Comic Book Artist #24 Preview

All Characters & art Š2003 Gahan Wilson

No.24

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CELEBRATING

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THE FRONT PAGE: NEW HORIZONS, THE MAELSTROM OF RUSS MAHERAS AND MY BABY BRO Ye Ed discusses the impending move to a new publisher, Andy Cooke’s coming nuptials, and a cool fanzine ....1

Editor/Designer JON B. COOKE Publisher

EDITOR’S RANT: THE MAN OF TWOMORROWS Ye Ed takes a walk down memory lane, reflecting on his time at TwoMorrows, and the Big Kahuna himself......5

TWOMORROWS

CBA REVIEW: AYE CARUMBA! IT’S MEXICOMICS! Ye Ed takes a look at Dan Raeburn’s great new issue of The Imp, devoted to funnybooks Down South ............6 FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE @!!?* Teen Fred talks about his great ol’ days with the great ’70s American satirical mag, National Lampoon ............7

JOHN & PAM MORROW Assistant Editor GEORGE KHOURY Associate Editors CHRIS KNOWLES DAVID A. ROACH CHRISTOPHER IRVING

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ will be published one more time by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. No subscriptions are available as this incarnation of CBA has only one more issue to go. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2003 Jon B. Cooke. Cover acknowledgements: The Kid™ & ©2003 Gahan Wilson, Cheech Wizard ©2003 Mark Bodé. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

Consulting Editors JOHN MORROW ROY THOMAS Front Cover Art & Color GAHAN WILSON Back Cover Art & Color MARK BODÉ Logo Treatment KURT HATHAWAY (W/ MARK SIMONSON) Proofreader ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON Transcribers JON B. KNUTSON BRIAN K. MORRIS SAM GAFFORD LONGBOX.COM STEVEN TICE Logo Designer/Title Originator ARLEN SCHUMER Mascot WOODY by J.D. King Issue Theme Song WARNING SIGN Coldplay Visit CBA on our Website at:

www.twomorrows.com Contributors Gahan Wilson • Mark Bodé Michael Gross • M.K. Brown Sean Kelly • Michel Choquette Neal Adams • Frank Springer Alan Kupperberg • Continuity Mark Simonson • Mark Arnold Shary Flenniken • B.K. Taylor Ed Subitzky • Susan Hewitt J. Scott Campbell • Sandy Plunkett George Khoury • Michelle Nolan Fred Hembeck • Mark Lewis Glenn Southwick • Scott Gosar Ray Kelly • Daniel S. Laikin Alex Bialy • Windsor-Smith Studios Joe Fallon • Batton Lash Mark Burbey • Beth Gwinn

THE COMICS OF NATIONAL LAMPOON THE MAKING OF A LEGEND: NATLAMP—THE GOLDEN YEARS Ye Ed gives a brief overview of the unforgettable 1970s magazine publishing phenomenon ................................8 MICHAEL GROSS INTERVIEW: THE ART OF NATIONAL LAMPOON The magazine’s premier art director discusses the parody comics and “Funny Pages” of the legendary mag ......10 GAHAN WILSON: THE ARTIST’S “NUTS” The great cartoonist and writer on his career and long-lost and lamented Lampoon experience ........................54 CBA BONUS: ANNIE, ALAN AND THE ART OF SATIRE The little orphan talks with Kupperberg in this exclusive two-page comic strip on A.K.’s NatLamp life ..............66 CBA GALLERY: THE COVERS OF NATLAMP’S COMIC-BOOK PARODIES Forty-eight killer comedic covers of various funny-book take-offs ......................................................................68 NEAL ADAMS INTERVIEW: FROM SON-O’-GOD TO ZIMMERMAN The artist discusses his NatLamp days, the philosophy of parody, and a super-hero from Nazareth ....................70 FRANK SPRINGER INTERVIEW: ARTIST OF ACTION From Pheobe Zeit-Geist to Tarzan of the Cows, the artist discusses his long tenure at the magazine ..................80 M.K. BROWN INTERVIEW: THE ROMANCE OF MARY KATHLEEN The artist/writer of Western Romances and Aunt Mary’s Kitchen fondly recalls those NatLamp days ................94 ED SUBITZKY INTERVIEW: A MIND FOR MIRTH The strange, bizarre and delightful world of the artist/writer of Backwards Comics and others ........................108 MARK BODÉ INTERVIEW: BAWDY AND BODACIOUS VAUGHN BODÉ The son of the late artist discusses his outrageously talented father and a wizard called Cheech......................120

This issue dedicated in memory of the late master tattoo artist

Skott Greene AND ALL THE VICTIMS & THEIR FAMILIES OF THE STATION NIGHTCLUB FIRE OF FEBRUARY 20, 2003

and in celebration of the arrival and good health of

Hunter Anderson Coates and in memory of a wonderful woman, the late

Hazel “Pat” Grillo and in memory of the King of Drag Racing Cartoons

Previous page: Aside from that poor legless frog, Rick Meyerowitz’s Mona Gorilla is about as close to a mascot as the National Lampoon had. Our seductive simian was painted as the cover model for #12 (Mar. ’71) in the “Culture” issue. ©1971 Rick Meyerowitz. Top: Son-O’-God says the magic word. Art by Neal Adams. ©1973 National Lampoon, Inc.Above: Mercury on the run in a previously unpublished drawing by M.K. Brown. Courtesy of the artist. ©2003 M.K. Brown.

Pete Millar N E X T

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Please send all letters of comment, articles and artwork to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 Phone: (401) 783-1669 • Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: jonbcooke@aol.com

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The Making of a Legend

NatLamp: The Golden Years A brief historical overview of the beloved satirical mag’s comics

by Jon B. Cooke

Above: After appearing in an issue of National Lampoon, Sam Gross’s notorious “Frogs’ Legs” cartoon became legend with the hapless amphibian eventually serving as the crippled mascot for the magazine. ©2003 Sam Gross.

Below: In 1966, Harvard Lampoon released the Playboy parody, which featured contributions from undergrads Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, as well as the business expertise of fellow student and the circulation & distribution guy, Rob Hoffman. Those three would become the founders of National Lampoon in 1969. ©1966 The Harvard Lampoon, Inc.

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Within the covers of this 100-page plus issue of Comic Book Artist, it is difficult—well, downright impossible, really—to give the complete story behind the comics of the legendary American satirical magazine in the early to mid-’70s. There’s simply not an adequate amount of available space to cover this surprisingly big subject. Much as this writer dreams of tackling an entire book— Coffee table-sized! Full-color! Repros a’plenty!—devoted to all aspects of the history of NatLamp (as it was affectionately called by staffers and readers alike back in those halcyon days), the best that can be offered now is this survey of nare but two (albeit major) features, the comic book parodies and comic strips of the humor periodical’s “golden age.”

While we’ve been able to interview only a few of the major contributing cartoonists, as well as a mere pair of writers, along with the hugely important managing art director of that beloved era, there’s no way we can do proper justice to the subject, but we are unapologetic to proudly fire off this necessary and essential opening volley.

Amazingly little—hardly anything, to be candid—has been written about the copious amounts of comic-book and strip material featured in the Lampoon’s pages, much that was of exceptional quality, work rendered by an impressive number of the field’s greatest artists. Though many of the magazine’s staffers and contributors, in general, are still lucid and hardly reluctant to share their experiences, the not-inconsiderable contributions of NatLamp to the art of the American comic-book form has been shamefully ignored.

Regardless of the attention given them by fanzines and the volumes composed detailing their histories, even the combined circulations of the Big Two comics publishers during the ’70s—DC and Marvel—were dwarfed in comparison to the runaway success of the satirical magazine on the newsstands. Through savage wit, exceptional writing, keen intelligence, and complete irreverence to any and all sacred cows, National Lampoon quickly became an institution among the Baby Boomer generation, inspiring a new sensibility regarding humor in this country, dismissing the adolescent insipidness all too prevalent in the once-vital, yet now flaccid Mad magazine, and leading to a veritable revolution in all forms of comedy. The culmination of the magazine’s cultural impact is evident in the quick ascent of numerous NatLamp alumni to much more lucrative and popular modes of American entertainment, most prominently in the TV sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (still televised and now enjoying distinction of being the longest running show outside of news and soap opera programs) and phenomenal motion picture successes of National Lampoon’s Animal House, Caddyshack, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Ghostbusters, and innumerable other Hollywood blockbusters, never mind no small impact in book publishing.

But the overall importance of the influence of National Lampoon on our society shouldn’t be measured in circulation figures or box office receipts, but rather by its profound effect on the collective American sense of humor (if there is such an animal). This fondlyrecalled magazine, more properly the spawn of brilliant cartoonist and

satirist Harvey Kurtzman and “sicko” stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce than Life (the 1920s humor mag, not Henry R. Luce’s periodical of later years) and humorist Will Rogers, was brutally irreverent. The editors and writers delighted in skewering not only convenient, easy targets of the American Left—kicking around the irresistible Executive team of President Richard M. Nixon and his second-in-command, Spiro T. Agnew, as often as possible, for instance—but also the very political sensibilities of the readers that made the magazine such a hit were under attack. No other cover image so typifies the fearless approach of Henry Beard, Doug Kenney, Michael O’Donoghue, and Company, as did the cover of #22 which parodied the popular poster of famed revolutionary Ché Guevara by showing the Leftist hero getting his kisser smacked with a cream pie. Appropriately, the Michael Gross artwork graced the cover of the “Is Nothing Sacred?” themed January 1972 issue. No one was safe from ridicule.

But the true pedigree of the magazine was, in fact, one traced back to the most sedate of environs, the Cambridge, Massachusetts campus of Harvard College in 1876, when what is now the world’s oldest humor magazine, the Harvard Lampoon, was founded by seven undergrads. Inspired by the British humor mag Punch, the immediately-popular periodical—which, to this day, can only be staffed by undergraduate students—was filled with “cartoons, quick jokes, clever poems and satires on college life of the day,” to quote the institution’s Web site. Throughout the years, notable staffers included many Harvard grads who would go onto notable careers, including George Santyana, Robert Benchley, and even William Randolph Hearst. Under Benchley’s editorial tenure in the early 1910s, the Harvard Lampoon published the first of its renowned magazine parodies. The aforementioned Web site notes, “While the fledgling efforts, satires of The New Yorker and The Literary Digest, made the literati chuckle, later magazine parodies would become national sensations, like 1961's Mademoiselle, 1966's Playboy, and a bunch of other[s]…. Parody books also became popular Lampoon products; 1967's J.R.R. Tolkien parody, Bored of the Rings, is still in print.”

In 1969, Matty Simmons, a one-time executive vice-president of Diners Club (significantly, the company that introduced credit cards to the American consumer) and the founder of Weight Watchers Magazine, became involved in the distribution and selling of advertising space of two Harvard Lampoon magazine parodies, and in them he saw a golden opportunity. With partner Len Mogel, he made the three outgoing editors of the college mag—Henry Beard, Doug Kenney, and Rob Hoffman—an offer to helm their own monthly to be sold coast to coast. Hoffman, possessing the most business savvy of the creative trio, composed what would turn out to be an astonishingly lucrative contract (even more so considering his tender age of 21) between the boys and the suits, one that would make these recent Harvard grads very comfortable indeed only five years later.

After less than a year ramping up, in the late Winter of 1970, the first issue of National Lampoon hit the stands, and readers hungry for more sophisticated and biting humor found the monthly to be intelligently written (if crudely packaged). In short order, frequent Evergreen contributor Michael O’Donoghue joined the staff, and the magazine soon attracted a steady stream of outstanding young humorists, many who would go onto significant accomplishments, including Tony Hendra, P.J. O’Rourke, Michel Choquette, Sean Kelly, Anne Beatts, George Trow, Chris Cerf, Chris Miller, Brian McConnachie, Ed Bluestone, Gerald Sussman, John Hughes, Jeff Greenfield, Bruce McCall, Ed Subitzky, and countless others. While a number of superb artists would contribute to the fledgling magazine COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003

CBA Interview

Michael Gross and the The hit magazine’s premier art director talks about the wild, Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Since Comic Book Artist was first conceived, I have wanted to do an issue devoted to some of my favorite comics material of my youth— the wacky funnybook stuff in the pages during the “Golden Age” of National Lampoon from 1970-75. On reading former NatLamp editor Tony Hendra’s Going Too Far (1987), I realized that perhaps the most important person to get an overview from would be the magazine’s thenart director, Michael C. Gross (a talented artist in his own right and one who figured prominently in the history of Heavy Metal, as well as a number of cool Hollywood movies). I just knew I couldn’t do such an issue without him, so I searched far and wide over the years. It wasn’t until a year or so back when I finally found the guy (courtesy of Mark Simonson) and I was delighted to find he was very enthusiastic about CBA and our plans for a NatLamp ish.

This interview took place in two sessions via telephone in midAugust 2002 (a month or so after I was able to meet the man at the International Comic Con: San Diego) and was copyedited by Mike.

Above: Michael Gross, National Lampoon art director, in 1970, the same year he came on board. Courtesy of MG.

Opposite: For the “SelfIndulgence” issue (#45, Dec ’73) , the editors—and art director— portrayed themselves as comic strip characters in a “Sunday Funnies” section. Michael chose a parody of Flash Gordon, drawn by (the late, great) Gray Morrow. ©1973 National Lampoon, Inc. 10

Comic Book Artist: Where were you born?

Michael Gross: I was born in Seattle, Washington, on October 4, 1945, and when I was about two, my mother moved to Newburgh, New York, about 14 miles above West Point.

CBA: What kind of upbringing was it?

Michael: It was a pretty interesting one, actually. I had working class parents, so I never knew my real father. My mother moved to Newburgh and married John Gross, who owned a bar and he raised me. They bought a rooming house. My father had a bar and we had a boarding house, so I was exposed to a lot of working class people and folks on welfare. And I saw my share of cops and murder…

God, it was really quite colorful. That was where I first got any kind of education.

My parents didn’t have any background in the arts. They had no knowledge or particular appreciation, nothing really. But I started to draw when I was three, and they were proud of me for that. They were both believers in doing whatever makes you happy. So I went to school and some teachers would say, “You’ve got some talent, do something with it,” and my parents were right behind me all the time. (Of course, they always believed that I would never be able to make a living as an artist—”doctor” would be nice—but they were always very, very supportive.

CBA: Were you an only child?

Michael: Yes. CBA: How big was the rooming house?

Michael: We had twelve rooms for rent besides what we lived in.

CBA: So you must have met all sorts of characters all the time.

Michael: Right. My uncle was a bookmaker and he was at my house every day, placing bets in the morning. I wasn’t allowed to use my encyclopedia because he would use it to file his scratch sheets in alphabetical order, as a filing system. When I was about ten, he taught me how to gamble on the races and gave me two bucks a day to bet the horses. When I was about twelve, I came home from school one day, and the kid next door comes out and says, “Boy, you should have been here! The cops came and took your mother, your father, your uncle—everybody!” Forty state troopers had come to the front and back doors of the house in the middle of the Summer and just carted everybody off. I think my parents then decided it was time to clean up the act for the kid, y’know. My father didn’t have anything to do with it. So my mother was on probation and my uncle did time.

My paternal grandfather was murdered, shot under a railroad trestle. He was a very, very powerful man in Newburgh. He arrived as an immigrant, and rose to power in Newburgh… I wouldn’t say it was the Mafia so much, but they were Italian loan sharks and gamblers. The city was proud of the fact that there was no prostitution or drugs. Y’know, “you loan a little money, everybody likes to bet, no harm done.” So it was a very colorful childhood.

We’d throw out the hookers from the rooming house. We had working people who had been there for twenty years, so there was a real combination of different kinds of people. It taught me a lot about humanity. My mother’s attitude was there are only good and bad people. There was no bigotry in our house…. It was quite a wonderful, very mixed, colorful upbringing. I could tell you a hundred stories, but you get the picture.

Newburgh might as well have been in the Midwest. We hardly even went to New York City, which was about 60 miles south. My parents did travel to the city on weekends, going to nightclubs, and stuff like that.

CBA: Did you get a chance as a kid to go?

Michael: My father would take me down every couple of months to let me do whatever I wanted. It didn’t matter what it was— Chinatown, Statue of Liberty—I’d think of a place to go, I’d get a friend to join us, and my father would take us down. Of course, he got tired after about the tenth consecutive trip to the Museum of Natural History. [laughter] He’d drop me off, look around, then come back, because he couldn’t look at any more bones. But it was quite nice.

CBA: Did your parents have the rooming house and bar into the 1960s?

Michael: Yes, my father ran the bar. He died in the mid-’70s.

My mother still owns and runs the rooming house, though she doesn’t live there anymore. I think it’s one of the last boarding houses of that type in the area.

CBA: Was there a common area where everyone would eat?

Michael: No, that would be strictly a boarding house. This was actually a rooming house, we didn’t provide meals, but we only had one telephone, which was the one in my living room. [chuckles] I was well into my twenties that whenever the phone rang, I ever thought about answering it. It was never for me. We had people who would play cards twice a week in the kitchen until five in the morning whether I had school or not. At Thanksgiving, we would bring in the strays, people who didn’t have family. It was quite something.

CBA: Obviously you’ve subsequently had to deal with many different kinds of people in your various jobs. Was it good to have that background, to be able to deal with all sorts of different people?

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Art of National Lampoon wacky early years and his philosophy behind the parodies Michael: I think it gave me two things: My mother had a great sense of humor, and my father did, too. And the people around us had a great sense of humor, so there was a lot of laughter, all the time. There’d also be a lot of fighting, a lot of throwing things, pinochle games around four in the morning, and I would hear an ashtray fly across the room and crash on the wall. But it was very Italian/Jewish/ethnic sort of life. They really lived all the time and enjoyed life. My father hated the bar business because he didn’t like drunks and he didn’t drink. At the same time, he couldn’t give it up, it was what he did. He socialized, and my mother would get pissed if he rented rooms to people in the bar because they were questionable people, it went on and on. What it meant for me was just to get a broader view of life….

Let me digress for a minute: If there’s one factor I think I bring to things, it’s that I’m not elitist and that I know how to communicate on different levels. The reason I like pop culture is that I think I understand communication. That’s due to the fact that I didn’t lead an isolated, insulated life. In my life, I’ve had the honor to dine with two U.S. Presidents. When I was a kid, my mother taught me table manners, with the belief that someday I would be hobnobbing with…

CBA: U.S. Presidents?

Michael: Right! Somewhere in that mix—even though some of my friends came from Harvard, and I went to an art school in New York—somehow there’s been a balance. I live in a working class neighborhood today. There’s a balance, and I think it came from my parents.

CBA: But obviously you developed a critical acumen, right?

Michael: Essentially.

CBA: Judging from the quality of your work, you’re a fine illustrator and a very talented designer.

Michael: Well, I’m an artist with a pretty good eye, I guess.

The scary thing about talent, is you live the first fifteen years of your life waking up terrified in the morning that you won’t have it, because you don’t know where it came from to begin with. If the guy next to you doesn’t have the talent, you say, “But why don’t you have it?” When you’re very young, you don’t understand that people have this in them—inbred talent—and it’s God’s gift. You’re just terrified. “If it goes away, how can I survive?” All I can say today is that I was blessed with a considerable amount of talent. I excelled in the arts and was pretty successful in whatever I touched.

But I just can’t take credit for that talent because I didn’t have anything to do with it. I was just blessed with it by God, and it’s a shame when people have it but they don’t nurture it.

CBA: Did you have an interest in comics at a young age?

Michael: No, I didn’t. I did love Mad in its comic days, but I gave up on it the day it turned into a magazine. I loved that comic book. We rolled ourselves into hysterics looking at Mad comics. I was a very average comic reader… Little Lulu… and I remember some of the more sophisticated stuff… the Carl Barks material, which was always a little more grown-up. I was drawn to it. But, no, I didn’t have a preoccupation with comic books.

I had a mentor at school, an amazing man named Val Warren, and he took me under his wings when I was fourteen or fifteen. He was older, just out of high school, but we met in the neighborhood.

He taught me everything. He introduced me to comic art, Frank Frazetta… he taught me how to take another way of looking at Alex Raymond’s work. He showed me stuff I didn’t know existed. And just like comics, he taught me to look at horror movies with better April 2003

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appreciation. I laughed at the Dracula movies until he became a friend… I’m a bit of a chameleon, so I absorbed. He guided me to rock ’n’ roll. He taught me Buddy Holly instead of listening to Chubby Checker. So in my life, he was a mentor in so many, many ways.

Without Val to show me the way, I don’t think I ever would have found an appreciation for comics. I carried his insight with me all the way to art school, at Pratt, because I used to really defend comic art, the really good comic book artists who were exceptional. But the other students thought it was a joke. Comics weren’t taken seriously.

“Now, Norman Rockwell’s an illustrator, but those guys do comics….” You need to remember, this was before Jules Feiffer did 11

guy who’s here contacting designers in Mexico City to work for the 1968 Olympics.

They need designers to do publications and graphics down there for the arts program that was going to run for a year. A cultural program, not the games. And it’s a great opportunity for you.”

So I met this guy in New York, and his name was Bob Pellegrini. Bob had come out of Time/Life Books. He was older than me by about seven years. He looked at my portfolio and said, “Do you want to do it? It doesn’t pay much, $8,000 a year”—I remember at Cosmo bringing back $86 a week after taxes!—“but you’re going to be in Mexico.” I was so naive! I had just lived in New York, and I remember asking if I need boots to protect myself from the rattlesnakes in Mexico City. [laughter] I didn’t speak any Spanish.

But we just packed up, and with twenty bucks in our pockets, took a plane, landed in Mexico, and said, “Here we are!… Holy sh*t!”

CBA: How did your wife take the news?

Michael: Oh, Glenis was great. She was always behind anything I did. It was an adventure. You know, thinking back, it was pretty brave to do what we did. We had a baby under our arm and… we were always brave. I always believed in chasing the Dream.

CBA: And obviously you had somebody there to support you doing it.

Michael: All she ever wanted was to do cool stuff and to do the right thing. She truly believed in me. The responsibility of the baby always came first, but we both shared a sense of adventure. She was never insecure, and believed I could do anything we wanted, and her support is what changed my life. I got to live in Mexico City, and I went from no printed pieces in my portfolio… maybe one or two… and went to having six-color presses sometimes running four jobs at once, and they were all mine! I probably did hundreds of posters, published in three languages, and more graphics than you can imagine. I mean, the work was new and modern art—they made the Smithsonian—and I was able to print my whole portfolio at the printer’s. We ruled that printer! They doubled my salary, and Bob and I became senior art directors on the project. We toured, coming into New York to hire people as a group. It was a wonderful experience. I was 23 years old! Now, remember, when I came back, the Vietnam war was still on. So, after one year in Mexico City, I came back with a full-blown portfolio of my illustrations, posters, designs, graphics, this whole thing that some people would be glad to have in their career.

It pushed my career five years in an instant. On top of that, I was competing when my peers were all still teaching. They had to teach for five years or something to avoid the draft, so they weren’t in the workplace. I immediately had this incredible portfolio and was looking around. Then what was the hottest magazine in America at the time was Eye magazine, a youth magazine published by Hearst. Helen Gurley Brown was the godmother over that mag, but she didn’t have any direct touch on it. It was a really cool magazine, mainstream but April 2003

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not… It wasn’t Rolling Stone and it was mainstream, but it had really, really radical graphics, and it was winning art direction awards all over the place. When the Eye’s art director died in a boating accident, they temporarily brought in some guy who they didn’t like, and changed editors. I walked in the door and they gave me my first magazine. I mean, I immediately had the dream, and now that I had my first magazine, it was Eye magazine! It was major. It was Life magazine size, it was hip, it was kids, it was rock ’n’ roll, all that stuff. And ooh, boy, it was great.

CBA: This was in ’68?

Michael: The very beginning of ’69. But it soon folded. I only worked on it for seven months and then it went under. Helen Gurley Brown came down, took direct control, and wanted to turn it into a magazine that would groom girls just before Cosmo. She wrote a cover line that didn’t belong on Eye magazine, but I thought she was a genius for writing it. In fact, we ran this line on a Lampoon cover years later in some parody because Henry Beard thought it was so brilliant. It was, “Sexy, nice girls in their Summer underthings.” I thought, “It’s genius. It’s brilliant.”

CBA: I’m putting in my subscription right now! [laughs] Michael: How can you not! “Sexy, nice girls in their Summer underthings”? it’s poetry! And I recognized that.

But I hated it, and I went out and said, “I can’t do it.” She didn’t want any perv photos; she saw that the design was radical, and wanted to pull back. She wanted to keep me, but I said, “I can’t lower myself to your level to put out a magazine.” And she cried.

CBA: Really?

You made Helen Gurley Brown cry?

Michael: Yeah, but then I found out later, that in any meeting where she didn’t think she was winning, she cried. [laughter] Anyway, I left the magazine.

CBA: You said it was Life magazinesized, so there were big, splashy graphics? Was it

Below: Cover of the first issue of National Lampoon (Apr. ’70), featuring “Mallard Fillmore,” Peter Bramley’s shortlived cartoon mascot for the periodical. Courtesy of Ray Kelly and Kelly’s Comics. ©1970 National Lampoon, Inc.

Below: Typically, the early issues of National Lampoon featured underground comix-style cartoons, usually drawn by art director Peter Bramley. This one is of a drug-sniffing rhino. ©1971 National Lampoon, Inc.

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Above: The first National Lampoon cover under Michael Gross’s tenure as art director (#8, Nov. ’70) sported art by renowned painter Louis Glanzman, brother of Sam (who’s a favorite comic book artist at CBA) and Dave (former Charlton Comics staffer)! Sam tells us that Lou used himself as model for the guy in the background. ©1970 National Lampoon, Inc. Inset right: Michael Gross, the award-winning art director for National Lampoon, sits for a portrait in 1972. Courtesy of M.G. Below: What Michael Gross describes as the best magazine cover he ever designed, the “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog” cover (a concept since swiped a quadrillion times), which graced the “Death” issue (#34, Jan. ’73). See Mike’s ad on page 65 to order a facsimile of the artist’s original concept sketch.

Courtesy of Michael Gross. ©1972 National Lampoon, Inc.

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geared for youth, or was it just hip?

Michael: Oh, it was for the younger generation. We did a photo spread on the making of the movie, Alice’s Restaurant. It was rock ’n’ roll… the Stones were on the cover, y’know?

CBA: It lasted six months to a year?

Michael: Right. The whole thing lasted less than two years. They wanted to carry Coca-Cola ads. But Rolling Stone was really tearing down the track at that point. All the editors really wanted to do another Rolling Stone.

So it was caught in this noaudience weirdness-thing.

CBA: That was a strange time for magazines in general, too, right? The Saturday Evening Post, Look, Collier’s… they were already gone by that point… and Life was in trouble.

Michael: General interest magazines just weren’t working. It was a very scary time. I couldn’t even tell you what else was being published at that time.

CBA: What did you have your eye on? Did you want to do your own magazine? Was that always your dream?

Michael: That’s still what I wanted to do. I wasn’t looking to change careers or anything. George Lois was doing the covers for Esquire as a freelancer, even under other art directors, and it the only magazine probably that did that. Sam Antipit, who became the art director at Esquire, even when Lois was doing the covers, Sam went on to have a design firm called Hess and/or Antipit.

Somehow it was contracted that I wouldn’t do the covers for Eye magazine; Sam Atchison would do the covers. So he had the same deal with Eye that Lois had with Esquire. It was fun working with Sam. I really respected him and he did a beautiful job. When the magazine folded, Sam said, “Why don’t you come work for me? I have a design firm.”

At that point, I even thought, “I’ll have a design firm someday.” There were great firms around in those days. Bob Pellegrini, who I worked with in Mexico… at the end of our stay in Mexico City, I said, “Bob, when we get back, you’ve gotta meet David Kaestle. You, David and I will start a design firm.” So I went back and we all went onto other jobs and other things, but from Eye magazine I went to Sam Atchison and learned the design business.

Things didn’t work out for a lot of reasons: Design is not a great business, and it wasn’t for me, being in my position, because I couldn’t make enough money and it was drudgery. It was just hard.

By now, I was starting to feel the pinch of changing jobs a little too often, but while I was there, Jan Wenner somehow came to me and he said, “Do you want to design a magazine called New York Scene? I’m going to have a magazine in every city: New York Scene, Chicago Scene, etc. Little lifestyle magazines. Small, black-&-white, cheap. I’ve got a guy there selling ads. Will you design it?” I said, “Okay.” But it was a freelance job, so I had to then work out of somebody’s office to do this magazine. The real problem with that was that I would go broke. I couldn’t pay my bills. But I worked for Jan Werner starting this little magazine where I had an art budget of $100 a page, and I would draw half of it myself. So it was pretty cool. We did some neat things and I did meet some excellent people, but I couldn’t keep doing it, and it folded. Finally, I looked for a real job again, and I went to work for Family Health magazine, a general interest health magazine, and they wanted it to be designed better. I did a nice design job, but it was slick, boring, and… that was a classic case of where I didn’t want to be. I had my own magazine, but it wasn’t first-rate. I just didn’t care what was in it; I was just doing a good enough job. So, naturally, I started looking for a job again, and my assistant was also looking for a job because he wasn’t happy.

So he came to me and says, “I was just called in on a job that you should go for. I’m not right for it. This new magazine, National Lampoon, is looking for an art director.” I said, “Are you kidding me?” Now, before that, I came home one day with that parody of Time magazine which the guys had done, which was what gave birth to the whole thing. I remember sitting in my kitchen and laughing my f*ckin’ ass off reading this stuff out loud to my wife and saying, “These guys are brilliant!” So that was it!

I went down to the newsstand, looked at an issue designed by Cloud Nine, and I remember going home and telling my wife, “This is the magazine I want to art direct. I know how to do this.” That was the only time in my life she thought I made a wrong decision! To this day, she’s the first to say, “Boy, was I wrong about that!” But she didn’t get what I saw in the magazine.

You’d think that National Lampoon would have been a step back for me. Wasn’t I moving toward book design? Wasn’t I moving toward art directing the slickest, biggest magazine of all? Wasn’t I destined to get Playboy someday? So what the f*ck is this Lampoon thing? A friggin’ underground? But, see, I understood. That was it, that was the progression that got me to Lampoon…

CBA: What was it that you saw? Obviously, Peter Bramley and Cloud Nine were giving the magazine this underground, pseudo-R. Crumb kind of look, epitomized by that duck on the cover of the first issue. Generally speaking, even though the magazine used some first-rate illustrators— Rick Meyerowitz, Arnold Roth, Gahan Wilson—the overall look of the magazine was, putting it kindly, not the best it should have been.

Michael: But let’s step back. When I was in college and wanted to do a magazine, one of the people I had lunch with was Gahan Wilson. And Gahan, as a Playboy cartoonist… what separated him from the rest of the magazine, in my eyes, what the difference with him was, he was like the Jonathan Winters of this situation. We were the new sensibility.

National Lampoon… what happened in there?

Who were these guys?

Why was there a Monty Python and NatLamp at the COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003

CBA Interview

Gahan Wilson’s “Nuts” The creepy—and cuddly!—cartoonist on NatLamp and the Kid Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice

Below: The Kid, star of Gahan Wilson’s monthly National Lampoon feature for “The Funny Pages,” Nuts, a superb comic strip revealing the timeless frustrations, foilibles, and fantasies—as well as joys—of life as a kid. This detail

by Gahan is from the cover of 1979 book collection, Nuts. ©2003 Gahan Wilson.

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Some call Gahan Wilson the heir to macabre New Yorker magazine cartoonist Charles Addams’ world of horrifying but hilarious monsters, but the noted contributor to that aforementioned periodical and Playboy, is truly a unique guy, a complete original, more a kid in his entire outlook. Forever young, always enthusiastic, eager for something new to do, as talented as ever, Gahan is one of my favorite people in the business. I had the opportunity to first meet the cartoonist during the H.P. Lovecraft Centennial Conference some 13 years ago, where I had the pleasure to escort him about H.P.L.’s beloved ole Providence Towne. Gahan would contribute to two of my projects—for which I am always indebted to him—and I thank the artist for his great cover this issue. Gahan, interviewed via phone on August 29, 2002, copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Let me start off with a question you’ve been asked a lot: You were born dead?

Gahan Wilson: Yes. It was really quite something and totally true. The doctors had given my mother an anaesthetic called “twilight sleep,” which they still use. But instead of affecting her, it put me out! So, I was stoned and when I emerged, I wasn’t breathing, getting bluer and bluer, and the doctors weren’t up to handling the emergency. Fortunately the family doctor was looking in at all this going on, and he dashed in and did this old-time thing of getting a bowl of hot water and a bowl of ice water, dipping me in one and then the other, whacking me inbetween, and that got me stirred to life. I started crying and there I was!

CBA: Were you often told that story as a child?

Gahan: I cannot actually recall anybody actually telling me but, yes, obviously I had been told the story, because I certainly wouldn’t have any conscious memory of the event.

CBA: Where were you born?

Gahan: In Evanston, Illinois, in the township hospital. I grew up in Evanston. It was a neat place to grow up, because it was really heartland America.

It’s still the same kind of place.

In some ways, it’s changed considerably; in others, it’s spookily the same (though everything is like that, I find). It’s a nice suburb, and

has a lot of middle class/upper-middle class people. Back then, it had some very upper class types. They lived in mansions, which were mostly lakeside property. This produced an interesting class of crazy people, because you’d have women who would be incredibly spoiled and had everything their way, and they lived in these places. They could indulge any eccentricity that happened to sweep over them.

CBA: These were widows and old maids?

Gahan: I would imagine, if you were in that world and knew who they were…. Frankly, I never bothered to memorize the names of these people. But I’m sure there’d be a lot of the robber baron group; and folks like that. Evanston’s a suburb of Chicago, sitting right next to the city. There’s Howard Street, which is the dissecting line between Chicago and Evanston, and it separated things in a whole bunch of different ways. It was very special and it was intriguing.

You had rough-tough on one side of Chicago—and Howard Street and Evanston in the grip of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union on the other. There was no drinking at all in Evanston. Prohibition survived. It ruled forever and ever.

CBA: Sin was pretty much restricted to Chicago?

Gahan: Yes! When you hit Howard Street—boom!—there was Chicago, full force. There were all these interesting bars and things.

That’s where you went to see the odd movies and buy weird magazines and so forth. Also, they’ve got this system of elevated trains which go out to the suburbs—it’s still there—and when they hit Howard (though I can’t believe this would still be in force), for some reason or other (it was some jurisdictional thing, I guess), you could not ride on through. You would have to get out of the train if going further north and transfer to another train, all very easily done. You usually just got off at the platform, and in no time at all there was another train, or there was one waiting there for you. The result of this produced all kinds of interesting things. If it was getting on into the night, there would be these wandering drunks on the Howard Street platform because, all of a sudden, they’d be rousted from the train and would be stumbling around. It was fascinating to watch them because they’d sort of weave over to the side of the tracks and almost fall off, but not quite…. All kinds of interesting little events.

One thing I’ll never forget happened when I and my best pal were coming in from Chicago—we were high school kids—and we’re on the train and see, at one end of the car, sitting quietly amongst everybody else, making absolutely no fuss at all, Basil Rathbone.

In the latter Sherlock Holmes movies they modified the Holmes costume to a kind of tweedy thing, which was theatrical but perfectly contemporary, only still odd. Rathbone was wearing one of these outfits on the train! We just couldn’t believe it. We tried not to stare, but were totally, “Gosh, look at that! Oh, wow!” That sort of thing.

So we hit Howard Street, and sure enough, Basil had to get off with everybody else. I don’t know why the hell he was on this thing; I guess he was just wandering around. It was an unbelievable, atypical foggy night, if you can believe this, like we heard London always was.

He’s standing there on the platform considering what to do next.

Finally, he takes his pipe out, which was a Calabash, just like Sherlock Holmes always smoked… it was part of his costume. He lights it up and heads down the stairs, so the two of us tiptoe carefully after him.

There we were on Howard Street, standing near Holmes in the fog, on Howard Street. He looked this way and that, with a thoughtful, lip-pursed look. So he heads down Howard Street, and we were wise enough to leave it at that.

CBA: [chuckles] The game was afoot!

Gahan: Right! We watched him saunter off. Apparently Moriarty COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003

was in the vicinity. It was a great incident.

CBA: Is it telling that you’re related to the master showman P.T. Barnum?

Gahan: It probably had an effect. I’ve always been very proud of it. The more I’ve thought of it, the more I realize the man, in a large way, was responsible for an incredible bending of American society.

He really was something. I think he’s probably one reason why we’re all awash in advertising and bunkum these days. He was a great figure. I’m also related to another grandiose figure, William Jennings Bryant, and he, too, is huge. The Wilsons were enormously religious people in the evangelistic movement. Grandfather Wilson was big on prohibition and all that, too. They had Billy Sunday over, and so on.

I had some amazing relatives.

CBA: Did you grow up in a religious environment?

Gahan: No. What happened with me was that my father reacted, eventually, very strongly against all of this as a young man, and was completely a dead-earnest atheist. The Wilson half is completely English, Scottish, and Presbyterian, in one way or another, and they came over way back in the old Jamestown period. They were from those very old settlers, not very far from the Mayflower kind of crowd. They settled on the East Coast and slowly worked their way Westward, most of them being farmers.

My mother’s side of the family is 100% Irish, who came over on account of that potato famine. They were totally Catholic, as you might imagine, so my mother was brought up in this very Irish, very Catholic world, which she revolted against. So I was brought up in a completely un-religious household. They were not just agnostic; they were atheists. They were flat-out completely dedicated to the idea that there was no God, and that’s that. It wasn’t discussed much. It was interesting because I was brought up with no religious influence at all, regardless of the families’ backgrounds.

CBA: Did you retain your mother’s maiden name?

Gahan: Yes. My first name was actually Allen, after my father, but that got confusing, I guess, so they started calling me Gahan instead, April 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

Gahan being my middle name. As time went by, I just got used to it.

Then I realized that Gahan sort of took the curse off of Wilson, and you had this interesting odd name. So that’s how it got started.

CBA: I was curious if you were rejecting the Barnum name.

Gahan: No, that’s just the way I was brought up.

CBA: Gahan is a Gaelic name?

Gahan: Yes, it’s my mother’s family name.

CBA: You were born in 1930?

Gahan: I was born on December 18th, which was the day astronomers, by means of comparing photographs, discovered the planet Pluto. So, me and Pluto, there we were. I was quite depressed when for a while there they were saying Pluto wasn’t a planet, but now they seem to accept it, if grudgingly.

CBA: He was lord of the underworld, right? And you were born dead, so there’s a connection there. [laughs] Gahan: It’s all very neat and I’m very pleased with the connection.

CBA: You’re from my mother’s generation and, the Depression notwithstanding, it certainly was a wonderful time for a kid to be growing up, wasn’t it?

Gahan: Yes, it certainly was a swell time. I think any period would be fun for kids, but my era had a very odd flavor about it.

The cartoon editor of The New Yorker, Bob Mankoff, is doing a book on how to cartoon. He asked me and a bunch of other New Yorker cartoonists to answer a series of questions, “Where’d you grow up,” and so on. I hadn’t really, consciously understood this before, this was really the first time it truly dawned on me that because my childhood was deep in the Depression, I grew up surrounded by adults who were frightened people in a society that was essentially destroyed and in complete chaos, and nobody knew what the hell was going to happen next. I would hear terrifying conversations between these people who were supposed to be protecting me and I wanted them to be all-powerful and so on, but they were all scared sh*tless. There was a great uncertainty, because everybody was on the edge of doom.

Above: Kudos to renowned portrait photographer Beth Gwinn— best recalled for her picture books featuring pix of esteemed horror, fantasy and science-fiction authors—for her extremely quick delivery of this great shot of Gahan Wilson and friend! Thanks much, B.G.! ©2003 Beth Gwinn Photography. Below: Also many thanks to the artist himself for Gahan’s lovely cover art. The characters and creatures floating around The Kid were featured in various Wilson articles over the course of NatLamp’s history. Can you name from which pieces and issues these weirdos came from?

The first to answer correctly receives the acetate color cover proof of this issue as prize! Hurry up, folks! ©2003 Gahan Wilson.

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I lived in this red brick apartment building, and it was terrific because the kids just formed sort of a barbaric little society of our own. We just made up games and played in the backyard parking lot, and had a lot of fun, roaming all over the neighborhood, but this doomish mood was always in the background. One of my chums’ mother was doing needlework to make ends meet. Everybody was right there on that edge. The janitor there had fled Germany. I remember one time we sat there, and he’s a great, tough, old German guy, an All’s Quiet on the Western Front sort of character. In his German accent, he said: [German accent] “Gahan, it’s like this.” He told me this whole thing about when you’re a kid, you go in the Army, then this happens and they have this war. He says, “You know, it’s gonna happen again.” So we had also this threat that the worst was yet to come. You’d look at the newsreels and see these impossibly ridiculous people like Hitler and Mussolini. The whole damn world seemed up for grabs.

CBA: Was it essential for the time to have a leader like Roosevelt in this country?

Gahan: I think it was a fantastic stroke of luck that we had FDR, because the place was sliding into chaos…. It was just going to sh*t, and all kinds of crazy people like Huey Long were all over the joint. Their fingers were almost on the throttle and they damn near took control. So Roosevelt revived faith and hope and he got the people to…[pause] CBA: To be less afraid?

Gahan: To be less afraid. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” was the mantra that saved everybody. There was this feeling of, “Everybody’s got to help everybody else,” a conviction that is just gone-gone-gone from contemporary society. Today, the idea that we’re all in this together is insanely missing. We’ve got a bunch of people who are completely self-absorbed and selfish to the point of absurdity. It’s very destructive and very dangerous, and depressing, to boot. But the ’30s was one hell of a period.

There was this wonderful pulp character called The Spider, the craziest one of them all. The Shadow? Forget him! The Spider’s the man. In a foreword for a reprint of a Spider pulp, I wrote, “This is the way it was. He’s not exaggerating.”

CBA: As a child, there were a lot of fantastic diversions for you. There was The Shadow on the radio, Buck Rogers at the movies, The Spider in the pulps, Flash Gordon in the Sunday paper… Superman came out in the comic books. Did you think these type of heroes were a reaction to the times?

Gahan: Oh, very much. The super-heroes, as well as all the tough private eyes and so on, were all reactions to a society that was in dreadful straits, so you needed characters like that.

It was definitely very much a reaction to the situation.

CBA: Did you absorb the stuff? Were you into Tarzan?

Gahan: Well, hell yes! I adored comic books and all that stuff. The old cliché about the radio programs being theatres of the mind was absolutely true; they were wonderful because you didn’t see. You had to make up at least 50%, and probably more, of what you were listening to. In fact, you listen to some of the tapes of the radio plays, and it’s astonishing to contrast that with television, which is a totally passive… I’m not knocking it, I think you can do wonderful things on TV, but it was, psychically, a whole different experience. I would doodle images of these people on the radio I was listening to. So it’s a whole other kind of activity, which is missing today. It’s kind of a shame, because it was an interesting exercise.

CBA: So you were drawing at a young age?

Gahan: I was one of these kids who doodled all the time.

Once, when I was president of the Cartoonist’s Guild, we were negotiating with somebody important in our business, trying to figure out how we should do it and so on. I looked across this panel of distinguished, first-rate cartoonists, and I notice this one guy is doodling a funny little face on this notepad. Then I realized the whole damn bunch of them were doing it. I realized that I, too, was making doodles and thought, “This is hopeless.” I don’t think you decide to become an artist; I think you’re just stuck with it.

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COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003

CBA Interview

From Son-O’-God to Bauhaus Neal Adams on his humor work for the National Lampoon Inset right: For the 1976 National Lampoon Iron On Book, Neal Adams contributed this rarely-seen piece of the rock’n’roll hero. Courtesy of the ever-helpful and talented Mark Simonson (hey, don’t forget to check out this NatLamp afficionado’s Web site — see the inside front cover ad of this issue of CBA). ©1976 National Lampoon, Inc.

Below: We’ve taken the liberty of flopping this image of the EC Comics-like host from “The Fall of the House of Bau,” by Neal Adams, from The National Lampoon Very Large Book of Comical Funnies (’76), a tale sporting superb artwork by the master. ©1976 National Lampoon, Inc.

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Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Our next guest is certainly no stranger to regular readers of this magazine, as Neal Adams has been interviewed more times by CBA than any other single artist.

His influence on American comic books—the industry as well as the art form—is incalculable, and the man’s abilities as an artist are beyond reproach. He is, quite simply, a living legend, and this is far from the last time we hope to speak with him, as Neal is already lined up to be a part of the first issue of CBA’s upcoming revamp, in which he will be collaborating for the first time with Alex Ross on a new cover. This interview took place in the new Continuity Studio offices in midtown Manhattan on September 6, 2002. Neal copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: How did you first hear about the National Lampoon?

Neal Adams: I believe I heard that the guys who had worked on Harvard Lampoon had decided to do a lampoon magazine commercially. Doug Kenney was sort of the pitcher/leader of the thing. I guess I was doing a lot of work up at DC at the time.

CBA: Michael Gross was the art director.

Neal: No, I came in before Michael. Well, I sort of introduced them to the comic book business, but they also introduced themselves.

Doug Kenney came over to DC Comics one day. I don’t know if I was working at the Lampoon at the time, but Kenney came over to meet with

[DC publisher] Carmine Infantino. They were walking around the offices and Kenney was sucking on a pacifier. I believe that’s where I met him; I was introduced to him by Carmine. It was obvious he was putting everybody on with this pacifier, but nobody was saying anything. So I had a conversation with him and just ignored the pacifier. I thought it was funny, but it wasn’t that damned funny. [laughs] Sucking on a pacifier!

I don’t know if you know much about Archie Goodwin, but Archie used to do pratfalls when he was younger. We’d be walking out of a hotel somewhere and he would fall on his face. He’d stumble and fall. You’d rush over to him, thinking he’d hurt himself, but he would just get up and smile that kind of shy smile. Then everybody would get upset! But you realized after a while that he just did it as a joke. So it was a very funny thing he would do. So if you were there when he did it again, you were in on the joke.

People have things that they do. One of the things that I do is, I walk down the street and I go under an awning and I hit the awning with my hand, but I act as if I hit it with my head and throw my head back as if I smashed my face. Now, this is stupid stuff, and I know that I’m revealing some incredibly stupid aspect about myself, but it’s funny to take a look at people’s faces when you do something like that! I’d act like I knocked my teeth out… in Archie’s case, he acted like he broke his back. But we would just do this kind of stuff….

So Doug Kenney came around DC Comics sucking on a pacifier.

Compared to running into an awning and doing a pratfall, sucking on a pacifier wasn’t that damn funny. My favorite gag is… you know how bums come up to you on the street? Some are pretty funny in a strange way. So if I’m ever with any business people, the serious-type suits, and some bum comes up…. Of course, bums always see me, for whatever reason. I look like a soft touch. So they come up and they’re stumbling up and I do a fake turn and I look at the bum and go, “Dad!” [laughter] And the suits will all cringe…. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Now, I think that’s funnier than a pacifier. It’s not my level of humor, anyway.

So I wasn’t initially overly impressed by the Lampoon. On the other hand, there were some things that I saw that I must have liked, and somehow we got together. The first thing I remember doing was “Son-O’-God Comics.” I thought, “‘Son-O’-God Comics’?

That’s hysterical!” Of course, I didn’t tell them that I thought it was hilarious; I just figured it was a job. They paid a little bit better than DC and Marvel, certainly better than Warren. As it turns out, they didn’t pay better enough to be worthwhile, because it was just too massively difficult to do the work.

CBA: I was under the impression the Lampoon paid quite well.

Neal: Yes, they did, but when you, for instance, have to draw the 12 Apostles in every panel, that gets COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003

to be labor intensive. One panel had to have Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, a hard thing to draw; it’s a busy thing, and I had to draw it more than once. For example, there’s a panel where it is reputed that the Vatican has these underground vaults where they keep all these art treasures away from the eyes of all infidels.

Of course, when I drew that frame, I had to draw these incredible art treasures. Well, you just don’t bang that out. So here’s one artist drawing the art treasures of the world in a single panel! Not exactly an easy thing to do.

Here I’ve got two panels featuring a family in a kitchen. Then a guy walking down the street. Then, suddenly, I’ve got the Vatican. That’s the Vatican! I drew it from reference, from a photograph. If you start counting word balloons, you see more balloons in there than you normally see. Here is, for example, puppets of the Popes sitting behind a curtain. Well, those little faces there, are actually those of real Popes. The Victrola is really a Victrola. That’s really a tape player there. So this kind of work is not something you can really knock out.

On the next page, every one of these things is described… a nun flagellating herself, three cardinals going over the forbidden books, treasures in the background, people being whipped and beaten, an old monk…. Here, in the next panel, you have a hallway and then you have essentially these semi-pornographic art treasures, but if you look at them, if you bring your eyes down and focus, they are actually famous Spanish women who posed nude… a famous portrait here. All these things, they’re just throwaways. Here’s a little Giglioni resting against another painting. The next panel on the following page has sculptures and images, icons of forgotten and thrown-away religions. But they’re all there. Totems and idols, all drawn accurately. The next panel is quite a large floor of these guys on computers.

Many people on computers. In the next panel, there’s a Peter Max-like poster, which had to be designed. In those days, they had those paintings of kids with big eyes, and so we did a version with John Kennedy. The guy in the top of the panel working on a press… well, that’s a real old-fashioned printing press. All the details are correct. So this was not a simple thing to do. On the next page, you have Washington Square Park. Every one of these people are individuals, not just faces in the crowd.

CBA: The detail in every single panel is incredible.

Neal: Here’s the White House under construction.

Excuse me? “The White House under construction”?

Here’s some cardinals in discussion. Those are actual cardinals, their outfits exactly right. You can recognize Pat Nixon in this little vignette in the corner. This was not an easy job to do, and believe me, it wasn’t worth the money they were paying. This is a copy of Michelangelo’s painting of the creation of Adam. The Brooklyn Bridge with the city below. When we get to the following page, we see that the 12 apostles all look like—typical cartoon versions of Jewish kids, with the noses and the glasses. Of course, that was not necessarily something I did to make a statement; it was simply the writers telling me, “Let’s do this. I think this would be cool.” I think it is cool.

In each panel where they show up—you start counting—there’s 12 Apostles. That’s part of the gag… there has got to be 12. Here’s bingo night at Saint Paddy’s Cathedral. This is the front steps; this isn’t throwaway. So when I say that it was busy and hard work at the National Lampoon (except for certain jobs, like V.D. Comics, which wasn’t that hard, and it was a lot of fun; it was cartoony). I had to draw what was required to be in there. Of course, anybody who knows my work, knows that I’m going to try to do the job right.

Interpersonal relationships notwithstanding, the Lampoon work was just for fun.

Son-O’-God Comics, “The Fall of the House of Bau”… they were totally insane! They all had hard-working panels. You had four art styles in one panel. So certainly, compared to drawing Jerry Lewis April 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

or Bob Hope comic books, where I could pencil ten pages in a day, I was lucky I could get through a half-page of this Lampoon work in a day. It was totally insane. But, on the other hand, it was a great deal of fun. The material was hysterically funny. Sure, you have to be pretty broad-minded to appreciate it all, but that’s what the Lampoon was all about: It was intended for broad-minded people.

CBA: Do you recall Sean Kelly and Michel Choquette approaching you to do Son-O’-God Comics?

Neal: They probably didn’t originally mention that they’d like to go further than the first one because the initial episode was so demanding and insane. I don’t think, at that time, I contemplated doing more. But afterward, when the pain wears off, then you can contemplate it again.

We were all well-suited for this assignment. Michel was a Catholic, as was Sean Kelly. Even Gaspar Saladino, who lettered it, was a Catholic. I was a Catholic for a reasonable period of time.

So who would know better what this is all about?

CBA: Who could be more sacrilegious than a lapsed Catholic? [chuckles]

Below: Judas Priest! This superhero “transformation” sequence is from the first installment of SonO’-God Comics (#22, Jan. ’72), drawn by Neal Adams. ©1971 National Lampoon, Inc.

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CBA Interview

Frank Springer in Action!

Pole-vaulting his way to artistic success in National Lampoon Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Steven Tice Frank Springer is one of the true class acts in the comic book industry. Charming, dapper, funny, and disarmingly handsome with a perennial twinkle in the eye, the artist was perhaps the most prolific contributor to the comic book parodies in National Lampoon, working for the satirical monthly from the onset until well into the 1980s. In the early NatLamp years, he was a frequent collaborator with Michael O’Donoghue, with the artist “square” and writer “beatnik” making a very productive and odd couple indeed. Frank was interviewed via telephone on Sept. 12, 2002 and he copyedited the following transcript.

Below: The dashing gent himself.

Frank Springer smiles for the camera in this recent pic supplied by the artist.

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Comic Book Artist: Where are you originally from, Frank?

Frank Springer: Queens, New York. I was born on December 6, 1929.

CBA: Did you grow up in the city?

Frank: The first ten years I spent there in Richmond Hills, Queens—the Forest Hills area—and then we moved out to Long Island, to Lynbrook, when I was about ten.

CBA: What did your father do?

Frank: He was a salesman for the Underwood Company, which produced typewriters and business machines. He trained salesmen as assistant branch manager of their New York office. I guess he just traveled around the city, mostly. Occasionally, he would go out of the city, but that would be to Westchester, not too far away.

CBA: How many brothers and sisters did you have?

Frank: I had one sister. She died in 1992. She was eight years younger than I. CBA: So did you grow up reading comic strips and comic books?

Frank: Yes. Of course, at first there were no comic books, but we got the Daily News on Sunday, and my father read me the strips before I could read them myself.

CBA: So this was Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie….

Frank: Right. They had Dick Tracy on the front page. They used to say their clever headlines sold the Daily News on weekdays, but it was the adventures of Dick Tracy which sold the Sunday News. I think the Sunday News circulation reached close to five million at one point. There was Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Terry and the Pirates, Smokey Stover, Gasoline Alley, Sweeney and Son, and a whole bunch of them.

CBA: So were you a real aficionado of the strips?

Frank: Yes! I was very interested in them. Before that, though, I remember drawing—or trying to draw—as far back as I can remember. While I didn’t appreciate the writing at that time, the drawings were very interesting to me, so I used to copy a lot of that stuff.

CBA: Did you take a shine to Milton Caniff’s work?

Frank: Yes! Starting when I was very young. I think my father appreciated Terry and the Pirates more than I did. He appreciated the authenticity of it—or the semi-authenticity—and the adult stories.

You know, the love affairs, the adventure, and so on. He was a very creative person himself. Did writing and so on. So I think he was particularly interested in Terry and in Dick Tracy, who he used to say had about the best plots and story of any of the strips.

CBA: Did you also listen to the radio shows of the time?

Frank: Yes. From about five until six every afternoon. Before five, there were soap operas, which I only listened to when I was sick, because there was nothing else on the radio during the day. But at five o’clock began the 15-minute programs, and there was Little Orphan Annie (later replaced by Captain Midnight), Tom Mix, and Terry and the Pirates. Li’l Abner was also a radio show, though that was a little bit later, I think. This was when we were still living in Queens, then, so prior to 1940, I believe.

CBA: Was Long Island basically suburban when you moved?

Frank: Yes, Lynbrook at that time was the suburbs, just a few miles from the city line. It was about 17 miles from midtown Manhattan, where my father commuted. I thought it was great. It was like the country, to me, after living pretty close to the Jamaica El in Queens.

CBA: Was there farmland?

Frank: Well, there were a lot of vacant lots. There were a couple of farms in Malverne, the town just above us. I lived right on the border of Malverne and Lynbrook. We used the vacant lots to great advantage, climbing trees, staging athletic events, and so on.

CBA: Did you have a neighborhood crew you hung around with?

Frank: Oh yes. We played stickball, hide-and-seek.

You know, the usual stuff. At that time there were no organized sports for kids prior to high school, so we made up our own rules depending on how many we had at the moment, and we got into pole-vaulting early.

CBA: Pole-vaulting?

Frank: I don’t know how that came about, but, all of a sudden, it was the craze of the neighborhood. We took over a vacant lot, put up standards, got a crossbar, and eventually we bought a vaulting pole from a nearby sporting goods store, for COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003

$14.50, I remember.

CBA: Which was a fortune for a kid in those days, right?

Frank: Well, five of us had to go in on the deal. Not one of us had $14.50 to spend. So we had a great time. We had a chinning bar, a high jump, and so on. I was very interested in track and field.

We also had a basketball court, as I recall. I had a great childhood.

It really was fun. Of course, by this time the War began, with gasoline rationing, our parents couldn’t get around very well by car.

We were just too young for the War but old enough to know what was going on.

CBA: Were you born with a white shock of hair?

Frank: No, that started growing in when I was nine years old, maybe eight, little by little. My parents’ friends first noticed it, before I did, though my parents didn’t say anything about it. My hair was in my eyes most of the time, so it was covered up. It was when I combed it back when I realized I had gray hairs there. It stopped at about the size of a quarter or a half-dollar in my early teens, and it stayed there until… well, it’s still there, but the rest of my hair….

CBA: Matched up?

Frank: Matched up, yeah!

CBA: Did that earn you a distinction as a kid?

Frank: Yes. I was remembered. For that, if nothing else. Once in a while I’d be in a strange city and somebody’ll say, “Oh, I remember you! We went to college together,” or “I saw you at such and such.”

Of course, it was my shock that was distinctive, so I wouldn’t necessarily remember them….

CBA: Was it okay as a kid to have that distinction?

Frank: You know, as a teenager, you’ve got all kinds of psychological problems. I was sometimes upset about it, on occasion, but I realized that it was an advantage in the long run.

CBA: Did it help you in your career, to at least some degree, that you were recognized and distinctive? For instance, people at National Lampoon remember you as that classy guy with the white shock of hair.

Frank: [Chuckles] Yes. Well, that’s a nice way to put it. You know, when I was in the Army, I remember an officer saying, talking about, I guess, getting ahead in the world or something like that, and he said, “Make them remember you. When you’re in somebody’s office, spit on the floor. Do something! Drop a book. Make them remember that you were there.” Of course, in the Army we all wore hats, so everybody looked the same, but I remembered what he said. They might throw you out of the office, but they would remember you because you had white hair or you were six foot nine or something like that. So in that way, it was an advantage. But, of course, if you couldn’t draw…

CBA: Talent will win out?

Frank: Yes, that’s right.

CBA: When you were in school, were you renowned as an artist?

Frank: Yes. I think I always thought that I was better at drawing than anybody else in the class. It turned out that’s not necessarily the case, but I had that suspicion in my mind. “I’m better than he is. He might have gotten that assignment, but I think I can do better than he or she.” A lot of kids drew, but they didn’t draw all the time. So the kid that likes to draw just naturally gets better.

CBA: And sticks out?

Frank: Right. Then you get out in the world, and realize that you’re in the business with a lot of other guys who thought the same thing. Some of them really were the best ones in their class, or the best ones in their school, or maybe even the best ones their state ever saw.

CBA: Did your parents encourage your talent?

Frank: Yes. I still have some art books that my father bought for me. I have a T-square hanging here that he got for me I guess in the 1930s. You know, they bought me paper and so on. I’ll tell you a story. I think that the idea was, if the kid is interested in something, give him the chance to express that. If he goes on to something else, then you try to follow that up with encouragement. So I think at first they might have thought it was a phase, but later on, I guess, after I began making money at it, they realized it was not a phase. [laughs] During the 1939-40 World’s Fair, the Underwood Company (where my father worked) had their own building, and in their exhibit was a huge typewriter, the size of a living room, perhaps. It was about April 2003

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

seven or eight feet high, perhaps, and as wide. It was worked mechanically. If you wanted to jump on the key, you might be able to move the type. Anyway, it used a huge roll of paper, and at the end of the season in 1940, the last year of the Fair, my father had occasion to go over to the fairgrounds, which was there in Queens, near where we lived.

CBA: It was in Flushing?

Frank: Yes, the same place where the 1964-65 World’s Fair was held. In fact, that ’64-65 globe is still there, about where the Trylon and Perisphere was at the ’39-40 fair. That was a magic time. I was nine and ten, and it was just fabulous. Anyway, in the Underwood building, there were workmen using the paper that was used on this machine for wrapping paper and that kind of thing. My father said, “You know, if you guys don’t need this stuff, I’ll take it home.” So they sawed the roll in half, and my father brought home this huge roll of this paper. It was really, really good paper, perhaps the thickness of two-ply Strathmore. A little bit smoother than kid-finish Strathmore, but not as smooth as plate-finish. My father mounted this roll on a wood frame that he made so that you could pull the paper out and then tear it off on a wooden strip that was across there. I used that paper for years and years, doing my pictures of Mickey Mouse and Superman, etc. It was just great paper. I wish he’d gotten a couple of rolls of it!

CBA: You’d still be using it today! [laughter] Frank: Yeah, it was great stuff! Paper today is not what it used to be.

CBA: Did you actually draw strips and do your own stories, or mostly just sketches?

Above: Frank envisions himself a champion pole-vaulter and mercenary (Holy Terry and the Pirates!) in this flamboyant self-portrait of the artist (no doubt written by frequent collaborator Michael O’Donoghue) from National Lampoon #21 (Dec. ’71).

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CBA Interview

M.K. Brown’s Romance The artist on cooking up comic strips for National Lampoon Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Mary Kathleen Brown’s unique drawing and writing styles can’t easily be described—check out these pages and you give it a shot, effendi!—but however quirky, her innumerable strips in National Lampoon, from Western Romances to Aunt Mary’s Kitchen, exude a kind, sentimental quality that is captivating. A self-described reclusive type—at least when it comes to the press—M.K. granted this interview because she believes the art of NatLamp is worth remembering. We found the artist to be a delightful and smart conversationalist in this interview conducted via telephone on September 10, 2002. M.K. copyedited the final transcript.

Below: Cartoonist M.K. Brown.

This portrait was shot for Penthouse magazine’s contributor page. Courtesy of the artist.

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Comic Book Artist: Mary, where are you originally from?

M.K. Brown: I grew up in Darien, Connecticut, and New Brunswick, Canada.

CBA: What kind of upbringing did you have? Was it pretty much the typical suburban environment?

M.K.: Yes. Darien’s a quiet little town, with excellent schools, very beautiful surroundings. After high school, I went to art school at the Norwich Academy in Norwich, Connecticut, then to Silvermine Guild in New Canaan.

Later, a scholarship to Instituto Allende in Mexico led to a year of further travel in Mexico after which I settled in San Francisco.

CBA: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

M.K.: There were four children in my family. My older sister and a brother have died. My brother, Frank, lives in Kennebunkport, Maine. His company, Xuron, produces precision hand tools for electronics and jewelry.

CBA: Were your parents creative at all?

M.K.: Yes. My mother drew wonderful pencil sketches of horses in profile, something I asked her to do over and over, and over the years she became quite an accomplished oil painter, especially of flowers and still life. She occasionally entered paintings in art shows in Connecticut and won some prizes.

My father was in electronics installations for Luder Marine in Stamford, Connecticut. He loved music and art and had a

great sense of humor. My parents both encouraged us with art supplies for Christmas and birthdays, that sort of thing. We all drew and made watercolors and paintings and got lots of positive attention for it. There was also a bit of competition among us. Being the youngest, I was always striving to draw as well as the others. My sister’s forté was fashion drawings, in pen-&-ink and colored pencils, the brothers both made pictures of flaming planes, exploding cars, monsters. I drew mostly people, animals.

CBA: Did you have an interest in pop culture as a kid? Did you like comics or comic strips?

M.K.: Yes, we all read the weekly comics appearing in some of the Canadian papers, especially the St. Croix Courier. One was Out Our Way. CBA: What was the premise of Out Our Way? M.K.: It was folksy strip of one or two panels in which ordinary things happened that weren’t particularly funny but somehow satisfying. The drawing was very fine, very well done, with good anatomy, and yet in a loose cartoon style that I liked very much.

Of course, Pogo was also there with great drawing.

CBA: You were attracted to the quality of art at a young age?

M.K.: Oh, very much so, yes. I really loved some of the illustrated novels that were around at the time by Albert Payson Terhune, Jack London, Kipling. Smokey by Will James was a favorite. His style, and the fact that the subject was horses, was very attractive to me.

CBA: Was he more of a straight illustrator?

M.K.: Yes, mainly pen-and-ink with just the right amount of detail.

A lot of detail, actually, but not fussy. The black-&-white drawings were very clear and the anatomy, of course, was well seen because besides being a writer and artist, he was an old cowboy who knew his horses.

CBA: You clued into Walt Kelly’s style?

M.K.: Yes. CBA: Was the political content of any interest?

M.K.: At the time, I think it was more the style and the timing within the cartoons.

CBA: Did you read comics?

M.K.: Not a lot, not in the way some people read comics. I read Little Lulu, Archie, Superman, that sort of thing.

CBA: Were comics around the house, generally?

M.K.: My brothers usually had comics and I would read those even though they weren’t my first choice. My sister’s favorite comic book featured two women with very, very thin waists who were always complaining about being fat.

CBA: Patsy and Hedy?

M.K.: Could be. The subject wasn’t particularly interesting to me but I was always fascinated by the anatomy, the spiked heels, the tight skirts.

CBA: Were you ever exposed to Mad comics?

M.K.: Oh, definitely. The first issues of that comic book were quite a revelation to my brothers and me. I think I was in high school when I wrote to Mad to offer my services as an artist. I sent them a drawing. [laughter] In just a week or so, I got a response from Harvey Kurtzman, who said I wrote a very funny letter. He wrote, “Why don’t you come into New York so we can study you?” [laughs] I was very encouraged by that. [laughter] Later, I met Harvey and reminded him of the letter, which he, of course, had forgotten. [laughs] CBA: So I take it you didn’t take him up on his offer immediately.

M.K.: It was thrilling enough to get his letter, but I wasn’t ready for New York.

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CBA: What was it about Mad that was appealing?

M.K.: Well, it was the first magazine I saw that broke the rules, both in content and graphic styles of the contributors. I was already drawing outside the lines a bit as a teenager, so was comforted to see kindred souls in those early Mads.

CBA: Did you start drawing as a little kid?

M.K.: Oh, yes. We all did.

CBA: What were you drawing?

M.K.: Imaginary people and animals, trying to figure things out, trying to draw people from different angles. I often drew on the walls in my bedroom with pencil, (the best surface ever) which was okay with my parents because we were allowed a lot of freedom. [laughs] One day I was standing on a chair while drawing at the dining room table, so must have been quite young, and was thrilled to discover how to draw the face in profile. I was using colored pencils and clearly remember laying in that red colored pencil and that nice black line to form the lips from the side view. That was a very big event.

CBA: Did you show the drawings to your parents and siblings?

M.K.: Of course.

CBA: Were they encouraging?

M.K.: Very. It was a very encouraging atmosphere. My brothers were drawing their war pictures—you know, explosions and planes, blood-&-gore, that kind of thing—and my sister was drawing ball gowns and accessories. I would copy their war drawings (though I was never very good at explosions and guns). I also drew fashions along with animals and people from life. There were pictures in stacks all over the house.

In Canada, I did a lot of caricatures. That’s where I started feeling intrigued with the ability to communicate with pictures.

After going into St. Stephen with the family every week for shopping, I’d come home and draw pictures of some of the people I saw, and was most encouraged when my aunts—great audience—recognized the subjects.

CBA: Did you ever show the people that you were caricaturing?

M.K.: No. These were people I didn’t know very well. Most were just folks in town.

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CBA: Did you ever save any of them?

M.K.: I still have a few of them.

CBA: Were they sharp and insightful, do you think?

M.K.: I don’t know for sure, but the fact that people recognized immediately who I was drawing felt really good.

CBA: These were all basic head shots?

M.K.: No, it depended on how I saw the person. There was one old character who came into St. Stephen every week called Briar Berney with a red mustache that stuck out at the sides. He looked a little like Crumb’s “Keep on Truckin’” guy, striding along. That drawing got a lot of good comments. Then there were the square dances in Canada which everybody went to on Thursday nights. The next day I would draw the people I saw dancing, usually in colored pencil.

CBA: Did you draw in school? Were you known as an artist amongst your classmates?

M.K.: Yes, I was, always. I was the class artist, I think, ever since I could remember. In fact, in the third grade, I even taught an art class, of all things.

I guess I had a good ego! [laughter] CBA: You were nine years old?

M.K.: Yes. I taught a class after school for those who wanted to stay, in how to shade objects, a sphere, a cube, a pyramid, and so on. I got the idea from an art program on television. [laughs] CBA: How many students did you have?

M.K.: Not many. Maybe six would show up, and I don’t know how long it went on.

Probably not very long, but it was nice of the teachers to allow me to do it. The principal at Hindley School in Darien was

Above: Superb autobiographical strip by M.K. Brown, perhaps commenting on how memory makes liars of us all. From National Lampoon Vol. 2, #26 (Sept. ’80). ©2003 M.K. Brown.

Below: The expert cook takes a break from the oven in this detail from the cover of cartoonist M.K. Brown’s Aunt Mary’s Kitchen Cook Book (Collier Books, ’83).

Courtesy of M.K.B.

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CBA Interview

Subitzky: A Mind for Mirth The nicest cartoonist in comics history off the top of his head Conducted by Jon B. Cooke Transcribed by Brian K. Morris Ed Subitzky is a very cool guy. Sure, there’s a bookish aspect about him—hell, Ed studied mathematics! A discipline hardly common among cartoonists—and he is blessed with a sense of humility most of us would benefit to emulate. In getting to know the artist/writer, you begin to realize what a brilliant man he is and, though Ed tells us he’s shy, you learn what an awesome life he’s led thus far! From seeking out satirical genius Harvey Kurtzman as a teen, to holding his own among the stellar humorists at NatLamp, to being a recurring guest on the David Letterman Show, Ed is simply an American original… and, yep, a most righteously cool dude, as well. Many thanks to his domestic partner, Susan Hewitt (who joins in on the conversation here and there) for her welcome assistance. This interview took place via telephone on Sept. 23, 2002, and was copyedited by Ed.

Above: Not only was Stylin’

Subitzky a NatLamp contributor, and frequent guest on the Dave Letterman Show, but Ed’s also a photographer’s model! Here’s a recent head shot of the multi-talented cartoonist! Courtesy of Ed Subitzky and Susan Hewitt.

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Comic Book Artist: When were you born, Ed? Ed Subitzky: I was born in 1943.

CBA: Were you an only child?

Ed: No, I have a brother and sister, and I’m the oldest.

CBA: Were you creative as a child?

Ed: I like to think so. [laughs] I was always writing. There were two things I loved as a child as far back as I can remember: drawing and writing. I was always borrowing typewriters to write anything I could at any time, and always drawing whenever I could get a chance.

CBA: What did you write?

Ed: I’d make a family newspaper that my cousins and I used to mail out to every member of our family.

CBA: How did you duplicate it?

Ed: I remember they were typed, and that we put a huge amount of carbons and paper into the typewriter, and just pounded the keys as hard as we could. [laughter] That’s way before word processing or even electric typewriters. I was probably about 12 or 13 years old then.

CBA: Did you become an accomplished typist early on?

Ed: Today, I’m real fast but I type with two fingers.

CBA: Yeah, me too.

Ed: I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one. [laughs] CBA: Yeah, I used to be a touch typist, but I had to stop because I was getting all the sh*tty jobs. [laughs] So what was the content? Was it factual or

humorous?

Ed: I was talking about this with a cousin just two weeks ago: The whole idea of the paper was that it contained super sleazy material; it was pure sleaze. [laughter] We would listen in on the conversations of the adults and try to find anything foolish, or possibly vaguely sexual that they might say. We could tattle about everybody we’d talk into subscribing. I think we charged something like a nickel for a subscription. The subscribers were mostly adults.

CBA: I take it the adults had a sense of humor about being ridiculed?

Ed: Well, a couple did and a couple didn’t. [laughter] It varied per person.

CBA: How long did the newsletter run?

Ed: It lasted a couple of years. We did it every couple of months.

CBA: Did you stray into fictional territory or feature satire?

Ed: No, not at all. Though when I was 14 or 15, I did write a very satirical magazine for one of my good friends at the time. It was full of fake advertisements, supposedly funny articles, drawings, and stuff like that. There was quite a lot of satire in it.

CBA: You started drawing as a little kid?

Ed: I was always drawing from as early as I can remember. I grabbed all the paper that I could and I’d draw and draw away.

CBA: Did you share your drawings with family?

Ed: Not really. I had the kind of upbringing where my folks kind of poo-pooed all that, and so it wasn’t very inviting to share it with them.

CBA: What were their hopes for you?

Ed: They never fully expressed it, but probably they wanted me to become a dentist, or something like that. [laughs] CBA: What was your father’s job?

Ed: He was a glazer. He had a store where he sold glass to the public and I used to hang out at the store a lot. I remember the glass came in these wooden boxes, and between every two or three panes of glass, there was a piece of paper that was the same area as the glass, used, I guess, to protect it. I would go into the boxes, separate the glass very carefully with my hands and pull out the big pieces of paper, drag them back into this little office, and spend hours and hours drawing on these oversized sheets. [laughs] It wasn’t the usual sort of drawing paper, but it sufficed!

CBA: Did you save any of your drawings?

Ed: None of it. None whatsoever.

CBA: Did you have any exposure to Harvey Kurtzman and Mad comics?

Ed: In those days, I cannot tell you the extent to which I worshiped Mad—I still love those old Mads, actually—and those were the days when Mad comics had merged into the magazine. I worshiped Kurtzman like nobody could worship anybody. A friend of mine at the time happened to live across the street from Harvey in Mount Vernon, and he invited me over to meet Harvey! I was probably 14 years old, or 15. Of course, it was like meeting God! I was a nervous wreck. [laughter] It was like meeting the creator of the universe himself. And it just so happened that another person I adored more than any other was also there, Will Elder! I was just completely freaked out. So Elder shook my hand, and I remember saying to him, “I cannot believe I’m shaking the hand that did all those drawings!” [laughs] I was just utterly overwhelmed. I showed Harvey some humor pieces I had written, and I asked Harvey if he would take a look at them, and he agreed. So I gave him a bunch of stuff, and he didn’t like my material. I was, of course, devastated.

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CBA: What were you satirizing?

Ed: I don’t remember. I guess it was all kinds of things, but I don’t have any real memory of it. All I remember is being heartbroken because Harvey didn’t respond well to my stuff.

CBA: Oh, no! Did you meet Adele Kurtzman?

Ed: She probably was there—members of Harvey’s family were there—but I don’t remember the details.

CBA: How long was the visit?

Ed: I’d say about 45 minutes or so.

CBA: Did Harvey have a studio in his home?

Ed: If he did, he didn’t take me to it. The encounter took place in his living room.

CBA: So Harvey was acquainted with your friend?

Ed: Yes. In the way neighbors inevitably get acquainted. They lived almost directly across the street from each other, and knew each other on that basis. I can’t tell you how accurate these memories are, so I hope I’m not embellishing.

CBA: Memory is the history of lies. [laughs] Ed: Perfectly said. Memory gets so mixed up with intervening events….

CBA: But it’s so entertaining! [laughs] Ed: Yeah, it really is. I do remember Harvey talked to me about how he had been kicked out of Mad, essentially, so this visit must have taken place after he wasn’t with the magazine any more. I thought he even got a tiny bit tearful while he was talking to me. But is this memory true, or lies my memory has made up? I can only tell you what’s in my brain right now.

CBA: The timing certainly seems right. You visited around 1957, right?

Ed: That sounds close.

CBA: Did you follow Harvey’s work in Trump and Humbug?

Ed: Trump, Humbug, Help!, every last little bit of his work, yeah.

CBA: So Mad was your favorite?

Ed: Totally, yeah. I enjoyed its satirical bent, definitely.

Like all kids of that age, a part of me recognized the pompousness and stupidity of the world around me.

And in those days—we’re talking the 1950s here— everything was taken really, really seriously. So Mad would be the only place where you could click with people who understood that. I loved that aspect of that magazine.

CBA: Did you ever go down to the Mad offices?

Ed: No, I never did. In fact, that visit to Mount Vernon was the only time I ever saw Harvey Kurtzman back then.

CBA: Did you go to the city with any frequency?

Ed: Yes. A friend of mine and myself would take the train down to the city—a big deal back in those days—and we would just do the usual things, like to go Times Square, see the latest movies….

CBA: What subjects were you good at in high school?

Ed: My favorite subject was mathematics. I even ended up being a math major when I went to college.

CBA: Do mathematicians typically have a good sense of humor?

Ed: Well, some do and some don’t. A couple of my friends who are mathematicians said physicists have great senses of humor, but the professors didn’t seem to have too much, somehow. [laughs] CBA: Did you have any wishes to do satire as a living?

Ed: I would have enjoyed it, actually, but I realized you couldn’t earn enough money that way. I never had the starving artist kind of personality, so I ended up with a career in an advertising agency, as a copywriter, more or less.

CBA: How did that develop?

Ed: I did it almost by accident. I went to the State University at Binghamton (though in those days, it was called Harpur College), starting in 1960 and I got out around ’65. While I did graduate work in math there, I realized I wasn’t good enough to be a professional mathematician. It just wasn’t going to happen. Though I’m better than most people at math, I’m not good enough to have made a April 2003

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career of it. So I knew that at the time and realized I had to do something else. I always loved to write, and I answered just about every ad in the New York Times that had to do with writing. The first job I got was for a copywriter writing direct mail for Moody’s Investors Service.

CBA: And this was right out of college?

Ed: Right out of college, yeah.

CBA: So you were like 22 or 23?

Ed: Yeah, because I actually took a little time off in college, and because of the grad school. Maybe 23.

CBA: Were you involved with any college publications?

Ed: I did cartoons for the school newspaper. I’ve got them tucked away somewhere here in my apartment. I look at them and cringe. [laughs] Some were one-panel, some were sequential, which mostly dealt with campus issues. They weren’t gags, particularly; they were little stories of sorts.

CBA: Were you political at all?

Ed: Nope. I was very un-political, actually. All the kids in those days were very involved with all this political stuff and somehow, I always felt on the sidelines.

CBA: To this day, do you have any political bent?

Ed: More than I used to, but not really. It’s not my natural instinct.

As you get older, you see the way people are messing up the world, and you get more political whether you want to or not. [laughter] But I would say that my natural tendency isn’t in that direction, and my

Above: A perfect example of Ed Subitzky’s unique approach to comics as he toys with the forms conventions, tickling the hell out of readers in the process. This fullpage strip originally appeared in National Lampoon #50 (May ’74). ©2003 Ed Subitzky.

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CBA Interview

Bawdy & Bodacious Bodé Vaughn’s son, Mark, talks about his dad and Cheech Wizard Right inset: Mark Bodé tell us this 1975 photo is of his father, Vaughn, “at a local greasy spoon in the Mission District in San Francisco a few months before he died. Courtesy of Mark.

Below and inset right: In the “SelfIndulgent” issue of National Lampoon (#45, Dec. ’73), Vaughn Bodé contributed this episode of Cheech Wizard relating an encounter with creator and creation. The portrait on the opposite page (by Vincent Bodé) of the artist ran between these pages. ©2003 Mark Bodé.

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CBA: Can you share any details on Vaughn’s upbringing and adolescence?

Vaughn Bodé was a true American original, as cartoonist Mark: Because his father, Ken, was a poet but lost his and as performance artist. Before his tragically talent to the bottle, Vaughn swore to never drink untimely death in the Summer of 1975, he was and to always use the creativity he got from his a staple presence in the pages of National father to further himself. Vaughn’s childhood Lampoon with his notorious Cheech was rough, one of beatings, theft and Wizard strip (often featured in multiple vandalism, so to escape these harsh realpages in full-color, as well as in each ities, he became immersed in a comic issue’s Funny Pages section), and also world my father created to comfort a frequent guest at comic book himself. conventions of the day, where he CBA: How did Vaughn’s profespresided over his renowned sional art career begin and can you “Cartoon Concert” slideshows. tell us about early gigs?

While his comics work was projected Mark: My father’s earliest comic on screen, Vaughn would expertly was a self-published parody of both give voice to his characters, with the Peanuts book Love Is… by Charles hilarious results. A loving, sensitive, Schulz and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and outrageous personality in the comics called Das Kamph, which included a piece world, his legacy is today being carried on called “War Is…” (There were only 100 by his equally-delightful son, Mark, who was printed in 1963 and a mint copy today is worth interviewed in 2002 via e-mail. about $4,000.) His first paying gigs were sucky commercial art jobs. Then he began branch out into fanzines Comic Book Artist: Can you please give us a biogand science-fiction pulp digests like If and Galaxy, for which he did raphical sketch of your father? Where he was from, when he was numerous covers and interior illos. born, what his childhood was like, siblings, etc.?

IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW, CBA: Is there any history behind Vaughn’s Cavalier magazine Mark Bodé: Vaughn Bodé was born in Syracuse, New York, on CLICK THE LINK TO ORDER THIS work? What was his experience?

July 22, 1941. He was the second of four children—Victor, Vaughn, ISSUE IN PRINT OR DIGITAL FORMAT! Mark: Robert Crumb quit contributing his Fritz the Cat strip for Vincent and Valerie—all born to Kenneth and Elsie (Morton) Bodé.

Cavalier and my father just fell into Crumb’s former position in the The kids’ childhoods were magazine. People would often buy that skin magazine just to clip out strained, to say the least, and they often played in the streets because their mother was always working and father was always drinking. So the Bodé siblings ended up criminals and in foster homes, for the most part.

CBA: Did Vaughn have a formal art education? If so, where, when and what was the focus?

Mark: My father attended Syracuse University, graduating with a B.F.A. and honors in #24: 1965. The entireNATIONAL time he went LAMPOON COMICS GAHAN WILSON and NatLamp art director MICHAEL GROSS to college, he was writing and speak, interviews with and art by NEAL ADAMS, FRANK drawingSPRINGER, comic strips theSHARY FLENNEKIN, ED SUBITSKY, SEANfor KELLY, BROWN, B.K. campus M.K. newspaper, TheTAYLOR, Daily BOBBY LONDON, MICHEL CHOQUETTE, ALAN KUPPERBERG, and more! Features new covers by Orange.GAHAN WILSON and MARK BODÉ!

CBA: Did Vaughn have a par(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 ticular attraction to comic books http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=98_56&products_id=540 as a youngster and, if so, any idea what books he particularly enjoyed?

Mark: His favorites were comic strips, which he would cut out from the daily newspapers.

He particularly enjoyed Alley Oop, Li’l Abner, Pogo, Prince Valiant, and various Disney strips.

Conducted by Jon B. Cooke

COMIC BOOK ARTIST 24

April 2003