke is what the strip is about. Nothing is lost. My strip works differently. Calvin and Hobbes isn’t a gag strip. It has a punch line, but the strip is about more than that. The humor is situational, and often episodic. It relies on conversation, and the development of personalities and relationships. These aren’t concerns you can wrap up neatly in a clever little saying for people to send each other or to hang up on their walls. To explore character, you need lots of time and space. Note pads and coffee mugs just aren’t appropriate vehicles for what I’m trying to do here. I’m not interested in removing all the subtlety from my work to condense it for a product. The strip is about more than jokes. I think the syndicate would admit this if they would start looking at my strip instead of just the royalty checks. Unfortunately, they are in the cartoon business only because it makes money, so arguments about artistic intentions are never very persuasive to them. I have no aversion to obscene wealth, but that’s not my motivation either. I think to license Calvin and Hobbes would ruin the most precious qualities of my strip and, once that happens, you can’t buy those qualities back.

Well, what about something like a doll? That’s not a product like a coffee mug, which would be there whether the strip characters were printed on it or not. Why doesn’t a doll fit into your definition of appropriate licensing?

A doll communicates even less of the strip than the things mentioned before. A doll only cashes in on the recognizability of the character. Products like that take the character out of the world for which he was intended. If you stick 30 Hobbes dolls on a drugstore shelf, you’re no longer talking about a character I created. At that point, you’ve transformed him into just another overpriced knickknack. I have no interest in turning my characters into commodities. If I’d wanted to sell plush garbage, I’d have gone to work as a carny. The idea of a Hobbes doll is especially noxious, because the whole intrigue of Hobbes is that he may or may not be a real tiger. The strip deliberately sets up two versions of reality without committing itself to either one. If I’m not going to answer the question of who or what Hobbes is, I’m certainly not going to let Dakin answer it. It makes no sense to allow someone to make Hobbes into a stuffed toy for real, and deprive the strip of an element of its magic.





You mention size. What’s all the fuss about the size of comic strips?

The size issue is crucial to anyone who cares about quality in cartoons. To save space, newsprint, and money, newspapers have been reducing the size of comics for years. It has gotten to the point now, where cartoons can no longer do what they do best. Comic strips are words and pictures, but there is little room for either any more. Most cartoonists, to make their work legible at tiny reproduction, have eliminated panels, line-work, and words, and the result is a drastic loss in character development, storytelling ability, and intelligent humor. A beautiful strip like Pogo would be impossible to read at today’s sizes. Adventure strips are dead. Comics have been deprived of much of their ability to entertain. Now we have a lot of talking heads and gags that could be read with equal effect on the radio.

The visual attraction of the comics is largely a thing of the past. Until something is done to restore the size of comics, they will only continue to get more insipid, and have less pull on their audiences. To save a few inches of space, newspapers are killing the appeal of comics. Unfortunately, the syndicates and cartoonists are afraid newspapers would drop strips rather than add space if cartoons were printed larger, so few are willing to take a stand on this issue. Nobody wants to lose his strip over a few little picas.


Before Calvin and Hobbes, you submitted four or five comic strips to the syndicates, the later ones being kind of training grounds for Calvin and Hobbes. How do you look back on that time?
When I was sending the strips out, I looked no farther forward than getting interest from the syndicate, so in drawing up three weeks’ or four weeks’ material I would hope to show enough versatility and enough basic competence in writing and drawing skills that would interest them. But I lacked foresight in thinking about the depth of the characters and whether they would actually be able not only to continue but expand as they went on. I think that’s probably the mistake that many would-be cartoonists make, that their characters are vehicles for gags, rather than distinct personalities that can grow and develop over the years. It was a learning process. You can’t learn to stand up and walk without falling down a lot, so it’s very fortunate that I was able to do that without anybody seeing these strips except friends.

Well, one thing that you didn’t do out of the public spotlight was editorial cartoons, professionally, for six months, with The Cincinnati Post. How do you think back on that experience?
The experience itself was horrible, but getting fired forced me to reexamine how committed I was to political cartooning, and I finally admitted to myself that it had always been very difficult for me. I was never really very good at it.

I Wish I'd Drawn... (26)

Trudeau puts daily ‘Doonesbury’ on long-term hiatus to work on renewed ‘Alpha House’

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Michael Cavna in Comic Riffs.


At this point in Garry Trudeau’s career, John Goodman has just proved to be more irresistible a roommate than Zonker.

Hello, daily call sheet; goodbye for now, daily comics page.

Trudeau, whose TV show “Alpha House” recently ended its debut season with strong viewership, got the good news: Amazon Studios has picked up his politically satiric program for a second season, the cartoonist and his syndicate are set to announce later this afternoon. That’s right: Fans will get to see more of Goodman and the gang portray four Republican senators who banter and bicker as Hill roomies.

But providing punch lines for Trudeau’s newest characters comes at a cost: as of Feb. 24, the daily Doonesbury— Trudeau’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comic strip — will be put on long-term and open-ended hiatus, distributor Universal Uclick will announce.

Trudeau will continue to create new Sunday Doonesbury strips; the rest of the week, readers will get reruns dating back to the feature’s syndication launch in 1970. More than 13,000 potential Flashback strips, Universal Uclick notes, haven’t been seen in a newspaper since their initial run.

“I’ve done the strip for 43 years — 45 if you include the college edition [at Yale] — and I’m ready for an extended break,” Trudeau, 65, tells Comic Riffs.

In making the move, the New York-based cartoonist takes nothing for granted: “A hiatus comes with uncertainty, of course: I can’t assume I’ll be welcomed back a year or two from now.”

But the chance to be among the pioneers of scripted streaming-TV is too strong. With Alpha House— which last year marked the start of scripted original programming at Amazon Studios — Trudeau is charting “new territory in the ground-breaking world of online video,” Universal Uclick says. The show is delivered via Amazon Instant Video.

“Comic strips and episodic TV actually draw from similar skill sets,” Trudeau tells Comic Riffs. “I’m accustomed to writing dialogue, constructing scenes and developing characters.”

In the case of “Alpha House’s” initial 11-episode run, the left-leaning Trudeau continued to especially develop and deepen his core quartet of characters — the conservative senators played by Goodman, Clark Johnson, Matt Malloy and Mark Consuelos — as they fended off Tea Party challengers, ethics probes and blasts in Afghanistan.

Trudeau took a sabbatical from Doonesbury last summer to launch the show, which was inspired by the true-life living arrangements of four prominent Democrats — after Trudeau read a 2007 article about “Real World”-esque roomies Rep. George Miller, Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Sen.Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Bill Delahunt, who were sharing a two-bedroom house in the southeastern shadow of the Capitol Dome. (Schumer tweeted just last month that he was looking for a new roommie after Miller announced his retirement.)

Prior to Alpha House, the Oscar-nominated Trudeau was no stranger to writing for the screen. He worked with the late-great director Robert Altman on the Emmy-winning HBO political series Tanner ‘88, and penned the Sundance Channel sequel, Tanner on Tanner.

Despite his range of related experience, Trudeau seems surprised with how fully realized Alpha House is, saying that “it’s amazing that the show looks anything like what I imagined it would be. And yet, miraculously, it does.”


“HOUSE” PARTY MEMBERS: Mark Consuelos (from left), John Goodman, Clark Johnson and Matt Malloy share both Hill and housekeeping tips in “Alpha House.” ("ALPHA HOUSE" / courtesy of Amazon Studios )

Comic Riffs caught up with Trudeau to ask him about his decision to creatively move in with the senators — and visit Michael Doonesbury, B.D., Zonker and the cast only on weekends:
Congrats on the Alpha House pickup, Garry. How did you arrive at the decision to put “Doonesbury” on hiatus again -- was it difficult or a no-brainer -- and is this a bit like caring for two of your creative children, one fully grown, the other toddling? How does one creator parent both?
Not very well — they're both full-time jobs. So I had to choose, and no, it wasn't that difficult. I've done the strip for 43 years — 45 if you include the college edition [at Yale] — and I'm ready for an extended break. A hiatus comes with uncertainty, of course: I can't assume I'll be welcomed back a year or two from now. The comics page is zero-sum real estate, and there are a lot of interesting new strips that editors could turn to while I'm away.

Any hiatus in this syndication climate can be risky — did your 2013 hiatus at all increase your belief that editors and readers will stick with Doonesbury Flashbacks out of fanhood and loyalty and, especially with these '70s and '80s strips to be rerun, fond nostalgia? Especially with the understanding that you [to quote Gen. MacArthur] "WILL return"?

There's no way of predicting whether readers will stick with it. And while returning to the daily strip is certainly my intention, I've been struck by how much lateral movement I see with colleagues in media and arts these days. We live in Free Agent America -- nobody stays put. It's hard to promise anything in an era that so prizes disruption.

Having said that, I've always thought of myself as a comic-strip lifer, which is common in our industry and an annoyance to younger cartoonists. I love working for newspapers, and can't imagine life without them. Which is why I'm keeping one foot in with the Sundays.

What does Alpha House do for you as a creator and commentator and storyteller that perhaps you can't do through Doonesbury? How has it been gratifying so far in its own way?

The goal is essentially the same: to entertain. Sure, commentary is part of the package, but if you can't clear the comedy bar, you don't have a show.

Comic strips and episodic TV actually draw from similar skill sets. I'm accustomed to writing dialogue, constructing scenes and developing characters. And, of course, I think visually.

The main difference is that the strip allows me to be a little emperor, in total control of every element. On a TV show, by contrast, I have to get buy-in from 120 teammates. Alpha House is a small corporation, and when you consider all the disciplines, talents and temperaments involved, it's amazing that the show looks anything like what I imagined it would be. And yet, miraculously, it does.


"100 Illustrators" edited by Julius Wiedemann and Steven Heller

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Making the selections for a book like 100 Illustrators (published by Taschen) is an exercise on many levels. You want to feature the work of the artists you not just like, but have also followed for years, but you also need to think about each one’s contribution to the field of illustration: who they inspire, their unmistakable style, and the bulk of work they have produced and continue to make. It’s a lot to take into consideration. Over the last seven years, we have profiled over 700 illustrators for the Illustration Now! series, as well as collaborated on books covering portrait and fashion illustration. But recently, we decided it was time to whittle down the list and create the most important book that’s been produced in the field in decades. It is not a showcase. It is an art book about the art of illustration. 

A few illustrations featured in a Daily Beast gallery:

Steve Brodner

Istvan Banyai

Brad Holland

Anita Kunz

C.F. Payne

Oscar Cahén: The Power of Illustration

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Jaleen Grove in Canadian Design Source.


Illustrator and painter Oscar Cahén was one of the most versatile and avant-garde artists of the mid-twentieth century in Canada. He was also a powerful advocate for the artistic and social potential of illustration. That he is not a household name is wrong, and speaks to the historical neglect design history has suffered in Canada. Subsequent generations have been deprived of the opportunity to learn from his example, and Canadian illustration has not really expanded beyond what Cahén did more than half a century ago.




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