Uncle Jam 99

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Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 37, #99 - Summer 2011

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Phil Yeh’s latest wordless graphic novel The Sunflower takes readers of all ages on an imaginative journey to a variety of places and in the end it is revealed that these adventures are all part of the collective dreams of children around the world. Phil Yeh will sign each copy. This new 52 page fullcolor book has been beautifully colored by Lieve Jerger.

Available online. For US orders send $15 postage paid via snail mail to: Eastwind Studios, P.O. Box 750, San Bernardino, CA 92402.

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AN EASTWIND STUDIOS TREASURE

US $10

A PHIL YEH WORDLESS GRAPHIC NOVEL

LOVE CONQUERS FEAR

uncle jam Vol. 37, No. 99

:content: Daniel Merriam Jan Burke Jon J. Murakami Dave Thorne Singapore Al Davison Malaysia Long Beach Evan Lurie Peter S. Beagle Moebius Kadir Nelson Arne Jin An Wong Doug TenNapel MeduSirena ‘Marina the Fire Eating Mermaid!’

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Uncle Jam Quarterly, Issue 99, Vol. 37, Summer 2011 Copyright © 2011 by Eastwind Studios - All Rights Reserved. All images copyright 2011 by respective artists, writers & photographers to cover the entire issue.

Burr Jerger Stu Weiner 1917 - 1982 1915 - 1985 Uncle Jam Quarterly is published whenever we get enough people in one room to do it, usually once every quarter, by Eastwind Studios.

Any similarity to any other publication, living or dead, is purely the fault of the other publication. Single hard copy issues are available by mail for $10 postage paid in the USA. Subscriptions are $20 for 4 issues in the USA. Order through our website wingedtiger.com or send check to Eastwind Studios, P. O. Box 750, San Bernardino, California 92402, USA. For advertising inquiries please email us or call (909) 867-5605.

Please support the advertisers who make this publication possible.

Phil Yeh~Publisher Linda Adams~Co-Publisher & Editor Tom Luth & Lieve Jerger~Art Directors Woodrow Tom Thompson~Senior Editor Frank Mangione~Vice-President Linda Puetz, Peggy Corum ~Senior Copy Editors Leah Fallon, Debra Bemben, Paula Miller~ Copy Editors Ken L. Jones~Contributing Editor Edmond Gauthier~Archivist Lim Cheng Tju~Asian Bureau Chief Sarah Carvaines ~Health Editor PJ Grimes~Music & Health Editor Jerome Poynton~Letters Editor CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS & WRITERS Todd S. Jenkins, Terri Elders, Matt Lorentz, John Weeks, Rory Murray, Roberta Gregory, Miel, Jerome Poynton, David Sands Greg Escalante, Nick Cataldo, He Shuxin, Phil Ortiz, MB Roberts, Mike Wolf, Jon J. Murakami CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Lim Cheng Tju, Lieve Jerger, Tom Luth Terri Elders, Linda Adams, David Sands Bruce Guthrie, David Folkman, Melinda Heide

COVER ART “Destiny” by Daniel Merriam Copyright 2011 www.danielmerriam.com

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 37, # 99, Summer 2011

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his 99th issue of Uncle Jam is our first to be readable online at wingedtiger.com; but for all of you who believe that print is still better and live in California, we are old-school enough to provide hard copies for FREE at your favorite independent bookstores, unique galleries, interesting record stores, museums and the like, just like we have done all those years since 1973.

Our cover story is with Daniel Merriam whom we interviewed in Sausalito, California. His work has long impressed me, and although we met only briefly years ago in Chicago, it was great to spend some facetime with this amazing artist. At the other end of the state, in San Diego, we sat down with the talented painter Kadir Nelson.

In this issue, we welcome the talents of Todd Jenkins who has done a number of interviews for us. We have a new interview with Jean “Moebius” Giraud, who we featured in a classic interview In Uncle Jam 98. This latest interview was conducted at the CTN Animation Expo, fast becoming the place for animation artists to get together. Terri Elders covered Peter S. Beagle for us and it is great to have Terri back writing for us like the old days in Long Beach, CA. Linda Adams and I did the majority of interviews this issue, all laid out with the art direction of Tom Luth and Lieve Jerger. Linda was instrumental in getting the piece on Jan Burke done.

We are continuing our coverage of Hawaii in the 100th issue, because we have a lot to report on and we are going back for a series of mural events in September and October.

Confirmed so far are murals at the Windward Mall on the 24th of September and at The Hawaii Entertainment Expo (HEXXP) on September 30 to Oct. 1st. I will be speaking at this exciting conference about the power of creativity in all fields. Jon J. Murakami will be at this event with me. So if you come to vacation in paradise in the fall, your timing could not be better. We have an interview with Jon and his teacher Dave Thorne in this issue. Both Dave and Jon and myself were among artists chosen to be a part of a new mural that was created on the computer (a first for me) and put up at the San Diego Airport this summer in time for the San Diego Comic-Con. It was organized by artist Matt Lorentz. This mural celebrates the history of aviation in cartoons. It also pays tribute to Shel Dorf, the founder of Comic-Con, which has become the biggest pop culture event in the United States.

“Sky’s the Limit”is the name of this mural at the CA-San Diego Airport by 17 cartoonists from 4 states, including Charles Schulz & Milton Caniff.

This project was coordinated by Matt Lorentz.

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Santa Fe, NM, city bus painted by Phil Yeh with help from local artists I started Cartoonists Across America & The World back in 1985 when I interviewed cookie king and literacy advocate Wally Amos, who happens to live in Hawaii. Over the years we have painted more than 1,800 murals in 49 U.S. states and 14 countries.

I had planned to end this tour in 2000 but have decided to extend it to a full 30 years, until 2015.

I continue to believe that in order to get this world on track, we have to do more to promote individuals in all the arts. It is only through the arts that we can effect meaningful change in a non-violent manner. The recent world events only support this theory. War and violence just don’t do it, Uncle Jam will continue to promote this kind of change happening around the world in future issues.

We are going to cover Santa Fe, NM, in the 100th issue as well, since this issue is pretty jam-packed. The bus we painted there last fall for Literacy Volunteers of Santa Fe and other literacy groups is still running on a different route each day. There are many thriving galleries and artists to report on as well. We will also have some very special interviews in the 100th issue and right now I will leave that as a surprise.

On a more somber note, we were sad to learn of the passing of Jeffery Catherine Jones (January 10, 1944 – May 18, 2011).

There is a film in the works and you can find more information at macabfilms.com. Our good friend Mark Bode (his father Vaughn was close to JCJ) and James O’Barr paid tribute to her on a mural in the Bay Area. We will have more on this remarkable artist in our next issue. g

—Phil Yeh

James O’Barr and Mark Bode at the Jeffrey Catherine Jones tribute mural.

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Not Built on Dreams Alone

Daniel Merriam is a highly regarded contemporary surrealist and is best known for his dry brush technique and gloriously imaginative style. Born in 1963 in Maine, Daniel was one of seven children in a creative, artistic family. He taught himself to paint at a very young age and used his art as a method of reflective play throughout his childhood.

Merriam studied mechanical and architectural design at Central Maine Vocational Technical Institute. While still in school, he applied his dimensional skills and passion for architecture in the family’s design and construction business. He then turned his talents into the commercial art field, working as an architectural and commercial illustrator for a number of multi-national corporations. Merriam’s illustrations have won numerous awards, including several first-place Broderson Awards and the firstplace New England Scholastics Press Association Award (for editorial cartooning.)

His latest book is titled Taking Reality by Surprise. Uncle Jam caught up with Daniel at his residence in Sausalito, California.

Daniel Merriam: My dad was an engineer. He did structural steel engineering for football stadiums. Spectator seating. He was always interested in woodworking so when I was a kid he taught me woodworking.

We had a shop and he taught me how to make everything. He also built houses and he started his own construction company.

Uncle Jam: Where was this?

DM: In Maine. He said “I’m going to teach you this because it’s a good skill to have. You never know when you’ll need this skill to survive.” He said he would rather I work with my head than my hands, so I began to study architectural engineering and design. I was more interested in design than engineering.

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UJ: Did you always make art, even though you were doing construction?

DM: Making art for me as a kid was playing. I was taking material that I had access to and making a game out of it. The concept of crafting things and shaping it into your dreams. I was exposed to the idea that if we could create something fine and beautiful it would have some value. There was a sense of craftsmanship and accomplishment to making things, but primarily the motivation was to entertain.

UJ: Was your father supportive of you being an artist?

DM: Not as a profession. My dad came around, but he was afraid for me.

He knows very well that 99.9% of all artists can’t make it. He was advising me to have something I could make a living with.

UJ: I think in general people don’t encourage their kids to go into the arts, because the arts are scary and it’s not a guaranteed money maker. But I have so many friends that are multi-millionaires in art. Charles Schulz and many others are quite wealthy. We shouldn’t get the stereotype out there that there’s no money in art. There is money in art. I think it’s a selffulfilling prophecy. If you believe you’re going to be a starving artist, you become a starving artist. It’s a poverty consciousness. I see artists all the time now that charge $3 for an original drawing. Where is this coming from? Round it up to $5!

DM: Part of the missing element is that there needs to be a sense of confidence or a business sense and I think more importantly they may lack that business sense and a farsightedness. It takes a real believer, a real dreamer to be able to imagine something very far away and believe that you will get to it. A lot of great accomplishments were achieved by

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The Art and Soul of Kadir Nelson

Uncle Jam: Now you’re working in LA during the week but still living in San Diego. Are you working on film projects?

Kadir Nelson: I am still doing my book stuff and I did this album cover for Michael Jackson and a lot of opportunities have presented themselves as a result of that. Work is up there, so I’m up there. I’m also making a transition into doing more gallery stuff and that’s not really happening down here. There are more galleries that would be amenable to showing my work in Los Angeles. San Diego has a lot of people but it’s still a small town. Culturally it’s not as diverse as Los Angeles.

UJ: I go around the world painting murals. What I wanted to do was share the experience of murals with kids. I paint with 500 kids at a time in all kinds of neighborhoods. We do them in the suburbs but also in Detroit, D.C., South Side Chicago and tougher neighborhoods with the kids. We see that a lot of kids really get into art if they have that exposure.

KN: Exposure is important. I was drawing with my daughter this morning and I was showing her a few things. She said “Why are you showing this to me?” and I said “Well, to put you ahead of your peers so when you get

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AL DAVISON On Exploring Your Own Muscle Memory ‘Muscle Memory’ in the context of this work refers to not only the physical aspect, like learning to walk, or failing to, but to the whole idea of learned responses. We learn from the media what ‘beauty’ is supposed to be, how we are supposed to feel, and think about our bodies, our sexuality and our place in society. My aim, through the form of Autobiography is to challenge the predominantly ‘able-bodied’ learned responses that we are exposed to and maybe in some small way help re-train our own ‘muscle memory’ in relation to the human experience in all its diversity.’ ­—Al Davison 6-20-2011 Uncle Jam: I see from your Facebook page that you are working on some new projects and perhaps we can start there---Can you tell us a little bit about your new project, Blood Light?

Al Davison: This is a collaboration with Alexander Finbow of Renegade Arts entertainment. The project started life as a screenplay by Alexander, it’s set during the English Civil-War and is a murder mystery, fantasy and journey of self discovery all rolled into one. I’ve known Alexander for a while, and it’s great to get to work together on this.

UJ: I was really impressed with your book, Hokusai Demons. Your work always seems to be so much more than what one sees in traditional graphic novels. Can you tell us how this book came about?

AD: A lot of my personal work evolves around my dreams. I wanted to self publish something on a bigger scale than we have attempted before, and thought a themed dream collection would do the trick. I looked through my dream diaries and realized that there were many with a Japanese theme, and that featured Kitsune (the mythical fox characters) so that seemed like a good hook.

We produced a limited edition hard-back. The profits from this, along with sponsorship from our friends at Genki-Gear, (who produce really cool Japanese themed t-shirts), and Mr. Neil Gaiman, (who also provided the introduction) allowed us to then do a trade paperback edition. Sales have been moderate, but it’s our first small step towards world domination!

Continued on page 17

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Co-Publishers Phil Yeh and Linda Adams had a chance to sit down with Moebius, aka Jean Giraud, last fall after his appearance and talk at the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank.

Unlike the much bigger San Diego Comic-Con for the general public; the CTN Animation Expo was a much more manageable crowd of aspiring animation artists, as well as seasoned professionals with a scattering of die-hard fans as well. The overall vibe from the Expo was one of people networking with other professionals in this industry. This has been needed for a long time and there were a great deal of booths, workshops and artists to meet.

Moebius had not been in the United States for quite a number of years and having a chance to reconnect with our old friend was quite an experience. For our newer readers, we can suggest you refer back to our past interviews with this master in previous issues of Uncle Jam. Let’s just say that Moebius is one of the most innovative and original artists of our time.

We re-ran the classic interview from 1984 in the last issue of Uncle Jam (98) which covered his relationship with film and his career in graphic novels. His designs played a role in such films as TRON, Alien, Willow, the Abyss, and the Fifth Element and his style under his pen name Moebius gave the world a whole new way of seeing. His traditional style illustrating Charlier’s Blueberry graphic novels under the name Gir, gave the world an exceptional look at the classic western.

The CTN Animation Expo included a very good overview talk with illustrations for both young and old fans. Moebius was in good form that evening, entertaining the crowd with stories of his life. He was in Burbank with his wife Isabelle. This interview was conducted the day after his talk in his hotel room.

Uncle Jam: Did you have fun on this trip and at the CTN Animation Expo?

Moebius: Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was great.

UJ: I thought this expo had a lot of positive energy.

M: Yes, because it was smaller, so the people they can meet and they are all

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together. took the best of the UJ: I want to talk about best and some of the visual imagery and the stories are really, really idea that film starts with wonderful. I have a visual image. So many children and now they film directors love the are 21 and 15, so it’s visual image. George finished. I don’t tell any Lucas loves children’s stories. I used to tell books. He collects stories to them and children’s books and each one was my own art. invention and I was M: I know he collects improvising to my son, originals. stories with dragons.

UJ: Yes, like Howard UJ: Did you write any Pyle and N.C. Wyeth. of them down?

So I want to talk about M: No, I tried once to the power of the image. record and suddenly it Obviously that’s your was not the same kind whole connection to of story. It was not the film making process. spontaneous. It’s better M: Yes, that’s funny when it goes free and because I believe in with no expectation. children’s books and UJ: When there’s no I think that it’s the purpose other than to only way for many fine artists to go into the industry of illustration. entertain the kids.

For the children it’s more open. An artist can be very crazy and they M: Yes, yes, because when the connection is direct with the microphone think (and they are right) that the children don’t care about the laws it becomes twisted. I remember some of the stories. I remember a story of the market and things like that. In children’s illustration you can have where they had a dragon in space looking for empty planets to give life, more freedom to express your imagination. There is a universe where and in order to give life to a planet, this dragon was involved in the big you can express yourself more freely. You can also do this in science bang. Every time he was arriving in a place there was already somebody fiction. For the representation of reality, very precise, very clear and there so he had to travel through the universe to find an empty planet very nice; something in the official art is over. Nobody does that. But ready to receive life and he saw the Earth.Ahh, this one is great, so he goes for the children it is still ok, because the children like to see beautiful into the planet…voom, into the middle. So his head is in the North Pole reproduction or representation of reality, trees, sky, the animals. They and his tail in the south. And the character in the story had to find the like that, you know. But they like also crazy stuff, so in the children’s head of the dragon in order to talk to it, so he had to go to the North Pole books you can see the two extremes in art. and to travel to the snow. It was an adventure. I was impressed with the UJ: When you were young, did you have some favorite children’s concept of the dragon flying into space and searching for different planets books? to give life. It’s exactly what’s happened. Because dragons are a metaphor M: Yes, I had a children’s book, it was for energy and it’s a metaphor for a Disney, early Disney, when Mickey energy with negative and positive.

Mouse had a rat face, you know, very, UJ: Sure, yin and yang. almost frightening sometimes. He had M: What’s Life--energy. Positive big black eyes. I used to dream a lot and negative. It’s funny because I about that. I also had a book Coco. It work a lot with Isabelle about these was a story for children. I don’t know concepts. if it’s in Italian or English, but it was UJ: A lot of scientists have been in French. It was so strange, it was a working on the idea of this energy. In little African involved into adventure, quantum physics it’s all about worm very funny.The drawing was so rough holes. In my Winged Tiger, he has and so naïve. I was completely into it. a hoop; he flies thru the hoop and My spirit was caught by it. comes out somewhere else in the UJ: What about the old Brother’s universe. Many years ago, I met with Grimm and the fairy tales, the old Fred Wolf and he said to me, “This stuff? is the same idea-- the wormholeM: It was all over school. When the -fly thru the hoop and come out parents were talking about stories; somewhere else. We took a slight it was fairy tales all the time. There turn, but I think that’s the idea of are some tales of Grimm that are a storytelling, there’s always a slight very popular part of the old culture turn. When you are telling a story, in Europe and in France.The Grimm’s you then go some other direction. wrote stories but they collected Children pay attention to detail.They stories, too. And their collected pay attention to the little details. I stories were stories coming from am always arguing with people about Moebius and his wife Isabelle.

Italy, France, England. Most of the time making children’s books. My art is in the 17th or 18th century when the Grimm Brothers started to collect; detailed and they always say “Oh it’s too detailed!” I say, “No, children those stories had traveled all around Europe because of the wars and like the detail. It’s the parents who have a problem sometimes.” the trips and the movement of population. Some are coming from Africa, M: I’m sure, they like that. Me too, yes, I like to look for the detail.

North Africa, some from the Middle East or some coming from Asia.We UJ: And it’s more fun. don’t know. So it’s true that the Grimm’s did good work because they M: When I draw a stone, it’s that stone. It’s not the same as the stone

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in another picture. I like to give identity to any thing.

UJ: Did this influence you when you were a child, seeing detailed artwork? Was that an influence in drawing?

M: I don’t think so because in that time I had very few. It was after the war and I had 5 or 6 books. They fed me a long time, for maybe 3 or 4 years, but the influence was big. The influence was in my inside and my sensibility. Now a child has so many books, so many opportunities so it’s very rich.

Sometimes I think it must be too much, I don’t know, because it becomes kind of a fog.

UJ: Our book Steve the Dog is about a dog who is watching TV and playing video games. We wanted to say, OK here is a guy watching TV and this little girl dog takes him outside and all she is showing him is the real world, because so many kids today don’t really go outside. They don’t pay attention to nature or to look at architecture. And what I am always trying to say to young people is you have to not only observe life, but if you’re an artist you have to draw from what you see.

M: The drawing is to make a direct contact, almost telepathic, with the spirit of the builder.The architect or the painter or the writer, if it’s a play or a book.You go directly in his mind and you open sometimes or close your mind sometimes in order to resist certain things, and so it’s kind of a muscle, a spiritual muscle and it’s good training. Maybe the best training is to draw things. To draw or to describe in writing. I like the idea of a diary. It’s good.

UJ: That’s a good idea. Or a sketch book for an artist.

M: Or a sketch book, yes it’s good.

UJ: So would you say to young people they need to draw more?

M: Yes, because in fact all the children draw at around 3 or 4 … they draw a lot and what they draw, it’s very psychic. They draw their emotional situation. Their relationship with the father and the mother and so maybe the brother and the sister, but most of the time it is the mother and father, and around the world of adults. So, it’s possible to see in a child’s drawing if he’s happy or not, if he is comfortable or if there is something wrong in the relation with the father or the mother or there is something between the father and the mother, you know it’s easy to find that. So the drawing is a mirror or it’s a way to talk about things that are just under the consciousness. It’s like when you write a letter, somebody can interpret the way you write. Say this guy says that he is friendly but in reality he is not, because the way he does the ‘a’ or the ‘I’.

UJ: Oh, the style of handwriting.

M: Yes, and in the drawing, it’s very strong, the presence of the unconscious. When an artist says “I do a story about courage and about tolerance and those qualities”, maybe he does that because it is more commercial, but when you see the graphics, it says “No, I’m not very tolerant and I’m not very courageous, or I’m not happy”. There is always in the drawing something we try unconsciously to hide to the people around and to ourselves. So it’s very good to draw and to write, but to draw is more direct. There is nothing between the unconscious and the drawing. The problem is when the children become older they try to draw well so they lose this spontaneity.

UJ: Or they say their drawing doesn’t look right so they stop. A lot of people--children…they all draw, but then we see as they get older they stop.There’s only one person drawing in a middle school or a high school class.

M: Yes, the problem is…. advice you could give to somebody is…when you stop drawing but you want to draw, the best thing is not to try to reproduce something. It’s not interesting to try to draw a superhero or

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a dog or a girl. What is interesting is to draw anger, to draw joy, to draw happiness, to draw jealousy, to draw pain, you know?

Start with an abstract concept and to let the pen, the pencil do something.

UJ: Reflect the pain. The drawing is more real.

M: Yeah, reflect the feeling. Yes, you don’t have to be worried about “is it good or not,” or “does it look like something.”

UJ: In fact, so many drawings we see now with young people here in the United States…they all look the same. There is a similarity. Everyone seems to copy.

M: Yes, but I don’t know if it’s a problem, because if you watch carefully, the drawings by children, they are all the same. There are maybe 4 or 5 familiar drawings. And I think it goes with the way we are. The different category of body we are. Because we have a family body...different bodies.

People strong, people small, people long, people nervous, people sleepy. It’s the way the body works. Different types.

UJ: And so you think their drawings reflect the different body types?

M: I think so, I think so. Inside the family they are very similar. In France we do something I like a lot. At school they do books with prints every year and they ask the children age 3 or 4 to draw themselves. So they draw themselves with their name and after that they print all the books with 30 or 40 children in the classroom and it becomes the gift that is given to the parents at the end of the school year. Do they do that here?

UJ: I remember when my son was in preschool they had the children lie down on a piece of paper. They outlined them and then had the child draw the details of themselves.

M: Yes, what is fun is to print that in a fabric or paper and to put all the drawings together. I saw a book a few years ago with children’s drawings coming from all around the world…China, Iraq, Egypt , France, U.S., Mexico and they were the same…all the same. The difference was the family bodies.

UJ: So it’s very universal.

M: It’s very universal. And you know when I was 5 or 6 I was in a family in France, my grandfather’s family because my mother was busy. She was alone and I was most of the time in my grandparent’s family. My grandmother was my mother for awhile. I used to draw alot because my father was working in a lawyer’s office and he was giving to me paper, pieces of paper that were written on one side and blank on the other.

UJ: My dad did that with computer paper. He was an engineer and would bring me stacks of computer paper.

M: It was great because I had all of those sheets of paper to draw.

UJ: The same with me.

M: And you know in the history of my family no one drew. Especially with my grandmother because she was coming from the countryside and in that part of Europe almost nobody knew paper or pencil. They only had a need to make some notes for the farm about how many chickens… most of the time they didn’t have paper. It was something for the rich people. I was the first in the history of the family having that possibility to have so much paper and to draw all the time for fun. Once I did a drawing representing a woman and a dwarf, with a boat leaving in the ocean with the sun showing on the side. I was in the boat and she was in the dwarf, and she was in the door and waving with a towel.

UJ: She was with a dwarf?

M: No, (speaks French) UJ: We’re switching to French.

M: No no, I’m sorry I made a mistake, it’s not a dwarf…it’s, you know… you know in the harbor…a wharf. She was not in a dwarf.

UJ: A dwarf’s a little guy …

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M: Yes, I know (laughter) I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It was very surrealistic…

(More laughter) UJ: Yes, very surrealistic (laughter) M: (explains his mistake in French to Isabelle) I drew my grandmother and she recognized herself and for her it was a kind of miracle and for maybe 5 or 6 days she was showing the drawing all over the place to everybody.

“It’s my grandson who did that,” “It’s incredible.” I was a celebrity.

UJ: And how old were you then?

M: I think I was 3 or 4.

UJ: Really?

M: Yes. UJ: Oh my god.

M: I think it was the beginning of my career.

UJ: So you had the support of your family?

M: Yes, and I am sure it was very interesting for me to express myself into those drawings. And you know the funny thing is many years later I made my first travel to America taking a boat to New York and my grandmother came with me to the harbor. I was in the boat and I said hello to my grandmother and she was in the dwarf ….wharf (laughter) exactly….

UJ: So you were drawing something from the future?

M: Yeah. I think I had the special relation with the drawing, with art… special magical and sympathetic through time and space, you know.

UJ: I think so, because I think if we are open to it we have dreams and visions. I often draw my dreams. I just wake up and draw.

M: Yes,Yes, me too. When I start to draw-- when I have a piece of paper in front of me--I am in a strange state of mind you know.

UJ: You’re almost in a trance.

M: Yes, and you know we are doing an exhibition in Paris and I gave a title to the exhibition. It’s Trance Form… “Moebius transe-forme” UJ: Very good. The artist Rick Veitch is always talking about drawing from his dreams and he has some pretty weird dreams. Like he dreams about Jack Kirby. I don’t know why anybody dreams about Jack Kirby.

But he was drawing these comic books based on Winsor McCay’s strip Rarebit Fiends.

M: Winsor McCay was really into that.

UJ: I’m trying to reach a mainstream audience, because I think a mainstream American audience has gotten away from the idea of drawing.

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Most Americans now don’t appreciate art. My belief is you appreciate art if maybe you try it. It doesn’t mean you’re going to become an artist. It’s like playing guitar, you play a little music, and you’re going to appreciate music more. In California we cut the art from the schools, so I’m trying to bring it back. I’m trying to tell people that you can draw at your house. You can go outside, you can draw the tree and I’m trying to get people like yourself to talk about what you were talking about.

M: Yes, sure, when somebody approaches the art there are two different ways. One is you approach art as a future or a potential producer of art. Second is, you approach the art as a potential collector of art. You see the expression but you are already able to judge if it’s good or not, so it’s two different approaches with the same material. As artists we need to talk to people with a certain education. But in a way the modern life gives a kind of education, because we are surrounded by art. This room is the fruit of knowledge in organization of space. All the furniture and the things are very well done and are aesthetic. All this is the expression of artistic concept. There is something artistic in everything we see. Outside in the street it is the same.When you are on TV it’s art. Sometimes it’s small art, sometimes it’s big art. Even the small series you know, it’s full of concept and art.Very invisible sometimes, you know, not very sophisticated, but most of the time much more than we think because in order to do something popular and simple you need a lot of knowledge to organize the words, to organize the play, to organize the light.

UJ: Yes, a lot of work goes into it.

M: So we are into a piece of art and we are all contributors to that creation. I think for example that when we follow the press or TV or radio or when you or I see what’s happening in the world, the nations, politics, economy, it’s a big play. Theater, it’s Shakespeare or Molière.

We want to know what’s happening every morning. When you are a journalist you have to choose between billions of pieces of information.

The 2 or 3 or 5 pieces of information that continue the story. So we build a story with our TV shows or in the play. Humanity is artistic in a way. But we paint that with our blood.

UJ: Let’s leave it at that, that’s good.

M: That’s good right? That’s a good ending. g Watch a video of Moebius’ Transe-Forme Exhibit.

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Jan Burke is a critically acclaimed and national bestselling author of fourteen books—twelve of crime fiction, a supernatural thriller, and a collection of short stories. She won one of crime fiction’s top honors, the Edgar® Award for Best Novel, for Bones. Jan has lived in Southern California most of her life, often in coastal cities—several of which combine to make up the fictional town of Las Piernas, where her series character, reporter Irene Kelly, works and lives.

Jan attended California State University, Long Beach, and graduated with a degree in history.

Uncle Jam caught up with Jan recently to ask her a few questions about her craft.

Uncle Jam: Did you know that you wanted to be a writer as a child?

Jan Burke: In second grade, my teacher put a poem I had written up on the bulletin board, and from that moment — if not before — I was doomed to dreaming of becoming a writer. So yes, from around the age of seven, I knew I wanted to write.

UJ: What types of books did you read when you were younger? Tell us about your favorite writers when you were growing up and your favorites today.

JB: To my good fortune, my parents encouraged my siblings and me to read, and we all read a wide variety of children’s books. My older sister is eight years older than I, and I wanted to imitate her, so I learned to read before I started kindergarten. I read Little Golden Books, and worked my way through a children’s encyclopedia — the encyclopedias were sold in weekly installments at the local grocery store, offered at a discount if you bought a certain dollars worth of groceries. The Scholastic Book Club, which sold books through our elementary school, kept me supplied on a regular basis. I didn’t read Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys, but I did read some mysteries and lots of adventure tales. My mother was the president of the local PTA, and decided we needed a school library. She was told there was no place on the campus, no staff available, and no money for books. She didn’t take no for an answer. The teachers — bless them — gave up their break room, parents volunteered to keep it open in shifts, and she raised the money for the books through a “ghost carnival” — parents could avoid the work of putting on a carnival by donating enough money for the books. We got our library.

I usually don’t name current favorites, for fear I’ll forget to mention a friend I’ll see at a convention. But I’ll say that my reading tastes are eclectic. I read cozies, thrillers, hard-boiled, procedurals, you name it. I often read outside my genre. Currently I’m bingeing on science fiction and fantasy books, enjoying John Scalzi, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Elizabeth Moon, and Lois McMaster Bujold. I am now reading a wonderful first novel by Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind.

I usually take out Ernest Hemingway’s A Clean Well-Lighted Place before I sit down to write a short story. I read Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar at least once a year, and try to do the same with Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. I usually fit some Raymond Chandler short stories in there somewhere, too. I’m a huge fan of Georgette Heyer and love to read a good Rafael Sabatini adventure tale.

I’ll be starting The Sea-Hawk again soon.

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UJ: What got you into writing mysteries?

JB: In junior high and high school, I enjoyed reading traditional mysteries, such as those written by Agatha Christie, but my love affair with the genre really deepened in college. A boyfriend had taken a detective fiction course, and through his recommendations I met Sherlock Holmes, the Continental Op, and Philip Marlowe. Happily, my affection for those detectives long outlasted the relationship. I also became addicted to “Columbo” episodes.

William Link and Richard Levinson broke a lot of new ground in television, and this show was one of their greatest innovations. The star of the show never appears until the second act. The audience knows who the killer is within the first few minutes of the show. And yet we’re engaged in the story from start to finish.

UJ: You were in the Senate at Cal State Long Beach when you were in college. You talked a bit about how Richard Kyle’s bookstore in Long Beach shaped you a bit. Can you talk more about those times and how it might have helped you as a writer?

JB: I don’t remember now how I learned about Kyle’s Books, but I started visiting the store while I was in college. For those who may have missed Uncle Jam’s earlier tribute, Kyle’s Books was one of the first bookstores on the West Coast dedicated to science fiction, mystery, and comic books. It also sold an incredible variety of magazines, and among those were a number dedicated to genre fiction -- I bought my first copy of Mystery Scene at Kyle’s.

Like all great independent booksellers, he was knowledgeable and good at connecting readers to books they were likely to love, and I soon learned I could trust him to introduce me to the works of writers I’d enjoy. Through his recommendations I read Ross MacDonald and many other greats. There was also the joy of talking about books to an expert who loved them. His enthusiasm for science fiction and comic books probably outweighed his enthusiasm for crime fiction, but he still knew more about the mystery genre than anyone else I had met.

When Richard learned I was writing my first novel, he provided encouragement.

At the time I met him, he not only ran the bookstore, but published the magazine Argosy, and had editorial and writing experience of his own. He was one of those people who gave me a deep appreciation of the masters of

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detective fiction, which was invaluable to a new writer.

For a time I freelanced a weekly column on literary life and events for the Long Beach Press-Telegram. I did a profile of Richard’s store for it, so somewhere in the archives of the P-T, you can find out more about the store.

UJ: What advice you would give to aspiring writers today?

JB: Right now, the publishing industry is going through changes. That panics anyone who fails to grasp that it has been going through changes since the invention of movable type. So, in the beginning, when you start your work -- ignore everything that has to do with publishing itself. Go back to something so basic, it long outdates publishing: storytelling. Stories are an integral part of being humans-- we think about the future in stories, remember the past in stories, teach and learn through stories. Let your story be your focus. Read the works of writers you admire and study how they crafted their work. Read the works of writers who fail to captivate you, and study how their work went wrong for you -- this is usually easier than studying the masters, who usually use subtle methods to achieve their result. The hardest thing, for most people, will be doing the actual work of writing and revising. They’ll watch TV, blog, be on Facebook and Twitter, play games, involve themselves in the passing dramas of family and friends -- they’ll do anything but write. Don’t let yourself become distracted, don’t put it off. If you don’t believe your story deserves your attention, why should anyone else want to give it attention?

Procrastination is your enemy.

UJ: When you wrote the first Irene Kelly mystery, did you envision it as a series?

JB: No. I just wanted to see if I could finish a novel-length manuscript. I wrote the second one because I liked Irene and Frank and wanted to see what they’d do next. It’s been like that ever since.

UJ: Many people love to read a series when they relate to the characters and the world that is created in that series. As a writer, how does that compare to writing a stand-alone book?

JB: I like writing both, for different reasons. There are several kinds of series in crime fiction. One features a character who isn’t much changed by the events of the books. Readers have the comfort of knowing that when they pick up a Miss Marple story or a Sherlock Holmes story, they will find a character they know and with whom they like to spend time.

I write the one type of series in which the character ages (even if not quite in real time) and is impacted by events in each book. Irene grows and changes.

This type of series offers a writer a chance to let characters evolve over several books. At this point in the Irene Kelly series, I know Irene and those closest to her fairly well, and yet they surprise me in every book. I’m not surprised by who they are so much as how they will interact with other characters or react in a given situation.

Stand-alones, on the other hand, offer an opportunity to set a story outside of the fictional world of Las Piernas. The Messenger is a supernatural thriller.

There is no way that I could suddenly introduce semi-immortal beings into an Irene Kelly story, even if she does feel certain that she senses her mentor’s ghost at her side every now and then. So that stand-alone allowed me to write

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in another genre, and experiment with world building of another order.

Nine allowed me to go to the other end of the scale — while the Irene Kelly books and Flight, a spin-off of the series, are set in fictional Las Piernas, Nine is a thriller set mostly in Los Angeles County. The premise is that a clandestine vigilante group is killing off the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, and leaving the bodies in LA County, in areas that are in the LA Sheriff ’s Department’s jurisdiction. One hero of the story is a homicide detective, who’s trying to figure out who is behind it.

The other is a young man who is convinced that one of those ten is innocent, and has to ensure his friend’s safety before the killer gets him. That book gave me a chance to use real settings — the LASD’s jurisdiction includes Catalina Island, mountains, deserts, urban and rural areas—and to tell a story that would not have worked as well with Irene as the protagonist.

UJ: Tell us about your next book. When will it be released?

JB: Disturbance is the tenth book in the Irene Kelly series. It will be out in June 2011. Irene is a newspaper reporter. As the novel opens, there’s plenty to disturb her — the newspaper where she has worked for most of her adult life is in danger of shutting down. Nicolas Parrish, the serial killer who came close to taking her life in Bones has recovered from his injuries, and although he’s in prison, she is nearly paralyzed by her fear of him. She’s certain he will find a way to come after her again, possibly through his devoted fans, who call themselves The Moths. They may be more than a group of anonymous bloggers: someone has come by her house late at night, making efforts to spook her. They aren’t just playing around — the next day, that message is delivered in the trunk of a car parked at the end of her street. She’s going to need to move fast to stay ahead of Nick Parrish, who has been planning his comeback — and revenge — for years.

UJ: Any other projects in the works?

JB: I have a short story in A Study in Sherlock, edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, which will be published in October. I’m working on the next book, but I’m a firm believer in not talking too much about a work in progress.

UJ: Tell us about the organization you founded, The Crime Lab Project.

JB: The Crime Lab Project is a nonprofit dedicated to increasing awareness of the problems and challenges facing public forensic science. We also have an associated charitable foundation, The Crime Lab Project Foundation, which has supported training, education, research, and crime labs.

We find that most Americans don’t realize that many of their local crime labs are underfunded, short of staff, ill-equipped, and working in aging facilities — often making the best they can of hand-me-down buildings — facilities that were built for another purpose and are often not suitable or even safe for lab work. There are huge backlogs of untested evidence in almost all crime labs.

Death investigation in the U.S. is in a terrible condition. We have no federal standards for coroners and medical examiners. Coroners in many states need only be 18, a citizen, and without a felony conviction to hold office. Little or no training may be required. Seriously, you do not want someone who has only taken 40 hours of coursework to be making the final call in death investigations. But 40 hours is far more training than many coroners have.

The work of death investigators affects the living: families waiting for death certificates for insurance; criminal justice; public health; workplace safety; finding the missing; health statistics and much more are dependent on quality death investigation. Yet many coroners do not have an office, work on paper systems, and have no refrigeration units for the storage of bodies. g To learn more about the Crime Lab Project, our website is http://www. crimelabproject.com I hope your readers will also go to our blog, where you can find out more about these issues and what can be done about them. That’s at http://www.crimelabproject.wordpress.com. You can also follow us on Twitter (crimelabproject) and on Facebook. We have a weekly newsletter about forensic science news. To subscribe, send a blank email to CLPNewssubscribe@yahoogroups.com

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Kadir Nelson­—Continued from page 7 to art class you’ll be ahead,” and she said “We don’t have art class in middle school.” Not one class. I couldn’t believe it.

UJ: That is a problem. It doesn’t mean they have to be artists, but if we don’t have art class...

KN: They won’t care about it.

UJ: We’re talking about artists in Uncle Jam to just get people to be aware of artists. People who like the NBA know the names of the players, so if you like art, you gotta know the players.

You gotta know who’s doing the art. There’s a lot of talent in places you don’t necessarily see.

Did you get a lot of encouragement when you were young?

KN: I did, I was very fortunate. My mother wanted to be an artist when she was a kid and she was discouraged from pursuing art.

It wasn’t very practical, so she gave it up and became an engineer…very smart lady. She regretted not following that path, so when she saw that I liked to draw when I was a little kid she gave me what I needed. She was very supportive and my uncle, who is an artist, saw that I liked to draw. She and my uncle always gave me plenty of paper. When I was about 10 or 11 years old I went to my uncle’s house in Maryland for the summer and he really gave me my foundation. He taught me about color and perspective and shading and so forth and we pretty much drew and painted all summer.

It was a really great summer.When I was about 16 I went back to study under him and he taught me how to paint with oil paint and I’ve been using the same medium ever since.

UJ: Did you go to art school after that?

KN: Having said that, I was really far ahead of my peers. I had been painting all through high school. Through junior high I had been drawing and really honing my drawing skills, so when I got to college I was pretty far ahead so I did really well there and started working full-time immediately after I graduated.

UJ: Where did you go to school?

KN: I went to Pratt Institute in New York.

UJ: What would you say was your big break?

KN: My big break was when I was hired to do art for the movie Amistad literally 2 weeks after I graduated. It was really great timing. I did that and at the same time I did this big job for Sports Illustrated. It was my first big job.

UJ: Was this in New York?

KN: No, I moved here right after I graduated.

My wife and I had just gotten married. It happened all about the same time.

UJ: That’s a good story for young people who are struggling, to hear something inspiring.

KN: It’s certainly possible. It didn’t really fall out of the sky. There was a lot of groundwork.

I was a good student. I was very diligent about completing my work on time and doing the best I could, so I built a lot of momentum and as a result of being a good student I was given this opportunity to have a one-month internship at the Society of Illustrators in New York. It wasn’t a big time commitment and it wasn’t a lot of fun either. You’re sitting there putting

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stamps on envelopes, but you get to meet the people there. As a result of that they gave me a ticket to one of their shows. I had just gotten my portfolio put together and I had some new business cards, so I brought my business cards with me to the show and gave one to a young lady there. She was maybe a year ahead of me.

She had just graduated and I was still in school.

She gave me a call maybe a week or two after that with a job. She really liked the image I had on my card and she didn’t think her work was right for the job, so she gave me the contact.

It was a $4000 job, which was like hitting the lottery for a student. So I did the job for the guy. He was in a real pinch and needed it right away. I did a sketch for him in the office. He liked it so I did the painting for him. It went over well. He liked me and saw how diligent and professional I was. He asked for some of my portfolios to share with his colleagues. He sent them out and one of them ended up in Los Angeles at a record company. They knew about this film that was in pre-production and sent it over there. This was over the course of 6 months. If I hadn’t had my business card, or had my portfolio, or wasn’t diligent, none of that would have happened. One of the worst things you can do is be ill-prepared for a big opportunity.

UJ: So a lot happened in that short time.

KN: Yeah, they hire you for 2 weeks at a time when you’re free-lance and not in the union, so I worked at home, and went up once a week to deliver my art. It was really more like school for me. I was learning and the production designer was like a really great professor. He really cared about what he was doing and he had great advice about how you can make your work better. So I listened. I worked on that for about 6 months. I thought I hit the big time, you know, working on this Spielberg movie for 6 months and then after that was over my phone didn’t ring for 6 months…how does that work?

I realized there is no “THERE” to get to. You always have to keep working.

UJ: Keep hustling.

KN: Yeah.

UJ: This is good advice for young people, just

to get your stuff out there and be there.

KN: I think it’s the new college aged generation.

I hear it a lot from friends of mine who are professors and people who deal with young people. It’s that same thing, they want to be famous or they feel like they have a sense of entitlement and they want things really quickly.

It’s not that it’s their fault, it’s this generation that is used to instant results.

UJ: It’s the internet.

KN: Internet. Absolutely.

UJ: It’s the internet. You push a button and it’s instant success. I’ve had young artists literally saying to me “I’m going to be famous in 2 months”. And then if they don’t, they’re working here, at Starbucks. It’s very weird instant potato mentality.

KN: Or it’s “If I’m here and do this program for 6 months, then I’ll make it.” No, it doesn’t really work that way.

UJ: So when your phone wasn’t ringing, what were you thinking?

KN: I was scared to death. I was married and had a daughter and I had one month’s worth of living in the bank, so I took a trip to New York and visited a number of publishers, shared my portfolio, and tried to find work. I found some good work. Shortly after that a friend of mine who I worked with on Amistad knew people in the animation wing of DreamWorks. He got an interview for me with the producers.

They liked my work so they hired me to work on Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. It was a really good experience. I worked there for about a year and a half.

UJ: Does this mean that you and Steven Spielberg are tight?

KN: Not at all. I met him twice--once on purpose and once by accident, when I was working at DreamWorks. I worked on Amistad

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with Debbie Allen.We actually were trying to sell Steven on the movie because he wasn’t sold on it yet. He wasn’t an African American director and he was directing an African American themed movie, which was something he did for The Color Purple and he got a lot of flack over it. The production designer and Debbie Allen said let’s create 3 acts of art work that will show Steven what the movie could look like. He was really tripping over the middle passage scene which is difficult.

That would be like asking me to direct something about the Holocaust. How can I do that? But we showed him what it could look like and as a result of that he took on the movie. It was like a dream working in a movie studio. Two weeks before that I was just graduating. It was really a great experience. That was really my big break. I met Debbie there and we ended up doing a book together. After my contract ended in animation, I was kind of angry that they let me go, even though I had wanted to leave for a year. I didn’t like having a job. It was painting, but it was still a job with a boss.You have to be there every day.You have an office and a desk and all that. It’s a tough place for an artist who wants to have an identity, because you are part of a big team and the work you do is meshed with other artists’ work and the final product isn’t yours.

UJ: My friends who work at Disney and DreamWorks and so forth... their names are on the screen at the end but I’m the only guy sitting in the audience trying to read their names. You get your name on the credit but nobody in the world knows who you are except other artists.

I have friends in the past that did beautiful posters so the movie could be sold and I think that’s another reason to talk about artists, because

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they are important to the process. Now I think artists can do a book and go into galleries and have that illustration work.

Have you found that with your originals for the books you‘ve drawn?

KN: It’s a niche to find those galleries that focus on illustration of children’s books. Depending on the gallery, or how honest they are. It’s a little tricky. Some of them don’t pay you and then ask you to come and do a book signing.

UJ: Some people don’t seem to realize that “By the way, we exist, we have families, and we have bills to pay.” There are a lot of artists who get cheated. In the comics field it’s pathetic.

KN: I’ve always shied away from doing galleries, because for one thing they want 40, 50, 60, or 70% and that’s a lot to give up. Even if you get your price and they double it, they are still getting a lot of money for what you did. I’ve never been able to really work that out. Although I have done galleries and it’s kind of a necessary evil, in some ways, to get your work into the hands of people who need to see it. What I’ve done is put together a show of artwork from the book We Are the Ship and other children’s book artwork that will travel and go to museums. They don’t go to commercial galleries but they are seen by these different communities. It gives the book legs as well. That has kind of worked out really well and sometimes they’ll bring me in to do a talk on the book.

What I hope to do is straddle that fence and have art work in galleries. One of the reasons I moved my studio to Los Angeles is to get in front of those galleries, go to those shows and meet the people there so they can see my work.

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UJ: So you are living here and your studio is in LA? KN: Yeah, this is brand new. It’s very odd but my family is settled here and it’s kind of a bold gamble but this is a prime time for me to make that transition with that Michael Jackson thing. A lot of eyeballs were on it.

UJ: What exactly is the Michael Jackson thing?

KN: In 2003, Michael was recording some music for his album called Number 1’s. He was recording at the studio in Hollywood where I had this big painting of Marvin Gaye hanging. It was a mural that detailed his life. Michael saw it and really liked it so he called me and said “I would like one for myself about me.” I was really glad to get that call. I’m a fan of Michael. My generation, we were Michael-crazy. I was ready to get started, but shortly after that his life changed. He got caught up in his legal troubles and the project really fizzled so I didn’t get to start on that. Then fast forward to 2009, he passed away and it just so happened that the guy that commissioned the painting of Marvin Gaye was Michael’s manager.

He called me and said it’s time for you to do that painting that Michael wanted you to do. It wasn’t clear what it was going to be used for but as we kept working he really wanted to push to use it on the album cover for unreleased music, which they did.

UJ: When did it come out?

KN: It came out in December. They announced it would be coming out a month before it was released, but they didn’t really promote the album very well. It should have been a big thing. They promoted it well in the UK but here hardly anyone knew about it. Still a lot of people did see it and it can be one of those calling cards. It was a big deal.

UJ: Is your studio one that the public can visit you sometimes?

KN: No, it’s a private studio. I will be doing private shows there, but it’s not somewhere where somebody can walk in “Can I come in?”

“No, I’m in my pajamas.”

UJ: You illustrated Michael’s Golden Rule about Michael Jordan and Testing the Ice about Jackie Robinson and wrote We are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball. Do you love baseball?

KN: I love the history of baseball more than anything, so that’s what really what drew me in. I was so captivated by Ken Burn’s documentary.

I was fascinated by the history of baseball and the Negro leagues.

UJ: Do you get a chance to meet all these people?

KN: Eventually. I’ve met every author I’ve worked with except maybe one or two. Initially I meet them after the fact. The publisher is the middle man and usually they like to keep both parties separate.

It’s changing now, but when I came into it, some publishers were very strict about it.

UJ: What do you think they’re afraid of?

KN: Well, one, I think they want to stay in control of the project.

They also are concerned about personalities. They don’t always mesh.

Some authors are very hands-on and they want to direct the artists, which is not fair to the artist. Sometimes they write notes “this is what it should be” We just throw those out.

UJ: When you do a book, are they saying “Okay, paint a picture of... whatever”?

KN: It’s left up to the artist. That’s why it’s not fair of the author to give notes to the artist as to what the art should be.

UJ: So you finish your painting…that’s your vision. Is there ever a time where the publisher says “You have to change that to a guy running”?

KN: It should all be worked out in the sketch. If it’s an author that has some leverage sometimes they’ll say this needs to change. But I haven’t run into that much of that.

UJ: I’m just thinking of big names like a Will Smith or Spike Lee or something, that you’re not finding that they say “Oh, no, no I want that to be something else.”

KN: No, not really. I think Mrs. Jordan wanted me to change one of the posters on Michael’s bedroom wall. I put Bruce Lee and there must have been a “no karate, or kicking or punching rule” in the house or something, because she asked me to change it to something else.

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I made it Roberto Clemente and she was fine with that. I didn’t mind doing that.

UJ: So primarily your income is from the books sales?

KN: For the last 10 years, yeah, they’ve been my bread and butter.

But I’ve never had one source of income. It’s always been several by necessity.

UJ: That‘s a good thing for people to know who want to become artists.

KN: They can’t depend on one thing. I sold prints from the beginning.

I sold my paintings and of course I did the books. That’s most of what I’ve done. I also do speaking engagements. All of it together balances it out. The only job I’ve had was working at DreamWorks for a year and a half.

UJ: Do you want to work on movies?

KN: I had thought about doing a bit of directing, but I’m a painter.

UJ: Was that your major in school? Painting?

KN: Illustration. I always thought of myself as a fine artist that does illustration. I want to get more into portraiture, painting from life.

That’s where I’m lacking. I’m not doing any painting from life. It’s mostly photographs. My goal is to do really beautiful quality paintings that people would want to own. That’s all I want to do.

UJ: I’m assuming from your work that you are going to stick to more representational stuff so we can tell what it is or do you want to go towards the abstract?

KN: I have no desire to do abstract.

UJ: I don’t really like the line that if something is illustrative it’s not fine art. I’ve never agreed with that whole argument. The galleries say this is real art, and this is not. At the same time, there was a recent show where Lucas and Spielberg revealed that they collect Norman Rockwell. They had a show in D.C. KN: I missed that show by a week. They had a few paintings there when I worked at DreamWorks. He’s really great.

UJ: What artists inspire you?

KN: There are really too many to name. I’m just a big fan of figurative painters.

UJ: Do you know Dean Cornwell?

KN: Oh, Dean Cornwell. Yeah, I love his work. When I worked that one month at the Society of Illustrators in New York, someone had found this Dean Cornwell painting in their attic and donated it to the museum and they had just gotten it restored. It was this image of a man under the streetlamp reading a paper. The light from the lamp bounced off the paper onto his face and spectacles. It was so incredible. I’m working on a book now on American History and I’ve always had that painting in the back of my mind, so I did an homage to that painting of the man. It’s right after slavery had ended during the Reconstruction program. There was this man who is reading and his daughter is standing behind him teaching him how to read.

He’s reading this Bible and the light is bouncing off the Bible onto his spectacles.

UJ: And that’s coming out in the new book?

KN: It’s coming out in the fall. The book is called Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans. It’s really ambitious and is the same format as We are the Ship. It’s about 100 pages with words and pictures on every page. I have 2 more paintings to go. I’m almost finished thank goodness.

UJ: Who is publishing it?

KN: Harper Collins. It’s kind of an interesting niche I’ve made for myself, in this age of digital books, at least this age that’s coming very quickly. To me it was important to make something that was a piece of art that you want to pick up and run your hand over and literally page through vs. clicking through the images. I’ve become an author by necessity instead of getting another author to write the text because I know how I want to tell the story. That’s my goal with these books. I want to create things I really love. g

www.kadirnelson.com

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Al Davison­—Continued from Page 7 about Mt Fuji was the first one I drew, and I gave the drawing to the nurse as a thankUJ: How important have martial arts been in you. It was also what sparked my imagination your life? in relation to dreams, since I’d never seen a AD: I wouldn’t be here talking to you now picture of Mt Fuji, nor had I heard of it... so without the martial arts. My training has how come I was dreaming about it? It wasn’t saved my life on more than one occasion. till I was four that I found a book on Hokusai It’s probably hard for most of your readers in the local library (my second home!), and to grasp, but as someone who is perceived discovered that Mt Fuji really did exist. So as disabled, I have had to deal with violence creating work based on my dreams has been on a daily basis most of my life, especially part of the process ever since I could hold a from neo-nazi groups in the UK. I started crayon. training at age seventeen in Dian-Qi-Tao UJ: In Spiral Dreams you manage to bring Gung-Fu under Sifu Shang-Qi Tse. I was Maggie & Al traditional cartooning to another level. I his only student and trained seven days a week fourteen hours a day for seven years. After a while he allowed me a couple of have always questioned the great divide between various forms of art especially days off a week, very lenient of him I thought, until I realised that it was to between “fine art” and our cartoon art form. So many of the pieces in this book study a complimentary art (Karate-Do-Shotokai)! I gained a 1st degree black would look wonderful blown up on a huge canvas in a museum and I often belt in Shotokai under Sensei Mitsuzuki Harada, and went on to gain the wonder how many people would not consider the work “fine art” if they didn’t highest rank in Dian-Qi-Tao, a 5th degree black belt. I inherited the System have their narrow prejudices about the cartoon art form. In the United States after my teacher passed away in 1984. I travel widely performing martial in the 21st century, art and especially the comic art medium, is not doing very arts demonstrations, and also teach elements of the art to theatre and dance well with the general public. I believe that years of cuts in all the arts programs practitioners. I’m an associate artist with Labyrinth Theatre, with whom I in our schools have created a very sad state for the arts in general. When people do not have a basic education or exposure to the arts, it is almost impossible pioneered the use of these techniques in physical theatre.

UJ: Your book, The Spiral Cage, dealt with your own personal story living to have a real appreciation for any of the arts. This is reflected throughout the with spina-bifida. Can you tell us how this condition has influenced your art US with our failing symphony orchestras and more starving artists than ever. I also believe that the lack of arts funding and art and music in our schools play a and outlook on life? real role in creating high school dropouts and our AD: Well, according to the doctors I should growing prison population in our country. How have died before I was three years old, and been are things in the U.K.? completely paralysed from the chest down. By AD: Generally public awareness is growing, but the age of four I was walking, despite being still there is still an obvious divide between what is technically paralysed. By the age of seven I’d considered fine art and comics. With the coalition rebuilt most of my nervous system and was only government in power, the arts infrastructure is paralysed below the knees, and still walking... being seriously damaged, as is the infrastructure doing the impossible does tend to make you of the country as a whole. Libraries and town halls both an optimist and someone who likes to seek that have been around for, in some cases centuries, out new challenges and beat the odds. That has are not only being closed down but the buildings hopefully come through in my art. sold off; making it even harder for any subsequent UJ: I have always admired the passion that you government to reverse the damage. One of the bring to your art, Al. Could you speak a bit about first things that this government did when it got where that passion comes from? into power was to close down the B.F.I. (British AD: Being constantly told by doctors that I had Film Institute) which should give you a clue as no future, physical therapists telling me not to to their complete lack of commitment to the arts try so hard, and being told that I had ‘ideas above here. I do a lot of literacy workshops in libraries, my station’ because I had aspirations beyond and to see them closing down is a tragedy. their expectations, only served to make me more UJ: Could you tell us a bit about your wife determined to give 100%. Surviving five murder Maggie. I see from your Facebook page that you attempts by my father and extreme physical and are both running a graphic novel and manga store psychological abuse just strengthened my resolve to in Coventry. I don’t know of too many comic prove I had not only a right to live, but to also make book artists who run their own shops. my mark, and encourage others to do the same.

AD: Maggie worked in I.T. for years. She’d had UJ: In your book, Spiral Dreams, you talk about enough and decided to take early retirement and the power of dreams in your life as a storyteller, move to Coventry to be closer to her mother who a disabled person, and a spiritual person. I have always used dreams in my own work and wonder if you might share how dreams was getting to the age where she needed some extra support. We decided to open a studio and graphic novel shop in Coventry... as far as I know I’m the only comic first became something that you could actually use in your work.

AD: I think due to the unusual circumstances of my early childhood… being artist in the U.K. who also owns a comic shop and works on site. People can in an isolation unit for the first two years of my life; I found I was able to come into the shop and see me drawing comics. We also run children’s art classes remember not only everything that happened on a daily basis from around on a Saturday, and adult classes on a Thursday, as well as hosting an Animé club the age of six months old till around the age of fifteen in great detail, but I and a games group in the shop. can also remember all my dreams going right back to that same time up to the UJ: We saw each other in England in the past and at San Diego Comic-Con, present. A student nurse, whom I consider to be my first teacher, was the first do you have any plans to visit the U.S. in the near future? person to explain the difference between being awake and dreaming. The unit AD: I’m planning to go to New York Comic-Con this year, I’ve always wanted had no windows and the lights were on 24/7, so I had no concept of day and to visit New York, and I’m looking forward to it immensely. g night or the difference between being awake and dreaming. She explained that More about Al Davison and his projects here when I was lying on a metal frame with tubes up my nose, that I was awake, www.astralgypsy.com but when I was doing back flips over Mount Fuji, I was dreaming. That dream http://musclememorymemoir.blogspot.com

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Daniel Merriam—Continued from Page 5. people who had to see very far away, like making it to the West Coast... that took a lot of belief that we will endure, we’ll make it. I think that kind of pioneering spirit is one of the beautiful things in art. When you see an artist that sets out to do it…they’ve got to make it for you to get the full benefit. There’s beauty in the people that attempt and don’t but the ones that really make it all come together are the ones that complete it, that reach the finish line. There may be people who put pieces of their career together in the beginning and they‘re beautiful but not incredibly successful because they didn’t get the whole package. It can be that they didn’t know how to bring it to the public, or they weren’t willing to take time, years, effort, money, sacrifice, or whatever it took to do it. It’s a combination of things. It’s like a painting is a combination of color and of shape. It’s not just one thing.

UJ: How did you learn the business side of things starting out?

DM: Having a father who was very logical, very practical, as an engineer.

He had an imagination though. He liked to work on projects that were interesting. One of the things he designed and built was a river boat. He built two paddlewheel boats, and I helped a little bit with them when I was still a teenager. Sitting in his den I’d watch him work at home with his complex drawings and renderings of projects he was working on and I really enjoyed the complexity; the detail of it. I would look over his shoulder and watch him do it. He was really into the math, into the calculus. He had that component in his mind, his personality. I had some degree of it, but more in a geometric sense. He would write pages of calculations down for me on a notepad and he’d run from one page to the next explaining it to me, thinking “Boy, my son is great, he’s just picking this up right away” and he’d turn back and say “You’re getting this, right?” “Oh yeah, I got it.”

UJ: Did you get it?

DM: No. (laughter) UJ: You write about illustrative art in your new book. You actually write about it more than I’ve ever seen it written about. Is this fine art?

That’s the debate. I’m a cartoonist; I think cartoons are fine art.

DM: The debate is complicated. It can escape most people. If you’re an engineer and you’ve studied this your whole life and you look at it logically, it becomes like pinball and that is that there are many different art forms and illustrative art forms, like the Sistine Chapel or painting iconography in a traditional medium but there are other art forms. Is it high art? That is the question. High art is defined by fashion. Is it in vogue? And that can turn on a dime. What’s interesting is, you look at my first book...the things I had to say and the interviews 20 years ago. I’m like this guy out there beating the drum for representational art or figurative art and trying to make the statement that you guys are all missing out on this really cool part of the art world.

Not that other types of art aren’t valid, it’s that we went thru a generation where figurative art was pushed aside, and maybe rightfully so, but you don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. That’s kind of what was going on, but that’s kind of how fashion operates. Now figurative art has come back because the client has changed and the market has changed and people respond to art that tells a story and art that’s a window into a world as opposed to what we grew up with. Anybody over 30 was exposed to elders who influenced them that art should not be a window that you

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look into. This is a great concept in learning and ideas; but what if you do want the value of a great illustration, of really cool shading, hatching and cross hatching, beautiful skills? For a while these skills were being dubbed as craft and craft was not art. But I‘ve got news for you, today it’s art again. Why? Because people stopped doing it. And when they stopped doing it people saw it as beautiful again. They also realized there was a last meditation; part of the soul, a connection to the earth that was found by numerous generations by taking part in this process. So it’s your mind engaging in this process, which is to envision something and then to craft it out and to watch it form before your eyes and have a sense of amazement in that you are this human who was able to do this. So this sense of pride helps you grow just by simply accomplishing something in a generation where people can only accomplish figuring out how to use their iPhones. How much gratification can you get when you realize that without Steve Jobs, you wouldn’t have done it?

UJ: The other thing that’s happening is, my friends that teach are saying that most of these young people never draw with a pencil, ever. These kids get into these schools without any ability to draw whatsoever. They’ve never picked up a pencil. I don’t even understand how they can be an artist without picking up a pencil, but apparently you can now. I’m afraid that you lose that connection.

DM: I would say it’s not going to be black or white and that there are probably more ways to master digital imagery in a digital world; but it is on a digital plane, limited by the mechanisms that operate that. It’s also perhaps emotionally limiting and what is taken out of that experience is the tactile aspect of physically working. You’ve got the dimension between you, the screen, and the mouse; and then you have the drawing board in front of you where your arm and your mind are working together and you’re working with the space there and the space in your mind.

They’re different mediums and I think that what is happening is that the digital world is catching up. It’s a very expressive medium and it has many benefits over doing things by hand and what tends to happen is we will lose that benefit of thinking “hands-on” and people will get out of touch with it and no one will be able to do it any more.

Today I was looking for some examples of Victorian lettering fonts, so I was on the Internet. I was looking up examples of old etchings from map companies. These works of art were like money, you know how money was etched. You look at the artists today that are doing it on the computer and the stuff on the computer is beautiful. They’re using the tools to proliferate that design but there is a certain element that they just don’t get. It doesn’t take you back to that time and place. You don’t get the true essence of the ideal behind that design. You get a modern interpretation that’s coming from a modern person who’s separate from the original environment that created it. If they went back to the tool that created the original design and referred to the original design, they could pick up where those people left off.

UJ: In the cartooning field, you look at Bill Watterson who did Calvin and Hobbes. Now we have cartoonists who are drawing sort of like Bill Watterson but not quite as good. Bill Watterson was taking a lot from Pogo, from Walt Kelly and so on. As you go down, copying the copy of the copy of the copy, you’re losing something. My problem with the machines

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is you lose that humanity. There’s something about the guy who paints the painting as opposed to the guy who digitally creates the painting. You see these books of digital art and it doesn’t look the same.

DM: No, but it exemplifies a different type of pain. There’s a struggle and a pain to it. It’s a lot of work, but you see evidence of certain shortcuts so you realize now that the artist is no longer paying attention to the nuances they had to when they were taking their time and going slow and eking it together. The artist who has to craft it by hand has to have a higher understanding of some parts in there that the digital no longer has to cope with. At the same time the digital artist has a whole other group of skills and things that they have to pay attention to. It’s not that it isn’t good. It’s the new generation, it’s the future, but I think we need to also look back to the past and the traditions to help maintain integrity in that.

UJ: Are you going to go to digital art? Is Daniel Merriam going to start doing his work digitally?

DM: I would say no, because I developed my skills and my appetite for art with physical material. If you take away the physical, it’s not as interesting to me. I can do research, but I get frustrated when I look at that computer screen. I like the backlit aspect of it and I can rifle through imagery pretty quickly. At the same time there’s a lack of integrity to the whole network. I can’t find everything I need on there. Sometimes it’s incredibly disappointing. When you physically walk into a shop or a warehouse that has all the antiquities and the history of design, you’re now there. It’s the real world and digitally all you can do is get out your iPhone and take pictures of it and post it on Facebook. It’s more accessible to people, but it’s not more real.

UJ: When I look for an image on the Internet and search a certain term, I will end up getting thousands of images that have nothing to do with the image I am looking for. I find myself going back to my reference books, real books.

DM: Because to publish a book you have had to have painstakingly put together the publisher, the financing, the editor, the material. There are so many months involved in getting there that the content is bound to be well thought out and all applicable, or else. With the Internet, you just slap it up there. Everybody has equal rights to compete for the attention. You’ve got idiocracy all over it. It’s not the Wild West; it’s like the Wild World. And there’s no law and order.

UJ: There’s always been a resistance to new ideas. I don’t want to sound like a complete dinosaur saying that technology is bad. I don’t think it’s all bad. I think there has to be a balance.

DM: Yeah, without the technology on my phone, I wouldn’t be able to show you all my drawings that I have stored in here.

UJ: Will Sausalito be your base?

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DM: I think it will probably be my retirement. I’m kind of tired of traveling around the world showing my art everywhere. I know it’s a nice thing to be able to do, but it’s exhausting because I have to produce a lot of work for it and I’m at the point where I’ve archived so much art of my own that it’s almost problematic because I’ve maintained a good market value for it but if I’m not there to manage it, it’s a ticking time bomb.

UJ: Most people don’t understand how hard watercolor is. I saw your work and thought “Who is this guy? This is good.” It was different, it was unique. It wasn’t like an assembly line doing it. Whether it’s because you take a lot of time doing all these crazy things you do in the details or because you are actually expressing something within you that’s not just architecture. You bring something to the table that you don’t see everywhere. I don’t see it anywhere. There are people who dismiss some art saying “It’s illustration”.

DM: So is the Sistine Chapel. It represents.

UJ: So are all the great Rembrandts.

DM: It represents whatever passion Michelangelo could bring to something he didn’t want to do.

Which is, “If I have to do a painting on the ceiling, it’s going to be a good one. It’s not a sculpture, but it’s a damn good painting.” At the same time he was representing the will, the passion, and a belief system so all the powers that be came together and what comes out is the complexion of the artist’s will. For me there is a sort of passion meaning of life and when I sit down to paint—I’m like—“This is reality.

This is what I mean to the world.

This is my only real connection to it. I better bring it all in here. It’s time.” I give it all and I know that by pouring that emotion into it, it will be me. If you’re at all true to yourself, your art is just a complexion of you, who you are.

UJ: So you’re putting that soul and that emotion into the piece.

DM: Part of that is devotion. You know in your heart that through that devotion you will reach the finish line and when you reach the finish line you have put in all these little pieces or parts or things that add up to integrity. Yes, less is more.

I believe in negative space and the Asian concept in art. However more is for certain more and if somebody looks at more, they will say there is more there. There is a time you need less and there is a time you want more.

UJ: I have the same feeling. Maybe that’s what draws me to your work.

DM: It’s the sort of thing you say “Ok this is my budget for time on this thing.” At some point as an artist you say “Screw the time budget, and screw the rules, and screw the less-is-more negative space. You know, I was leaving some negative space there; but screw it, that’s valuable space and I can use that.” g

www.danielmerriam.com

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Talkin’ Story with Dave Thorne & Jon J. Murakami

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— An inter vie w with t wo of Hawa ii’s top car to on ists —

e wanted to do something different in our interview and then moved up to the university level in 1976with Dave Thorne and Jon J. Murakami, two of 77, about the time that you and I met. So I taught Hawaii’s best known and finest cartoonists. This interview at the university for 25 years. was done in March 2011, before Dave turned 81. Jon turns UJ: Who are your illustratious students?

41 this summer and the two go back more than 20 years. Phil DT: Well, there’s Jon of course and Alan Low. I Yeh, who has known Dave since the 1970s and Jon since he taught a couple thousand people over the years, so was a student in Dave’s class at the University of Hawaii, it is really quite a list. conducted this interview in Dave’s home on the windward side JM: Dave is a connection to a lot of people. of Oahu. The interview is a great example of what happens DT: I also taught at the YWCA, workshops and between a student and a teacher in the best sense. Dave’s house other classes. is going through some renovation. He has shared the house UJ: Did you also teach Todd Kurosawa (Dreamworks Dave Thorne, Luana Maitland, with his wife Lorraine; whom he met while attending college artist)? and Jon Murakami in the Midwest. They have three grown children, two of them DT: No, but I met him when a sixth grade teacher in California. asked me to speak to her class about cartooning.

Dave Thorne has been called “the Jedi master of Hawaii cartooning.” I think that it’s There was this one kid in the class that was really, really good. Later fitting to think of Dave as this Yoda-like character giving wisdom to so many students when Todd got into high school, he had this assignment to interview over the years. You really have no idea when you are a teacher how many people can someone in his field and he interviewed me. I was really impressed with be inspired by your wisdom. This is especially true when you are not even in his class! his talent. He then went to the mainland to Marvel and Disney and finally Dave inspired Phil over the years with his unfailing positive energy and outlook on life. DreamWorks. A number of my students did become professional, but Noted comics writer Scott Shaw! (yes, the exclamation is part of the name) calls Thorne a lot of them took it for fun. One of the rewards is when the student “Hawaii’s beloved cartoon sensei.” Writer and cartooning blogger Mark Evanier refers surpasses the teacher. That is so great. I am very proud of Jon. to him as “Hawaii’s goodwill ambassador of cartooning.” Usagi Yojimbo’s Stan UJ: Me too.

Sakai calls Thorne “the cartoonist guru in Hawaii.” These quotes came from Burl JM: I consider both of you my mentors.

Burlingame’s piece about Dave for his newspaper The Star-Bulletin which runs Dave’s UJ: We met at the San Diego Comic-Con all those years ago. How did that Sunday comic strip Thorney’s Zoo. change your life?

Jon J. Murakami is perhaps best known for his humorous line of Local Kine greeting DT: I got to meet a lot of my heroes who ultimately became my good cards, produced and distributed by Maile Way Products. In addition to his greeting friends. God Bless Shel Dorf (the founder of SDCC). Shel was so cards, Murakami has illustrated the series by the late University of Hawaii professor helpful and very thoughtful. He would introduce me to my heroes and Peter Coraggio, The Art of the Piano Performance in Illustrated Form, which then he would step back. In the summer of 1979, he wrote me and said is published in Japan, Korea, and the United States. He has also done many other “When you come to San Diego this year, do you want to fly with Bob children’s books including his popular Gecko board books for young kids. Anywhere you Kane (the creator of Batman) to meet my boss, Milton Caniff (creator go in Hawaii, it is impossible not to see Jon’s artwork. He also designs T-shirts and logos; of Steve Canyon)?” So I got a 2 feet x 3 feet sheet of newsprint and does free-lance illustrations, cartoons, and clip art; creates original comic book art; and wrote back just one word in marker, YES! When I got there I met Bob, draws comic strips for various newsletters & local newspapers including the Honolulu but he couldn’t make the trip to see Milton. Dick Moores (who drew Star-Bulletin and the Hawaii Herald. His Sunday strip Calabash contains a hodge- Gasoline Alley after Frank King died) wanted to go, so we flew up from podge of his humor with no set characters or storyline. He is an active member of San Diego to Palm Springs. The whole way up Dick was like an excited Cartoonists Across America & the World, founded by Phil Yeh. Phil and Jon have kid! When we got there, Milt picked us up, and I had my first ride in also produced one full length children’s book, The Winged Tiger & The Dragons a Rolls Royce. We went to dinner and Dick started to praise Milt. He of Hawaii and are about to do a second for 2012, the Year of the Dragon. He started to tell him how much he loved his work and finally Milt said, “I graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. As a UHM student, he drew The University of Diverse City, a daily comic strip for Ka Leo O Hawaii, the campus newspaper.

Uncle Jam: Jon, you were Dave’s student more than 20 years ago?

Jon J. Murakami: I still am. Dave is my mentor. He taught me how to think like a cartoonist. This was 1989. I had just started college at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and I Thorney’s Zoo by Dave Thorne took a class from Dave. I met you the same year.

UJ: Dave, how long have you been teaching?

Dave Thorne: I was an art teacher in the public schools. I had a couple of promotions and I ended up at the state level designing and producing educational materials for teachers and giving workshops to teachers all over the state of Hawaii. So I started teaching in Hawaii in 1962, but I had taught three years in Manitowac, Wisconsin. I attended the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. I started at the high school level

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am a fan of yours. Anybody that can draw a round brick smokestack in perspective has got to be good.” Shel and I looked at each other and smiled. Anyway, it was a wonderful weekend. Milt took us to his studio and showed us his work. He had to go to a meeting but before he left, he said, “Go through my originals and pick out a strip you’d like and I’ll sign it.” Now the hotel room was paid for and in the morning, he brought us coffee and pastries, signed the artwork and took us to the airport.

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by Phil Yeh with a guest appearance by Jon J. Murakami from Winged Tiger #15

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by Phil Yeh with a guest appearance by Jon J. Murakami from Winged Tiger #15

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by Phil Yeh with a guest appearance by Jon J. Murakami from Winged Tiger #15

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by Phil Yeh with a guest appearance by Jon J. Murakami from Winged Tiger #15

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Conitued from page 21— That was a fantastic trip! I went to San Diego Comic-Con for more than twenty years straight. It was the high point of my year.

UJ: You have quite a collection of drawings in your sketch books from San Diego Comic-Con. DT: I have a lot. The bigger the artists were, the more humble and down to Earth I found them to be. One of the first artists I met was Sergio Aragonés (MAD magazine & Groo the Wanderer).

UJ: There doesn’t seem to be a more universally loved artist than Sergio.

DT: Yeah. I think he is really one of the most down to Earth artists. I just love him.

UJ: Did you meet any others?

DT: I met Scott Shaw! (Captain Carrot); June Foray (voice of Rocky the Squirrel); Doug Wildey (Johnny Quest); Don Rico (Captain America); and Joe Kubert (Tor & Sgt. Rock). Sergio invited me to his home for a party after the convention. I said I would take the bus, but Joe offered me a ride in his RV with his family. This was my first time in San Diego! Sergio lived in the Hollywood Hills then. All these famous people were there and Sergio said that if I liked, I could spend the night here.

UJ: When you were teaching in the state of Hawaii, you had a chance to visit other places that were outside of the state. How did this come about?

DT: When I was in the Department of Education, the office I was in was the media office. One day I got a call from the university asking if I was willing to go to Ponape and I immediately said yes! They had a program where they had American teachers going over to these other islands and working with their teachers. They wanted me to illustrate some media materials and give a workshop for some teachers over there. This was in 1967. They now call the city Pohnpei, but in those days it was known as Ponape. It’s in Micronesia. That was a wonderful experience. At that time it was like going back 100 years in Hawaii.

UJ: How long did you stay there?

DT: The whole summer of 1967. When it came time to come home, I didn’t want to leave. I loved it there. The people were wonderful. It was during the Vietnam War and there were both draft dodgers and Peace Corps volunteers there. Then later on I got a chance to go the Marshall Islands twice and once to Samoa. These were shorter stays, less than a month, giving workshops to the teachers over there. I am collecting little vignettes and if I ever get my memoirs finished this will all go inside. I will probably call it, “I can’t believe I did all this!”

In 2000, I had a student in my class from Sri Lanka. Her father was the fourth highest ranking navel officer of the Sri Lankan Navy. He was here with his family and his daughter liked cartooning, so he dropped her off and picked her up each day. On the last day of class, I asked him if he would like to sit in and he said he would love to. He was sitting in the back and after I had all the students working, I went to talk to him.

He said, “ You know we don’t have anything like this in Sri Lanka and when I get back I will talk to some people and see if we can bring you and your wife to Sri Lanka and you can give a class there.”

Now, I have been on the planet a long time and you hear all these wonderful things but you get to the point where you don’t bet the farm on them. But he did it and it was so well organized, better than I could have organized it.

He got more than 30 students including three Buddhist monks! They set my wife and me up in a five star hotel and covered all our expenses and when

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Local Kine greeting card by Jon J. Murakami. class was not in session they would take us sightseeing. I remember we were driving down the road and here comes somebody walking their elephant. I went to a zoo when we were there and we got to ride an elephant. Because we were with this guy, we got VIP treatment everywhere. Then they took me into the snake house and asked if I wanted to hold a boa constrictor.

I am not a snake kind of guy, but being polite I held it. It was like holding a robot. Its muscles were like steel. It felt like an erector set with skin. He knew I liked elephants and on another day we visited a friend who was being given an elephant for her birthday. So they brought the elephant up on the front yard to feed it and they asked if I wanted to sit on it. We were there 11 days and it was really nice.

UJ: All these years you were teaching, were you also free-lancing cartooning?

DT: Yes. I have been free-lancing all my life. I made my first sale in 9th grade and have done it throughout college and in the service.

UJ: Is that how your students like Jon also jumped into it?

JM: I was lucky. Being in the right place at the right time and being in Hawaii, word of mouth is usually the way that I get work.

DT: Jon was exceptional. While he was a student he was drawing a daily comic strip. That’s a lot of work. As well as his studies…well I don’t know if he did any studying (laughter).

JM: Well, back in 1989, it was only three times a week so it was kind of easy. Deb Aoki (another Hawaiian cartoonist with a successful career on the mainland) actually had heard of me and she took me over to the school paper. My friend Dean knew Deb and he knew I liked to draw, so he made the arrangements. When I met with Deb, she suggested that I get a couple strips together for publication in the school newspaper. Over the weekend I came up with 4 or 5 ideas and went to Dave for advice because I didn’t know what I was doing. He actually helped me tweak the proposal. So I submitted it to the editor and since there was not much in the school paper, I was in. The semester after that we went to 4 times a week.

DT: And you continued drawing the strip for the rest of your career. It was a great strip with a great cast of characters. Each character had their own personality.

JM: It’s funny because they were based on my friends growing up. A group of 15 of us. But I kind of drew everyone the same, so I had to put little armbands on them with their initials on them! But in time, I got it down to distinct characters in a college setting. And this became the core of my strip, The University of Diverse City. I was working several jobs at the time and just starting with my free-lancing.

UJ: When you were in college, how did you start free-lancing?

JM: I started doing designs for t-shirts and

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Thorney’s Zoo by Dave Thorne then I met a University of Hawaii professor, who read the comic strip, Peter Coraggio. He has since passed away. He came up with this concept where I designed this origami finger for his piano class. Then he got some funding and decided to do comic versions of his teachings. We started doing them for a Japanese monthly magazine, so every month we sat down and had to do 8 pages and then send them to a translator.

UJ: Were you enjoying drawing all the piano keys?

JM: Of course not (laughter). This was before the internet and we spent a lot of time in the library and fortunately, I have a piano at home. (Jon plays the saxophone but also a little piano.)

UJ: We should fast forward to your collaboration with me (The Winged Tiger & The Dragons of Hawaii) where you have all these musical dragons. You are the only person I know who makes it look easy having a dragon playing the violin.

JM: When I was in high school, I was drawing and playing the saxophone.

It’s fun and I really enjoyed it; but I kind of hit a crossroads between music and art. I felt that I couldn’t concentrate on both so I picked…

UJ: …the one that made the less money (laughter).

JM: I don’t know, because music is so competitive.

UJ: You have done the Local Kine greeting cards, advertising, children’s books, and of course the comic strips. Are you the hardest working cartoonist in Hawaii?

JM: (laughter) Well, it’s interesting but the college strip has a following even 20 years later! And that still brings me jobs. That’s how I ended up doing the greeting cards. Gayle Machida & Paul Isono both worked at University of Hawaii and met on Maile Way; which is how they got the name of their company, Maile Way Products. Paul is kind of the business guy, he was ASUH president at one point and Gayle is a business person. We decided to try out the greeting cards, which are aimed at people on the islands. Longs Drugs picked us up, but every store has a different buyer; so they had to go see all these different buyers, and then Hallmark and Wal-Mart.

UJ: Tell us how you came into The Star-Bulletin?

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JM: Dave started it off with Guru Gecko and then in 2007, Dave and I started this new series and then Deb Aoki came into the mix.

DT: I started Thorney’s Zoo on my birthday in 2007. It is great that Jon’s parents have always supported him in his dreams. So many people don’t support their kids wanting to go into art.

JM: I am also doing a web comic for Oceanic Cable called Online Aloha.

UJ: And you are working for the Japanese-American newspaper in Hawaii?

JM: Yeah, The Hawaiian Herald or The Hawaiian Hochi. Every other week I do a comic strip for them as well. I illustrated five gecko books and a few other titles. You were actually the first guy who published me for books with a 4 page story that I did for your comic book. Even for children’s books, The Winged Tiger & The Dragons of Hawaii was my first children’s book. I have been fortunate. A lot of cartoonists are very shy and you have taught me to make noise.

UJ: I have observed that most cartoonists are shy. We see this at the conventions when so many just sit there and don’t make eye contact with the public.

JM: They are shy and afraid. You taught me that very well.

UJ: Part of art is teaching the business side and basic marketing.

JM: That’s what I am doing with my Gordon Rider comic. This came about because I was hanging out in my friend Sean Akita’s store. I was drawing the comic strip on a dry erase board and this developed into a series of comic books. It’s all based on my friend Gordon Chan and we have five issues. We finally set up a shop online so people can buy the comics, shirts, buttons, and other Gordon Rider products. For the fifth anniversary last year we put out a special book with people like you and Dave and Stan Sakai.

UJ: Is there a Gordon Rider movie?

JM: Well, this is still in development. We will see what the future holds.

We do have trailers on YouTube as teasers. It’s really funny but Gordon actually submitted his photo as Gordon Rider to Hawaii 5-0, but they had

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Gordon Rider tribute issue by Jon J. Murakami copyright problems so he wasn’t selected as an extra.

DT: I had a call from a friend of mine in the 80s and we did a comic book about AIDS. We did this book in Manga form, 100-some pages, and it was translated into Japanese. I hired Dennis Fujitake and others to help me on this because we were on such a tight deadline. Another time I had a call from The Department of Health in Hawaii to do a book about a fish called Apoha which is a type of the fish called ‘o’opu.

I did a coloring book and another book on that. They still distribute these books and activity sheets to schools for free. They are to educate people regarding water pollution and its negative effects on sea life and the environment. At one time I was planning to retire to LA and leave Hawaii to go find more work.

UJ: So you were going to leave Hawaii and retire in LA? (laughter) DT: Yes, for professional reasons. But when retirement came I was getting more and more work. I started thinking about the beauty here and how nice it is here.

JM: We did a book about anti-smoking with your character Patrick Rabbit and the Dragons of Hawaii. I remember that when I was in school I did drawings for my teachers.

DT: All my schoolbooks were filled with drawings. I think that all artists have this in their blood.

UJ: Can you tell us about Lyle and Lorna that you did for my Patrick Rabbit series years ago?

DT: A lot of people don’t understand, but deaf people don’t like to be considered handicapped. Lyle can hear, but he signs and Lorna is deaf. So these strips are something that use signing in the actual comic strip. I also did a comic strip for a New Age magazine that featured my character The Aloha Spirit. All these characters are things I would like to do more with.

UJ: Dave, you have always been one of the most positive people that I know; so it made perfect sense that when I interviewed Wally Amos in 1985, you two would know each other! Wally was so positive and he works on behalf of adult literacy and that’s how I started this Cartoonists Across America & The World Tour back in 1985. g http://gordonrider.bigcartel.com Dave Thorne’s Zoo animation

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More Magic from Long Beach, California…

By Phil Yeh

I

n our last issue we wrote an article on Long Beach, California as the birthplace of the modern American graphic novel. It is a town in the shadows of Los Angeles and for many decades chided as “Iowa By The Sea” because so many Midwesterners settled into nice cottages on its tree-lined streets. We published Uncle Jam from 1973 to 1990 in the first incarnation of this free newspaper, now a free magazine. Writer Ken Jones was kind enough to supply us his unpublished interview with Richard Kyle, who coined the term “graphic novel” in the late 60s and operated one of the best bookstores in the world in the 1970s and 80s. In that piece we also spoke to Roberta Gregory, Jan Burke, Rick Hoberg, Steve Greenberg and Tom Luth on their memories of Kyle and their early days in Long Beach.

It should be mentioned that most of us who considered Long Beach our home have since left for other places many years ago, including myself. But in some ways, the creative spark that was ignited in all of us in that seaside community has never really left us, because after more than 21 years, we have brought back Uncle Jam. Our creative juices are still flowing.

We also mentioned Fred Patten, who was briefly Kyle’s partner and who was largely responsible for introducing Manga and later Anime to the United States. Although Kyle retired from the scene long ago, we are happy to report that he will be honored as a special guest at the San Diego Comic Con this summer. Another artist we recently profiled in UJ 97, Alex Niño, is also a special guest at SDCC this year.

I wanted to mention another Kyle friend and later a bookstore owner in Naples, California (part of Long Beach).

Tony Raiola still sells his excellent selection of European imports at San Diego Comic Con but it should also be noted that he was among the first to bring these books to the attention of comic fans in Southern California. Even though his store is history, his Pacific Comics Club is very much in business: visit www.pacificcomics.com/

Raiola is responsible for many of my generation getting looks at complete runs of long-out-of-print comic strips back then, like Krazy Kat and Little Nemo; but especially the more obscure strips like Charlie Chan, Johnny Hazard and Casey Ruggles. His annual trips back to his native Italy often brought the works of such masters as Hugo Pratt and Milo Manara to us artists, long before they were translated into English. Raiola told me that he owes a great deal to Kyle for helping him establish his store in Naples back in the day. He has a booth at Comic Con in San Diego each year and you would do yourself a favor to visit with these living masters of pop culture! His email is tony@PacificComics. com The days when independent bookstores prospered in California and when print was treasured are disappearing; but like old vinyl records, I believe that a new generation will wake up from the hype of the internet and see how different and vital holding real books can be. To illustrate my point of hyper-inflated value of the internet, consider Murdoch’s News Corp buying My Space for over $600 million only to recently sell it for $30 million in 2011. So much of the value of the internet is just utter nonsense, but there are few willing to say that the emperor has no clothes. Recent studies report that Americans don’t do well in history in 2011. There is an old saying that those who do not know history are bound to make the same mistakes again.

This issue we offer a piece by Dennis Mallonee, also from Long Beach, who has struggled for the last few years with his very independent publishing company.

That story starts on page 31. g

Artistic Edge Gallery Art & Custom Framing 2105 East 4th Street, Long Beach, CA 90814 - Tel. 562-433-5169

www.ArtisticEdge.addr.com wingedtiger.com

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ard to believe it was twenty-five years ago this summer that H FLARE, our shining goddess of the light, made her comic book debut. But there she is, right there on the cover of the very first issue

that the “monster” had in fact been a man that caused her to repent and turn herself away from evil, toward the good.

That origin of Flare, as envisioned by her creator, Stacy Thain, is of the original Champions mini-series, standing in the back, well behind so remarkable a story, so mythological, even Biblical in aspect, that I have for these past two decades and more, out of what may be an Giant, the Marksman, and Icestar.

Flare didn’t stay in the background for long. Indeed, inside that issue, irrational fear that the result won’t measure up to the vision, been curiously reluctant to put it entirely into print. There she’s the very first Champion we meet. Her right have, in recent months, been discussions with Ardden index finger appears on page one. The full-body reveal Publishing regarding the possibility of doing a special occurs in a full-page splash on page two. And in the series in which the origin of Flare will finally be told, long run, the impact Teresa Feran’s initial appearance but for the time being that project remains on the back had on the master villain Foxbat pales in comparison burner. to the impact she had on the comic book industry as Suffice it to say that it wasn’t Flare’s photokinetic a whole. powers that quickly made her the most popular member As much as it was anyone’s, the story in that original of the League of Champions. And it wasn’t just the fact six-issue Champions mini-series was Flare’s. The major that she’s a blonde babe in a skimpy costume. What villain of the piece was her evil little shape-shifting did it was the fact that she has presence. Bottom line: “brother Philip.” Specific details of her origin were whenever she’s on stage, everyone pays attention. revealed. And her tragic personal relationship with In mid-1987, when we began publishing a second the doomed hero Giant was the centerpiece of the series of Champions comic books under our own mini-series’ emotional conflict. To be sure, during the Hero Comics imprint, Flare again dominated the story course of those six issues, other characters had their lines. So greatly was her presence felt that in a poll of moments. In particular, a romantic conflict between readers asking which Champion they’d most like to Rose and the Marksman was being established. see appearing in a solo title, Flare received three times Lady Arcane’s ambivalence regarding her mystic more votes as the runner-up. heritage was being set up for future exploration.

That poll led directly, in the autumn of 1988, to the And the goofball relationship between the League comic book that forever changed how comic books of Champions and Icestar’s sometimes friendly, selfwould treat super heroines. styled “arch-nemesis” Foxbat was front and center. But Younger fans may find this difficult to understand, it was Flare who was dominant. And the truth of that but throughout the history of comic books, up until was that she was effortlessly dominant. the late 1980s, female characters had never achieved At the time, I didn’t quite realize just how dominant equality with their male counterparts. Even Wonder our shining goddess was going to be. I was, however, Woman, the exception that truly proved the rule, had fully aware of the power of her story. And frankly, out never been a sales success. For the most part, what of concern that she might end up outshining everyone super heroines there were in the comics were female else, I was even playing her down a bit. I deliberately knockoffs of much more popular male characters. gave her a tacky orange costume (one she “designed Flare #1 changed everything. Even at $2.75--a price herself”), and assumed that she would be adopting point much, much higher than the typical price of the a non-threatening posture, one in which she would day--with a stunning new costume designed by Tim present herself to others as a naive little girl. But that Burgard, with cover and interiors by Tim Burgard and posture of pretense was so far from the truth that it Mark Beachum, that issue of Flare flew off the comic should have been evident to anyone who was paying book racks. It was the only issue we published during attention to what was actually happening in the context that era that had to go into a second printing. of the story that Terri was playing a survival game.

What Flare #1 proved was that comic book fandom Underlying Flare’s posture of naiveté was the cold was ready for a sea change in how women would be calculation of a vicious, unforgiving, trained killer who treated in the medium. And what it demonstrated to had only recently made a conscious decision to turn every other publisher in the business was that a strong herself away from the darkness in order to reach for female character could not only be much, much more the light. Moreover, that decision had been made in Flare Pin-up by Tim Burgard than just a cheap imitation of someone else, she could the full awareness of its consequences. As far as Flare indeed, on the strength of her own character, support a knew, her decision to be a hero, to be a Champion, successful comic book title. was going to cost her her life. Moreover, it was going My great regret is that, with that first issue of Flare, to destroy her home, her family, everything she had we achieved our greatest success, both creatively and ever known. commercially, right at the moment when personal To this day, the full story of the origin of Flare has circumstance forced me to pull Heroic Publishing back never been told. It is, and has from the beginning been from the business of publishing comics. Since then, while entirely of a whole; which is why we’ve been able to dealing with those other matters, Heroic Publishing has reveal scattered pieces of it in various issues of various continued to keep one foot in the water. There have been Heroic Publishing titles. We know, for example, that fully 40 issues of Flare, 29 issues of Flare Adventures, she was born in the heart of the Amazon, the child of 11 of Flare First Edition, and 3 Flare Annuals. Even her a goddess, given life and light through the science of electric little sister Sparkplug had her own three-issue a group of expatriate Nazis financed by the leader of series. We’ve made a syndicated Flare newspaper comic an occult criminal organization. We know that she was strip available through Creators Syndicate. And our trained by these evil men to be their tool of vengeance glittering heroine has appeared in many different issues against the decadent West. We know that in her teens of many other Heroic Publishing titles. she was artificially aged, and sent on a mission to The important thing is that Terri Feran’s story is far destroy the League of Champions. We know that when from complete. New issues of Flare are on the horizon. she reached America she linked up with the master A Flare video project is in development. And if all goes assassin, Max Krueger. We know that she attacked and according to plan, Flare’s first twenty-five years will thought she’d actually killed a monstrous hero known as prove to have been only the barest of beginnings. g the Gargoyle. And we know that it was her realization

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Evan Lurie and His Backyard Friends

V

By Todd S. Jenkins

ersatility is a vital trait for the There was one song that went, ‘Oh, we working musician, especially when a have to catch THAT... ball or... else there longtime gig gets put on hold. Pianist will BE...’ And so they ended up in 5/4 and and composer Evan Lurie has been a fixture 7/4, crazy stuff because I was going for on New York City’s downtown jazz scene that kind of thing. But this show is rather since the mid-1970s when his brother, alto different in that the music is always in some saxophonist and film auteur John Lurie, kind of genre, and so we try to be very began leading The Lounge Lizards. Their true to that genre. It’s less cerebral.” incomparable blend of hot jazz, film noir Lurie appreciates Burgess’ idea that music moods, Jewish and tango flavors, and other and dialogue don’t have to be dumbed down influences made the Lizards one of the most for kids to get them. “Someone contacted significant ensembles of the downtown me about doing music for another kids’ scene. Now, with the Lounge Lizards on show. They sent me this poem that they indefinite hold due to John Lurie’s health wanted me to set and it was all this stuff troubles, brother Evan has moved into a like, ‘Okay, kids, now do this!’ And I realized distinctively different milieu: children’s that was really just wrong. You don’t tell television. them to do this and then ask why don’t they Since 2004 Evan Lurie has been the do this. You just have the characters do musical director for Nickelodeon’s it. I think the rules are the same whether smash hit cartoon “The Backyardigans”. it’s for adults or for children. You would Photo courtesy Evan Lurie The preschool favorite features cartoon never do that in a film for adults. Always, animals (voiced by real kids, not the usual if you can show information in a movie, it bevy of squeaky-voiced adults) acting out sticks much better than if you speak the their play fantasies and singing Lurie’s original songs. Echoing information. Nobody in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’ says that the Lizards’ eclectic style, Lurie enjoys almost carte blanche the poison is in the glass, but you see Cary Grant carrying the to use whatever influences and seasonings, from Bollywood to glass up the stairs and it glows in the dark, and you know, ‘Oh, pirate shanties, he desires to fill out each tune-filled episode. it’s poisonous!’ Another one of my favorites is ‘Notorious’, In recent seasons Lurie has let the show’s kid-critters dabble where Grace Kelly is being poisoned with the coffee. Hitchcock in Stax soul, zydeco, rembetika, roller disco and Strauss. apparently had this three-foot coffee cup built so that it sits and Lurie originally got the job because of his connection with takes up half the screen. You know she’s being poisoned, and Nickelodeon producer Janice Burgess. “I’d been scoring films for you think you realize on your own that it’s in the coffee. And it’s a long while (‘The Kill-Off’, ‘Trees Lounge’, ‘Joe Gould’s Secret’). the same thing for kids. They don’t want to be told, they want Dan Yaccarino, the guy who created ‘Oswald’, had a pilot with to figure it out for themselves.”

Nick, and he had done a television commercial for something The network test-runs each episode with audiences of real kids unrelated, some food product. The music for that commercial to see what works well and what needs tweaking. “Nickelodeon was done by my brother, John. And when Dan needed music puts a pilot together, and then we go to schools and play it for for ‘Oswald’, he was wondering if he could approach John about the kids. My big question was, if there is information that is it. Now, John would not be interested in doing a children’s imparted only in a song, will kids follow it or will they think cartoon or television in general just because of the amount of that the song is even part of the same thing? We generally put work it requires. I already knew Janice, who at that time was an information in the song and in the dialogue if it’s important executive at Nickelodeon. She suggested that Dan contact me. information, just to avoid the songs being completely extraneous.

So he did, and I did ‘Oswald’. Then, when Janice left Nick as an Then there’s always the question of whether they follow the executive and did her own show, she contacted me to do the characters speaking during the song. Quite often we’ll vamp for music for it. I foolishly said, ‘Oh! A different genre of music for dialogue and have the kids speak certain lines during it. It seems every show. What a great idea!’ Most television shows have a to work. There’s feedback from audiences and they do test it library of music that they use. They don’t write every cue for in certain ways. They go through a whole rigmarole that I’m every episode, nor do they write four songs and reprises of blissfully unaware of.” those songs. Nor do they score them with actual instruments!

The main songs are usually recorded before any choreography It’s an absurd amount of work from start to finish, between or dialogue, and then Lurie fills in the underscore once everything writing the songs and then writing the underscore. Every show else is in place. He enjoys the mechanics of the whole process, has an awful lot of music in it; sometimes, I think, too much. The though at times the high-pressure schedule (ten months to song is basically to underline anything that happens.” animate one episode, songs and all), standards and practices, Unlike many kids’ shows where young characters are voiced and the minute intricacies of the process can boost the tension. by adults, “The Backyardigans” has a genuine feel of childhood But Lurie has the freedom to try just about anything and isn’t imagination that is conveyed through child actors. While real- afraid of failure. life kids might not make up new lyrics to “When You’re Smiling” So far Lurie hasn’t hit many brick walls in putting together as they play, Lurie’s music adds to the wholesome spirit of the these unified scores. The main difficulties lie in the mechanics show while kicking things up a notch for parents. He keeps each of piecing episodes together. “The hard part becomes pausing episode’s score focused on a particular genre, which adds unity for action. If there’s action in a song and the singing stops and flow. Lurie says, “A lot of the songs in ‘Oswald’ were in odd and then there’s some action, it’s very difficult because then time signatures and things because I was going for that linear it becomes the territory of the animators. How do we know structure: ‘Da-de-da-de-DAH... de-DEE-de-dee... Da-de-DA...’ how this will fit? When they’re singing and walking and then

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they stop for something to happen, the music then has to hit these points that don’t exist yet. So there’s a lot of scary stuff because you never know when it comes back from animation, whether they’re going to understand what you meant.” This means that the musical team has to time things out and give the animators clues to work with. “We talk with the director a lot and try to work out, ‘Okay, is this enough time?’ Then they have to understand that it’s either going to happen ‘Bop-BOP-bopbop-bop-bop’ or ‘Bop-bop-bop-bop-BOP-bop-bop’. But it can’t happen half a second later. We’re in a tempo and you only have these choices. We have to use click tracks for the underscore but we don’t do the songs with a click track. That’s one of the great things about doing the songs first.”

Lurie also enjoys the freedom to hire the musicians he wants for each project, and he prefers live instruments to keyboards.

“I can write a line for a saxophone to play, then write a line

his passion for tango, a musical form that he has explored on several of his recordings (“Chochin”, “Selling Water by the Side of the River”, “Pieces for Bandoneon”) with Alfredo Pedernera on bandoneon, the Argentine style of accordion.

One key to successful scoring, Lurie finds, is to think like a child would really think. “When the first episode, the pirate one, was in script stage there was this whole business about finding the treasure, they dig up the treasure, then they realize that they can’t split it so they decide to bury it again. Then there’s all this stuff that goes on about ‘where should we bury it, how will we find it again?’ And Janice just said, ‘No, no, no! They find the treasure, they dig it up, they bury it again. That’s all that matters.’ She really has this wonderful ability to look at it and go, ‘No, that doesn’t matter. As far as the kid goes, you dig it up, you bury it again.’ Nothing else is of any importance.”

Lurie crafts his music based on this understanding that kids are

Evan’s Band: The Lounge Lizards, drawn by Mario Zucca.

www.mariozucca.com

for a trumpet to play. If I was doing it myself on a keyboard, they would both reflect my phrasing. But when you give it to a musician, it often comes out of the instrument in a completely new way. When you use live musicians you end up with all the various live personalities interacting with one another in a way that you don’t get with a synth. I mean, we’ve used synths, but only in a genre that uses synths. We try not to use it as a substitute for a new instrument. For the Bollywood episode we used a synth for a string section because there were already too many musicians. I mean, I have a budget. We had another episode in the second season for which we used a twenty-piece group, so that meant for the Bollywood episode we had to not use strings at all, just a synth player. But since the strings in Bollywood are so processed anyway I figured it didn’t matter.

And then we did an 80s pop episode, which was just done at home on synths. There’s a real guitar and a real tambourine, but using synth otherwise allowed us to get our twenty pieces to do the other episode.” Lurie has also been able to draw upon

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simplistic but more perceptive than they get credit for. “I don’t sit down and say, ‘Oh, wait a minute. A raised second? No, we can’t do that because it’s for children.’ I don’t really think about trying to gear it for children at all. The lyric is very clever, and then it’s sung by children, and I think that’s all it takes. In no way do I particularly skew things. There was one episode where they go to outer space, and we were thinking, ‘Hey, we can do Sun Ra!’ But that was too big. We can’t do Sun Ra as a genre, we can’t do John Coltrane as a genre. I won’t do the blues as a genre because I don’t want to hear kids singing in that style.

But anything else... well, there are things you can’t do, but just about anything else I don’t see what the problem is. As long as the lyric is clever and the voice that’s singing it is approachable, I don’t think kids have a problem with it.” And, judging by the runaway success of “The Backyardigans”, Lurie, Burgess and the rest of the team have really found ways to click with their target audience. g

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Steve The Dog & The Winged Tiger

with art by Geoff Bevington and Phil Yeh, colored by Lieve Jerger, tells the true story of how a couch potato dog named Steve actually gets out of the house for the very first time to explore all the things he missed in his hometown Chicago, USA. This book can be an aid in fighting childhood obesity and couch-potato syndrome, bringing back a balance between real life and computer & video games or TV time. A universal story for all ages.

This first limited edition hardcover of just 1,500 copies is numbered and signed by both Phil and Geoff. $30 plus shipping & handling.

The Winged Tiger in Singapore

With art by He Shuxin, Geoff Bevington and Phil Yeh. Colors by Lieve Jerger.

The sequel to the best-selling Steve The Dog & The Winged Tiger title.

This sequel continues the adventures of Steve the Dog and his friend Dot as they travel from Chicago to Singapore. In Singapore they meet Emily and Rocket and see some of the great attractions in that island nation. The main characters again learn a lesson about balancing their time between the computer and real life.

Published and available where fine books are sold in Singapore. Published by Comixguru. A limited number, signed with an original drawing by Phil Yeh are available in the USA for $30 plus s&h. Order online.

Signed books make great gifts for all ages!

Eastwind Studios, POB 750, San Bernardino, CA 92402 or order online - under the Books & Products button

WINGEDTIGER.COM

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Doug TenNapel The Darkness in Our Own Backyard

by Todd S. Jenkins

N

ot many people would attribute their life’s path to the moment when they caught their first newt. But Doug TenNapel is not the average person. Since beginning his career in 1990, as an animator for the cartoon “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”, TenNapel has become one of the most sought-after graphic novelists in the business.

His creations, from 1998’s “Gear” to his most recent GN, “Ghostopolis”, have been acclaimed by both readers and industry insiders as some of the most cutting-edge publications in the genre.

TenNapel blends a strong sense of tradition with innovative storytelling and plot ideas to create memorable and enduring works.

Along the way TenNapel has also dabbled in video games (“Jurassic Park”, “Stimpy’s Invention”, and most importantly, the legendary “Neverhood” series for Dreamworks), film (“The Mothman Prophecies”), television (he was the main puzzle consultant for “Push, Nevada” and the creator of “Earthworm Jim”, “Project G.e.eK.e.R.”, “Ape Escape” and “Catscratch”), children’s books (the series “Doug & Mike’s Strange Kid Chronicles” with Michael Koelsch), album covers and occasional voice-overs. TenNapel won an Eisner Award for Best Humor Publication in 2000 for his work on “Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror”, and has garnered the respect of his peers worldwide for his uncompromising work ethic and creativity. Doug spoke with Uncle Jam from his home in Orange County to discuss matters of art, inspiration, faith, and the weird aesthetics of small towns.

UJ: The last I heard from you, you mentioned that “Ghostopolis” had been optioned for Hollywood, with Hugh Jackman expected in the leading role. What’s the status of that?

DT: We have a script done for it, and it’s been submitted to Disney so we’ll see what they think of it. We’re looking a lot right now at how “Tron” does. The results will dictate a lot of what they will be doing for the next few years as far as the big-budget movies. I’m

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happy with how it’s going so far. We’re having progress, which is more than some of my movie deals could say!

UJ: I remember a couple of years ago that “Monster Zoo” had been optioned by Sam Raimi.

DT: That’s right. That one went back into turn-around. It’s an example of one where they submitted a script and then it just ran out of gas.

There’s still a lot of interest in it all around Hollywood. A lot of people pitching and working on that one, so it’s in good shape still. But there’s not the original push for it. What usually gets people so excited isn’t there; it’s something you just have to resurrect.

UJ: Do you find it hard to translate what you put on the page into a format that will work for Hollywood or television?

DT: I don’t think so. I don’t see much of a difference, really, in all storytelling mediums. They all have their strengths. You weed away certain story elements or certain things that don’t work very well. I’d love to have a music soundtrack on my graphic novels, but I can’t! You just learn to work with the strengths of a medium. There are a lot of similarities between the mediums so there’s not a lot of re-thinking you have to do for the most part.

As far as the storytelling, character, plot, they’re really similar. I’ve seen a lot more movies than I’ve read comic books, so I think the movie genre is even more of an influence on my work than comics are.

UJ: In looking back over your body of work, one of the big themes I see running through much of it is this idea of the evil that’s hiding in plain sight: the T-rex in the cave in the backyard (“Tommysaurus Rex”), the little house that’s a monster lab in Turlock (“Creature Tech”). Is that something you find yourself consciously drawing from, the idea that there are bad things out there that we sometimes might not even notice until somebody steps up and tackles it?

DT: I think it’s pretty universal in story. One of my big influences is Steven Spielberg’s work in the 70s. “Jaws” has a pretty provincial sheriff, then boom! There’s a monster. “E.T.” is suburban. It’s a universal way to bring your audience into the fantasy. It’s much more like the structure of classic fairy tales. You have a normal guy who is suddenly surrounded by an outrageous world or outrageous

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things. Usually the bad guy is pretty outrageous, pretty otherworldly. But sometimes my bad guys are just plain humans, too. It’s not just the bad guys, like I’m saying there’s impending evil all around, but that there’s impending supernatural good all around us, too. There’s wonder and amazement, things kind of right under our noses.

I was raised in a country town (Denair, in California’s San Joaquin Valley) and as a kid I resented part of the culture of comics at the time.

Why are all the cool things happening in cities? Batman in Gotham, Spiderman and all. I thought, “Well, what if Spiderman was set in a small country town?” And that’s kind of “Creature Tech”. That’s kind of what I like about “E.T.” is that it’s much more suburban, like in an outskirt of Irvine or something. Those make more sense to me, and I think there’s a broader audience, a broader swath of Americana that might find interest in that.

UJ: Exactly. I grew up in a small town here in Southern California called Yucaipa.

The town’s population has quadrupled since I graduated, but back then it was so puny and boring that we used to wish for something like that to happen. We had to drive ten miles into the next town to even buy clothes, much less have anything in the way of entertainment or excitement.

DT: Same here. I came up in a small farm town, and I had to ride my bike into Turlock just to go to McDonald’s. Turlock was the big city around there… it’s a great town to have been through.

UJ: I suspected you had some kind of connection with it. I thought Turlock was a really strange place to pull out of your head and plop that story into, but it works so well.

DT: You’ll notice a lot of my stories take place in the San Joaquin Valley. “Creature Tech” is in Turlock; “Tommysaurus” is in Oakhurst, which is on the way out to Yosemite from Turlock; “Earthboy Jacobus” takes place in Modesto. It’s kind of my joke to all the city-dwelling comic guys: there’s a redneck in town, here to tell some stories.

UJ: Another hallmark of your work is that, even though you have this underlying core of good vs. evil that runs through so much of

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the comics world, you shift it in so many different directions. You genre-hop like a madman. I love that you’ll do a Mafia story here, an alien story there and a dinosaur story over here, and make all of them profoundly different while they still carry your signature.

DT: Thank you! That’s the Coen Brothers’ influence on me. They’ll do “Hudsucker Proxy”, where right before that they did “Miller’s Crossing”. They touch on the sentiment of parents in “Raising Arizona”, and then do something like “Fargo”, a straight-up murder mystery.

So they’re a big influence in the genre-bending stuff. I just like the idea of jumping into something fresh. One of these days I want to tackle a romantic comedy, look at the elements there and see how I’m going to marry that to my stuff.

One of the rules I have set for myself for the romantic comedy is no bugs, no monsters, no supernatural.

That will be the first time I do something like that, just straight-up. I mean, obviously my sensibilities, the quirkiness and stuff will come through, but I really want to keep it down. There are certain genres that you can’t really put sci-fi into without breaking them. “Iron West” really is a faithful Western, even though there are robots in it. It’s very much a Western. With romantic comedy, I don’t know if you can put a seven-foot-tall praying mantis into that and still have it be a romantic comedy. I don’t want to break it; I want to pay respect to the genre.

UJ: Out of all the graphic artists who have come before you in this line of work, who really shaped the way you wanted to do things?

DT: As far as a giant in the actual artistry of comics, Mike Mignola (“Hellboy”) is a big influence on me. Not that I want to emulate his style – I’ll never do it as well as he does – it’s just how he really puts a lot of design principles in his work.

His work ethic and style, he’s actually very classic in what he’s doing. It’s very potent, too. I love the formulas he’s working out, his sensibilities. There’s a lot of strength in that work.

Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”) is another one, drawing from classic comics and a classic approach to illustration…and

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Jeff Smith (“Bone”). So forget story; all my guys are really skill-based. I always felt like I needed to work on my own skills, so I wanted all my heroes to have a really high skill set. Dave Stevens’ “Rocketeer” is another one that was really influential, especially on my early work.

UJ: The Watterson connection is interesting because he’s one of those who had this fantasy element that would disappear as soon as somebody turned a corner. Hobbes was the talking tiger until someone came into the room. I see a lot of that spirit in your work, where you’ve got this absolutely chaotic stuff going on. Then the page turns and it’s back to normalcy, and it’s just as big a shock to the system as what was happening on the page before.

DT: I’m always trying to challenge my own worldview. A lot of artists my age are either modernist or postmodernist. I’m trying to transcend both of those worldviews because there are huge problems with both of them. The modernist demands that all the facts are there, that all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed, that there’s an explanation for everything. The postmodernist is very existential; the fairy element is very abrupt and kind of poofs in and out of reality. That’s where I would put “Calvin and Hobbes” because it’s very existential.

I think Watterson is probably much more of a Hobbes than a Calvin. So I’ll tell stories from those points of view because it’s naturally what I want to fall into. But I want to challenge myself to try and transcend that. The way I try to do that is to go back and be more of a kind of medieval thinker. I’m finding a lot more fun and creativity coming from the medieval

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mindset, where “Ghostopolis” came from. It’s a medieval style of fairy tale with a richer stability to it, and it really feels like something from the past much more than the present.

UJ: A lot of your characters struggle with the issues of morality and faith. In “Creature Tech” you have the scientist who becomes a scientist because, in part, he’s trying to get away from the fact that his dad was a pastor. He’s looking for something different, then that whole thing gets turned upside-down.

DT: That’s kind of the catastrophe element of story, and it’s a rule of fairytale. As soon as a man says, “I don’t believe in magic”, pity that man because the story is just going to beat the crud out of him. You have to pay for that. Any time you have an atheistic scientist, as soon as you nail down what it is that he’s running from, you know the story is going to pin him down and just beat him up until he learns or transcends. There are so many stories within comic book culture which are, just by default, either atheistic, which is modern, or existential, which is postmodern. I always found it lazy, like the genre of comics wasn’t doing its job in being as great of a medium as it could be, which is to really think outside of the box and transcend those things. A lot of what I’m getting from comics culture is kind of a knee-jerk hostility toward the past, tradition, father figures, patriotism and all that. So I sort of started going in and really embracing those. I have started some of my heroes with a problem with patriotism and all that. Then, by the end, they get it and they learn to overcome that reflex. That’s where a lot of my own worldview is coming from. I’m trying to do

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something by being traditional in a lot of ways. A philosopher once said, “When everyone else is dancing in the room, the best way to stand out is by holding still.”

UJ: I also like the fact that you’re not afraid to leave some loose ends hanging. Even though you do operate from a more traditionalist structure in a lot of ways, you don’t have to have all of the questions answered by the end of the book. Do you think that comes from the story’s development, or do you try to consciously leave those things hanging out there at times to make people think?

DT: It’s not conscious, in that I don’t put rabbit trails that aren’t sewn up; it’s more natural than that. I don’t feel an obligation to explain everything. When it comes down to writing and drawing, it starts to narrow itself down for you. It forces you to start editing things out, narrowing things down, saying,”What must I tell by the end of this story?” So, often things that don’t have to be explained won’t be, but those that have to be, will be. I make sure that the big things, the big plot stuff, all tend to address more. That’s one side of it. The other side of it is, within all great storytelling – and, again, this is like medieval storytelling – there is a longing. And longing is very rarely allowed to stay in a story. That’s something that you’ll find in a lot of my storytelling. When all of the big plot points are sewn up, there is still a grief and a longing so that not everything is perfectly sewn up. It’s kind of a tribute to real life. I believe all of the answers are available, but not all of them are given. You should always sense that there are a lot more journeys that these characters are going to go on that are probably just as interesting as the one in the book. Their lives aren’t done, but you’ve glimpsed into someone’s life where something extraordinary has happened, and hopefully extraordinary things are going to continue to happen now that they’ve had this paradigm change.

To go on these journeys is painful. These characters are put through the wringer, and there’s going to be a lot more time that they need to heal. But that’s not what most stories are about, I don’t think. It’s the post-third-act stuff that’s implied.

They’ve got a lot of work to do, but they now have some of the tools and information they need to work through it. They might have been kind of a crippled philosophical slave before, but now they are a bit more enlightened. You get the sense that they’re going to be okay. You don’t know how they’re going to do it, and it will probably fall apart for them a couple more times before they’re done. That’s what I mean by the longing.

When you watch “Lord of the Rings”, oh, my gosh! The movie had that theme song, and when you hear that theme, to me, it’s the greatest representation of longing in music I have ever heard. It breaks my heart. And you see Frodo at the end, he did his thing and lost his finger, and you sense that he’s gone through hell. Those who looked through the palantír and those who touched the ring, they have to go to the other side.

They can’t stay here. It’s that longing feeling that things aren’t just going to be okay and it’s not going to be easy. To me that’s what reality feels like. No matter how good a day you have, you can still feel like something’s missing and you’re itchy. And that’s not just totally dismissed or tidied up by some little poppsychology statement. There’s something truly fallen about us,

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something truly broken, and even the resurrected Christian has longing. It’s not done, not “game over”.

UJ: In fact, once you get to that point, you realize it’s only just beginning from that faith standpoint, so it changes the stage you’re at.

DT: I always warn fellow Christians that if they were given some pipe dream that, now that you’re saved you’re going to totally fix your life, fix your marriage, you’re gonna do better at your job, that’s just bull prosperity doctrine that I don’t support. It’s bad theology. If anything, I might tell them, “Brace yourself, because there’s a very good chance that everything is going to fall in on you now.”

UJ: Right. The Bible says, “In this world you will have trouble, but fear not, for I have overcome the world.” It’s not saying you have overcome the world.

DT: And it’s obvious that God’s preparing you for troubles.

Give that message to people! Go this route of Christianity and face trouble like never before.

UJ: The graphic novel industry does get bogged down in cliché like anything else. It’s more interesting when you can break out of that box and go for something that not only isn’t clichéd but is a lot closer to the reality of the situation.

DT: That’s why I made the alien in “Black Cherry” a practicing Catholic. I have a Protestant friend who is against Catholics who said, “Why did you make him a Catholic?!” I told him, “Well you should be happy because I almost made him a Mormon!” I just thought, with that whole idea that aliens are so far beyond all of us that they don’t need religion, I thought it would be interesting for them to find an alien that’s far more religious than any Catholic. It’s my little wink at life. I know I’m jabbing at my culture and all that, but we have such an amazingly creative media in graphic novels, and the failure of imagination is staggering to me. I’m all for clichés and stereotypes, and I love that people are covering the bases in graphic novels. I wish there was a little higher percentage of people exploring things that aren’t just trite, callous, crass, pornographic. That’s so boring, and the way that’s usually approached is the least creative way. You want to find something that’s really hard to do? Show me beauty anywhere in graphic novels. I don’t know that anyone has truly approached the subject of beauty and captured it in the medium in the way that Michelangelo’s “David” is beautiful. I know our medium is capable of that, and man, when someone discovers that, then that book is going to be huge.

UJ: What’s next on the agenda in the TenNapel universe?

DT: Some pretty amazing stuff is coming down the pike. I have a web comic that came out on January 10th called “Rat Fist”. I’m hoping “Earthworm Jim” fans like it. It’s going to be pretty funky and bizarre, and I’m not sure where it’s going to go. That’s going to be part of the fun for me on that one. I finished my next book for Scholastic, which comes out next summer. It’s called “Bad Island”. And I’ll give you an exclusive, for the first time ever because no one has heard this title before for my next book I’m working on now. I’m 160 pages into my next graphic novel; it will be 288 pages long, and it’s called “Cardboard”. You’re the first to know. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and I’m ecstatic about it. g

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Not The Last of the Unicorns

By Terri Elders

T

o quote a certain blue jay, “Well, I’ll be a squab under glass!” I finally met Peter S. Beagle, and he’s just as charming as his stories!

In the late 1960s I read A Fine and Private Place, really an elegiac prose poem that he wrote when he was only nineteen. From its opening line, “The baloney weighed the raven down,” I was hooked, imagining myself playing chess with ghosts in a graveyard.

Shortly thereafter I discovered The Last Unicorn, featuring the aforementioned gossipy blue jay, a cryptic butterfly and an amorous oak. Plus, of course, the unforgettable human characters: the inept magician Schmendrick, Molly Grue, Prince Lir and Lady Amalthea. Oh…and the unicorn.

Then after I read the amusing I See by My Outfit, an autobiographical recounting of a cross-country motor bike trip in the early l960s, I somehow lost track of Beagle. Though I didn’t take to haunting cemeteries in search of chess partners, I did continue to be absorbed in unicorns. Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s I collected the fabulous creature in a million forms, bookmarks, stickers, books, coffee mugs, jewelry, even a keychain. I saw The Hunt of the Unicorn tapestries at New York City’s Cloisters, and The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in Paris’s Cluny. Unicorn paintings by Phillip Yeh and Janet Valentine still hang in my home today.

Beagle began to gain fame in the ‘80s when his animated movie of The Last Unicorn became the favorite flick of every child and many adults. I even dragged a boyfriend off to see it, and he didn’t even roll his eyes. A musician, he fell in love with the score, from the moment the band America began playing the title track on the opening credits. I, of course, fell in love with voice actor Jeff Bridge’s mellifluent King Lir. Bumping into Beagle I never dreamed I’d ever bump into Beagle, let alone last Halloween weekend at the Long Beach Comic Con. What was he doing hawking his books at such an event? Why wasn’t he ensconced in his opulent digs in Malibu or Beverly Hills, resting on his laurels and his…royalties?

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While I waited for the line of autograph seekers to diminish, I chatted with Connor Cochran, Beagle’s friend, editor, agent, publicist, business manager, sometime publisher, and fulltime champion since 2001.

Why the pair travel the science fiction and fantasy circuit turned out to be a story as strange as some of Beagle’s own tales.

Essentially, Cochran claims, Beagle, while one of the cleverest writers in the world, lacked business skills. Consequently he ended up being manipulated.

Cochran referred me to an issue of Green Man Review, with a piece, The Problems on Hand, and How You Can Help. In this piece Cochran details the dispute with Granada Media over the l982 animated version of The Last Unicorn, and the conflict with Saul Zaentz over the animated version of The Lord of the Rings. Lesser issues include film rights to Farrell and Lila the Werewolf and stage rights to A Fine and Private Place.

The major problem, according to Cochran, is the ongoing financial dispute with Granada over nonpayment of contractually due profit and merchandising shares. Cochrane estimates that Beagle is owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, or even millions.

“He was broke, about to be homeless, when we met,” Cochran recalled. “And he had no idea how much he was loved in the world and how people worldwide were waiting to read more of his work.”

I admitted I’d love to read more Beagle, but hadn’t been aware that more existed. Beagle’s detour as a screenwriter had interrupted his early career direction as a novelist, magazine nonfiction author, and short-story writer.

“He’s written over sixty stories and two new novels in the last five years. And there’s more on the way,” Cochran said.

A Sequel Afoot “Will there ever be a sequel to The Last Unicorn?” I asked.

Readers have always wondered if the unicorn would remain solitary forever.

“Peter continues to think and take notes for that novel, but

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he won’t start writing it for a while. He’s got two other novels he’s still polishing, and one that he wants to write before he starts in on Sooz’s tale. As for what specific shape her story is taking as he thinks, I don’t know. He shares his first drafts with me, but not his early thoughts. Meanwhile he has written three new Schmendrick stories, all set before The Last Unicorn that will be appearing in 2011 in various places” said Cochran.

Sooz appears in a semi-sequel in the form of a novelette Two Hearts, which was first published in Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine’s October/November 2005 issue. It since has seen reprinted in several collections. The tale won the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novelette and the 2007 Nebula Award for the same category.

The line waiting to talk with Beagle finally dissolved, so I introduced myself to Beagle. Did we talk about The Last Unicorn?

Not at all. We talked about my recent studies in Victorian literature at the University of Cambridge, and why it’s important to read to children.

“And not just children’s books,” Beagle said. “I read The Old Man and the Sea to my sons in one long night. I started in and they became engrossed, had tears in their eyes. I couldn’t stop…they wouldn’t have been able to go to sleep, plus when I started to read it aloud, I hadn’t realized it didn’t have chapter breaks. So I had to go on and on until the end.”

Beagle mentioned an earlier still-unpublished book, Mirror Kingdom, which featured a gay black man in Paris of the 1950s. In recent years he’s been turning out more short stories.

“I still think of myself primarily as a novelist. I’ve had to reinvent myself,” he said.

Of the films he’s directed, his favorite was the l977 adaptation of Don Robinson’s novel, The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened, with a cast that included James Earl Jones, Debbie Allen and Jimmie Walker.

“One day towards the end of the filming my son was on the set, and Jones said, right in front of him, ‘Peter writes black dialog like a poet.’ I was so proud.”

As for early influences, Beagle mentioned Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White. He also admired Robert Nathan, who wrote Portrait of Jennie and other fantasy novels in the first half the twentieth century. In fact, Beagle reminded me, he’d dedicated The Last Unicorn to Nathan.

That dedication reads: “To the memory of Dr. Olfert Dapper, who saw a wild unicorn in the Maine woods in l673, and for Robert Nathan, who has seen one or two in Los Angeles.”

In recent months I’ve read more Beagle, including Tamsin, a ghost story starring a headstrong14-year-old girl from the Bronx who moves to a farmhouse in Dorset, England, and encounters a ghost from the fifteenth century. That Beagle can write a story from the perspective of a young girl, in a completely believable fashion, shows his enormous skill in capturing voice. The adolescent, by the way, is named Jenny, which I’m certain is a nod to the haunting heroine of that Nathan book of Beagle’s youth and my own.

Conlan Press has announced that soon there will be a complete line-by-line explanation of all the butterfly’s remarks from The Last Unicorn in a piece called The Butterfly Decodex. In March, 2011, Conlan Press will ship Beagle’s new story collection Sleight of Hand, which will include The Woman Who Married the Man in the Moon, a brand-new Schmendrick story, Beagle’s first since he wrote “Two Hearts” back in 2005.

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The Clamoring Crowd I’ve done some checking on Beagle’s continuing popularity. On Super Bowl Sunday, 2011, Beagle had 2,343 fans on Facebook’s Last Unicorn page. The Internet Movie Data Base discussions teemed with Beagle-related topics such as who should direct a live action version of The Last Unicorn, which has been rumored for years to be a possibility. One fan posted: “You want a movie about unicorns and fairytale kingdoms? Hire Ridley Scott!”

I coaxed one of my book clubs to read The Last Unicorn. Some of the women were not friends of fantasy, but one, Liz Voltz, a ski instructor from Beaver Creek, Colorado, said when she got to the line, “The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships,” she got the shivers. “I was so excited when all the missing unicorns were released from the sea and came in from the foam!”

I asked a writer, Allison Pang, of Northern Virginia, if Beagle were an influence. She responded: “I was in second grade and all about unicorns. My mother rented The Last Unicorn for a birthday party. This was in 1982, mind, and therefore a Very Big Deal. Not only did I watch it over and over again until she had to return it two days later, I taped it on the little hand held tape recorder someone had gotten me. And I listened to it. Every night. For at least a month. In 1985 I found the book at the local library and that was that. I’ve read it at least once a year since then, but it’s been so very interesting to see how my perception of the story has changed as I’ve grown. On the surface it seems like a very simple fairy tale – the last unicorn in the world rescuing her people – but peeling back that outermost skin reveals layer upon layer of nuanced meaning: hope, loss, love, despair, desire – they’re all there, but they’re woven together with a masterful subtlety that is very hard to capture. I think for me it’s the precise and lyrical tone of the words. Some of the phrases are like living poetry and others are so peculiar I cannot help but be drawn into them. As a writer myself, I will admit I’ve attempted to emulate the same sort of magic, but I suspect I’ll never truly be able to manage it. I did put a unicorn in my book, A Brush of Darkness, although I went the opposite way.

Phineas is really a bit of an anti-unicorn, seeing as he is rather small and perverted, but I think part of that is because any “real” unicorn would never live up to my expectations. I cannot write Amalthea, and I wouldn’t want to try.”

But Beagle can write Amalthea. So we’re all clamoring for the full-length sequel. g

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Uncle Jam: After many years when you worked with Moebius on Tron, we caught up with you last November at the CTN Expo in Burbank. Did you happen to see Tron Legacy? Did you like it?

Arne Wong: It had all the bells and whistles but no content. I was looking for the big-you know…where my jaw dropped. I felt that the polished effects were really well done and then bringing back his other self and all that was a kind of cool idea, but, in Tron we broke through the envelope, this one didn’t break through the envelope. There wasn’t anything that was “breakthrough” in either content or story line or going to a new world or what that world looks like today.

They did a version of the old world, like they just left and came back and it had kind of grown a little bit. It should be exponentially evolved. I think it should be 100 times more to the future of what they meant it to look like, to the point that I would just be blown away; out of my socks; out of my seat just being in this new place, but the new place wasn’t really new. I recognized all the effects. I recognized the landscape. There wasn’t anything like Tron. You entered into this new landscape in that first movie.

UJ: I think the stories are not that original in a lot of the new movies.

AW: Yeah, and technology is moving so fast now. I watch Tech Talk. They are the most brilliant people on the planet talking about what’s going on in science, technology, astronomy, psychology, you name it. They have interviews with the top physicists or the top Microsoft guy, for example.

They’ll have the most evolved guy building the latest technology and they’ll talk about it. This one guy just puts these gloves on and he is able to make an internet surface on anything. Whether it’s a ball or a piece of paper. You don’t need a monitor. Where we’re going is so fast and so cool and yet the movies aren’t going there. They’re not quite there. Sci fi is supposed to be ahead of our times. We’re supposed to be catching up with the fantasy and the imagination and now the technology is going faster than our imaginations.

UJ: What about the students that you’re teaching?

AW: I teach in a digital media college. They are constantly upgrading software. So I’m looking at what’s coming in and I talk to the teachers.

UJ: What about the students? Are they showing you more imagination these days?

AW: Not so much imagination; but technically they come in with an intuitive knowledge of software to the point that if they have never touched the software, and you give them an idea how it works they can actually figure it out themselves in about 10 minutes. Whereas I would still be struggling through it and needing a manual or calling someone up. They come in with this attitude: “I can do this job -this is no big deal-I’ve been playing games since I was born. My whole mind is in this digital Mecca and this is a language that I can speak”. There used to be separate little softwares and you had to have separate ways to learn them but they’re all becoming more common

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and they’re coming together to the point that all the media are going to be on one platform so you could do Word, Photoshop, video editing, and making an animation all on the same screen. Touch screen is the way to go. That’s where we’re headed and it’s almost here. They’ve already developed it but they haven’t figured out how to market it. That’s coming. Like IPad2. We’re going into another generation. Pretty soon IPads will be on sketchpads. We’ll be able to draw beautifully. That’s what I’m waiting for--to be able to sketch and draw and to be able to move the background with my fingers instead of with a cursor.

UJ: So what’s the rationale why you are teaching 2-D as opposed to 3-D? What are they thinking?

AW: I teach at the Academy of Art University, I teach at State College, and I teach at this private Emeryville college in visual arts. They all have the same idea that if you are going to go into 3-D you need to have a little background in 2-D to understand the principles that go into an animation.

There’s the information that guys like Chuck Jones and Tex Avery have passed on. I use those things because it teaches them the nuts and bolts of timing and character acting and things like that on a real basic level and then having them work on machines that are not 3-D but 2-D in the sense that they scan in their artwork and it goes up on a flipbook which is software we use and they kind of work the way we do in 2-D. They complain at first that they don’t like to draw and why do they have to draw, but by the end of the course they are really appreciating where 2-D has come from and how difficult it really is. They learn the nuts and bolts of timing from a 2-D perspective which is easier than 3-D, because when you teach somebody a ball bounce in 3-D, there is so much software understanding just to get the ball to bounce.

By the time you get all that down, it’s a week later.

Whereas with 2-D you draw that ball and you get the ball bouncing in the first hour.

You just do it. They get to see the results immediately.

UJ: Now are you drawing from a tablet like you said or

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are you drawing on paper?

AW: Light box, animation paper…they’re learning the old style but instead of shooting it, they use a scanner.

UJ: So new technology meets old?

AW: Yes it’s a crossover and they actually can color too. What they’re getting here is they’re learning to draw a little bit, thumbnail, storyboard, things like that- which is important when they get into 3-D. When they do 3D they get to do a lot of creating poses and key positions and if they can stretch the key positions they’re a lot further ahead than the students who can’t, because he has to build the pose first so he’s way behind the other guy who has already figured out the pose he wants and he just puts them in.

UJ: Do you find that these kids didn’t really have a background in drawing the old fashioned way?

AW: It’s very normal that they don’t know that. I’d say one or two people out of an entire class of 12 or 15 can draw. The rest slides downhill to a person who can barely draw a circle. They come in with no drawing ability and want to learn 3-D, because they didn’t think they would have to draw to do 3-D. So I sometimes have to go back and give them the Marvel book, How to Draw, and go all the way back to perspective because they don’t even know that. Because you know with computers they’ve already built the perspective in and you don’t have to know how to draw things in perspective, you just create the horizon line and then boom--you’re there.

But when they draw it they appreciate the idea. Like you said, it helps generate the creativity in different ways. And I show them lots of videos of the old guys like Ollie Johnson or Norman McLaren. I show them a lot of stuff to give them a background of where animation came from. They should appreciate all the evolutionary steps to animation that led them to where they are today UJ: You look at the old Disney stuff. You look at Eyvand Earle for example, on Sleeping Beauty. You look at Gustaf Tenggren on Pinocchio. To me what’s lacking on most of the things I see, especially on 2-D that I see with the grandkids on TV, there’s almost no art in this stuff. But even when I look at 3-D stuff, there’s a lack of artistic sensibility when you compare it toTenggren in Pinocchio or you look at Earle and what he did in Sleeping Beauty. You can actually see an artist. And in all the Chuck Jones stuff… especially the backgrounds. That’s what I’m worried about, because 3-D is very polished but there is a lack of soul.

AW: You can’t touch it with any human touches. It’s not easy. With 2-D, you touch the paper and you draw with the pencil. You imbue the artwork...you’re connecting even if it goes into a digital container. When you don’t touch it, then the whole thing is totally disconnected from you. You’re still moving it around, you’re still placing it and positioning it, but you don’t get to physically touch it. I feel they’re going to have to do more to get there… to replace that touching part. And I think they will eventually because these kids are smart and they know what’s missing. They’re just trying to get the software to develop to that point, but there is still something to be said about where the artist touches the art directly … like the drawing ability vs. a pre-dreamed model that

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somebody gives you. There is something different when you draw it than when you just move a puppet around and that’s basically what it is...you’re moving a puppet instead of drawing a character and imagining. But it’s not impossible. I’ve noticed that the last few animation films I’ve seen, like Tangled, I’ve noticed that they got all the good stuff that we were trying to teach them. They got the principles down. They have the follow-through and that stuff is looking sharper and sharper.

UJ: Moebius mentioned Tangled and that he really enjoyed it. He and his wife loved the expressions on the characters.

AW: We always struggle with that in 2-D. Out of maybe 5 scenes one may be a gem; because you have to hurry thru the other ones and maybe you didn’t put enough time into it. If you put enough time into a scene you really can feel it. All that knowledge it took to get there, these kids have it already starting out. What took me 10 years to get, busting my chops; they got in 1 or 2 years. When they get out of school they are already geared up where it took me 10 years to gear up and I was working and living and trying to get there. So they’re already shooting off from there. If they’re smart and they’re really ambitious, they can go far. Even though it’s 3-D, I can see the craftsmanship is coming together. Again, content is still missing but when it comes to technique I see it really spewing out. When I saw Avatar, when the live action and the 3-D character were next to each other you couldn’t tell the difference. It wasn’t like Dick Van Dyke and the little penguins dancing together. It was like these 2 things were in the same reality. It’s the old yin-yang symbol. You have all this technology with no content. Technology is skyrocketing forward and the offset of that is that creativity is dropping. You go to other places, like Europe, it’s the other way around. Creativity is high and technique and technology is low. There’s gotta be a bridge somewhere and hopefully I can participate in that when it happens.

UJ: What were you doing before Tron? What was your background?

AW: TV commercials. I was trained under John Freeman. He animated Lady and the Tramp. He was a Disney lifer. When I met him he was retired and doing commercials and my first job was a Tony the Tiger commercial. I learned under him as an apprentice and then from there I learned under Corny Cole (Looney Tunes). I was lucky to work under Duane Crowther, who was the animator for The Blue Meanie. He taught me how to be a director. He showed me the ropes and let me go and I would do my own commercials.

UJ: This was in the70’s?

AW: Yeah, mid 70’s. And then I left and started my own company to do my own commercials and that was around the time during the 80’s when Tron came around. Then I worked in Hong Kong and when I got back I started doing commercials. That was my bread and butter. Of course Moebius was still in the picture, because at the time he wanted to stay in America.

I helped him get a visa and I helped him find a place in Venice and then he brought his whole family over and I helped them get into school. I set them up and got them phones. That was really a fun time. They came into my studio in Santa Monica and shared my office space. Here I had Moebius in my office and nobody knew who Moebius was yet. Only the artists and some film people. The people who came to visit were guys like Peter Lloyd (Tron) and Rick Griffin.

UJ: Rick Griffin showed up?

AW: Yeah, we worked on a commercial. He did backgrounds for me. He was such a trip. I went down to his house in Costa Mesa and he was totally into Egyptian scriptures and reading about Anana. He was fanatical in that. He would disappear for weeks. I was working on this commercial and he was doing the background and I would call him on a Monday and say “Hey what’s happening? Are you going to bring that background?” No response…for days. I called his family “Where’s Rick?” They said “Oh he kinda does this every once in awhile. He disappears.” “Where does he go?”

“I don’t know- maybe in the studio. If he does, he locks it up and you can’t get in.”

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UJ: Maybe he was surfing. Did you ever surf with Rick?

AW: No, I didn’t. What he did was, he would disappear for about a week or two and then come back. I was pulling my hair out because my commercial needed to get done. I literally had him painting the backgrounds under camera while we were shooting and blow drying the art right at the camera, because he was so late. We got to be good friends. We hung around his studio a lot.

UJ: When I interviewed Rick in 1976 he had just gotten back from Europe and he mentioned that he saw this cool guy from France, saw his artwork but he didn’t meet the guy. This turned out to be Moebius. He got to meet Moebius at your place in Santa Monica? Do you have any photos of that?

AW: No, back then you didn’t have cameras sitting around all the time UJ: How did Rick and Moebius hit it off ?

AW: Everybody respected everybody. Jean is such a humble guy, most people don’t even know who he is until I accidentally say “That’s Moebius.”

He likes to be called Jean and so I say “This is Jean” “Oh, hi Jean”, and I go “Well, he’s also known as Moebius” and that’s when people either faint or just have a clueless look on their face like “who’s that?”

UJ: I noticed at the CTN expo that a lot of young people did not really know who Moebius is. A few did, but I would say there is still a lack of a sense of history of the artists. I’ve had young artists at comic con say “Who’s Jack Kirby?” And I say, “How can you draw superheroes if you don’t know who Jack Kirby was?” That’s kind of what we’re trying to do with Uncle Jam, to run some old interviews so the younger people know who these people are.

AW: Did I ever tell you the story of ZAP the movie? I think it was around the time I first met him in the early 80’s and I had this idea. I had the collection of ZAP Comix and said lets get all the artists together and make a movie based on ZAP. Rick is “I’m in” and I got a hold of (Victor) Moscoso and I got a hold of R. Crumb, and everybody was ok as long as everybody was ok with each other. Rick, Crumb, Moscoso, Gilbert Shelton, S. Clay Wilson, and Robert Williams. They were all in. We agreed that I would get the money to make a feature film and they would all get a piece. Everybody would get a 5 or 10 minute piece and they would do whatever they want.

There would be a bridge between one artist and another. So I sold the idea.

The guy who produced Tron said “I can give you $1.4 million. How about that?” So I went back to everybody and said “Look, we’re not making a $5-10 million feature but we can make a $1 million one and it still can be ok. Let’s just get it out. But we could not come to a final agreement and the whole project went up in smoke. I watched all the money disappear and the guys pulled out.

UJ: What a shame. Tell us about the dome project.

AW: It’s a new media. We don’t even know it’s potential. The film I made is called Tales of the Maya Skies. It’s a National Science Foundation grant to research whether or not immersive technology retains content better than flat screen technology. Immersive screen created a different learning response and so that‘s what the grant was about and they used Maya Skies as the content. They went through four directors and four scripts and they all got shot down. They were running out of time and money and I was the story board artist for the first one, so they brought me in and asked me if I’d direct it. I said “Ok, if I can control the script too.” They said ok. I was looking at the script and said “You guys are talking down to the Mayans.

You are scientists talking about some primitive society and that ain’t gonna fly. You gotta come from the Mayan point of view. They said “Mayans were not scientists.” I said “Yes, they were scientists. The dictionary definition of scientists is to research and record your findings. That’s what a scientist does, and that’s what these guys did. They measured the skies, they wrote it down and they kept records of it.”

UJ: They also had zero.

AW: Yeah they came up with that. So, we made the film. We went from what they call naked eye view of the universe. We came from the Mayan’s

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perspective, which I think was the turning point of the script –made the script work. We got a Mayan writer. We got Lila Downs to do the music and the narrations. She is a famous Mexican singer, whose mother is Mayan.

She was the torch singer in Frida. She’s great. So we were really lucky to get her. We opened the film in Mexico City because it’s a co–production with Mexico and the Chabot Space and Science Center. The producer, Konda Mason, is African American and the director is Arne Jin An Wong, who is a Chinese American. We show up in Mexico City to open Maya Skies about the Mayan people in the center of Mexico with a gala red carpet opening and the minister of education. And they are looking at us like “What? And you don’t speak Spanish either. How could you be making a movie about us?” When it was done everybody stood up and applauded. They even had 9 Mayan shamans flown up from Yucatán, because if they liked it then it was ok. They had never even been in a plane. So these guys did a ceremony and it was a big gala thing and then afterwards they gave their approval because it was done with integrity in the whole ancient Mayan perspective.

And we used mostly Mayan people to tell us how to do this. We went through the ritual. We did the ceremony. I did the sweat lodge with them in the beginning. The shaman told me what was important and I put it in the script. In the end, when it was finished, I went back to the same place and did the closing ceremony with the shamans and we closed out the whole project. It was all done the right way. We didn’t make up anything and we didn’t project anything outside of what was truly what we knew.

UJ: Did you mention anything about next year being the end of the world?

AW: Yes, they don’t see it as a big deal. They see the world making a bigger thing out of it than what it is. There’s January 1, 2012; then there’s January 1, 2013. The Mayan calendar-the 5250 year long calendar- comes to an end on September 22, 2012 and then the next 5250 begins with another cycle.

UJ: Like the Age of Aquarius and the Piscean Age. AW: Exactly. It’s an era. They have more than one calendar. That’s just one of their calendars.

UJ: I think it’s going to be a good thing.

AW: Me, too. It’s a transition because it’s moving from one cycle to another and I believe we are integrating spirit and matter; where before it was just spirit by itself, which was the religious period and then we went into science and technology and industry and now we’re integrating both of them and we’re into something new.

UJ: You’re very optimistic. Very good.

AW: Oh yeah, well some things might happen; but I think its all part of any birth canal. When you go through a birth canal it all appears dark and it looks like you’re coming to an end.

UJ: Where can people see Maya Skies?

AW: You can see it in Oakland at the Chabot Space and Science Center and maybe in Santa Barbara at the Gladwin Planetarium at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. You have to call because they rotate their showings. The film is 30 minutes long and it was a 2 ½ year project. It took 3 years to finish because half of it was used up with other directors and other scripts. We would have done a better job but it is still amazing as it is.

My next project is for the Hawaii Planetarium. We developed the concept and I pitched it and now we’re looking for funding. We’re gonna start under water. We’re gonna show how the lava breaks out from the mantle and pushes its way to the surface. It takes a million years before it even hits the water’s surface. We’re gonna show all that real quickly. The oldest island is Kauai. As you go south, they get younger. The big island is the youngest one. It’s only about a million years old. That’s why there are hardly any beaches or sand there. That’s why everything’s still black rock.

UJ: You were living in a tree house in Hawaii. Can you tell us about that?

AW: It was on the big island in south Kona around 2000. 2-D animation had kind of run out and the big thrill was 3-D; but 3-D was still Silicone Graphic machines and laptops weren’t invented yet. It was really a big deal.

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You would have to spend over $100,000 for a machine to do 3-D. I couldn’t afford that, so I basically went out of business and couldn’t transition into the new one. I had some land in Hawaii and had a tree house there, so I thought I would go there for a few months, maybe spend the summer there. Wait for the thing to blow over, how can 2-D die?...it’s impossible. I trained my whole life to be a 2-D animator. I trained with all these guys and here I finally got good at it and… “Where did it go?”

UJ: I think there were a lot of people feeling like you were.

AW: And I was thinking it’s gotta come back, so I went to Hawaii to chill out and I thought I was going to be there for a few months. A year went by. I was calling LA and people were saying “It’s getting so dry. I think I’m gonna have to work overseas somewhere.” Everybody was leaving.

I almost gave up animation. I started teaching surfing at the beaches, and I’d go to hotels and teach Tai Chi. I went to elementary schools and taught how to draw Sponge Bob and stuff like that. That was my life. That’s what I did and I lived in my tree house.

UJ: You didn’t have running water or anything?

AW: No, I had no water; no electricity. Even the bathroom was an outhouse that somebody donated after a year. I lived like this for almost 2 years. My mom got sick so I came back here to take care of her. I thought I was just going to be here for a short time and then she got worse so my father said don’t go back because we didn’t know what was going to happen, so then I became her primary caretaker for the following year until she passed. And she passed in my arms which was really a trip. When I left San Francisco, I was 24 and I never came back except to visit. My mom got my girlfriend, who is now my wife, to come see me. I had broken up with her and we were separated. She was in Mexico and I was in Hawaii. When I came back to see my mom she said “Where’s Dania?” and I said “Dania and I broke up 3 years ago.” And she kept saying “I want to see Dania.” I didn’t even know where to find her in Mexico, so I tracked her down through somebody who knew somebody who had an email and I asked if she would like to come visit San Francisco. It took awhile but she agreed. I said I would pay for the gas. She had a car and was driving from Mexico. My mother’s birthday is August 25 and I was hoping she would make it back in time for the birthday. On her birthday my mom said “Where’s Dania?” and I said “She’s on the road somewhere and I think she may be here sometime today.”

She showed up about 4:00 in the afternoon. My mother was really happy. We did the birthday cake, we sang happy birthday, and then she said she had to go to the bathroom, so every one had to leave the room so I could help her.

When I went to help her get up that’s when she went, right in my arms on her birthday after bringing Dania. So I took it as a sign and I asked Dania to marry me.

UJ: So how did that go over?

AW: She said yes and we stayed in San Francisco. I didn’t go back to Hawaii and I ended up teaching. g

http://www.jinanwong.com http://www.mayaskies.org

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W

e came back to Singapore for the Singapore Toy, Games, & Comic Convention in December 2010 for the second time in one year!

Singapore prides itself on being a nation of fans. They have the best fans for all popular things in the world, from music to comics. They also have a thriving new Marina Bay Sands Casino, which is an architectural marvel, and the newest Universal Studios on Sentosa Island. What once was a place to

stay perhaps for a day while changing flights at the world’s best airport, is now a destination point.

I had always heard that Singapore’s Orchard Road has the best Christmas decorations in the world and since we were in town in December, I had to check it out! We brought The Simpsons artist Phil Ortiz with us, as both of us were special guests at the convention. Our suites at the Peninsula Excelsior Hotel provided us with magnificent views of the harbor, a Ferris wheel actually bigger than the one in London, the Marina Bay Sands Casino, and some world class views of the city. The Singapore Toy, Games, & Comic Convention proved to be like so many of the pop culture conventions in the states with plenty of Simpsons fans! One of the highlights was running into Edward James Olmos, with whom I received an award many years ago at Sony Studios in Los Angeles for our work in literacy. Talk about a small world, as Phil Ortiz has been in talks with Edward on his own animation project. Olmos was in Singapore and Malaysia working on his own project. Our main reason for this trip was to debut The Winged Tiger in Singapore, which is the sequel to Steve the Dog and the Winged Tiger, set in my birth city of Chicago. In this new book, Geoff Bevington (Steve’s creator) and I teamed up with Singaporean cartoonist He Shuxin. The black and white art was magnificently colored by Lieve Jerger. Shuxin’s publishing company published this book and we will have sequels set all over the world.

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One evening we took off to see the decorations and lights on Orchard Road and they didn’t disappoint. Block after block of fabulous shopping malls done up inside and out like I had never seen before in my world travels! Singapore prides itself on being tolerant of all faiths, and seeing their Christmas lights really gave me some optimism for the future. The majority of Singapore is made up of Chinese, but this being a former British colony, a lot of people are of one Christian sect or another, with a lot of Buddhists and Taoists thrown in the mix. Add the Muslim Malays and the Indian people who span everything from Hindu to Christian to Muslim and you have a real lesson in racial and religious tolerance. One can only imagine a whole world living in peace.

Linda took some amazing photos of the many decorations. Since we were so close to Malaysia, we decided to explore a bit more of this fascinating country again.

As I reported in Uncle Jam ‘98, on our first visit to Kuala Lumpur I was more than impressed with my experience to this ancient Muslim kingdom. It was Phil Ortiz’s first visit to Malaysia but none of us were prepared for the beautiful Christmas decorations that met us in KL. They were everywhere in a country that is more that 65% Muslim! When I asked my friends what was going on after seeing Christmas trees and lights everywhere, they cheerfully replied that everyone celebrates each other’s holidays here!

The most days off in the world!

Our friend Linda Tan arranged for us to have a really nice dinner at a very nice restaurant. While we waited for our meal, a group of Christmas carolers came to sing to us. This was an older group of middle- aged to senior folk and they surprised us with a great grand finale of a carol turned into a rap!

Needless to say, back home in the United States we don’t ever get to listen to Christmas carols in any restaurant for fear of offending ANYONE. Vivian Toh and Jay Lim arranged for us to speak to a couple of Art Colleges while we were there. They publish a delightful art and design magazine called Cutout (we were featured in their next issue). We really enjoyed speaking to these students about the excellent opportunities for their work on a global level. The Malaysian cartoonist Chin Yew also spoke to these students about his career. I believe that with the internet and more communication, there is little excuse for any artist not to tackle the world and this is my main message everywhere that I go these days. As luck would have it, we were invited to an animation conference in the new convention center in Putrajaya, Malaysia’s gleaming new capital city. There is some real exciting animation happening in this part of the world. We had been told that Lat, the Charles Schulz of the region, was going to be here. After missing him for lunch on our last visit (see UJ98) we were disappointed to miss him again! But my dear friend Dr. John Lent caught up with Lat at a conference a couple months later in Singapore!

We also had a chance to visit Malacca and saw monkeys at the Batu Caves, See photos on opposite page. g

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Putting Disability On Ice The Arctic Wildcats Bring Sled Hockey to SoCAL

Nicholas Jenkins is much like any other ten-year-old. He does well in school but struggles with math.

He enjoys Bakugan, Beyblades, and anything involving cars. He’s a devoted Cub Scout and likes to keep active whenever he can.

Keeping active has been the hardest part for Nicholas. He was born with spina bifida, a birth defect where the spinal bones don’t form properly. He is the only kid at his school who uses a wheelchair and the only Cub Scout in his area council with a permanent mobility disorder. But that has never held him back. Nick has participated in the Loma Linda Triathlon, swims like a fish, and has been the kids’ handcycle clinician at the Redlands Bicycle Classic. He has been honored

by Kohl’s and Sunny Delight for his sports and disabled advocacy work, and was named 2009 Member of the Year by PossAbilities at Loma Linda University. He even made the top 35 out of 5,300 contenders for Sports Illustrated Kids’ SportsKid of the Year.

Nick’s biggest achievement to date has been to bring the sport of sled hockey to Southern California for the very first time. Sled hockey is an adaptive sport for people with mobility disorders. The rules are much the same as for regular hockey but adaptive equipment is used, including specialized sleds and two shorter hockey sticks with ice picks on the ends for propulsion. Before his ninth birthday Nicholas began looking for a regular sports program he could participate in, but he found slim pickings.

About that time a friend back east sent some photos of her son trying out sled hockey at a clinic. Nick was sold, and he began looking into the sport.

He contacted USA Hockey, arranged to borrow some sleds and sticks, and set up a clinic in Ontario with Paralympic medalist Dave Conklin and Ray Free of the Sacramento Lightning. The response was great, and in the summer of 2010 the Southern California Sled Hockey Association was born.

Nick’s team, the Arctic Wildcats, serves kids and adults with a variety of disabilities. Elina has cerebral palsy and loves the freedom of getting out on the ice. Cody suffered a major brain injury at age two but played sled hockey for years in Iowa, and is happy to take it up again.

Janet played stand-up hockey but thought she was sidelined forever by a muscle disease until she found the Wildcats. Katie, who injured her spinal cord falling from a horse, is a local pageant princess and avid athlete. These players and many more have benefited from Nicholas’ vision to bring this fun sport to the region. Nick’s motto, “Disability doesn’t mean inability,” is the driving force behind the Arctic Wildcats, and much of his life in general.

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But starting a program and keeping it afloat are two different things. The Wildcats held their first season with equipment borrowed from another program, which had to be returned afterwards. Because of the weak economy it has been very difficult for the team to drum up funding sources to buy their own sleds, sticks, helmets and pads, much less paying as much as $400 an hour for ice time at the local rink. They are currently pursuing a Pepsi Refresh grant which would give the program $25,000 to fully equip their athletes and buy ice time for a full season.

The competition is stiff, as only the top ten vote-getting projects, out of about 250 groups in their category, will get funded.“We don’t charge our players anything to take part in our program,” says Christie Jenkins, Nick’s mother, who directs the program with her husband, Todd. “Having a disability is expensive enough without having to pay to have fun and get exercise. Eventually, once the program grows some more, we will charge $35 per year for USA Hockey membership and the insurance that comes with it. But our biggest goal right now is to get the players back on the ice, and for that we need funding.” PossAbilities, the Lady Ducks junior hockey team, the Ontario Police Officers Association and some other local groups have donated equipment and some funds, but there is still much ground to cover. One sled and one pair of sticks runs about $750, which makes it expensive to outfit a full team to begin with. Thankfully much of the equipment will last for years, so once the initial funding comes in it will be easier for the Arctic Wildcats to stay afloat. Getting there is the hard part.

Nicholas says, “Sled hockey is probably the most fun sport there is.

I like being able to play a sport with my friends, and I like that my little brother and other people without disabilities can play, too.” The team hopes to start doing exhibition games against local abled hockey teams, police and fire personnel, and other interested players. Traveling for tournament competition is a little further down the road; right now the only other teams in California are in San Jose and Sacramento, although plans are developing for teams in San Diego and L.A. For the time being, Nick and his teammates just want to be able to hit the ice again with their own equipment. g Those interested in supporting the Pepsi Refresh effort can vote once per day at http:// w w w.refreshever y thing.com/ sledhockey, or by texting the message 102873 to the number 73774.

For more information about the program or making a donation, contact the Southern California Sled Hockey Association at (909) 863-1000 or IESledHockey@aol. com/

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MeduSirena

‘Marina, the Fire Eating Mermaid’ Uncle Jam: Can you give us some background on yourself?

MS: I was born in the West Indies.

My father was an avid diver and boater who taught me to free-dive when I was just three years old.

Underwater swimming has been the center of my life ever since.

When swimming, I often imitated other sea life so that I could be more efficient underwater. My mum was a big fan of Hollywood musicals and dances. It was through her that I came to watch Esther Williams films, and that was the beginning of my lifelong pursuit.

Aquatic spectacles lent another angle to what I was already doing.

It gave me the opportunity to show artistic fluidity in an underwater medium, and that was irresistible.

Back in the 70’s, aquariums and hotels often had dive, ski , or dancing water shows, which I enjoyed very much. My love for underwater performance was imprinted from the very beginning. Through the art of navigating and dancing through liquid space, I hope to give the audience the opportunity to escape mentally, even for just a brief moment. If they are inspired, I feel that my “mission” is accomplished.

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UJ: I was wondering how long you have been a mermaid?

MS: I don’t think there was ever a time I “became” a real mermaid. I’m an aquatic performer. Raised on the islands of the West Indies, I learned free-diving at a very young age (three years old), so I have been underwater for a lot of my life. That fact, combined with my background in Polynesian and Oriental dance, just made it a natural evolution.

UJ: What kind of training is required?

MS: A natural ability to look comfortable underwater. able to tolerate photo by Arthur Eisenberg Being chlorine and salt water is also essential, because no nose clips or goggles are used for the “mermaid” performances. Training requires running (long distance), push-ups, situps, weight work, breath-hold swimming laps, dance, and lots of time spent underwater. This is an art of movement and a discipline first. To become a MeduSirena-Pod Aquaticat, one must definitely train a lot.

UJ: How often do you perform and where might our readers see you?

MS: I perform throughout the week at different spots-The Hard Rock, lounges and stage shows in Fort Lauderdale... I’m always at the Wreck Bar Fridays at 6:30- where I perform my swim show. I will be performing as a headliner at the World Mermaid Awards in Las Vegas and at Tiki Oasis (Polynesian Pop Event) in San Diego, in August of this year. It’s always best to check my website for calendar updates.

UJ: You mentioned some pop culture connections. Could you give our readers some details?

MS: I’m very involved in the Tiki community. The Polynesian pop culture movement is of great interest, as are Aquatic Spectacles (of course) and Mid-Century pop culture branches ranging from horror films to comics and Hollywood musicals. I often implement some of those aspects in my performances.

UJ: You also pose for island or Tiki-theme-oriented shots, can you describe what else you do?

MS: I would like to be an ambassador for retro-styles of entertainment.

When I’m not in the water, I’m a fire eater/dancer, Polynesian dancer (in both traditional & “tiki” styles), and I’m a stunt dancer. I often add things to my performances, such as ladders of swords, beds of nails, broken plates (which I stand on), and fire. But most of the time I’m happily submerged; performing not just for the Wreck Bar, but for photographers, film, consulting and training swimmers, and continuing to research the history of aqua spectacles in hopes to write a book by next year. Hopefully, people will feel inspired to continue training in this almost lost art form.

UJ: Where can our readers find out more about you? g MS: My website is www.medusirena.com Twitter : http://twitter.com/#!/FireatinMermaid Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Marina-the-Fire-EatingMermaid-MeduSirena/129928587222

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 37, #99 - Summer 2011

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— By Phil Yeh - Photos by Linda Adams —

W

Discover the Woman Who Brought the Navel Orange to Southern California

e will cover more of Oahu in the 100th issue of Uncle Jam, after our next series of mural events promoting reading and art, under our Cartoonists Across America tour. Let’s just say that 10 days were not enough to take in one Hawaiian island during St. Patrick’s Day in Honolulu’s Chinatown… home to a few great Irish pubs and a street festival that brings out the Irish in all of us! The highlights for us were our mural events at The Outrigger Reef Resort and also one at the Kahala Mall in Honolulu. Many of Hawaii’s best cartoonists were there, including Gary Kato, Dennis Fujitake, Alan Low, Dave Swann, Kevin Muranaka, Michael Cannon, Dave Thorne, and Jon J. Murakami; as well as friends and the general public. Our mural at the Outrigger Reef was made all the more pleasant with the support of the Reef ’s Luana Maitland. The two murals were donated to local schools after the events. We also thank our friend Amy Tokuda, who was instrumental in us enjoying the Empty Bowl Project at Mark’s Garage in Chinatown. Local potters donated ceramic bowls and local restaurants donated soup. Thousands came out to pick a bowl and some soup and all proceeds went to help feed the hungry in Hawaii. We will be back in the last two weeks of September for much more fun in paradise. g

California’s citrus industry owes a huge debt to the navel orange tree—in fact, to two trees in particular, the parent trees of the vast groves that exist today.

They were planted in 1873 by abolitionist, women’s rights proponent, and utopian Eliza Lovell Tibbetts.

Creating an Orange Utopia: Eliza Lovell Tibbets and the Birth of California’s Citrus Industry Patricia Ortlieb and Peter Economy 136 pages / 978-0-87785-337-4 / paperback / $12.95 Swedenborg Foundation Press | www.swedenborg.com | Order: 800.621.2736

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Left to Right: Mitchell Cannon, Josh Lee, Dave Thorne, Kevin Muranaka, Gary Kato, Phil Yeh, Dennis Fujitake, Alan Low, Jon J. Murakami, Amy Tokuda, Gorden (Rider) Chan.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 37, #99 - Summer 2011

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Mural at the Outrigger Reef Hotel

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Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 37, #99 - Summer 2011

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Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 37, #99 - Summer 2011

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