Zav ier Leslie Cabarga self employed illustrator/designer
Autobiography written by Zavier Leslie Cabarga 째 Book produced by Nicole Kasperbauer
utobiography →P erhaps my father had indeed wanted to sort of size-up the situation, but mainly he wanted to purchase the right size Zipa-Tone sheets for me to use. → “ Last night I had a dream that I had gotten a copy of the very first issue of EVO!” His dream came true and so did mine as I walked away with some comics. → I was absolutely amazed by these teenagers, Bob, Mike and Toby, who comported themselves as adults, hobnobbing as equals with the grown-up world. → I was still oblivious to this new women’s movement when I delivered a cover—at last I’d been asked to contribute one—to the RAT offices. → I shrugged it off but later realized that I was the only guy there and had missed an opportunity.
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“By the time I was 12, I knew cartoonist and illustrator. I because I am more of a selfshould have several degrees studying all the time about I just was reading a book ab two dozen books about vacc as bad as pesticides. They p that don’t work. They are a m of science that covers these have been insynched in me.
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w I wanted to be a neglected schooling -learner. I feel like I s by now because I am things I am interested in. bout vaccinations. I’ve got cinations. They are just put toxins into your body mythology. There is plenty e topics and those things .” -Zavier Leslie Cabarga “Cabarga is really brilliant; incredibly smart. He’s a wolfwatching machine. So much smarter than the people he surrounds himself with. He’s a guy where he can do whatever he wanted and do it well.” -Stuart Sandler -3-
My alternative epiphany came in 1968 at fourteen when I chanced upon a copy of R. Crumb’s Head Comix, a soft-cover, Viking Books compilation of Crumb’s absolutely revolutionary “underground comics” that had begun appearing in the alternative Press by 1966. “Thank God!,” I thought to myself, “I can stop drawing muscle-bound men in capes and tights!” Immediately, like many other fledgling cartoonists of the time, I began drawing my own puerile versions of Crumb’s misogynistic, racist, stoned-out, hippie comics. -4-
ventually I published my own “underground comic,” Johnny Fungus, and enjoyed brisk sales at 50-cents a copy at my Marlboro, New Jersey high school. Though my comic had some full frontal nudity and racist depictions, the school administration was apparently so impressed by my initiative, or perhaps simply caught off-guard, that my extreme contents met with no censure. Along with my own drawings, I had sought a contribution for Fungus from a black boy I knew who also drew cartoons. When later I gave Vernal King a printed copy of Fungus he never spoke to me again. At fourteen I was so oblivious to the racism in my comic, I never gave it a second thought. Though hard to imagine now, back then racism and sexism were pretty much accepted, especially in the alternative press. I wish I could locate Vernal today and apologize. Over the summer, between my Freshman and Sophomore year in high school, I took Fungus to the New York Comic Book Convention and met Kim Deitch, then the editor of the all-comix tabloid Gothic Blimp Works to which I’d already become a subscriber. Impressed by my work, Kim invited me to submit a color page—one of only 4 pages per issue, that would run in the full-colorprinted signature. Kim was having trouble finding cartoonists who knew how to do color separations, and I was already a veteran! Since age twelve, I’d been cutting amberlith color separations for my art director father. When Kim subsequently got a call from my father, asking on my behalf what size halftone screen Blimpworks required, he initially freaked-out assuming Ted was going to accuse
him of corrupting a minor. Perhaps my father had indeed wanted to sort of size-up the situation, but mainly he wanted to purchase the right size Zip-aTone sheets for me to use. When I’d head down to Kim’s studio located in a storefront on 9th street near 1st Avenue in the Lower East Side, there was always an indescribable feeling of magic in the air. Perhaps it was all that soon-to-be world-changing hippie energy. On the window Kim had painted the words “Comics Museum” with a large drawing of his character Uncle Ed the India Rubber Man (based on the Michelin Tire man). Kim occupied the front room where the sun cheerily streamed in, and in the back, in the relatively darker living space, his “old lady” Trina Robbins also drew comics, on a drawing board propped up against the kitchen table. This was an arrangement about which she would later bitterly resent. Kim Deitch provided me with introductions to the art directors of The East Village Other and RAT, two of the Lower East Side’s premiere underground newspapers, and so the very week that Gothic Blimp Works #4 with my full-color page hit the stands, my work also debuted in EVO. You can imagine how I felt, having come down by subway to the East Village and seeing not one but two newspapers on the newsstands containing my first published work. Nowadays I realize that my early comics were asinine; embarrassing—but about as well-drawn as any of the other second-string UG cartoonists of the day, omitting Crumb, Deitch, Trina, Spain, Shelton, and other first-stringers. I realize now
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that, despite the massive effort I put into my work, and my prodigious output, I was also often lazy and inconsistent with the work itself. Sometimes I churned it out as quickly as possible just to get it accepted and see it published. Other times I was really working on my craft. My first Gothic Blimp Works page was drawn to a minimum standard—and the “story” was oh so stupid. But I apparently had “something” in those days that kept me constantly in print. I would later proudly point to a period—possibly as long as fifteen years during the late 70s–80s and perhaps into the 90s—when no month went by without my work appearing in at least one, but often as many as six magazines or newspapers at a time. In my earliest days, running around the streets of New York with my portfolio, I had an unshakable belief in myself. To put it mildly, I thought I was hot shit. I would arrive at an art director’s office with the unspoken attitude, “You may now publish me.” Somehow, I believe, my subconscious attitude was infectious or perhaps psychically mesmerizing. It conveyed itself to my clients who indeed hired me. In the offices of the East Village Other I came upon their “stacks” of back issues, which were usually for the taking by those who worked for the publication. To my surprise I found a pile of EVO #1 from, I think, 1965 and made off with 5 or six copies. On 8th Street, the main, cool, commercial avenue of the East Village, I entered a book store that always carried the latest underground comics. Having very little money, I offered to trade the owner a copy of EVO #1 for some comics. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “Last night I had a dream that
I had gotten a copy of the very first issue of EVO!” His dream came true and so did mine as I walked away with some comics.
"By the time I began my Sophomore year in high school I was already living my dream of becoming a published cartoonist and had even less interest in school than usual." Every weekend I’d take the bus an hour up to Manhattan and do the rounds hawking my comics from place to place. If EVO rejected me, RAT, with its somewhat lower standards, would usually accept my work. One day, I think it was August 14th, 1969, I arrived at RAT and they were all packing up to go to some kind of a music festival called Woodstock. They invited me to come along, but not having any idea what it was, and not sure my parents would approve the idea, I declined. Darn it. I began doing color pages for Louis Abolafia who published Luv, a sleazier version of the popular sex tabloid Screw. One of my strips called “Cherry Bomb”, showed a penis about to break a nitroglycerin-coated hymen. It actually got Abolafia busted for obscenity. You could show a penis or an open vagina, you just couldn’t show one in contact with the other. (He never blamed me. It was his fault for publishing it, not mine for drawing it.) The standard fee for a page of comics was then $20.
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But with each issue Abolafia would plead poverty and cut me down to $18, then $16, until I think he went out of business. It’s amazing now to think of $20—or even $16—as viable payment for artwork, but those were the days! Nevertheless, by 1972, when I finally left for san Francisco, I had amassed over $2000 from my comics work. School had always been an affront—a bane upon my boundless creativity—and by winter break of sophomore year (I had just turned fifteen) it had become intolerable. My mother, who had long been active in the alternative school movement— even forming and running her own school, attended by my younger brothers and sister—read about an alternative high school in Manhattan that had been formed by high school drop-outs, principal among them being Richard Avedon’s son, John, and Toby Mamis, a Stuyvesant high school drop-out. My New Jersey high school was only too anxious to transfer my documents to this new school. I was, for the second straight year failing all my classes since I refused to do any homework. I’d also annoyed my teachers by covering my school books in Playboy centerfolds and wore a T-shirt I’d made that read “Sectional Inter Corps.” When the school year resumed after winter break, I took a bus into Manhattan for the first meeting of The New World School, held in the huge, 14th St. loft of “Alternate U,” another counter-culture institution of learning. At that meeting, it was decided to disband the school, which might have been unfortunate for me—aside from signifying my total liberation from school!—had it not been for a couple of canny drop-outs from New York’s
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Stuyvesant High I met that evening. Toby Mamis ended up being a sort of Dada design peppered and Bob Singer, both around sixteen–seventeen with what are now called “retro” clip art and years old, had been publishing their own “high“vintage” magazine clippings that I was personally school underground newspaper,” The New York enamored of. To their credit, Toby, Bob and another Herald Tribune, a name they’d appropriated almost staff member, Michael Kleinman, did not object to as soon as that venerable daily newspaper folded. the silly stuff I put in that issue of the newspaper, (Today, such a prank would be unthinkable; which was nevertheless their most coherent and you’d be sued by Time-Warner or Fox, who would professional-looking issue up to that point. zealously protect any such copyright into oblivion.) I stayed over at Toby’s house that evening (I was I was really impressed by Bob and Toby’s audacity still living in New Jersey with my parents) and and enterprise and they were impressed by my when he suggested we go out for a midnight snack incursions into the “real” world of the adult I was so nervous about being out in the big city at underground press. Immediately I was signed on night, I put a razor blade in my pocket in case I’d as art director of the “Trib” even though, aside need it for protection, but ended up cutting myself from drawing comics, I’d never really done layout when I later reached into the pocket. (Which is before. But among my already growing list of analogous to people who buy guns for protection “accounts” was the small design firm of Brill & and whose kids end up accidentally shooting each Waldstein. Dean Latimer, a writer whom I’d met at other.) EVO, had taken me up to meet B&W, the designers Bob, Toby and Mike provided me with an of Al Goldstein’s Screw, and at fifteen—too young alternative education I never would have to legally purchase this hardcore sex tabloid—I’d experienced otherwise. become their in-house illustrator. At my request for layout help, Les Waldstein told me to simply position my headline type and photo on the page layout and rubber-cement in the type galleys. Whatever type didn’t fit you bumped to the back of the book. Fuck school! Like everything I’ve ever done in my life, I just asked a few questions, read a book on the subject, and figured the rest out on my own. About a week later, I was at the Mamis’ basement apartment in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with portable drawing board, T-square, and exacto knife to lay-out issue #10 of the NYHT. It
"Being completely apolitical —I was just in it for the graphics and the swag—I quickly learned that there was a guy named Bobby Seale who we wanted to free from incarceration, and another guy named Chairman Mao who we wanted to emulate."
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Toby carried Mao’s Little Red Book around with him. Years later, in the 80s, I owned a bakery in Philadelphia and a birthday cake order for a “Bobby Seale” came in from the bar three doors down the block that Bobby frequented. I got a kick out of that. Also about that time, the world learned that Mao had murdered hundreds of thousands of teachers and intellectuals while bedding a fresh virgin every night. In retrospect I believe it was unfortunate that, unaware of any other accessible format for an anti-capitalist sentiment, intellectuals since the 1930s rallied around communism, itself as totalitarian and fascistic as America’s corporate-run imperialist “democracy.” I was absolutely amazed by these teenagers, Bob, Mike and Toby, who comported themselves as adults, hobnobbing as equals with the grownup world. For about two years, I crashed at their respective houses and followed these guys around—puppy-dog fashion—to various offices as they contracted business with PR guys of the music, film, and publishing industries. While Bob and Toby collected books and records for “review”; and press passes and invites to concerts, movies and press parties, I collected movie stills and associated swag for my use in the graphics department.
crude, high school underground newspaper, we were sent with the rest of the press corps in five stretch limos up to Harlem’s Apollo Theater to watch a new act, Al Green, in one of his first performances. The next morning the label feted us with a meet-and-eat breakfast at a fancy hotel where we were introduced to Al Green. I’ll never forget how Al looked me straight in the eye, and with the warmest, most sincere smile, shook my hand. The character of the man still impresses me. Another memorable party was given at the top of the New York Times Building for the release of the Times’ book Great Songs of the Sixties. We brazenly pulled out some joints prompting a straight-looking woman to comment, “I smell burning hemp rope.” We received six passes to a press screening of the film Woodstock. As Bob, Toby and I headed toward the theater we encountered three teenaged girls and I think it was Toby who spontaneously took the initiative of inviting them to join us. They agreed and in the front row we seated ourselves boy-girl, boy-girl, boy-girl. I spent the entire movie with my eyes riveted to the screen and my hands riveted to the chest of “mine.” (I was known as “fast hands” Leslie in those days.) Afterwards we six simply parted company. I never even thought of asking the girl if I could see her again.
It was phenomenal what they were giving away in those days. Toby built a massive record library, and there were frequent press parties with free food and free albums and books and promo items. I remember they gave away mini jugs with Nitty Gritty Dirt Band printed on them. Though only a
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"As the NYHT became increasingly slicker, my skills improved and ad revenue grew accordingly. I remember Michael Kleinman really hustling on the distribution end, which helped." Around that time, something surprising happened. Women’s Liberation. It was like, over night, we fellas were being called male-chauvinist pigs, and we were flabbergasted; blind sided. Where had this come from, when did it start? Into one of our Herald Trib meetings stormed about five of the young women loosely associated with our newspaper, demanding that they be given a voice. I know for a fact that all of us Trib boys loved and respected our mothers and desired as close a proximity to girls as possible. I don’t think we would have exempted a woman from contributing to the paper if they had offered an article. What struck me most was that this was the first time any of these women had actually shown up at one of our meetings. I was still oblivious to this new women’s movement when I delivered a cover—at last I’d been asked to contribute one—to the RAT offices. No one was around when I got there so I just pinned my artwork up on a shelf over the layout tables. I wish I could remember what I had drawn but I know that it was, again, in that R. Crumb misogynist vein and it was most definitely
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offensive to women. RAT had always been much more political than EVO and so when a group of female RAT staffers came in and saw my cover, they ripped it down and it became the last straw, causing the female take-over of RAT. My original cover art was never again to be seen. And I think RAT soon folded. But not necessarily because of my desecrated cover. Though not necessarily caused by the women’s movement, underground newspapers began to fade. Our New York Herald Tribune died after about six issues that I worked on. EVO continued for some time, however, but I always felt it lacked its earlier spark.
"I was now 16 and had begun to seek clients above the underground." Once, when Bob Singer and I had gone up to Praeger Publishers to pick up an ad they were placing in the NYHTrib, I asked if they had need for a designer to do ad work. The person there asked me if I knew how to spec type. I said no, but I’d find out how. I went home and my father showed me how to use a slide-rule to determine what point-size a given amount of text would need to be in order to fit into a given amount of space on a layout. I went right back to Praeger and announced that I now knew how to spec type. The implication was that therefore they would have to hire me. (I already mentioned that I considered myself to be God’s gift to graphic design.) So what could they do but give me a small ad assignment. I completed
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it and got, I think $60 for it, but neither I nor they followed up on further work. I made an appointment to show my wares to the publisher of a film-review magazine. He sat me down beside himself on a swanky sofa in his office. While I turned the pages of my portfolio and delivered a running commentary, I noticed that he had an amused expression and his eyes were not at all on my work but on me. When his hand went to my knee, I abruptly got up and left. The experience left me sympathetic to women who get the “casting couch” treatment; who are not taken at all seriously and in many cases have been called in by employers with no intention of hiring them. I worked freelance for several months doing layouts for Rock magazine, a Rolling Stone imitation. The art director was Steven Heller, later to become art director of the New York Times Book Review. He and I would sing classic rock n roll songs in harmony as we worked. That no one ever complained indicated to me that we were not too bad. Patty Smith was an editor at Rock. We were all at the office late, doing type corrections on the latest issue, which meant in those days that you literally pasted a corrected paragraph, sentence, word or letter over the incorrect type. I remember her complaining “I’m a fuckin’ poet, I don’t have to do this shit.” Patty kept typing her buttoned white shirt up so her midriff was exposed, but it kept falling down. I asked her why she was bothering to do that when it kept falling. She told me that when she was a younger, skinny teenager, she had become pregnant and it “ripped-up” her
stomach so, when she liked a guy, she wanted him to see her stomach before he got in bed with her and freaked. I shrugged it off but later realized that I was the only guy there and had missed an opportunity. But, at sixteen, I saw her as an older woman (probably all of twenty) and never even considered the possibility. In her mind, however, I
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had spurned her. About week later on the street near the Rock offices, I saw Patty sitting on an old chair, oddly placed in the very center of an abandoned lot, on the lap of some guy with whom she was making out. She called out to me, sort of triumphantly to show that she’d gotten this other guy. When I later saw portraits of the famous Robert Mapplethorp, I immediately recognized that it was his lap she’d been sitting on. I know he was gay, but maybe he went bi for her. Mapplethorp took some famous photos of Patty Smith. For a month or so in 1971 I got a steady job with a small film distribution company that, among other things, re-released the classic horror film Freaks, as well as many Japanese Samurai films, a genre that was only then becoming known in America. It was my first real “job” job. I was staying at the Mamis’s house at the time and would get up, open a vitamin E capsule and spread the oil on my face to help with acne; which was something my mother had suggested. I didn’t like to look at myself in the mirror because it upset me to see the acne. So one day, at work, I was in the bathroom and dared to check the mirror. What I saw was more horrifying then the acne—my face was completely shiny from the oil! And I’d been going around like that for weeks! And interestingly, no one had ever mentioned it. Being the type I am, I would’ve said to the guy, “Hey, you know.....” I wiped off the oil so my face looked normal and never again spread vitamin E on my face!
After about a month or so, someone tipped me off that my boss was stringing along his two other employees and not paying them on time. When I collected my check for the week, I cashed it immediately at the issuing bank and called in that I had quit. It was not very considerate to leave them in the lurch like that, but then it was probably something like karma for that boss. I later learned that the poor office girl had been paid only promises and eventually, for lack of funds, had to go back home to Canada to her parents. The only reason he had paid me up till then was because I was the newest staff member and he needed my work. I have since learned that it is common for certain unscrupulous employers to pay you until they feel they no longer need you then finagle out of paying the final bills. I was thusly stiffed twice in later years, one time by the manager of the punk rock band The Plasmatics. By 1970 virtually all of the New York underground cartoonists, Kim, Trina, Spain, Crumb, Bodé, etc., had migrated to San Francisco, where all the underground comics publishers, Print Mint, Last Gasp, and Apex Novelties were located. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I followed, which I did in 1972.
And that’s another story.
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“The problem with school in general, in order to get your degree you have to do many things that are irrelevant. You have to learn algebra and science. Really, when does anyone need algebra in their lives? Almost never. They make you slob through algebra and calculus and say it’s helpful because it opens your mind to new ways of problem solving, which is plausible. In general it’s taking up all your time and for no reason. I recommend to people to find ways to get their specifics of what they want to do. If you know what you want to do in life, I think it’s better to take specific measures so that you can really further your actual interests instead of wasting time with things you’ll never loose.”
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