Uncle Jam 102

1

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

2

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Issue 102,Vol. 39, Summer 2013 Copyright Š 2013 by Eastwind Studios - All Rights Reserved. All images copyright 2013 by respective artists, writers and photographers to cover the entire issue.

Burr Jerger 1917 - 1982

Stu Weiner 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 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 a check to Eastwind Studios, P. O. Box 750, San Bernardino, California 92402, USA. For ad inquiries please contact LindaAdams35@yahoo.com or call (909) 867-5605. philyeh@mac.com Please support our advertisers who made this publication possible.

Phil Yeh~Publisher Linda Adams Yeh~Co-Publisher & Editor Linda Amick Puetz, Art Director Tom Luth & Lieve Jerger~Assistant Art Directors Peggy Corum, Debra Bemben, Sandy Cvar ~Copy Editors Edmond Gauthier~Archivist Lim Cheng Tju~Asian Bureau Chief Sarah Carvaines, MPH, RD~ Health Editor PJ Grimes~Music & Health Editor Jerome Poynton~Letters Editor Beth Winokur~Facebook/Blog Editor CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS & WRITERS Todd S. Jenkins, Gregg Rickman, Lim Cheng Tju, Ken L. Jones, Terri Elders, Matt Lorentz, John Weeks, Rory Murray, Roberta Gregory, Miel, Jerome Poynton, Greg Escalante, Nick Cataldo, He Shuxin, Mike Wolf, Jon J. Murakami, Linda White, MB Roberts, Batton Lash, Al Davison, Pierre Le Pivain, Greg Bear, Tom Luth, Donna P. Crilly CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Lim Cheng Tju, Lieve Jerger, Tom Luth, Linda Adams, Bruce Guthrie, David Folkman, Greg Preston, Allen Freeman

available online at wingedtiger.com

COVER ART Painting by Leo & Diane Dillon for Switch on the Night by Ray Bradbury illustrated by Leo & Diane Dillon Alfred A Knopf publishers Copyright 2013

3

Quarterly, Volume 39, #102, Summer 2013 I have been painting murals with artist friends all over the world for over 40 years.

I started with fellow students back in high school and quickly graduated to a 90 foot wall next door to my first studio in Anaheim, California. Back then I was painting with my partner Mark Eliot, with whom I cofounded this publication in the fall of 1973, our second year at California State University Long Beach. It was November Mauricio Cosio, Phil Yeh, Stan Sakai, Oscar Gonzales Loyo, 5, 1973 and this fall, Uncle and Sergio Aragones at Utopia in Mexico City 2003 Jam celebrates 40 years. In this edition, we will take a closer look at an exciting with a few mural events held in shopping malls new mural project designed to help bring about a and quickly became something that spanned the globe. We went from doing small murals new renaissance to San Bernardino, California.

In 1985, after I met and interviewed Wally Amos on foam core to big walls on schools, youth for this publication about his work promoting clubs and shopping centers to city buses, giant literacy, I decided to form a band of artists who billboards, and bookmobiles. Thousands of kids would use our talents to call attention to the of all ages have joined in the fun and hundreds problem of illiteracy and to the solutions. It started of professional artists have been there to mentor them. I thought I would do this until my own kids were grown and now as I witness the birth of my wife Linda’s fifth grandchild (our first little girl); I know that I will do this for the rest of my life.

We have painted more than 1800 murals in 49 U.S. states and 15 other countries since 1986 under the banner Cartoonists Across America & The World. We have also created, written and published more than 90 books.

These are books that have colorful cartoon characters, but with substance. You actually learn something interesting without the tired plot devices about zombie vampire mutant aliens. The first cartoonist to call and offer his support to this tour in 1985 was the late Charles Schulz. He really led by example, making his comic strip something everyone could read and enjoy. Peanuts was really for all ages.

In this issue of Uncle Jam we will cover the whole spectrum of graphic storytelling from the G-rated cartoons of one of my oldest friends, Sergio Aragones, to the incredible work of Robert Williams, who was one of the founding members of ZAP Comix. Rory Murray went up and interviewed Robert Phil Yeh and George Gladir at San Diego Comic Con 2009 continued on page 36

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

How Ray Bradbury Saved My Life (In 1964 on a rubbish tip, in Newcastle, by the Railway Track)

by Al Davison

My Dad’s logic went something like this: ‘God made you a cripple, to punish me for my sins, so if I send you back to him after exorcising the Devils from you, he will forgive me’.

I had an office to write and draw in; okay it wasn’t a real office, but it was away from the house and my dad, and it was my secret place... yes it was on a rubbish tip by the railway line, and well yes, it was an old safe, with the door hanging off, but it was my old safe with the door hanging off. I had my Grandad’s old mining helmet with a torch on the front for reading and drawing by, a rucksack full of supplies: emergency banana: check; peanut butter sandwich: check; bottle of Sarsaparilla: check; Pens, pencils and paper: check; several issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland: check; one copy of Alice in Wonderland: check. The walls, such as they were, were wallpapered with words, paragraphs, sentences and even whole pages, torn from magazines and books--my inspiration.

This was my haven... I’d wheel myself there every day, on my makeshift wheelchair. The chair the hospital had supplied was an adult size wooden bath-chair that smelled of old people, piss and disinfectant; and was so heavy that not even the combined efforts of Mam, Auntie Suzie, and Mr. Henderson from number eight, could shift it more than a few feet. Whilst my own makeshift version adapted from an old luggage trolley was much better, though I had to push it along with my hands on the ground, a couple of shoe brushes strapped to them for protection and extra grip.

On this particularly wind-swept Sunday morning, I had slipped past the collective radar of the neighbours, who were on high alert, with instructions from my Mam, to keep me away from the railway track. She didn’t want a repeat of the incident with the ironing board and the cabbage. I’d gone up the cut, parked the trolley in the long grass, and slipped through the gap in the wall, behind the Bergman’s place, managed to avoid panicking the chickens, and made it to the office unseen.

I was working on chapter two of my new book ‘The Creature from the Black Lagoon vs. Alice in Wonderland’. My process was as follows: 1. Cut out random passages from Alice in Wonderland (a cheap paperback edition, not my illustrated hardback of course); 2. Paste into scrapbook intermingled with chunks of the dialogue from The Creature from the Black Lagoon transcribed off of the TV; 3. Copy the results into my notebook longhand; finally, 4. Re-copy into my hardback manuscript book, making changes where I felt they were needed, and adding a spattering of my favourite ‘words of the week’ culled from my dictionary. Hey, you didn’t expect it to make sense did you? I was four!

I was having a bit of a dark cloud day. Mam was taking my sister to hospital after Sunday lunch, as she was suffering with spasms in her bad hand, due to the cerebral palsy. I was to be left with Dad. That meant that after they had left for the hospital, either the Church of England Bible or the Masonic Bible, would come out. The former was bad, the latter really bad... an exorcism was on the cards either way. It was hard to write or draw. My stomach was churning (butterflies? more like killer moths!) and my head felt like King Kong and The Frankenstein creature were having a punch up in it! I peeked out at the railway track, and found myself wondering if maybe I did just go back to ‘God’, then maybe that would make Dad feel happier; that he might stop hurting everyone.

But there was a problem with this scenario... I didn’t believe in God. If I died, Dad might not feel better, unless somehow something convinced him that ‘God’ had forgiven him. If it didn’t, then he’d still hurt people, and I’d still be dead.

4

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

On the other hand... he wouldn’t be able to hurt me anymore. I’d just stop. I wasn’t going to heaven or hell, I was sure of that, maybe I’d be reincarnated like the Buddhists taught, but the pain would stop, wouldn’t it? I started to crawl out towards the track, when I became aware of a piece of paper stuck to my plaster (I was in a plaster-cast up to my waist after my eighth operation). It was between the drawing of Marilyn Monroe I’d done in marker, and Pop Robson’s (Newcastle United footballer) autograph. I uncrumpled it and read it out loud, as was my want ‘ What does your character want, what is his dream, what shape has it, and how expressed? Given expression, this is the dynamo of his life, and your life, then, as Creator. At the exact moment when truth erupts, the subconscious changes from wastebasket file to angel writing in a book of gold.

Look at yourself then. Consider everything you have fed yourself over the years.

Was it a banquet or a starvation diet?

Who are your friends? Do they believe in you? Or do they stunt your growth with ridicule and disbelief? If the latter, you haven’t friends. Go find some.’ ©Copyright Ray Bradbury

Enterprises 2012.

Moebius and Bradbury by Pierre Le Pivain, AKA Le PiXX

5

Truth erupted! It wasn’t my destiny to sacrifice myself for someone who had no regard for my dreams, someone who didn’t believe in me. The nightmare scenarios and fears that took up the majority of space in the wastebasket of my subconscious were transformed into... ideas, the stuff of stories, and thus stopped hurting. Soon I’d found a friend, admittedly he was an invisible one, made-up, a blind superhero called Nocturne, but it was a start. I found a surrogate Father, okay so he was a Scarecrow in the field behind our house, but again, it was a start, and he was a great listener!

As for the Exorcisms, I started to fight back, with the help of Nocturne, and eventually I won. The abuse stopped as did the murder attempts. I survived and I thrived. It was another thirty-five years before I discovered who wrote those words. I still don’t believe in God. I do believe in the power of the imagination, the power of people to reach their potential against all odds and to tune in to the vast universe, or universes, and make a difference, as taught by us Buddhists; and yes I do believe that Ray Bradbury saved my life in 1964, on a rubbish tip, by a railway track in Newcastle. Thanks Ray.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

The Fantastic Art of Leo & Diane Dillon An Interview with Diane Dillon

great friendship and mutual admiration over the years. We only met Ray Bradbury after we had done Switch on the Night. The publisher sent the manuscript, which we loved. How could we turn that down? I think we finally met him at a convention, but I don’t remember which one.

Uncle Jam: Can you tell us how you first met Leo? What kind of man was he?

Diane Dillon: I first met Leo at Parsons School of Design. We started out competing with each other, so when we decided to marry we knew we’d probably not survive separate careers; so that’s when we joined forces and called ourselves ‘the third artist’. As to the kind of man he was, I would say complicated. He was modest, sensitive, generous and so talented. He was also angry and distrustful, growing up black in this country. Art saved him. Whatever mood or situation he might find himself in, his mantra was, “Just do the work.” He was happiest at the drawing board. He was driven, which I envied; because after working on commissioned work he would stay up to do things for himself. I envied that.

UJ: You started your career illustrating science fiction, is this accurate? How did you come to know Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury?

DD: Yes, we did start doing illustrations for science fiction magazines. Harlan contacted us to do some work when he was with Pyramid books. Later he came to New York and ended up being our house guest for about six weeks (in a small three room apartment) before he moved to California. It was the beginning of a

UJ: You had a wonderful way of working together on the same illustrations with Leo. Can you talk a little about this process?

DD: We both read a manuscript, then discussed how we might approach it, then drew thumbnails and threw ideas around until we agreed on one. Then we passed it back and forth at various stages. Leo never wanted to be specific about who did what; because he felt some people would use that as a wedge between us.

6

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: In the book Switch on The Night by Ray Bradbury, you came up with a wonderful way of showing the inside of the house and the night outside. We see the house without walls in one page and from a bird’s eye view in another. How did this come about?

DD: Switch on the Night was full of great images on every page and we wondered how we could show everything. Not a bad problem for an illustrator. In the process of solving that problem, we thought of Escher with all the levels of space and perspective and that gave us the inspiration and direction to go.

UJ: You once told me that when you heard that you both had won the Caldecott Medal in 1976 for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears by Verna Aardema, your agent called to tell you the news and you didn’t know what the Caldecott was? Did I remember this correctly?

DD: Actually, we were still working at about 2am when we got a call. It was a woman we didn’t know and we heard talking and laughter in the background while she congratulated us. When she hung up we thought it was a prank and we were trying to think of who it could be. About half an hour later our editor, Phyllis Fogelman, called to also congratulate us. We knew it was real then but didn’t know what the Caldecott was. I later realized that was the reason for those medals pasted on the books that I wanted to pull off so I could see the rest of the cover when I was a kid. Receiving the medal changed our career; and realizing people were looking at our work, it made us want to improve and perfect the work.

UJ: You are the only illustrators to win the Caldecott two years in a row. In 1977, you both won for Ashanti to Zulu by Margaret Musgrove. Your work in so many of these books has a

richness that really stands apart from most of the children’s books. How did you develop this style?

DD: Thank you for the compliment. Actually we think of ourselves as having many styles and techniques, although there is something that reflects our hand. For us techniques are the graphic vocabulary for an artist, as words are for a writer. The subject matter or period the story takes place in, dictates what style or technique we use. Why limit ourselves to only one way to say something? We thought of ourselves as the mocking bird and the chameleon.

UJ: The late Bryon Preiss wrote The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon in 1981.

Bryon was a friend of my best friend, Alfredo Alcala. I really believe that all people should also know the names and backgrounds of visual artists.

It seems that in this time, we all know the names of the reality stars but actually very few artists in this country. I believe that if people know something of artists’ lives, then there is a chance that they might consider a career in the arts. What are your thoughts?

DD: First, I think all of the arts should be put back in the schools. How can a person be well rounded or have a real choice in what they might want to do in life without being exposed to a bit of everything? Today, artists are virtually invisible but it wasn’t always like that. In the 20’s-40’s, before television, people read magazines like Ladies Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, Time, etc. for entertainment. The illustrators were well known, as well as their work. Times have changed and we can’t go back. When an artist achieves some amount of recognition, it’s usually continued on page 33 7 Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

All Paintings Courtesy Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York

Swap Meet Sally 2006 Oil on canvas

Robert Williams On Conceptual Realism

Uncle Jam: Good evening readers. My name is Rory Murray and I’m here this evening in the San Fernando Valley interviewing Robert Williams; surrealist painter, former underground cartoonist, and living legend. How’re you doing Robert?

Robert Williams: I’m pretty good…quite an introduction. It’s hard to keep a straight face with such a pleasant introduction.

UJ: I guess the first thing I’d like to ask you is, about 20 years ago in a video interview you claimed that you would probably get some kind of lung disease from mixing your own pigments.

So my first question has got to be “How the hell are you?”

RW: Well, I’m doing pretty good. I’m an older fella now and I survived the lung problem, but maybe my next problem might be kidneys or something like that from exposure to paint; but so far so good.

UJ: You once cited Antonio Gaudi as your favorite architect; and Picasso and Dali as influences. Do you have any current favorite artists?

RW: I do. I have a lot of contemporary artists who are my favorites, but I wouldn’t know where to start on something like that. Since I’ve become older, there are a lot of younger artists who have come up. The amount of younger artists who have come up in the last 10 or 15 years is enormous. An interesting artist, a very talented artist, is a guy named Van Arno. He’s a realistic painter. He originally was a graffiti artist. And then you know I’m still very heavily influenced

8

Derision 2009 Oil on jute

with underground comic books and EC Comics and hot rod art. B-movie posters, and especially 20s and 30s pulp covers and science fiction art and all the things that detract from really being a true fine arts artist.

UJ: Ed Roth created Rat Fink because he hated Mickey Mouse. What was the inspiration for Coochy Cootie?

RW: Well I created Coochy Cooty in 1969 when I was involved in Zap Comix and I needed an anticharacter; a pathological, psychopathic, cartoon character that was really indicative of the youth nihilism of that time in the 60s. A kind of a character that had a little below-average intelligence; some magical powers that complement comic book stories; and a very psychedelic soul, very reminiscent of the 1920s and early 1930s animated figures. It was simplistic. The character would get into very anti-social situations that younger fringe teenagers and people in their early 20s that took drugs could immediately relate to. He shot up heroin and stole. He had a girlfriend that was just as bad as he was and he could never get into her pants as much as he tried. He did everything he could to appease her. She would continually keep him insulted and resist his advances, and then immediately go off and screw other people. It was just a reflection of things I had seen in my life…a never comfortable situation that you had to come back to all the time, ’cause it was part of life.

You were always trying to find a peaceful way in life; and every time you moved, another problem would develop. This Coochy Cooty character had

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

a certain amount of magical powers because he was in a comic strip. He could virtually do a lot that was beyond logic, and having a psychedelic personality was part of pushing that magic. The character never gained a lot of fame. The original readers of Underground Comix could understand abstract cartoon characters; but when the comix got so big that they met a general audience, the provincial and conventional audiences thought, “Well, everything’s got to have a good ending to it and it’s got to be something with a moral code to it.” Coochy Cooty was far from an ideal role model and he certainly was not a kind of character you would have around children, so the character still survives in my paintings and whatnot: A good cartoon effigy.

UJ: Speaking of psychedelic; do you have any reminisces of Timothy Leary that you would like to share?

RW: Yeah, I do. I knew Timothy Leary for a long time, but I didn’t become really good friends with him till the last 10 years of his life, and then we became very good friends. Timothy was extremely intelligent, but he enjoyed social life. He had enormous social skills. You’d go to dinner with him at a restaurant and he’d just get up from the table and go table to table and start talking to people. He was just enormously charming; remarkable social skills, and at one time he was fairly handsome. He was the happiest around young people at night clubs. Almost every night he would go out in Hollywood and go to the clubs because they let him in free and everyone

worshipped him. He just had a good time, so even into his 70s he was hitting 2 or 3 clubs a night.

He lived a very free and gratuitous life…never locked his doors. He lived up in Beverly Hills, up in the hills there and he never locked his door. He had a continuous panoply of goofballs coming in and out visiting him. He enjoyed being the guru character for a lot of these people who would come to see him every chance they got. Every time I went over there, there was just a throng of goofus’s. Some really intelligent people came up, some real celebrities; but by and large it was the latent hippie kind of people, who were liberal. He attracted a lot of very liberal, politically correct people.

My tie in with him was we both went to military school and got thrown out.

So there was a right wing world we saw.

He went to West Point and got thrown out of West Point. He was an aspiring officer and he just would not go by the regulations, so they booted him out. I was in a very strict military school in the first and second grade in the Deep South and I got kind of pushed out, so I could sit down and talk with him about military history and military situations. We had a connection that none of the rest of these “sensitive” people had. I talked to him about G. Gordon Liddy and I would say “It’s interesting you’re so comfortable with this extremely right-wing brigand.” He said “Yeah”, and I said “To me it looks like that’s the same combination as Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin”. He said, “Exactly right.”

So he was enormously intelligent, but he really enjoyed this panoply of people coming in.

He loved young people. I remember he caught pneumonia; he was 72 years old, making these clubs. He never went to the doctor and he caught pneumonia. When he went to the hospital they found out he had prostate cancer, and then it was very advanced and his number was up. I remember sitting down at a table with him and a couple of other guys. He wrote his own obituary for the LA Times, you know. That was an interesting experience. He had one of my paintings, a print of one of my paintings, in his bedroom right across from his bed and he said, “I’m gonna die looking at that”, and I thought “I’m pretty honored by that.” Now a lot of artists came in and brought art to show people, ‘cause other big shots came in there; and then when he started to die, all these people said “Oh, I want my art back.” I thought that was kind of cheesy.

Anyway, he was gonna be frozen and they had a big cryogenic tank there. He was a big publicity coup for the cryogenic people, but all these…what would be a good term; frivolickers—Bohemian frivolickers; ‘fun-havers’. They would decorate and paint psychedelic stuff on the cryogenic machine. The cryogenic people flipped out and they told Timothy, “You can’t be painting on all this stuff and decorating this stuff.” Timothy said “Come pick it up and get it the f..k out of here.”

His next idea for eternity was, he was going to be

9

shot up in a rocket; his ashes. So the family got the ashes and set them aside. There was a wake.

They gave Suzanne a little vial of his ashes that she still has to this day, but most of it went up into space. Anyway, I don’t know, I could go on about Timothy for a long time; but I think you got the gist of it.

UJ: My first introduction to Harry J. Anslinger was in your illustration Law of the Lame. As a

Robert Williams photo courtesy of Rory Murray cannabis patient and activist I have come to view him as pure evil. Would you care to comment on the war on drugs?

RW: First, Harry J. Anslinger. I was in the drug culture in the late 50s and early 60s. There used to be a really strong drug culture; and if there hadn’t been the Vietnam War, this drug culture would have really blossomed in another direction. I learned that early on Anslinger was the asshole that pushed through outlawing marijuana. To my views, this is my opinion, the reason the asshole did it was because a lot of prohibition enforcers were put out of business when they repealed the Volstead Act. Harry Anslinger was involved in the Secret Service during the First World War and you couldn’t probably have been more right-wing than that asshole. Prohibition was right up his alley, because you can arrest people for drinking and what not, and that’s an easy thing. So Harry Anslinger pushed that through in 1936 or 37. The thing about the drug laws is that the police use the drug thing and they can get people on drugs if they can’t get people any other way. They got poor Candy Barr, the most famous stripper; 2 years for 2 joints in Texas. If there’s a f…ing God, which I’m doubtful, if there is a God, people like this Harry Anslinger must know there couldn’t be a God because he sure as hell is going to go to hell. Someone mean and spiteful and brutal. The Republican Party is much like that today. The only good in these really brutal right-wing people like this, is to oppose the other countries’ brutal

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

right-wing people. That’s the only good there is to these people. People are just born brutally evil. Before I came to LA from Albuquerque, I was doing drugs in Albuquerque. If you got caught with a marijuana cigarette, that was like dope and you were like f…ed. But you could smoke it around and people didn’t know what it was, because people rolled their own cigarettes.

They had Bull Durham and stuff. Seeing a rolled up cigarette wasn’t that odd; but if they caught you with marijuana, it was just like being caught selling heroin or something. It f… ed your life up. So there was a subculture developing all over the United States.

This is much unspoken of today, because when you think of the subculture you think of hippies and the Vietnam War; but this was a strong culture and it was growing all over.

My first contact with drugs was when I was working in a carnival and these people were taking handfuls of bennies all day and there were joints going around. That was my first observation that there was a drug culture and I was in the middle of it. I had gotten indirectly involved in the Beatnik movement in ‘59 or ‘60. I was a good chess player and I was a chess hustler who would go to coffee shops and win money off people.

Here’s where the problem lies. The guy you bought a lid of marijuana from was the same guy who two nights ago robbed the filling station; because you had to deal with real criminals to get these drugs. I remember I was with some people who were going to get some drugs. We were driving around and went over to this girl’s house. Later I found out they went to the door and knocked. No one answered, so they went around to the back and kicked the door in.

Fortunately she wasn’t there, or I’d have been in prison, because they were going to kill her. I had to run around with these kinds of people for drug connections. There was a form of language called carny talk that had developed out of the carnivals for the drug culture. What you’d do is take every syllable, kind of Pig Latin, you’d take every syllable and put a z in it; like f..k you was fzuk yzou. People taking drugs could really rattle off that carny talk and when I was in the carnival they could make it sound like a bee hive. When I came out here in ‘63 and listened to rock and roll music out here, some of the disc jockeys were putting in little carny talk remarks and I felt real comfortable about that. I came out here and did a lot of LSD and speed and what not. The good LSD wasn’t around very long, and then people got into those animal tranquilizers.

I remember on Sunset Blvd, there was a restaurant called Huff’s. Bob Dylan hung out there and a number of people hung out at Huff’s.

The drug scene was so tight in Hollywood that the police couldn’t get in to it. The police were like dorks and they tried to be cool dudes, but they were dorks. It was like they had a neon sign when they tried to infiltrate it; so it was a giant group of people who couldn’t be infiltrated. The cops knew

they were selling dope out of Huff’s. You’d call up Huff’s and give some code and they’d bring your food over. You’d open the Coke up and there’d be a little marijuana in there. This went on for a long time and the police were going nuts trying to figure out how to bust Huff’s. You couldn’t leave your windows open or your car unlocked because they’d plant marijuana in there. The thing was, the police in the early 60s were under the auspices of Chief William Parker. He was on a par with Harry Anslinger. He came in the 40s; cleaned up the corruption in the police department; and then came in with this Nazi established situation. If you were driving around Hollywood the tip was that if you were pulled over by a cop, get to a street light because you’re going to need a witness. The cops back then had to hand out so many shake-down cards at the end of the night. They had to stop 12 to 15 people a night and fill out a card. Shake ‘em down so you’re continually getting f…ed with in Hollywood; the slightest thing they’d be f…ing with you, filling out those cards. I remember on Santa Monica Blvd. I had my hands up against the wall. They went through my wallet and asked me how much money I had and I said, “Well I think I’ve got $25.” They said, “It looks like only $15 here, what happened to the other $10?”

I’m up against the wall and I said, “I stopped by the grocery store.” And they say “What did you buy?” And I have to go “Well, I got a bag of pork skins and Spam and you know.” “Speak up!” and I’m yelling out my grocery list. I remember that very distinctly. When Chief William Parker died, he had established such a command in the LAPD. The news said when he died they took the head

10

of every department and had to shift him over an entire department to break the power control, because when Chief Thomas Reddin came in he couldn’t have done anything. It would have still been a Chief Parker administration of police. This was before the Vietnam War, then the war starts and then everyone is a cool dude and doing drugs.

The Vietnam War really aided liberation. If you look at the American culture from 1955 till 1963, it’s the same, but then you look at the culture from 1967 till 1980 and it’s two different cultures, just in a few years. The Vietnam War made a cultural jump, a sexual revolution. All this stuff changed.

All of a sudden you could get girly magazines. It was just a whole different world because of the Vietnam War. Suzanne and I lived in Hollywood and we were kind of in the eye of the hurricane.

Some guys came by one night that were delivering the next day’s LA Free Press. They stopped by and said “We just want you to see this. This is the LA Free Press that’s coming out tomorrow morning.”

He showed it to me and in all green print there’s a whole bunch of listed names on the next 3 or 4 pages of every narc in the LAPD and his home address. The cops blew it; the news blew it. It was a scandal of enormous proportions. Then in about 2 months Art Kunkin’s house, the guy who put out the LA Free Press; his house burned down. So that was the world I functioned in in Hollywood in the early drug days.

UJ Are you politically active now?

RW: I have my opinions. I vote. I have never done political artwork, because political artwork

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

is always too timely and you’ll end up eating it.

You saw the thing I did on Harry Anslinger and that comic book, but that was about as political as I was going to get.

UJ: I pretty much have to be an activist, because as a cannabis patient I see my friends being hauled away to jail and I have to do something.

RW: Let me make a comment about that. I would certainly like to see marijuana legalized, but on the other hand, the people that smoked it were an underground world that you enjoyed, that not everyone could be in. So that’s gone; that secret world is gone.

UJ: Do you keep in touch with any of your colleagues from the Underground days?

RW: I do. I keep in touch a little bit with Crumb and a little bit with Gilbert (Shelton), but not like I used to. I’ve got nothing but good to say about Gilbert. Gilbert got me into Zap and he’s a remarkable person, a fine artist, a serious cartoonist. He has a good working knowledge of the history of comics; he’s extremely intelligent.

He really knows how to engineer a story. He isn’t one of these cartoonists who just starts here and goes panel, panel, panel, panel, and puts an end on it. He engineers stories and he is enormously efficient. He’s very well respected in Europe. He’s extremely liberal, which is probably why he’s in France, because of his liberal politics; definitely.

UJ: I’m a big fan of Wonder Warthog and The Freak Brothers.

RW: Wonder Warthog was started out in his college, but then he got involved with Pete Millar, who did drag cartoons and hot rod cartoons. Pete liked Gilbert’s artwork so much that he published 2 or 3 Wonder Warthogs magazines and had them nationally distributed. It had to be car related but Wonder Warthog got around at one time or another.

art movement to be called Conceptual Realism. Is this the case?

RW: Yes, I do.

UJ: What did you think of R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis?

RW: I enjoyed it very much. It was a great opus. When I first heard about it, I wrote him a letter and said “I hear you’re doing an illustrated Bible story. A lot of people I know get older and in their old age they slip into religion. I’m not gonna do that at all, and I hope all of a sudden you haven’t found faith. If you do, we’re still friends, but I’d sure hate to see someone with your imagination backslide into religion.” He wrote me back and said, “If I do pick up religion, it sure as hell won’t be this one.”

UJ: Phil Yeh and I have been working on a mural at the site of the first McDonalds in San Bernardino. Have you done any murals?

RW: Yes, I have done murals. The biggest mural I did was in 1987. I was commissioned by the City of Los Angeles to do both entrances to one of the tunnels that go under Wilshire at MacArthur Park. That area and that tunnel are not only the most graffitied area in Los Angeles, but that area of Wilshire and Alvarado is the highest crime spot in all of Southern California. I agreed to do this under the idea that I would get a show with Otis, and they later got me into a show at Otis.

But then I had to go before the city commission to get my stuff OK’d, and I’ll tell you what I did.

It’s in my books and I’ve got prints of it. I did a series of geometric patterns that had so much contrast and color and metal flakes and tones and harsh colors; these patterns were designed to discourage graffiti; giant geometric nightmares of day-glo and metallic colors and whatnot. They were worse than graffiti. They were visually worse, but you couldn’t graffiti them, because the graffiti would be lost in them. They were like that for years, until graffiti artists came in and whited out entire areas. There was a movie called Falling Down with Michael Douglas and he goes through that tunnel and you can see the façade of what I did.

UJ: Have you done any album art?

RW: I didn’t do album art. That was licensed. A large number of my paintings have been licensed to punk rock groups and other rock bands.

UJ: On a related note were you a bit saddened when Tower Records closed?

RW: Yes, just like Border’s Books.

UJ: Speaking of music, do you have any favorite singers or groups?

11

Robert Williams Wooden Spirits Persist Where Termites Fear To Tread 2006 Oil on canvas RW: Anyone from X-Ray Spex to Enrico Caruso; an enormous amount of music and singers from Debbie Harry to Jenny Lind in the 1870s. No one ever heard her voice. Nothing was ever recorded, but she is supposed to be the greatest singer in history. I listen to classical music, I listen to punk rock and I listen to all kinds of music. Jenny Lind was an opera singer right after the Civil War that P.T. Barnum hired. She was called the Swedish Nightingale. She was a real beautiful, famous singer. She was the dominant singer of the 19th century.

UJ: You were born in Albuquerque. Have you been there lately?

RW: I haven’t been there in a long time. My mother died 19 years ago and I haven’t been back since. I’m planning to go pretty soon.

UJ: It’s become the new Hollywood. One of the last projects Dennis Hopper worked on was the TV series Crash and it was filmed out there.

RW: I knew Dennis Hopper very well. He’d been to my house.

UJ: Did he have any of your artwork?

RW: No, he didn’t like Realism. He didn’t like tight realism, he liked more expressive artwork, but we were close friends. I was very comfortable talking to him.

UJ: I read on the Internet that you prefer the

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: What exactly do you mean by this term?

RW: Well, this is important that I get this across to you, for you to understand.

I’ll have to tell you the whole story.

Before the Second World War, Paris was the capital of the art world.

Because of the hardships of the Second World War and after, New York became the capital of the art world. New York made that popularity off of Abstract Expressionism. There were two art critics primarily, Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, who shoved it through and made Jackson Pollack.

Jackson Pollack got real big, because he got that write up in Life Magazine.

Anyway, Abstract Expressionism took hold. The way they pushed it was, that people with superior mentalities have a much more sensitive and emotional understanding and intuition to abstract art and that people who depend on realism are kind of retarded. They inferred this; they didn’t directly say that, they inferred it. So thru the 40s and 50s, Realism died. In art schools it’s real easy to be an Abstract Expressionist. You paint with a limited pallet, maybe all the earth colors and blue.

You can make a big mess, so you had thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of aspiring artists or Abstract Expressionists. The people who couldn’t make a living off it, because there were so many of them, became art critics and art functionaries in museums, and art writers and heads of boards and what not. When I came into art school in the early 60s, I had these ideas of hot rod art and naked girls and B movie posters and pulp magazine excitement; I had a rude awakening.

You couldn’t even do that, couldn’t start doing that in art school. The way they inhibited people was to refer to them as illustrators. “You’re an illustrator”, and that, to me, is one of the greatest insults in the world. “Oh yeah, you’ve got talent, but it’s for an illustrator.” That’s about the same level as getting a blue ribbon at the fair, you know.

So then after Abstract Expressionism took hold, another movement took hold that I had a great deal of faith in. Its original name was Neorealism, but it came to be known as Pop Art. I thought Realism was coming back. How wrong I was. Pop Art is a form of appropriation. Everything in Pop Art is appropriated. No imagination. It’s gotta be appropriated, because it’s a reflection back on our wonderful, hip popular culture. That was a real heartbreak for me.

And then came Minimalism, which was another kick in the teeth, where you just did as little as you could, as boldly as you could. And then Minimalism was backed up with Conceptualism.

Now Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism could dawn back to Dadaism. The philosophy of Dadaism was that one day an artist can

just point to something; that’s it.

Conceptualism presented itself as enormously intellectual. You don’t even need the art. The initial art isn’t even important; it’s the concept of it. I had to deal with that.

Conceptualism would take on a lot of different masks like performance art; a whole bunch of things. A lot of other people had no dexterity and went along with the philosophy that if you could draw you should be in some other business; so the period from 1946 till 1998 or so, you had an enormous amount of talented people who could draw and paint and think and conceive, have to go to work for f…ing Disney or the movie industry doing storyboards. They have to do all these things because they can’t get into the art world.

I started painting realistically in the early 60s or even in the 50s and discovered I was in trouble. My hope of being a painter was just a fantasy. Even if you go with the program, it’s a fantasy. It’s really almost hopeless to be an artist; it’s almost like trying to be a poet. So I did a number of really tight paintings and was fortunate to be able to sell them to people who weren’t that keen into the art world, and made a lot of money.

But I could not get a gallery show and I could not get in any art magazines and I didn’t have a peer group. The Underground cartoonists that I worked with in the 60s and 70s, Crumb and all these guys, they all went to art school and found out there was no place in the art world for them; so they did comics and I couldn’t talk them into coming back into the arts world, so I didn’t have a peer group.

Then the Punk Rock movement came in the late 70s and early 80s and they started having these shows at galleries at night and at after hours clubs and they were like the latest step of Bohemians; from the beatniks to the hippies to punk rockers.

They had the Bohemian ethic of being sloppy and doing what they wanted and taking drugs; a world I was akin to, so I realized that if I loosened my work up I would have a peer group. I could fit in; there were no stringent rules as long as it was kind of sloppy. I knew anatomy pretty well, so I could just crank out really, really rude artwork, really brutal mayhem, and it went over like an overnight success. I was heralded and I couldn’t do these things fast enough, so I had a toehold; I had a peer group. So I started doing them a little tighter, and a little tighter and then I put a background in and made the background bigger, then a little tighter, till I had kind of left them, but I had recognition.

Other artists had come along and kind of followed Realism, so there needed to be a magazine for this. The Surrealists in the 20s and 30s had their magazines in France and there needed to be a magazine for this sort of thing. I went to these tattoo people who were doing interviews, just like you’re doing an interview with me. I told this gal that there should be a magazine for this kind of art. Two weeks later she called and said she had talked to her publisher and he said he would

12

Robert Williams Hollywood After Midnight 2007 Oil on canvas do this magazine. The magazine was called Art? Alternatives. It went a number of issues and sold very well; but for some reason the guy fired the girl and that was my connection, so the magazine no longer had a thread going through it. The magazine kind of lost its way. I was talking to some friends, Greg Escalante, and some other friends and said “We ought to try to buy that title from them and get that thing back on the right track.” So we approached the publisher, Fausto Vitello. I had met him before, because he used two of my covers on Thrasher, and he said those were some of the best selling issues. He was hot for the idea, so we approached the people in New York to get the Art? Alternative name and they said “No, we don’t want to sell it.” I went to other people, too. I tried to talk to Larry Flint and he wouldn’t talk to me. I said to my friends, “I’ll come up with a bunch of names. We’ll pick and do our own magazine.” So I came up with 110 names so we could do our own magazine. They picked about 10 of them and then had a lawyer research them and see if they had been used. The only thing that hadn’t been used was Juxtapoz, so that’s where that name came from. Now you got a magazine.

Immediately it sold. We started out with 23,000 issues and it just started selling like crazy. It was a quarterly, and then it went bi-monthly. Art schools wouldn’t have it around, but eventually they did; and then the distributors started saying this is one of the largest sell through magazines. If you do 10,000 magazines, only 4,500 will actually reach hands. That’s the way the magazine business is, it’s a tremendous failure thing. Juxtapoz had one of the largest sell through on the stands, so they started hiking up the print runs on it and the thing got to be, over the years, the largest selling art magazine in the world. The art schools started accepting it and it just blossomed all over the U.S. and parts of Europe, Canada, and Australia.

You had a trend coming in; an ocean of people, just like the Underground Comix; an

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

ocean of people coming in who wanted to be artists. The first thing I noticed that went haywire was that everybody wanted to do Tikis.

I thought “That’s kind of pathetic.

You open up this wonderful world and they’re like mentally f…ing absent. Vacuous mentality, everyone wants to do Tikis. I did the editorials and I started saying this Tiki thing (personally Suzanne and I have a large collection of Tikis), “This Tiki thing is bullshit”, so I made a lot of enemies. The next thing is children and big eyed children.

Then that caught on. Young girls all over the country getting gallery shows doing big eyed children and big eyed girls. So I tried to run that down and I made so many enemies that I put myself in the back of an art movement that I started. I kicked myself out of my own art movement. I had been involved in Underground Comix and I learned how to tell stories; so I knew how to do a narrative in a painting. These other people didn’t. They just lock onto one thing and burn that out, so I made a lot of enemies. Originally called Low Brow art, it signified the fact that the very bottom is going to be the very top; but they didn’t catch onto that, they wanted to be ritzy.

My good friend Kenny Sharf had a show at the Salvador Dali Museum 13 years ago and he named the show Pop Surrealism. Then they had a show in Cincinnati or Cleveland somewhere, with a bunch of artists along with Kenny and me, which was called Pop Surrealism. Somehow the word gets around to this hoard of people and they all want to be pop surrealists; none of them were in the original show. That’s what was thrown up against the wall and stuck. Number one, I don’t like Pop, because it’s appropriating; and number two, Surrealism died at the Second World War. It was a very strict manifesto that you couldn’t follow, that had something to do with the subconscious and automatic art. It wasn’t exactly what you think of today. I wasn’t happy with Pop Surrealism, so I started thinking that the thing about Conceptualism was that it glorifies thinking. Unfortunately nobody can draw or takes pride in craftsmanship; but if I put hypothetical thinking into it with realistic art…Conceptual Realism…that says it all.

I wrote a thing in Juxtapoz and I went through the entire history of conceptual art—all the heroes in it—and compared what they did into thinking patterns of what Conceptual Realism does, with the exception of the fact that in Conceptual Realism you can draw and you have a certain respect for craftsmanship.

UJ: Eighteen years later do you still have any involvement with Juxtapoz?

RW: I do, but Juxtapoz has its own life. It developed its own life and no longer needed to be pushed around in a stroller by me. I discovered continued on page 29

When I was 16, my high school f r i e n d M a r k Eliot, (who later cofounded U n c l e Jam with me when we were college students at California State University Long Beach) decided to fly up to San Francisco and meet Gilbert Shelton. The year was 1971 and it was still the height of the sixties, which I would say lasted from 1967 (The Summer of Love) to 1977 when Disco became the rage. I am sure that historians can add their two cents here, but these are my memories. Mark and I wanted to become professional cartoonists but we didn’t really know where to start. We were not normal teenagers of our times. Neither one of us tried marijuana, but we loved the underground comix coming out of San Francisco.

We had a passing knowledge of mainstream comic books, a better knowledge of the comic strips in the newspapers, and we actually loved the cartoons in Playboy. We would go through back issues found at thrift stores and clip out the cartoons and file them in folders by various artists. We poured over the artwork of all these comics to better understand how to become a professional artist. But it was the underground comix that had the artwork and the stories that really excited us! Here the artists had total freedom to express whatever was on their minds, and when you are an American teenager, this is very attractive. You have to remember the time we lived in. The Vietnam War was still going

Legendary Comix Artist

Gilbert Shelton on and the draft was a very real thing in all our lives. Gilbert Shelton was actually doing some of the best storytelling of the underground.

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers told of the adventures of Franklin, Phineas, and Fat Freddy all written and illustrated by Shelton. He lived up in San Francisco, so naturally, we decided to go and meet the man.

We had the address of the Rip Off Press and walked to their office. I can remember being very naïve and asking Shelton what kind of pen he used. Over the years, I would get to know many of the artists of the underground. Clay Geerdes, who used to write for us, even put on some incredible Underground Comix Conventions up in Berkeley, California. Even though I was younger than most of these artists, they never brought my age up.

Shelton was one of the members of ZAP Comix after Robert Crumb published the first one alone.

The other artists included Robert Williams, “Spain”Rodriguez, Rick Griffin, S.Clay Wilson, and Victor Moscoso. I met Rick Griffin at an early San Diego Comic Con, when the lines between artists, poets, musicians, writers, actors, film makers, and other influential people were not as defined as they are today. We interviewed Griffin in 1976 and he did an original cover for Cobblestone, which was our sister publication. In fact, I even introduced my high school classmate, Greg Escalante, to Griffin at that interview, along with Tom Luth, who was our colorist and photographer. Griffin died in 1991. Sadly, after we conducted this interview at the 2012 San Diego Comic Con,“Spain” Rodriguez also left us in November.

Shelton lives in Paris with his wife, Lora Fountain, who is an agent. They have been in France for quite a number of years. ~Phil Yeh Uncle Jam: We’ll start off with France. How do you like France? You’ve been living there for quite a few years now.

Gilbert Shelton: Twenty eight years. After 28 years it’s not so romantic anymore. It’s still an interesting place. I read the French comic books mainly to practice my French, although there are some good ones. There are monthly comic magazines, 3 or 4 of them, and there is no such thing in America, is there? There are a lot of cartoonists my age. I knew Moebius.

UJ: Did you see him often?

GS: Not too often, but a lot of times at comic book festivals and he had a big show in Paris.

Fortunately my wife, Lora, spotted his wife at the entrance because the place where the show was, wasn’t all that big. They could only have 300 people inside. We went in and we stayed for an

13

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

hour. There was a line of several hundred people outside. When we came out, the line hadn’t moved at all yet. There were still 300 people waiting to get in.

UJ: How did you decide to move to France?

GS: We have a funny story. We were over in Paris doing a book tour for my French publisher. While we were there our charter airline went bankrupt, so we had to buy a ticket to get back home. At that time a round trip ticket was the same price as a one-way. Then we had a ticket back to Paris, so we came back. We were going to spend a year, but we ended up staying.

UJ: Did you ever learn to speak French?

GS: I can get along. I’m fluent, but fortunately Laura is better than I am. She takes care of all the bureaucratic bullshit.

UJ: So what have you been doing? Are you still doing the Freak Brothers?

GS: I’m working on a story right now with Paul Mavrides in which Phineas becomes a suicide bomber.

UJ: That’s very timely. And this will be out when?

GS: Whenever we get Zap #16 together.

UJ: How long has Zap #16 been in the works?

GS: We average about one number every 5 years.

UJ: Being in the same country as Robert Crumb hasn’t sped up Zap any?

GS: No, Victor Moscoso has kind of taken charge as the editor; if he wasn’t always in charge.

He’s putting together a big anthology from Fantagraphics: a one hundred dollar box set of Zap Comix.

UJ: Will that be out next year?

GS: Yeah, I imagine; as soon as we finish Zap #16, which is almost done. S. Clay Wilson, his cartooning days are over. He had a head injury or a stroke or something. Nobody knows. They found him in the street and he can’t draw anymore. Not only that, he has no short term memory.

UJ: Who’s left…? Moscoso, you, Crumb, Spain (He died after this interview was recorded).

GS: Robert Williams and Paul Mavrides.

UJ: Is Paul in France?

GS: No, he’s in San Francisco.

UJ: What else have you been working on?

GS: I’ve got a new series about a rock band called

Not Quite Dead. I’m collaborating with a French artist named Pic. UJ: This is running in France?

GS: Yeah, and published in English by Knockabout Comics in England.

Sergio was with me and we had Charles Burns and the Hernandez Brothers; there were quite a few cartoonists.

UJ: Who’s distributing in the United States?

GS: Last Gasp is distributing it. I don’t know how many they’re selling.

UJ: I heard rumor that you had a deal with Cheech and Chong. They bought an option on the Freak Brothers. Is that true?

GS: Not Cheech and Chong—there’s been a number of film options. I think we’ve sold it 8 times and 8 times the rights have reverted back without anything being done. Universal Studios had it for 6 years and then Film Roman had it; the people that did The Simpsons. Most recently a British company in Bristol, the Bolexbrothers had an option to it. They were gonna do stop action film. Not just like Wallace and Gromit. It’s not modeling clay, but little models ¼ size that have real cloth clothes and they have articulated skeletons; so except for the Freak Brothers’ big noses, it’s very realistic. The sets are so realistic that you can’t tell they’re not full size.

UJ: Are they going ahead with it?

GS: They’re having trouble finding money.

UJ: I was kind of hopeful that I would hear news about a Freak Brothers movie. I guess you were hoping the same.

GS: Maybe it’s better to just keep selling the options…8 times.

UJ: How does France differ from America?

GS: Well, they’re similar enough, except for the language of course. I think comics are much more respected in France. There are 3 or 4 monthly comic magazines and a big annual comic festival that they claim has 200,000 visitors. What do they claim here (San Diego Comic Con)?

UJ: 150,000 GS: I heard 300,000 but I don’t know how they tally it up.

UJ: They count everybody twice.

GS: I think if it’s different days they should count them twice.

UJ: I think the convention center only holds 130,000 people; so they sell out and then that’s it. But they have all the other events around the area. All the other stuff going on, so maybe it’s 300,000. So you’re talking about Angoulême? It’s pretty big.

GS: Not as big as this.

UJ: I was in Angoulême the year Crumb moved to France. I think you were there.

GS: I was there.

UJ: The guest country was America, so we had a whole train from Paris going down there. I know

14

bar for a couple of years, but the bar lost its license because of excessive noise.

UJ: Was the excessive noise your piano playing? (laughter) GS: No, it was the guitar player.

UJ: You grew up in Texas?

GS: Yeah, I went to the University of Texas. I was the editor of the student magazine at University of Texas. It was a humor magazine. That’s where I started Wonder Wart-Hog comics.

UJ: Harvey Kurtzman had some influence on you, didn’t he?

GS: Oh yeah, yeah, he was very helpful. He had HELP! Magazine.

GS: I missed 1 or 2 years. I’ve been to Angoulême 25 times at least. They don’t have the special train anymore. That was fun.

UJ: How does it compare with here? When you sign books there, is there more of an audience or less?

GS: It’s about the same.

UJ: We’re fighting the same thing; TV, movies, video games, and all the rest of it.

GS: At Angoulême there’s a National Institute of Comics, which is a museum and it’s in the same town as the comics festival, but it’s not associated with it.

UJ: Have you had an exhibit in the museum?

GS: No, I don’t think so. The library bought some pages from me. Crumb had an exhibit there.

UJ: We were at the Haifa Comics Festival in Israel last year. We went to the Israeli Cartoon Museum there and I think that one should be built in San Diego, especially for the people who can’t get into San Diego Comic Con. GS: Comics museums have had a kind of bad history in America. Mort Walker had two; there was the one in Massachusetts, Kevin Eastman’s.

I think there is still one in San Francisco, but it’s probably the only one.

UJ: There’s a small one in New York City and there’s one in Pittsburgh, the ToonSeum.

GS: One of the big differences in France is that the government subsidizes. There’s the Department of Culture. That’s what America needs. America is going the opposite direction.

UJ: We seem to be more interested in war than in creating an environment for artists and musicians.

This is a very strange thing because we are cutting back on all the arts in this country and at the same time talking about having more war.

GS: Invading Iran.

UJ: What other activities are you involved with?

Are you painting?

GS: A little bit. I was playing piano at the local

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: So you were in Texas when you first corresponded with him?

GS: Yeah and he used to have an amateur page in HELP! Magazine and I graduated into doing original stuff for HELP! When I first started working for HELP! Gloria Steinem was the assistant editor and then after her it was Terry Gilliam; and then Robert Crumb was gonna be the new assistant editor. He reported for his first day of work at HELP! Magazine and there was Kurtzman standing in the hall looking sad and they had gone bankrupt. Crumb didn’t have a new job after all.

UJ: Did you know Robert at that time?

GS: I knew his work. I never met him until ’69, in New York. I spent some time in New York and we both worked for the East Village Other and Gothic Blimp Works.

UJ: So you were a part of the New York scene with Vaughn Bode?

GS: Vaughn might have been the editor of the Gothic Blimp Works. Spain Rodriguez was there.

UJ: Trina Robbins?

GS: Yes, and Kim Deitch. In fact Trina and Kim drove back with me in my car to San Francisco.

All of those people moved to the Bay Area just about that time.

UJ: What was it like in those early days when you started Rip Off Press?

GS: That took up most of my energy; drawing the Freak Brothers every week for underground papers and then publishing them at Rip Off Press.

Rip Off Press had a big warehouse, 8000 square feet, so we would have big parties there once a month with live bands and everything. That was the main social scene for the cartoonists; some of whom were so introverted they never left their house, like Robert Crumb.

UJ: I was at Rip Off Press. I was 16 and I came up to meet you. I met you at that time and I remember the warehouse and everything. It was quite an experience for me. I was in high school and I wanted to be an underground cartoonist. continued on page 30

Michelle Mangione is a songwriter/musician with a home base in Los Angeles and a fan base throughout the world. Michelle is an accomplished songwriter and has partnered with the legendary Grace Slick on several songs. Phil and Linda Yeh paid a visit to Michelle after meeting her when she performed at D Gallery in Lake Arrowhead UJ: What we’re trying to do is promote literacy and education. That implies music and every field. So we’ll take it from there. Do you have any favorite books?

Michelle Mangione: Let me think about it. Oddly enough, because I was a word fanatic even when I was a young kid; I never read. All I did was play music. As a song writer, having a vocabulary is important. I think we store everything in our brains, whether we recall it or not; we store everything we’ve ever read or heard. Thank God, I have recall. I do crossword puzzles. That’s my favorite thing to do; reading, not so much. I don’t know why, probably because I’m a little too ADD, I don’t know. I didn’t have a learning disability; I think I had a reading disability. I couldn’t focus. When I was reading and studying it was so difficult. I had to read the same paragraph probably 20 times. I’m thinking maybe the last book I read was probably some silly one. A book on tape was actually the last book I “read”. It was probably some silly crime novel; something that was mindless.

UJ: Where do you get ideas for songs?

MM: Totally 100% life experience. All of the songs are based in experience. I can’t really write any other way. I’ve tried, too. I’ve written with this girl who’s a great songwriter. She sits down with people all day long. She will hash it out and come up with some really cool stuff. To me it’s ebb and flow and if I have an experience it’s all about state of mind, for me. If there’s a writer’s block or whatever, it’s like life. There are cycles. I think if I have an experience, I might write about it later. Some of the things come out lyrically and one of the reasons why I like words so much is that there are certain songs…. I wrote a song called Jupiter and I just like the way the sentence “I remember chasing Jupiter” sounded. It sounded beautiful to me. What does that sentence mean? It did mean something, and I remember when I was a little kid and I used to sit there and look up into the sky and wonder what was out there; always reaching out there. And then I thought maybe that’s what it means. Then I looked up Jupiter and thought “OK, so there’s a whole different meaning that I didn’t even know about, or maybe I had read it somewhere a long time ago”, but I love writing based on experiences. I’m not good at making shit up.

UJ: Do other people record your songs?

MM: I’ve had other people record songs. I just wrote a song with this girl, Kelly, who is coming out with a record. She has one of the songs on that record. I just finished writing a song with Exene Cervenka from X and she’s doing a lot of different things. Talk about literacy; she’s such a poet and

15

volunteers and does all sorts of things for kids.

I’ve had a couple of up-and-coming young artists do songs that they’ve put on their records. One song appeared in a movie, but it was another artist that sang it.

UJ: You’ve been doing this for how long?

MM: Forever. I can’t remember when I wasn’t doing music in some form. I started when I was 3 or 4 and my mom did piano lessons. Then I started writing really silly songs when I was little. My sister had a guitar and I would strum A minor and E minor. I learned to play piano when I was very, very young. Then I probably picked up a guitar and then drums came along later. Drums are my main instrument and my first love, basically.

They came along probably when I was 10 or 12 and I’ve spent most of my career playing drums; backing with other bands or whatever.

UJ: Would you say you make your living from session work or from concerts, or what?

MM: Session work, performances, teaching. I’ve taught a lot of lessons over the years. I taught at different schools and privately. I’ve given percussion workshops. I do all of the above. I have to mix it up.

UJ: I’m just curious because I’ve never really had a job. I started Uncle Jam when I was 19; had a studio in Long Beach. I was drawing. I had an art gallery when I was 20 years old. I always believed that an artist, musician, or whatever, should just do it. Just figure out a way and just do it. Don’t get a job as a secretary or a waiter, because it doesn’t make any sense. If you’re an artist, be an artist.

Are your parents supportive?

MM: Yeah, supportive on one hand and when reality set in, it’s kind of like…”Great, great, we support you”. I was playing jazz a lot and my father was really into jazz, so he really liked that.

My father was a musician who never went out and played. He was brilliant and wrote songs that no one ever heard, so I think he liked it when I played jazz. He was very supportive of that. They are both very supportive of me writing, although they would love to see me have a different life style.

I’ve always found a way to make it work. It’s like

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

we do what we can. If you don’t have a ‘real’ job, then you have to make it work.

UJ: The kiss of death is when you have to get a ‘real’ job. You have to make a commitment to being an artist. Everyone I know, artists, musicians, whatever, that’s it. So we starve sometimes and sometimes it’s good.

MM: That’s why when the recession hit, it was like “What recession? I’ve lived in a recession all my life.” I was telling all my friends, “I can so show you how to do this. We can live on a shoestring.” It’s interesting. I was thinking the other day about small businesses and I was thinking there are so many businesses that are so much more risky than becoming a musician, like the restaurant business. But they can go into a bank and get a loan. We can’t go into a bank and say “Hey, I need money for a CD, man.” The truth is that the return on that investment would probably be better than the restaurant return. The other day I said to someone, “I’ve gotta go to work” and she laughed and I just shot her a look and she went “Oh, I didn’t mean that.” She’s like “I thought you just go and play and have fun.”

That’s not what we do. I love that part of it, but the lifestyle... I’ve been around musicians all my life, so it’s not odd, but it’s definitely a lifestyle that we choose. It’s not always easy.

UJ: A real job can disappear in 2 minutes. If you work for yourself, you control your own life. I believe that if more people did music or art, they would appreciate it more.

MM: I don’t know about the rest of the arts, but with music I think that in this country we have this belief, this illusion of the American Dream.

It has to do with money, prestige, and power.

Wouldn’t it be cool if the American dream was about loving other people? We never hear that. We only see people accepting Grammy’s and sports awards and whatever it is, saying “I’m living my dream.” I’m not knocking living your dream, but I question sometimes, because of media and because of corporate America, what our dreams have become. Are we doing music to get that outside stuff, or are we artists to create art? Yes, we all want to be successful and have abundance,

but not at the risk of losing our humanity and I think that’s happened a lot.

UJ: Young people, especially in music or anything in the arts; they see things like American Idol and these TV shows; and to me, I don’t believe this is a good way to foster independence and originality.

What are your thoughts on American Idol?

MM: I love watching it in a total hedonistic way; because it’s good TV. It’s drama; it’s total drama to me. It’s the same reason I like certain books. I don’t take it at face value. I don’t look at it and say “That’s what an American idol is.” That’s not what in American idol is. An American idol is a mother who dedicates her life to helping. There are so many other people that I want to emulate, than somebody who has a really fantastic voice.

That is one of the problems with shows like that is that people may not get that. I also know that I really am just trying to take care of my own backyard in every way that I can. Is it art if it doesn’t sell? That is the stupidest question to me.

If you’re an artist or a musician, it’s kind of a no brainer. It doesn’t compute. When you’re an artist all you want to do is art.

UJ: We’re at a point in our society where there is so much of this corporate, canned, reality shows that I think--because I talk to people all the time-think there are a lot of people who are getting fed up with this. Recently I met some young people, as well as some old people, who say they are not watching TV anymore. I met a young lifeguard who says, “I’m really into the Counter Culture; I don’t watch TV.” Well, I was really into the Counter Culture, as a hippie, but I had friends who were the Beats. They were before me, but I knew some of those guys really well. There’s some misconception, because I once went to the Chelsea Hotel in New York and there were all these Beats; a gathering of Beats. I met all these guys in one of the rooms. There were all these guys in there watching a football game. I hate football and I said, “What?” It’s totally alien to what I was thinking; I was thinking bongos, or something. That’s what I find, we all want to stereotype.

MM: I’ve had people who I’ve thought stands for everything I believe in and then I find out that they beat their wife or something. We all have that human quality. I’m a trash media and literature junkie in a way, but I know what it is for me. I think, “OK the bottom line for me is I have to go to bed at night and think, ‘Did I live my life like the person I want to become?’ What did that involve? What do I want to change about tomorrow for my world?” I’ve stopped trying to advocate, because we can get down to everybody. It’s just about the day. I’m gonna get up in the morning and say “I want to live my life the best I can and not support bad shit.”

16

I don’t think we understand what that is, when we see American Idol. Nobody really gets what that means. There’s a show now that says you win a record contract. Great--most of the people I know that had record contracts were tax writeoffs. I think 10% of people with contracts actually got promoted and the rest of them didn’t. How many people who actually got record deals were shelved and basically were a tax write off?

UJ: A record deal is like a publishing deal. You’re an author and you have a publisher. People on the outside don’t understand; it doesn’t mean anything unless you have someone promoting you. All the little writers have a book out, so what? The publisher expects the author to do the promoting, unless you’re one of the few big authors. There are very few people in the strata of a Tom Cruise in films or Bruce Springsteen in music: very top level. But that’s not the majority.

What I’m interested in-- when you do a CD like What is a Saint?, how do you promote it?

MM: I do a lot of live shows to promote it. I put it out on the Internet as much as I can. I’ve hired a publicist before to help me promote, but most of the time I can’t afford to hire a publicist.

UJ: I find publicists to be a waste of time usually.

MM: I agree. I think the best for an independent artist is to just try to get a lot of reviews and interviews. I try to talk to a lot of people. You

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

have to keep pushing. The only reason I got into Rolling Stone is because Grace (Slick) called Rolling Stone and said “Hey, I’m doing a song with this girl Michelle, and she just finished the track so will you review it?” and they did.

UJ: How did you meet Grace Slick in the first place?

MM: Through my partner, Lori. She’s been very good friends with Grace for many years. She played some of my stuff for Grace a long time ago and she dug it, which blew my mind. She would quote a couple things and I would say, “Can I use that in my promotion?” We didn’t really talk music unless she did. She’s funny; she’ll just start telling stories. I was showing her the drum beat for White Rabbit, because she was talking about being in the studio with Jorma (Kaukonen) and trying to tell him what kind of beat she wanted. I said “Like this?” Then we were just hanging out one day and she hands me this piece of paper with a bunch of lyrics. And she said “Would you want to put some music to this?” “Let me get back to you on that.” ha ha. I love the way she thinks.

She’s very free thinking, being a woman in music and actually speaking her mind. I go back in music; for me as a kid, who did I have that really did that: Grace Slick and Chrissie Hynde, who were in control of their environment. Chrissie Hynde did what she wanted to and probably had to play the game a little bit too. I could see it, not just in their music and songs, but in their presence.

UJ: Patti Smith?

MM: Absolutely Patti Smith. When you think about rock & roll men, there’s a lot, but when I think about the women that I listened to, Grace was one of them. I was a little bit young when she was playing.

I would have loved to have seen her and Janis (Joplin), but I really think that whole idea of having women to emulate is good.

Every single girl group that had two girls in it, they would compare us to the GoGo’s. It’s weird because we had so few girl bands; like really serious girl bands. When I think about them, I think about Martha Davis (the Motels). I had a chance to work with her on The Edge of Madness and we were talking about a producer that we both worked with. I wouldn’t work with him, because he was a jerk.

UJ: Do you find it’s getting better or is it getting worse for women?

MM: Better, I think. I think women are getting more respect because they are demanding more respect. I think with everything I’ve ever run into with guys, it’s mostly about fear. I don’t think it’s that they’re bad guys, usually. Girls can be really tough in bands. The competition, and our egos and self-obsession we all have as artists. My girl is a counselor. She’s been a drug counselor for high profile people for continued on page 26

Rockabilly Hall of Fame’s

Keith O’Conner Murphy Fame. Point: Connie Francis, the first female rock megastar is still not in there. Even Chris Isaak says, “When they let Pat Boone and Connie Francis in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, they’ll balance it a lot more.” However the R&R Hall did ask me for a copy of my King Records recording for their permanent collection and I was glad to oblige.

UJ: I was amazed that on your new CD, you really did mention the entire class of your graduating class back in the 60s. Can you please tell us about this CD and the reunion?

KM: I decided to compose a piece for my Oak Hill High School senior class. The Class of 1962 highlights historical events from my senior year and includes the names of all 90 of my classmates.

The six-minute song begins by mentioning historical figures and events of the era such as John Glenn, Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I researched the history of the year and also included personal memories of high school friends.

It is a purpose-driven song; it was fun writing it. It was the first time I had performed in many years and it was fun. I performed for both my Converse, IN Oak Hill High class of 1962 and my 8th grade class from Chippewa in Wabash, Indiana. I made the front page of three newspapers, and even received an email from the superintendent of Oak Hill, who heard an interview on the radio and then opened his paper to see the article. Back in the day, a call from him would not have been a good thing most likely! The CD, which I did as a labor of love to give away to classmates, produced many thank you notes and comments, and I was grateful. I also included my 1960s records on it, and it is available from the popular Internet places. It is titled The Class of 1962 by Keith O’Conner Murphy. The chorus and melody hook sums it up: “The skies were both gray and blue, for the class of 1962.”

Uncle Jam: Tell us a little about yourself, Keith.

How did you get started in the music business?

Keith Murphy: I started singing when I did an Acappella version of O Little Town of Bethlehem at a 4th grade PTA meeting. Then I wrote some songs with my co-writer Jim Aguilar. We were naïve and didn’t know you couldn’t just take a 3 inch tape around to record companies and get a contract. But that is exactly what happened; and next thing we knew, we were in Nashville backed by the “A Team” who backed Elvis and many famous recording artists!

UJ: A German band performs one of your songs on their CD. Please elaborate.

KM: After that, the great German rockabilly band Black Raven said they would welcome hearing my new song Tiddlywink. I was honored, because it was the only new song on their album that they did not write. Who could resist with such profound lyrics as “Do I want

UJ: You took a rather long break to raise a family and have a more stable career with M&M Mars Candy Company. Since dipping your fingers back in the music business, you have been honored with a spot in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Can you tell us about that and what else has happened since then?

KM: Yes, based on the strength of Cindy Lou, my first record, they inducted me in 2003. I was looking for my label mate on Stacy Records, the great guitarist Al Casey, and asked them how to find him. They told me he had been looking for ME! My name is Keith Murphy but I recorded as Keith O’Conner, so I was hard to find. They were inducting 198, 199 and 200. I asked if I could be 200 and they said yes. It was quite an honor, as I believe it is more genuine than the more popular and more profit-oriented Rock and Roll Hall of

17

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Keith O’Conner and the Torkays

UJ: Any upcoming performances you can mention?

KM: Not much performing, but if it happens I won’t avoid it. Actually Europe is more likely than the USA, as they seem to appreciate old R&B and rockabilly and original rock and roll more than in the US. It is particularly true of artists who are genuine and unique, but not best sellers. Speaking of genuine and unique greats, Uncle Jam and Phil Yeh are remarkable in their perseverance and what they have achieved, and I salute you. Phil is one of the nicest and most caring people I know – especially his concern about kids and the huge need for support of literacy and the arts. He is also a genius in my opinion.

That is not really a compliment, just a fact.

her, does a T-shirt want to shrink? Do we go together; do Titanic go with sink? Do I need her, does an autograph need ink? She’d make the devil get religion and the preacher get a drink!”

UJ: You are a car collector and this issue features our Route 66 mural at the site of the historic first McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino. Can you please tell us a little about your cars?

KM: You can never have enough cars and Jay Leno is my roll model! Yes roll, not role. I love 50s and 60s American cars, but don’t have one at present. I also love British sports cars, and my favorite is a 1954 MG TF, which I have owned since 1973. I also have a DeLorean, like in Back to the Future; made in Ireland. Last year we did a rally from coast to coast across US 50, in my Porsche Boxster S, which was a wonderful trip. We started in Ocean City, MD and ended up at the Golden Gate Bridge. We then headed down the coast highway to LA, and then back across sections of old Rt. 66 and stopped at our daughter’s in Amarillo, TX and finally home to Schooley’s Mountain, NJ – 7,400 miles and about a month, top down and wind in our hair when we could!

18

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: Finally, any new songs in the works?

KM: I have a couple I need to get demos made of. One is a song which the great Trop Rock artist Howard Livingston started and I picked up on as a co-writer, “(I Believe In) Second Chances”.

Another I wrote by myself is “She’s Got the Best Body Money Can Buy”, which is a humorous rocker. Stay tuned. http://www.rockabillyhall.com/ KeithOConnerMurphy.html 1960s Garage Bands http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw9xn_bs7fQ 

I have known Sergio Aragones since the 1970s.

Linda and I decided to go up to his place in Ojai, California in January 2013, and catch up with the fastest pen in comics. We brought along colorist Tom Luth, who worked on Uncle Jam almost since we started it in the early 70s. Tom has had the task of coloring Sergio’s extremely detailed cartoons for decades. We had interviewed Sergio back in the first incarnation of this publication in the 1980s. We had a very nice lunch prepared by Sergio’s wife Charlene. ~Phil Yeh Uncle Jam: What have you been up to?

Sergio: Something that I’ve always done since I was 13 years old…drawing; sitting at my drawing table, thinking of ideas, and drawing them. Specifically, I’m doing MAD, I’m doing the MAD Show for TV, and I’m doing Groo.

UJ: What are you doing for the Mad Show?

Animation?

Sergio: Gags. It’s an animated 15 minute show, which has been nominated for an Emmy and is in their 3rd season already. It’s very popular with kids. It’s the Mad Show on Cartoon Network, for Warner Brothers. I do gags, Alfred E. Neuman gags and the marginal gags for them; then they get animated. And in Mad Magazine, I do “A Mad Look At....” which I’ve been doing every issue and the little marginal cartoons. I’m doing Groo and this time we’re doing a crossover, which is Groo and Conan, because Dark Horse has the rights for Conan. Tom Yeates, who is a great artist and is drawing Prince Valiant right now, is drawing the Conan part and I’m drawing the Groo part, and of course all the writing with the great help of Mark Evanier.

UJ: When will this come out?

SA: We have finished two complete issues and are finishing #3. They want issue #4 begun so they can market them with the date of publication.

Also I’m working on my comic “Sergio Aragones Funnies”. I did seven issues and then, because I had an operation, I had to rest for awhile. I finished #8 and I’m finishing # 9. I’m also doing special projects. I did a cover for DC and I’m doing The Simpsons. I write and draw them.

UJ: So you’re busier than ever.

SA: Yes, busier than ever. So it is good, being discovered for foreign editions and some advertising once in awhile that you have to do inbetween, so I have a full agenda. I don’t take any new work, because I can’t.

UJ: There’s no break, there’s no time to rest.

SA: All the time is resting--I sit. Don’t forget, as you know, too, with your things; that half of the job is thinking, so the thinking is relaxing. I sometimes sit by the pool, bring my coffee and I sit there. I still enjoy relaxing. I go to the coffee house and I think, or go to the marina and think of ideas. Half of the work is very relaxing.

UJ: Are you going to start traveling again this year?

19

SA: I have visited every place on Earth.

UJ: Did you go to China?

SA: Yes, a long time ago. I want to go again, because I have never seen the clay soldiers.

UJ: Yeah, in Xi’an.

SA: I have to see that…I have to see them because I saw the soldiers in Germany at a trade show that they had, but it’s not the same as being there.

UJ: The real place is really impressive, because it’s so fascinating. These farmers were digging a well and then boom, there were all these soldiers.

SA: And then when you read the story about how it was destroyed, how they broke them and took the weapons.

UJ: Have you been to Shanghai?

SA: Yes, and that place where you gamble-Macao.

UJ: They say Macao is three times busier than Las Vegas.

SA: I don’t doubt it.

UJ: Also Singapore now has a big casino, The Marina Bay Sands.

SA: Singapore has changed. It was a dump when I was there the first time and then the second time it was immaculate. I travel a lot. I’ve seen most everyplace from Antarctica, to Bhutan, to the Himalayas. Traveling at my age, they ask “Oh well you will not go back to India?” Well not really. I’ve been there, I’ve seen it and I have enjoyed it, so I don’t want to go again. I have my memories and places change. I went to Kenya with a MAD group once. A couple of years later I went with my wife and I couldn’t recognize the place because they had added so many different hotels.

So everything changes a lot. So many places I don’t want to go back to, because my memories are so perfect. I still go to conventions…I get invited to a lot of them.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: Any conventions coming up in 2013?

SA: Yeah, probably. I won’t miss San Diego of course. I’m going to Boston. I got invited to Spain. I got invited to a convention in India. They keep inviting me to Malaysia and I have to go back, because I have a great time in Malaysia.

UJ: We had a great time in Malaysia, too. I was there twice in 2010. Really nice.

SA: They had a big forest fire across Malaysia the last time I was there and the smoke was so dense that you couldn’t see the towers. We went in (Petronas Towers) and we went to the top. We couldn’t see the city because of the smoke. I had seen it before…It’s a great place.

UJ: Animation is booming in Malaysia. They have a lot of studios. When we were there in 2010, we ran into Edward James Olmos. He was doing some animation projects.

SA: The world has become one. Foods, work, language, clothing, it has become so universal in many ways.

UJ: Do you know Lat? (Malaysia’s most famous cartoonist).

SA: Very well, yes.

UJ: He’s been knighted, you know; so he’s a big shot in Malaysia.

SA: He was invited to the U.S. by the State Department and he came to visit me at the studio.

That was one of his wishes, to meet me. The funny part is that because I had just come back from Asia, I had all his books. I saw them and I was fascinated by his work. I went to bookstores and bought all his work without knowing him, so when they asked me if it would be alright if he came to my studio, I said “Please”. So when he comes in and I said “Please sign these books for me”, he was so delighted that I knew his works so well. I think he’s an incredible cartoonist and if

you want to know Malaysia, you have to read his books.

those musicians or those contemporary writers. Oh, I see a great future.

UJ: To me, I think the secret of traveling is finding those guys like Lat all around the world.

SA: Absolutely.

UJ: So you would encourage anyone who wants to be a cartoonist, to go for their dream?

SA: Absolutely. Oh, more than ever.

But more than ever, he has to become better because if you are crappy you are not going anyplace.

UJ: You find someone who has an original take on the world as opposed to superheroes, you know-- the same old stuff.

SA: What happened is that in humor cartooning and regular cartooning, even adventure cartooning, the family is very small universally; so if you have arrived to a point that your work is known like my work is known because of MAD; I know a lot of the work of people who have succeeded in their countries. Many years ago, I went to Brazil and I know there’s a cartoonist there that his name is Geraldo, excellent cartoonist, so I pick up the phone directly and call him and say “Geraldo, this is Sergio Aragones” “Oh Sergio”, like a lost brother, he comes to pick me up, have dinner, introduced me to a lot of the people—because it’s a family. There are not many of us. See, if you want to be a doctor, you go to college, you graduate, and you become a doctor.

There are millions of them all over the world; architects, engineers, everything; but cartoonists, we are a handful in the world.

UJ: That’s true.

SA: So once you know or you are more or less known, then you go there and introduce yourself and it’s like you know them all your life; same problems, same ambitions, same everything. It’s like you’ve known them forever.

UJ: I think that’s true. It’s like the kids today coming up; we have to encourage them to be more original because I see so many just drawing the same stuff.

SA: Well to us, it’s the same stuff. To the elder cartoonists, what we were drawing was the same stuff.

UJ: But they have to make a break. Somewhere they cannot draw Batman; they have to draw something new.

SA: Those guys who are just drawing Batman will never succeed. They need to eventually stop drawing Batman and draw their own characters, which is what we tell them every time we are at a convention and all the kids arrive. We realize that a larger percentage, they are not going to stay in this career. They love to draw, because it’s a natural thing, like playing music. It’s a natural thing that everybody has a little bit of art in them, so they like to be part of it. They like to be at convention, they like to sign sketches, but you know they are never going to go anyplace, because they don’t have the real interest to become themselves as cartoonists. But there’s a percentage there, that really want to and you can see it in their eyes and in their work. When you

20

give them a hint they go and do it and next year you see their improvement; so now you know that anytime that kid comes you can spend some time with him and with developing him. The others, you’re talking to them and they’re looking around; they’re not caring, there are so many of them; but that’s like in everything, so the ones that are going to succeed, they’re going to make something different. The one’s that keep drawing the same, let them. They don’t harm anything.

I say look, if you want to get into the business, tomorrow you have to bring me this character on a motorcycle, jumping over a train, rescuing a girl who’s been attacked by a dinosaur. And the guy looks at me like I’m crazy and I say that’s what the script is asking me for. In one panel alone, I want the guy on a motorcycle, jumping over a train and rescuing the girl from the mouth of a dinosaur.

UJ: And you have to do it in one day.

SA: You have to do it in one day and the guy says “Well, I don’t know how to do that.” “Then you have the answer. You have to learn how to draw dinosaurs and you have to learn how to draw trains, and so on.” Some people do it, and some people don’t. Those who don’t will never make it.

UJ: So are you hopeful for the future?

SA: Very hopeful; very hopeful. As population increases, more cartoonists increase. The media changes. Old fashioned people that don’t think of the future think comic books are dying. That’s not true. Printed media may be in danger, but we have an electronic world just starting. There are infinite ways to draw cartoons now, more than ever. Yes, the comic book as we know it is going to become very specific. People are not going to buy garbage.

They are going to buy the best, so the bad are going to be eliminated, because they are going to be very expensive. Paper’s going to be very hard to get. Bookstores are going to get smaller. You have to electronically buy your paper, so only the best are going to survive. What is good for certain eyes is no good for others. I watch modern humor and sometimes I don’t understand it. When I read MAD Magazine and there are a lot of young writers I have to ask my daughter, “What does this mean?” and she will explain to me what they were talking about; because I don’t know about

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: So what you recommend for a young artist is to study anatomy, or life drawing, or what do you suggest?

SA: It all depends. If he’s good at drawing, I would specify that he get good at writing; because you could be an artist, but in the comics if you are an artist/writer you can draw your own stuff. To draw, don’t waste your time taking an anatomy class that you can learn in a book. Go and learn literature. Learn how the good writers write. Write—not draw—write. Then you can write your own material. If you are a very good writer and a very bad artist and you want to do both, then learn anatomy, learn shadows, and invent a career for yourself. Invent your proper college, like cartoon college. There must be a few around, but invent your own. Realize there are a lot of books around. Realize what they are all about; shadows, perspective, anatomy, proportion, hands, expressions. Each one is a class. Give yourself a class. Learn it. If you’re no good at hands, learn hands, draw hands for a long time. Learn how to draw an animal from a book.

Realize how is their skeleton, how do they work, and then go to the zoo. Now you know the animal from books, now you can see it moving, now you can see the proportion of how they move. If you tried to draw the animal from the zoo without knowing the anatomy of the animal, it’s going to be a very poorly drawn animal. If you learn from a book, how the anatomy works and how the muscles connect, how the jaw connects to the face when they open their mouth; then you know your animal. Now you go to the zoo or to the ranch to see a horse and then you start drawing them.

It’s a study. I still study. If you go into my studio right now, there are 2 or 3 books open about ships, because I have to draw a ship. Even though I am cartooning it, I have to know how the anatomy of the ship works. So I have tons of sketches of ships, because I have to draw one ship. I’m learning again. Every day I learn.

UJ: I notice your house filled with books and artifacts too. You have an interest in all these things. It’s like when I talked to Ray Bradbury, Ray learned from the library. He said go to the library; it’s free.

SA: Of course, yes indeed. And the young people who have been raised not with books, but with a computer, the books are there in the computer.

It doesn’t have to be a paper book; it can be an electronic book. It’s just the reference and knowledge. No matter how you get it, you can get it from a paper book or you can get it from the

computer; but learn. Don’t just go to Wikipedia and learn three facts. Learn more. The more you know, the more you can do. So in this life it’s not how you do it, it’s what you do with it.

UJ: I fully agree, because I think the problem today is that it’s so easy to use computers; but I find the kids know less. When I talk to young people, I say, for instance “Do you know Wyatt Earp?” They don’t know. I say “You know, the Kevin Costner movie?” They say “Who’s Kevin Costner?” So I realize that we have to do better to make history fun.

SA: It’s a stage right now. Tweeting, communicating with a computer, texting. It’s very fashionable right now, but even the dumbest of the dumbest are going to realize that and say “Hey, buddy, how you doing?” “I’m doing nothing, just sitting here.” That doesn’t go anyplace. They’re going to realize that very fast. Girls don’t realize that, until they die in a crash because they are texting. It is terrible. But it’s going to happen.

That’s a phase because it’s a new invention and the kids are suddenly into it; like in comics they were into Manga because it is popular, but Manga has changed around. It has been integrated inside and now it’s like everything else. But for a while Manga was all it was. Same thing with texting… they will realize it won’t go anyplace except to death, and they will want to know more. Suddenly it’s going to hit a generation of bums, because of the lack of knowledge, lack of wanting; but the next generation is going to say “I don’t want to be like that guy”, so that’s going to change. People are engrossed in that, well sadly it’s the parents’ fault because they are not saying “Wait a minute, son, there is something better than this.”

UJ: I’m an optimist too. I think we’re going through kind of a tough time with some of the people; but at the same time you have the kids who are very smart and very much paying attention.

SA: Absolutely. It’s about percentages. The United States is a very large country. When you talk about France or a smaller country, you can say they have a very high intellect. Well, percentage wise they don’t have that many people; but if you count how many intellects are in France, let’s say there are 100 intellectuals and in the US we have 10,000 intellectuals because we have so many more people. If you compare that volume, we have more artists, more intellectuals, more of a little of everything. By the same token, we have more bums, more ignorance, more prejudice because of the amount of people.

UJ: So the bottom line is you’re optimistic. We have to let our readers know, especially young kids; because I often meet young people who want to get into cartooning, but they don’t know where to go. The business is kind of tough right now, so what would you say to a young person coming to you?

SA: One thing I have realized, I have never found a very, very talented person without a job. You have to get better. If you want my job, get better than me; then you’ll have that job, guaranteed,

21

because I’m old. Just become better, because I’m not going to let you take my job. I’m going to practice to get better, so the better ones are going to succeed. There are not any qualms about it. Jobs have disappeared, of course; jobs that computers came and took away. If you were a guy who assembled cars, or a lady that made the weekly letter for the company, the computer can do that very fast and cheaper; so you’re out of a job, which is not coming back. Robots are doing your job in the factory. Those jobs are not coming back. That poor man and that poor woman are screwed up because they were not prepared for other things. I doubt it very much that a man says, “I want to use a wrench to tie screws on a car.”

That job doesn’t exist anymore. It is the new jobs that you have to find…millions of jobs. You have to use a computer.

UJ: You have to have education.

SA: You have to have education and you have to mold to the times. Times are changing faster than ever, so you do have to change faster than ever.

Just because your dad was a welder, you don’t have to become a welder; but if you become the best welder, you’ll have work forever.

UJ: There are people like Sam Maloof. He made chairs by hand that sold for $40,000 apiece. He passed away, but his assistants are still making chairs with his plans.

SA: Crafts are going to survive because people like handmade things. If you make a craft, don’t expect to become a millionaire. What do you want to do? Do you want to become a millionaire, or do you want to do what you like to do? If you like to do this, you realize you can live well if you’re good at it, but you’re not going to become a millionaire. We have examples in cartooning that the worst paid are cartoonists and the best paid is a cartoonist. Why, because his character was so good that it was made on television, advertisements, movies, etc. etc. Charles Schulz with Snoopy and Peanuts, made the man very wealthy. Luck? No, he was very talented and people like what he did and so the guy was making a living. There’s a gamut there…a large difference of salaries, but I don’t think that I know a cartoonist that got into cartooning to become wealthy. They became cartoonists because they liked to draw. Usually when they get married then the wife wants to have more. If they were single they would be doing what they liked probably very comfortable living in a trailer. That’s what he likes to do. They like to draw and to see their cartoons published; then they die and become very famous and very wealthy. Their heirs become very wealthy. It all depends what you want in life.

If you want to become rich, forget about crafts.

Get into banking. ..or robbing banks. Ha ha.

UJ: What do you think about gardening?

SA: I love it. It’s very healthy. We have our planters. I built a very beautiful planter for Charlene and when the season comes, we will have peppers, tomatoes, chilis, all kinds of stuff.

There is a cartoonist called Don Rosa who draws

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Donald Duck. He specializes in chilis. He has a great farm raising chilis. Gardening is a very comfortable craft, in a way. You get up in the morning and you plant while you think of ideas.

It clears your head. So is carpentry for that matter.

So is any craft that takes you away from what you are doing; to clear your head. You do a craft or anything that distracts you from what you are doing. That gives you a little peace, because cartooning is a 24 hour job. It’s not like fortunate men that go to work from 9 to 5. As soon as 5:00 ends, he doesn’t take work…that’s it. He’s free to do whatever he wants. Cartooning is a 24 hour thing, you’re always working. It’s good to have a separation where you work. In my case, I’m a crafter. I do a lot of things, because I always wonder about how things are made and then I do them, learn how to make them and then I don’t do it anymore; because I know how now. I apply it to my cartooning many times, because I have done it myself. When I’m doing Groo and I have somebody building a boat, they have the right tools and it’s the right boat because I have done it.

With everything, it’s the little details that if I put a guy doing ceramics in the background; I’ve done ceramics so I try to give the right movement to the man that’s doing it and the right tools and things.

So if you don’t know about ceramics you don’t notice that, but you feel comfortable. Nothing is distracting you from the story and you can go there and realize that you’re there. If you know ceramics you can say “Oh, look at that. That’s the right tools.”

UJ: You have the knowledge of what to draw--the detail. Alfredo (Alcala) once did a painting of his father’s carpentry workshop from when he was a small boy. He was old when he painted it, but he remembered all the tools in the workshop. It’s really incredible, he had a photographic memory.

Tom Luth: One time Alfredo had me take him to a model shop. He wanted to get various models.

He was looking at the model of a battleship. He says “Oh no, this is all wrong” and he took out his pen and started correcting it on the box. The store owner came out; “You can’t do that!”

UJ: That’s it; he would recognize the detail and pay attention to the detail.

SA: It’s important. This is a big difference in cartooning. For instance, I come from gag cartooning and in gag cartooning you want simplicity. You want to go to the point. The less you put around, the more you will understand the gag, like in the marginals. Then you go into comic books. What you are trying to do now is to invite your reader into that world. You don’t want to do a blank background, because that means that guy is no place; so you want to give a modicum of information. You want to make the reader feel where they are; so let’s say that the comic book I do with Mark Evanier and Tom Luth and Stan Sakai, I want it to be the most comfortable for the reader to be there. There’re no anachronisms in Groo, of any kind. I don’t do the joke about Obama in Groo. There’s not one mention of anything contemporary. Groo, who is a barbarian

that lives in a mythological place, has no relation with our world. Many times I try to avoid words like tomorrow or things that indicate a specific time. I want it to be more of old timing. The bars, the market, the houses; I do all kinds of research, not only with my travels, but with books to keep it current within his antiquity. It drives people like Tom Luth crazy because suddenly they realize, “Wait a minute, is this real or this invented?” I get a call from him and he says “What is the color?” and I say “Whatever you want, because it doesn’t exist.” When I’m working I try to do a comfortable locale for the reader; so if the craftsman is right, if the people in the environment are right, the plants, the housing, even the ships; it won’t take you away from the story. By nature you’re in the story and you’re reading and if suddenly something in the comic bothers you, you have broken that fantasy that you are in. That ship is wrong. Without you saying it, it’s your subconscious because you know how a ship should look and that distracts you from being there.

UJ: When you do your stories in Sergio Aragones Funnies, you’re telling your own personal story, so what is your method of working when you work on that?

SA: We did a comic called Solo. Solo was a comic that was published by DC Comics. It was 12 comics and each one was drawn by a different artist. We had carte blanche to do anything we wanted. I figured out I’ll do gags; I’ll do personal stories; and I’ll do funny stories. It was very successful for me, so I figured out that I want to do that all the time. Bongo was amenable to publish it, so we started and when it came to personal stories, I’ve been fortunate that my life hasn’t been quiet. I was born in another country and I was a Second World War refugee. I came to Mexico by ship. A lot of things happened to me; I traveled all over the world and I was with MAD Magazine.

Many, many things happened to me. I did military service, so I have a ton of stories to tell. I met a lot of very famous people, I worked in the movies, I’ve been in a movie and television shows. I’ve done a lot of things, all the time working as a cartoonist, too. I had to tell the stories, so those are very easy because I remember very well.

Because it’s humor, I have to find the fun part of the stories, because all of them had something funny. If not, you wouldn’t remember it. Every time we took a trip with MAD magazine, of which we took over 40 trips overseas, there was always something funny happening with cartoonists. I look for something that will entertain and change the different ages; something that happened when I was a kid, something that happened when I was a young man, and something that happened when I was an adult. I’ve been alternating the stories.

Research is easy because when I remember what year something happened, then I can go to books or to Google and look for that particular car to put in the background. Tom is the one who suffers

22

here, because he has to color the things a little more accurate because they are supposed to be real. So he calls me constantly about it. “Yeah the puppet was red.” Ha ha, I drive him nuts with that.

UJ: These are really good stories because I think it gives the reader, especially young people, a sense that you’re doing lots of things. I read in your funnies that your father was a film producer.

There’s a good story about when you were in the movie. For me, it’s really nice to see how your life was.

SA: It’s in a way trying to do little biographical stories without getting into the boring biography.

I tell graphically things that happened.

UJ: You will never just write a book; your life story?

SA: No, I have no interest in that. Life passes pretty fast; and then I have always been very respectful of other people’s lives. When you write something, you have to involve everybody that’s been around you and I don’t want to. I don’t want to involve people who are going to read about certain private things, which is nobody else’s business. If they want to wonder, let them wonder.

Things that my generation of people wouldn’t understand that we did, I don’t want to tell about it. I just go with my regular stories that I’m doing and I think that will suffice.

Graphically they can see it the way I remember it, or the way my mind remembers it.

UJ: They can have a good sense of the story.

SA: I have a few stories that have been published in other places, like the time that I went to Bhutan.

It was a wonderful story, because I had great experiences over there. I already did it for another publication, but maybe one day I will publish it again. It came out in black and white, so Tom has to color it.

UJ: I understand that in Bhutan, the King has to invite you to come?

SA: No, what happened was that they opened Bhutan. I went with a friend of mine. I’ve been all over the world with him to do documentaries.

We have great adventures in Africa, in Antarctica, all over the world. He decided nobody has been there, so let’s do a documentary in Bhutan. We applied for a Visa. I was the first visa-Number 1-for a Mexican.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: He is a filmmaker?

SA: Documentaries. I have traveled with him a lot. I have done some of my adventures with him in the funnies. So we went to Bhutan, but we realized that we didn’t really have a real good documentary. We just had a travel log, so we didn’t do anything with it. The day I met Richard Nixon was published by DC Comics. That will probably eventually come out in the funnies. A story that gave me the Eisner Award as the best short story was the story that I called “The Gorilla Suit”, when I was doing aquatic ballet. It was a very funny anecdote about a gorilla suit that almost drowned me. I published that story also in another book by TwoMorrows Publishing House.

Eventually that will be in the funnies. Right now all the stories are totally new.

UJ: So, the Bongo comic series will go on for a long time?

SA: At least we have a contract until edition number 12. I don’t see any troubles.

UJ: How many pages do you have to draw a day?

SA: I draw 2 pages a day. With new projects, a lot of people say “What do you want to do besides this?” I don’t want to do anything else. I’m so happy doing what I’m doing. I’m not interested in making movies or doing television of anything. I like what I do.

UJ: You’re not interested in animating?

SA: No. If somebody wants to do a very good job of it, I don’t object; but for me there’s nothing for me to do there. For me, what I do, which is sitting and drawing, that’s what I enjoy. I am very happy.

I have a lovely family. I have a good place to live.

I have very good friends. Health has been so far very good.

UJ: Are there any awards you haven’t gotten?

You’ve pretty much gotten them all, right?

SA: In the U.S., yes. There are a lot of awards all over the world. Once I was talking to a Russian cartoonist and he asked how many medals I have.

I have one medal, I think, that someone gave me.

I asked him how many he had. He said he had 400 medals. He had participated in 400 things and had been awarded 400 times. So he’s very much, very well rewarded, which is fine. So many countries have awards for showing and for doing and I don’t participate. I don’t like to compete. I have gotten recognition for my work, but I don’t like to compete. If they want to recognize me, well thank you, I have worked hard. I don’t think it’s a competition. I do my work and if they recognize it, fine. If they don’t, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. I get the same reward from a kid sending me a letter saying “I love your work”. http://www.sergioaragones.com/ Photos courtesy of Tom Luth

San Diego Comic Fest Creates ‘The Friendly, Intimate, Comic-Con Experience’

By Donna P. Crilly

George Clayton Johnson walks around San Diego’s Town and Country Resort surrounded by a mini-entourage of old friends, admirers and family. He’s sporting a poofy vest similar in style to the “life preserver” Marty McFly wore in Back to the Future.

Somewhere behind his long, white beard and under his wide-brimmed hat is a face covered in bandages and dried blood from a fall he took in the parking lot on the way to San Diego Comic Fest.

Some of the blood has trickled down to Johnson’s beard; however, he seems less concerned about it than his son, Paul, who escorts him toward their destination, through a small crowd of conventiongoers.

Johnson, an 83-year-old man, says he’s never worked a 9-5 job. Luckily for the people at Comic Fest, the co-author of Logan’s Run isn’t your typical 83-year-old. He’s one of the guests of honor at the festival.

He ducks behind a stairwell and smokes some pot before making his way to Comic Fest’s version of Café Frankenstein to sit on a panel where he talks about the “good old days” of comic books.

In the late ‘50s, Café Frankenstein was in Laguna Beach, California as the “black sheep” shop that was a little too liberal for the neighborhood.

Walking around Comic-Fest, you hear “the good old days” tossed around generously. It’s because Comic-Fest, which debuted in October 2012 to die-hard comic book and sci-fi fans, is a nod to the 1970s when Comic-Con focused on just that. But George Clayton Johnson Mike Towry and company, who are responsible Convention Center from Oct. 4-6, 2013. Some of for organizing the three-day festival, aren’t the early Comic-Con attendees say the Town and griping about the fact that many Comic-Con Country Resort reminds them of the “old Cortez International attendees today don’t read comic days,” when Comic-Con was poolside at a hotel. books. They say they appreciate the explosion Though not the first Comic-Con location, it was in pop culture that Comic-Con created, but also an early breeding ground for aspiring comic book wanted to bring the heart of Comic-Con back to artists. Likewise, the Town and Country Resort the basics. Thus, Towry, one of the original co- has a pool leading to the front entrance. Art of founders of Comic-Con, began Comic-Fest with Gold, Silver and Bronze age superheroes are being painted on 8-foot slabs of wood along the a handful of co-organizers.

Comic Fest is meant to be “intimate” and pool’s perimeter for passersby to admire as they “friendly”; a way for dealers and fans of comic head back and forth from Café Frankenstein to the books and sci-fi to “geek out” without having dealer room and panels.

The Resort isn’t easily spotted at first, as there to deal with the thousands of people pouring through every nook and cranny of the San Diego aren’t thousands of cars and cosplayers leading the way to the destination. Rather, one finds the Convention Center.

It was a recreation of a time when panelists Comic-Fest locale after scouring the area and were accessible and networking was a way to following the tiny 8x11’’ signs posted on easels make friends. Before the days of security closely throughout the parking lot. If you’re not paying guarding who enters and exits a room, young attention, you might miss it, as a convention and inspiring artists could waltz right up to their center next door might confuse attendees into heroes and ask advice from them; which is exactly thinking the festival is there.

Once you find out exactly where the festival what Phil Yeh, the celebrated graphic novelist and takes place, you walk in and see a bunch of muralist, did to Ray Bradbury at one of the first baby boomers, who all seem to know each other.

Comic-Cons when he was a teenager.

And because about 1,000 dealers, panelists They’re chatting and reminiscing about the days and fans attended, Comic Fest will host its when Americans appreciated artists and produced second year at the Town and Country Resort and art, while the present bunch of young consumers 23 Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

idolize mostly actors and musicians. But then again, people often look in retrospect.

Towry checks in at various panels throughout the festival to make sure everything is going smoothly. Most of the time, he has somewhere to be, and the stress on his face is hard to hide.

The cosplay is minimal, mostly limited to a handful of Steampunks, who boast that San Diego has the third-largest Steampunk community in the U.S., behind San Francisco and Seattle.

The swag is reserved to a few buttons, stickers and fliers with coupons on them. But then again, floor-length bags and free stuff isn’t what Comic-Fest is about. It’s about people such as Jackie Estrada, one of the honored guests and early Comic-Con attendees, who has edited and published hundreds of books in her career. It’s about good, old-fashioned comic books, and about getting together with like-minded people in a friendly environment to talk about them.

Estrada is at Comic Fest with her husband, writer Batton Lash. They’re seated in the dealer room where Lash displays a few of his works, including Tales of Supernatural Law and The Simpsons Super Spectacular. Lash readily engages in thoughtful conversation with anybody who seems interested. Usually, it equates to a sell. He’s in a form-fitted blazer and pants ensemble with a skinny red tie. Aside from the self-publishing panel, Lash can usually be seen holding down the fort at his booth in the dealer room because Estrada is running around speaking at panel after panel.

Perhaps the only celebrated guest busier than Estrada is Scott Shaw, who spoke at eight panels throughout the three-day festival. Shaw is a cartoonist who has drawn for Marvel and DC Comics. Some of his popular works include The Flintstones and The Simpsons Comics, among others.

Toward the end of the three-day fanfare, Towry and a few of his fellow Comic-Fest organizers sat in a panel and took suggestions for 2013’s Comic Fest. Most of the criticisms were minor.

One baby boomer was adamant about getting more comfortable chairs at the panels. Others complained about the price for how small the convention was. But for the most part, people said they had a good time. Towry said last year’s Comic Fest was “sort of an advertisement” for this year’s, and it appears as though the advertising paid off. The crew is already working on churning out what seems to be an event that has an identity all its own; because really, Comic Fest is not a wannabe Comic-Con, it’s “the friendly, intimate Comic-Con experience.”

For more information and to see a list of the 2013 Guests visit http://www.sdcomicfest.org/ 

GIVE A (TEEN) HOOT

Songwriter/Producer David Malloy’s Nashville Hootenanny Features the Hottest Teen Talent

by MB Roberts Uncle Jam: Why did you decide to focus only on teenage performers?

David Malloy: I wish I could say that I was so smart and creative that I had it planned this way all along, but I didn’t. It just evolved. Every time we put together a Hoot, we got the biggest response to teen performers. Then we did a Hoot featuring teen performers only. The response was huge, from fans as well as musicians who wanted to play on the show.

The Nashville Hootenanny began as most great art does: spontaneously. Back in 2010, Grammynominated producer/songwriter David Malloy, along with his partners, had just purchased Nashville’s Westwood Studios. One Saturday night, Malloy, who has some 41 Number One hits to his credit working with dozens of stars including Eddie Rabbitt, Reba McEntire, Dolly Parton and Tim McGraw, among many others, invited some talented unsigned artists to the recording studio to play and sing.

“It went on for hours,” said Malloy. “Everybody loved it. We gave constructive criticism, but nobody tore anybody down. It all came from a positive place.”

Soon, Malloy made “The Hoot” a regular thing and word spread to friends in the music business who brought over beer, wine and barbeque and watched the show.

One weekend, he invited some aspiring teenage performers to play. They streamed the performance live on the Internet, then later put it on YouTube and the Teen Hoot was born.

Two years later, the Teen Hoot has grown from an unplugged show for 35 friends at Westwood Studios to full-on, plugged-in (and broadcast live online) concerts for sell-out crowds of 1,400 at Nashville’s Rocketown. More significantly, the global, online audience has exploded. Fans from 156 countries have viewed Teen Hoot YouTube videos and during Hoot-o-ween in October of 2011 and again at the two-day Hootfest in July 2012, and the Valenteen Hoot in February 2013, Teen Hoot trended third worldwide on Twitter.

“The goal is global awareness,” said Malloy.

“It’s a global platform for up-and-coming young artists to gather fans and make a statement.”

With the 2013 Teen Hoot Fest coming up in July, Uncle Jam recently caught up with Teen Hoot founder, David Malloy, whose latest passion is giving teenage musicians a global platform.

24

UJ: Why do you think that is?

DM: First of all, kids are Internet and social media savvy and that is such a big part of our plan to help young up-and-coming performers find an audience. Also, what I realized is that when you’re a teenager, that’s the period of your life when you have the time and freedom to be obsessed. You have time to tweet and follow people on Facebook and watch YouTube videos and listen to music. You don’t have a job or family to take care of so if you play music or you’re a fan of music, you have hours and hours to devote to your obsession.

UJ: Is the Teen Hoot a competition?

DM: No, the Teen Hoot shows are not a contest.

There’s no winner. You win if you get to play the show. There are lots and lots of artists who didn’t make the show. It’s quite a selective process. We set the bar really high and always have amazing talent.

UJ: So it’s not like American idol, where performers are judged and evaluated onstage?

DM: No. I don’t want to be a Simon Cowell. We really want everybody to shine. It’s not about tearing somebody down. So much of television’s ratings are based on that. The Hoot is different.

It’s about the positive. These are kids. It isn’t our place to tell someone that her dream is over. My God, your dream is just beginning! It just may not be realized this year.

I see those knees shaking! It’s a big deal. It’s everything you’ve ever wanted to do. Everything you’ve talked about and now you’re going to do it. There are a lot of emotions backstage, from the kids and sometimes from the parents.

UJ: So the parents are invested in this too?

DM: Absolutely. It’s understandable. Families make a lot of sacrifices to support this dream. It takes equipment, guitars, computers, keyboards and travel. The commitment from a family with a teenage musician is no different than from a family with kids who are athletes. But unlike athletes, young musicians have fewer outlets for their talent.

UJ: Is that another reason for the great response to the Teen Hoot?

DM: Definitely. In Nashville we have Rocketown, a club for kids that doesn’t serve alcohol; but not every town has a place like that. In most towns the small, live performance venues serve alcohol; so it makes it tough for kids to find a place to perform live, outside of church or maybe a summer fair or a school thing. Teenage musicians are hungry for an outlet.

UJ: Will the Hoot expand to other cities?

DM: That’s our plan. Nashville will always be the home of the Hoot. But we are planning a future Teen Hoot in Chicago. And we’re working on a London Teen Hoot.

UJ: Have teens from other countries performed at the Hoot?

DM: Yes. We had performers from five countries at the Hootfest (two-day Teen Hoot) in July 2012, including the Command Sisters from Canada and Oliver Garland from the U.K. England is loaded

UJ: Who chooses the acts for the show?

DM: I do.

UJ: How do you choose?

DM: I go with my gut.

UJ: Some of the performers have experience but for some, playing in front of a big live audience and a huge online audience may be a new thing.

DM: Right. The Hoot is a proving ground. Are you an amateur or are you ready to be a pro? Kids will find out, “Do I like this? Do I want to do it more? Do I want to get better?” Or they may find out, “This scared the crap out of me. Maybe this isn’t for me.”

UJ: Do some kids get really nervous?

DM: Yes. Some of the kids get really scared.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

continued on page 26

Mark Tyler Nobleman on The Truth About Superheroes

by Phil Yeh

Uncle Jam: First of all, can you tell us where this interest in writing about the guys who created Superman and Batman comes from?

Marc Tyler Nobleman: I’ve been a superhero fan since I watched Superman: The Movie in my pajamas from the front row of a single-screen movie theater in my hometown. Ten years after that, by reading Time Magazine’s 50th anniversary

article on Superman, I learned (or at least that is where I think I learned) of Siegel and Shuster, and when I got out of college, I attempted to start a screenplay about them. This was when Jerry was still alive. But after my first discouraging moment in research, I shelved it, only to revive it ten years later as a picture book.

UJ: The basic lack of fairness seems to run through your Batman book, with Bob Kane just ignoring the contributions of his friend Bill Finger. I could not believe it when I read that Bill wrote Batman for 25 years without getting his name in the book! What kind of reaction has your book gotten from the relatives of Kane?

MTN: Just one so far. In the comments section of the article about my interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, a woman claiming to be Bob’s niece chided me for writing about a person I didn’t know personally and said it was shameful of me to call Bob a liar.

UJ: Sadly, as more and more really unfair corporations seem to own everything in the comics field, what do you suggest that creators do

25

to protect themselves?

MTN: Read my book and do the opposite that Bill did!

UJ: I read your book Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman with considerable interest since I had a hand in helping them get some money from DC Comics in the mid-seventies. You wrote to me this year and said that my role was included in a play. Could you talk a bit about this play and about the injustice that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster suffered?

MTN: You were instrumental in helping Jerry and Joe! I tell your story quite often and am proud to know you. The play is called The History Of Invulnerability. It focuses on Jerry and his various strained relationships—with his father, his son, and with the larger issue of the Holocaust.

Being a play—i.e. dialogue driven—it takes some liberties with history, but is the result of extensive research. It addresses the great tragedy of Siegel and Shuster—the fact that they sold all rights to Superman for $130. This was at the height of the Great Depression and that was, of course, a lot more money then. To Jerry and Joe’s credit, they did try to correct this oversight— multiple times—but it took three decades for them to succeed in securing credit and compensation for Superman.

happen to be riveting beyond that. At least in my opinion!

UJ: You have written over 70 books for children in your career. Can you please tell us about some of the highlights from your career?

MTN: The two biggest highlights are the superhero books you’ve kindly been asking me about. I’ve had the honor of writing for multiple companies I respect, including Nickelodeon, Scholastic, and National Geographic; plus the honor of having my work covered in other respected brands including USA Today, Forbes, and even MTV. Perhaps the greatest honor is when I’m invited to speak at a school or conference, which fills a significant part of my work time.

UJ: Siegel and Shuster’s character has been a worldwide success since the 1930s and yet there wasn’t a good kid’s book about their creators. Can you tell me why it took so long to do a book about the creators of Superman?

MTN: I don’t know, but I’m glad it did or else I might not have been the lucky one to do it! One reason may be that some editors shy away from nonfiction for younger readers unless it dovetails with curriculum. But I don’t think anyone even tried before me.

UJ: What are your plans for the future?

MTN: I hope to keep writing, especially more nonfiction picture books that fill gaps—i.e. stories that have never been the focus of their own books.

http://noblemania.blogspot.com/

UJ: It seems to me that if there were more books for children like your Superman and Batman books, more children would be better educated about tons of topics in this world that relate to their lives. If children had knowledge that these big corporations generally will try and cheat you, they could be better armed when they go out into the real world. Is that a motivating factor for writing these books?

MTN: Yes, though I’m not trying to teach anyone that corporations cheat as much as I’m trying to embolden kids to take pride in—and ownership of—their work for its own sake. If the Superman and Batman back stories were just cautionary tales about greed I would not have been interested, but they

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: You are also a published cartoonist yourself.

Can you please share with our readers your thoughts on cartooning for magazines and newspapers in the 21st century?

MTN: We need another Golden Age! No matter whether magazines are in print or online, cartoons are still a must-have feature for the same reason they ever were—they capture attention and build retention, plus they don’t take much time to read. When I began my career, I contacted any magazine, big or small, that I thought might be open to running cartoons. Cartoonists coming up the pipeline now should do the same, only now with sites as well.

Mangione continued from page 16 a long time. She’s worked with so many intense people, but she says being an artist is a diagnosis in itself; because there are things that we all go through, I think. It’s hard, and so to get back to your question about how I met Grace Slick… (laughter) She sent me pages of lyrics to put music to. She’s got this really cool writing. I’m still putting stuff together.

UJ: You did a song with her, The Edge of Madness and the proceeds go to the relief in New Orleans.

Can people still download it?

MM: Yes they can. Grace does stuff for people like that. She saw the Gulf problems on CNN and was bombarded with it. She called and said, “They just got hit again, and I don’t know what to do except write lyrics. Will you put music to this?” There are so many people on that record.

Bill Medley is on the record; so many people that did not need to. I said, “There is no budget; it’s all going to New Orleans relief” and everybody donated their time. I don’t think anybody got paid. The unfortunate thing I have to say is iTunes does not have any special category for things like this. They still take the same amount even if you can prove that it’s 100% nonprofit. There are no administration fees or anything in what we’re doing, but iTunes still takes their 30% or whatever it is.

UJ: With all this reality TV and all this corporate business, I think we have to go back.

MM: How do you do that? If you’re a kid, first of all, the whole thing about choices comes back.

If all you were ever fed is mustard, you’d have to acquire a taste for it and you’d think, “OK, now I want mustard.” I think part of it is what the kids are fed. When I was a kid we didn’t have American Idol; why did I become a musician? A lot of people see the show and that’s the reason that they start doing this, is because that looks really, really good. When I was a kid, what moved me? Why did I start? I have to think about that.

People say “You should be famous.” The best quote I ever heard about that is in that movie Hoop Dreams; the documentary about the two basketball stars. Some little kid walks up to get an autograph and he said “Will you remember me if you become famous?” and he looks at the kid and says “Will you remember me if I don’t?” I think about the motive for doing what we do and I think about kids and what they’re being shown. They’re not being shown as many different choices. I got a call from a friend of mine who is a middle school English teacher and she knows I’m a musician.

She said “They cut back the music program. We have 100 kids and we have 20 instruments. They won’t let us buy any and the kids are all signed up and ready to play.” I told her that I’ve been doing this first Friday thing for the last couple of years, so one Friday I said “Let’s just do a fundraiser.”

We did the fundraiser and just put a couple things out on the Internet and asked for donations of instruments. People have that stuff and they don’t know what to do with it. All you have to do sometimes, as you know, is ask. There is gonna

26

be at least one person that is willing to carry the message. Channel 9 news appeared and said “We heard you’re doing this”, because apparently the principal had talked to somebody. They got enough instruments for the school by word of mouth. Sometimes I think we’re afraid to ask.

UJ: We have to encourage the young people.

MM: Especially in music. This thing here—a recorder—I’ve had that since I was about 12. I used to go in my garage, before we had multitrack recorders available. It was sound on sound; so if you wanted to record more than one track, you’d have a degradation of sound, because you had to record over it. I worked really hard to get three part harmonies, guitar part and bass part. I’d sit there all day long and just work on that thing and try to figure it out. I’ve had people ask me about giving somebody advice in terms of becoming a musician. My main thing is, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and don’t ever let anybody tell you who you are supposed to be or what you are supposed to be. Sometimes I’ll have kids come in here and I’ll produce them; and I’ll say “What is it that you hear? I hear a whole bunch of stuff, but what do you hear?” and let them have the experience to pull it out. The difference between us and the kids now, and one of the reasons why I think it’s hard to connect to kids regarding things like this, is that we had to do it all. A lot of times when I’m talking to kids I feel like I’m an old man going “We had to walk for 2 miles…” you know. Now everybody can just do it on their iPad. There was a kid in here who wanted to learn how to express himself singing a little bit, because he was a rapper and he wanted to start singing. He said “My friend plays all the instruments.” What he meant was he plays all the instruments, but on his iPad. That’s really all you have to do, because everything is sampled. You don’t have to play anything. Why should they learn if they don’t have to? I think a big thing, and one of the things that’s happening that’s wrong, is that kids are not having enough human contact because we have all these electronic tools. Is that how it’s gonna evolve? Like when we go out there and play live and there’s nothing there. There’s nothing but you and the instruments.

UJ: On a very basic level, art and music is in our soul. Everyone loves art and music. They don’t know how to do it, necessarily, but they love it.

When I’m drawing anywhere in the world people will stop and look. There’s something when a musician plays on the subway. You just want to stop and listen. I really believe art and music is for everyone. All the societies in the world that are higher and advanced recognize it. There are places in India where there is no word for art, because everything is art. Everything you do in your life is art. You cannot substitute the experience of playing a real guitar for Guitar Hero or anything like that. I believe that if more musicians, artists, and writers would just step up and encourage kids, maybe if they hear it from 100,000 people, then maybe a new Renaissance can happen.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

MM: There are definitely tools, because I use them. The editing capabilities are amazing. But there’s nothing that feels like this (strumming a guitar). There is nothing that I could pull out from the guitar program on the iPad that feels to me, or to somebody that’s listening, like the raw sound because it’s imperfect. And there’s nothing like it when a kid or an adult puts their hand on a hand drum. All of a sudden they are playing and nothing feels like that. You cannot re-create that.

Michelle’s The Edge of Madness is her second collaboration with rock icon Grace Slick (formerly of Jefferson Airplane). The single was chosen as one of Rolling Stone Magazine’s “Top Singles”, and can be downloaded at www. michellemangione.com where proceeds will be donated to victims of the latest Gulf Coast disaster.

Teen Hoot continued from page 24 with talent so that’s why London is on our radar for the first international Teen Hoot. After that, we’re shooting for Australia and Japan.

UJ: What about fans from around the world?

DM: Fans from every state in the U.S. and 48 countries watched the Livestream from the Hootfest in July. The top six countries were the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Chile, Mexico, and Australia. That’s a lot of fans and ultimately, the fans are in control! An artist has to have an audience. And with the Hoot, which is becoming a trusted brand, fans know they are going to find awesome talent at these shows, whether they’re watching in person or online. They come to see their favorite artist and end up discovering other talented artists.

UJ: Are the musicians who play the Hoot looking for a record deal?

DM: Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve watched the whole thing change right before my eyes. One example is Austin Mahone, who is looking like he’s on his way to becoming a huge artist. He’s played the Hoot twice. He has tons of Facebook fans and he’s capable of booking out a venue (with a $30 ticket) of 2000 people. And that’s not counting his merchandise. If he can do all that, how bad does he need a record deal?

UJ: What do you get out of this?

DM: As you get older, there’s a primal need to give back. My whole generation probably has that; and teens who are receptive to a message and to learning are a pleasure to teach. There will always be kids moving into and out of that age bracket: 13-19. It’s like a river, it’s not the same water it was 10 minutes ago. It keeps flowing.

Teen Hootfest 2013, July 26, 27 Rocketown, Nashville, TN For tickets and more information: www.teenhoot.com 

The amazing world of

Garner Holt Garner Holt is a local legend in San Bernardino, California, where I have been painting a series of murals at the historic site of the first McDonald’s.

You might not know his name but if you’ve seen many of the rides at Disney Theme Parks or Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants, you have seen his animatronics. Naturally, we painted Holt on our San Bernardino mural showcasing the history of the city. Holt started his company in high school at the age of 16 in 1977 in his parent’s San Bernardino garage. Today Holt Productions takes up 3 big buildings in the town where he started.

When Albert Okura, the owner of the Juan Pollo chicken chain and the owner of the McDonald’s property told me he had been invited to speak at a local conference about entrepreneurs and that Garner Holt was speaking too, naturally I went along. Later, my wife, Linda Adams Yeh, and I went over to his office to conduct this interview.

Holt builds everything, but it was dinosaurs that caught my eye. The late Ray Bradbury loved dinosaurs and this is where we began our conversation. ~Phil Yeh Garner Holt: When I did my first figure for the Pacific High School Bicentennial --my Uncle Sam figure--I was fortunate enough to get a note from Ray Bradbury mentioning the character and everything. He had tried to get out to see it; but he had something come up, so he sent me a letter.

That was kind of neat. That was my Ray Bradbury connection. I never really met him other than that.

Uncle Jam: He would love this place.

GH: He was a big fan of Imagineering. Bill Butler is my director of creative things. He’s a writer, too. He does a lot of show writing for us and promotional stuff. I knew he would be interested in all of this. He’s a Bradbury fan.

Bill Butler: I got to meet him at a talk a few years ago in Los Angeles about futurism and how L.A. completely missed the boat on being part of the future.

UJ: Did you do any of the parks like Universal at Sentosa Island in Singapore?

GH: We did the animation and figures for 85 or so figures for the Madagascar attraction there.

That was a big project for us a couple of years ago. We do a lot of projects; we’ve worked in 30 different countries at this point. Just recently our 30th country was Ukraine. We did a project there, so we’re back working in South Korea and Indonesia right now. We get around with our projects. Disney’s a big customer; Chuck E. Cheese is a big customer. We do have a pretty wide range of worldwide clients. Chuck E. Cheese, who is a major client of ours, is starting to branch out more worldwide, so we’ve put our first show in Dubai last year and there’re some in Guam. They’re scoping out China.

BB: My favorite statistic about them is that all of Chuck E. Cheese’s stores in the US and other

27

Garner Holt Studios places have more attendance annually than the Disney parks combined.

GH: Even in a bad economy people have to take their kids somewhere. You want to wreck that place instead of wrecking the house, you know.

You run around screaming and throw things and get it out of your system so you don’t do it at home. Chuck E. Cheese’s has got a real niche.

UJ: You started in your parent’s garage?

GH: My whole family history is of a horse family and rodeo people; world champion ropers and riding stables. My uncle supplied movie horses and my dad was a race horse trainer. Before I was born, my dad was hoping I would become a veterinarian; because if you have a kid that’s a veterinarian and you are a race horse trainer, that’s the full complement of what you need. You have plenty of horses in the barn; you have somebody to take care of them who is in the family. I was an exercise boy, racing horses, training and breaking horses. I spent the first 10 years of my life on the back of a horse. It was fun and always brought a lot of friends to the house, but I didn’t like it in some ways, because I was getting thrown off all the time. I’d get on horses that were crazy and get thrown off; but I got paid a little bit for doing it. I’d always been interested in monster movies and monsters and things. I used to watch the monsters on TV. I didn’t really know much about Disneyland at the time. I saw a TV show about Disneyland. The Osmond Family went through the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. I was so excited about the Haunted Mansion and wanted to have my own little haunted house in the backyard; so my mom bought me the haunted mansion record at Kmart. I got to be a real big fan, but I had never really seen it. I asked them if they would take

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

me to Disneyland, so eventually weeks later they took me. Going through Disneyland changed my whole life.

I went through the park and instantly was bitten by the bug, or absorbed enough pixie dust that I told them in the car on the way home that “I don’t want to be a veterinarian, I want to build theme park rides.”

I had a little haunted house shack in the backyard and I’d have kids go through.

I came home from Disneyland with renewed excitement. It got bigger and bigger, so I continued to build things around the yard to emulate things at Disneyland. I was only 14 years old, so I strung up some cable that I got from the neighbor and I put it across the yard between phone poles and I put a pulley and a bucket on it.

I’d have kids climb the ladder and I’d pull them across the yard. That would be my skyway. I’d charge them 25 cents. My parents would figure out what I was doing and they would put a stop to it immediately because I was endangering the lives of kids in our yard. I had a petting zoo; I had a Pirates of the Caribbean thing. I would dress up as a pirate and I dug holes in the back yard and I’d put water in it. I had a boat that I bought from a man down the street. I’d pull them around in the boat and I’d have the Pirates record going. When I couldn’t get kids to ride in it, I’d get our goats in the boat and I’d pull them around in the water. I tried having a horse ride. I put a sign out in front and got people to stop. This girl got out with her mom and got on the horse and I was walking the horse around. I had never had a customer. I didn’t know where they were going to ride, so I sent her in the backyard and the first thing the horse did was walk under a shed and it scraped the girl right off.

She fell on the ground and my dad came out. She was crying and my mom was really upset saying I was going to get them sued. So instantly with my first customer my horse rides went down the drain. Finally I said “What can I do that you guys would allow me to do? Can I do the haunted house thing and really beef that up?” They said “Yeah, we’ll watch and make sure you’re not going to kill anybody.” So I stuck with the haunted house.

As time went on, I used to ride down to Lucky’s supermarket on my crazy bike and try to attract attention. I gave out flyers for the haunted house and nobody ever came, so finally I drove my bike continued on page 37

Mural Highlights a Creative San Bernardino

by Phil Yeh

Within a few months, I could paint again, but very slowly. My eyes were seeing things in hyper-detail and it was interesting to see what was happening in terms of my style. I still did everything slower than normal, but to most people I was on normal speed now; since previously I was always too fast and too hyper for normal folks. In December of 2011, I was invited by a young cartoonist named Lee Blum (UJ #101) to be a guest of honor at a small comic festival in Haifa, Israel. Linda and I enjoyed this trip a lot! I painted 3 murals over the course of a week with help, of course, from other cartoonists, students, and adults. Lee’s family showed us Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and we even made a trip to the Israeli Cartoon Museum in Holon. I hope to return to this area of the world and paint more murals promoting literacy, creativity, and peace. The trip to Israel showed me that I could still do public mural projects.

It was the beginning of 2012 when we Phil Yeh with Dan Romero, sculptor got back to of the palm tree on the roof California.

Last issue (UJ#101) I mentioned in my editorial that we were working on a massive new mural I started painting some project at the historic site of the first McDonald’s metal shelves with my restaurant in San Bernardino. The project has colorful style for the grown to encompass the north wall of the building San Bernardino Public that houses the unofficial McDonald’s Museum. I Library, where my wife should start at the beginning to put everything in works. It was winter, context, as I begin another great adventure in my and since these shelves were metal and that life on old Route 66.

In May 2011, I suffered a stroke while in New meant enamel paint, York City. It affected the right side of my body, I was outside in front and for months afterwards, I really could not of the library painting draw. So I didn’t bother picking up a pen or a away and talking to folks brush and just worked in our garden. I knew that as they watched. This if my right hand never came back, I could relearn is how I came to meet to draw with my left. I really wasn’t worried. I James Valdez. He likes to figured that maybe it was God’s way of making talk as much as I do and me slow down a bit after more than 40 years of continued on page 39 Albert Okura, owner of Juan Pollo and of the McDonald’s museum painting murals and traveling all over the world.

28

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Robert Williams continued from page 12 that the audience for Juxtapoz is so large that me coming in and trying to pontificate or dominate my influence in it hurt so many people and the direction they wanted to go, that it had to be free flowing. It had to be a resistance to the formal art world. It had to be a doorway for young people and that’s what it’s become.

UJ: Robert Williams Mr. Bitchin’ was a documentary about your career that came out in 2010. What was your reaction to this film?

RW: The movie got a really successful response.

It took over 20 years, it went through 3 film companies, and it’s over 200 hours of footage that interfered into Suzanne’s and my life. How we didn’t get divorced and how we kept together over that; we had people around us all the time, all the time. The last people to put it together were the film division of Rhino Records. Nancye Ferguson, ex wife of Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO, took charge of it. The girls that did the middle part were a couple of gals that worked for South Park. They got a lot of wonderful footage, but they couldn’t put a string through it. The people at Rhino Records edited it into a real supreme thing. It’s a real documentation on the Underground art world for the last 20 years, maybe earlier. It premiered at LACMA and then it went from there to New York at MOMA and then it came back to MOCA and now they’re in the middle of distributing it to theaters, and then it will go to DVD. UJ: It must have made you feel good to finally get recognized by some of the major museums.

RW: OK, there’s a very important thing in here that you must know. This is a name you’ve probably never heard of, but you better hear of it. In the late 50s, early 60s there was a famous gallery in town called Ferus Gallery. It’s one of the most famous galleries in the United States and Ed Ruscha came out of it, Ed Kienholz, Joe Goode, Billy Al Bengston, and about 8 or 10 other artists; most famous artists on the West Coast came out of Ferus Gallery. It was started by a guy named Walter Hopps. Most of these guys were either Pop artists or Abstract Expressionists. Walter Hopps got Andy Warhol his first show; he brought Marcel Duchamp from France; got him his first show over here and got him recognized. He later became the head of the Pasadena Museum; they threw him out for drugs. He got to be the director of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. In the 50s he tried to get Von Dutch to become a painter. He went to the Corcoran and in 1970 he had a Zap Comix show. Zap Comix was only since ‘68. This was one of the top galleries in the U.S. and they had a Zap Comix show. I can’t emphasize how ahead of his time this guy was.

Walter Hopps became a very close friend of mine in the last 10 or 15 years. He died 7 years ago and just before he died he was titled in Europe as the number one museum curator for the entire world.

He loved Zap Comix and he loved hot rods, right through all this elite bullshit. He helped me get in the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. You

29

know, when I would show in these galleries around town and small school museums and stuff, the snotty installer would say, “We’ve got to hang that painting with a 56” center. That’s how you do it in museums.” I’ve heard this so many times. I sat with Walter and asked him “What’s the deal on that?” “I came up with that.” “You came up with it? You know if you’ve got a painting with a low horizon, you have to raise it up to the horizon.”

He say’s “You’re right.” Walter Hopps was the guy that brought Abstract Expressionism to the West Coast. I said “You really f…cked me up with that Abstract Expressionism, you know.” He was so progressive. He was at the top and there was nobody in between. You’re either at the bottom, or you’re Walter Hopps. His legacy is still very, very strong in Los Angeles.

UJ: You were also included in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Do you feel like you’ve now been accepted into the mainstream fine art world?

RW: Marginally. I’ve gone from the top of the bottom to the bottom of the top; marginally accepted.

UJ: In 2011 you were part of the Two Schools of Cool show at The Orange County Museum of Art. What has been your experience with these museums?

RW: Well, the gal who got me into the Orange County Museum was a very close friend of Walter Hopps at the Guggenheim. Walter was going to have a show at the Guggenheim with what he called Imagist Art with the new Realism. It would have included me with a lot of other people, but he died.

UJ: Can you tell our readers what you’re planning for the coming year?

RW: I’m working on two very large sculptures in Burbank at a studio I have over there called Gentle Giant and I just finished a big painting.

I’ve got to do about 20 more paintings and I go to New York for Tony Shafrazi.

UJ: Phil and Linda Yeh last saw you and your wife Suzanne, along with George and Peggy DiCaprio, at the opening of your Vans shoe line a few years ago. Any plans for future lines with Vans?

RW: I don’t know; I’m in their hands there. I could push them and they would do something, but I don’t do that. They’ve been very, very kind to me at Vans. I’ve just come out with some glasses for Oakley and I’ve got little things here and there. In 2010, Mooneyes shipped my and Suzanne’s cars over to Yokohama for the big car show over there.

We have a lot of little things like that.

UJ: How do you go about creating a painting?

What is the process you go through?

RW: A number of things; I’m always thinking and I’m always coming up with ideas; and 8 out of 10 ideas are bad ideas. I always sketch them down or write them down. I have some criteria.

One of them is, never do anything that’s been done before and never do the same thing twice.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Then I have problems with censorship and being politically correct, which I have a lot of trouble with. Now there’s a problem in the art world…a very big problem. Since the Dadaists, before the First World War, they’ve tried to stop this, and that is that people will not get it out of their heads that art is a decoration. They think art is a f…ing decoration. You know, if I have some books laying here on the coffee table, like I have Moby Dick, or I have War & Peace, or I have Two Years before the Mast, or Tale of Two Cities, or Hunchback of Notre Dame. These are remarkable novels, but you can’t pick them up and show pictures out of certain passages; because they’d ruin the environment you’re in. Art should be on the same level, or better than, literature. One of my most favorite paintings is Gericault and his Raft of the Medusa. You couldn’t paint a painting like that today; it would make people sick. You couldn’t put that in the lobby of a bank. That’s why Abstract Expressionism is so famous, because it makes good decorating. I have to face the problem that what I am going to do is going to be bought by people with a lot of money that first see this as a f---ing decoration, not as a thought.

Since I’ve been an Underground cartoonist, I like to deal in thought; that’s why I reference back to Conceptualism, because they sell things that don’t make good decorations. There’s the problem.

I got a call about 10 months ago from some fast-talking guy who wanted to pull me into some art deal. I say “What is it?” He says, “Well, I just wanted to know if you’re interested.” I said, “Well, I’ll be interested if you tell me what it is.” And he said, “If you’re interested, I’ll call you back in a couple of months, when I get this figured out.” He calls me back in a couple months and he says “Are you still interested in this deal?”

“Well, I don’t know what the deal is.” “I’m just wondering if you’re interested in a fine arts deal that might be a great aid to you.” “Well, yeah, but you still ain’t told me what it is.” He says, “I’ll call you in 2 days to tell you what it is.” He calls me back in 2 days…a real fast talking guy. He says, “Well, Thomas Kinkade is coming out with a reality show and we want you to be the foil.”

“F…ing forget it!’ And then I thought, “Well man, I could have finally gotten wealthy off this thing.”…and then he died.

UJ: How long, on average, does it take to paint one of your paintings?

RW: I used to do 1 ½ to 3 a month, but it takes me 2 ½ or 3 months to do one now. Lots of drawing, 3 coats of paint; the painting is painted 3 times.

But it’s just so time consuming. A good painting is painted 3 times. That makes it rich and just perfect and it will last forever.

UJ: Can you comment on the differences between cartooning and illustration, and fine art?

RW: Yes, I can do that. Illustration is a commercial application of illuminating someone else’s idea.

Cartooning is free thought. Fine art should be free thought. Cartooning is the fine art to come. There is no other form of graphic language that has such a large vocabulary, or potential, or borders

than cartooning. Cartooning can say anything.

Cartooning will eventually take over Fine Art. It has to.

in Amsterdam one time about 20 years ago. They gave us 30 samples of this really strong stuff.

After the first joint I was too stoned, so I gave them all the same score. Mavrides smoked it all and wrote a lengthy critique of each sample.

UJ: Gilbert Shelton was out from France for the San Diego Comic Con in July 2012. He mentioned that Zap may be in the works soon. Would you be interested in being involved in that?

RW: I’ve got some work in it. You know S. Clay Wilson’s got medical troubles and we’re all getting old, so it’s not gonna be around forever.

UJ: Years ago Uncle Jam interviewed Rick Griffin. Can you share a story about Rick?

RW: I’ve got so many stories about Rick; what do you want to know about Rick? Last time I saw him he was over at the house on his Harley and I walked him out to the street and I said, “Rick, you know I rode motorcycles myself and I’m all f…ed up from them. These things will kill you”; and that’s the last time I saw Rick. Rick was one of my favorites; he was an enormously close friend. Rick lived in a couple of schizophrenic worlds that didn’t mesh very well. He had an enormous sense of religious responsibility when he wasn’t chasing bitches and taking drugs. He was enormously talented, but he couldn’t do something if there wasn’t a paycheck waiting at the end of it.

UJ: Do you have any memories of the car culture or Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth that you’d like to share?

RW: Yeah, Ed Roth saved my life. Suzanne and I both worked for Ed. I went from job to job trying to get work as an illustrator; trying to do this and that, after I got out of art school.

It was just pathetic. There was no such work as art work unless you were an illustrator and laid out magazines. I got fired here and fired there.

I was the art director for Black Belt Magazine and they fired me. I ended up being a container designer for Weyerhaeuser Corporation. They fired me. I went down to the employment agency Gilbert Shelton continued from page 14 Then I met Ron Turner. He was in a little garage and he said “You need to have a collection of underground comix” and he gave me 2 grocery bags filled with underground comix. It was really funny because I didn’t tell him I didn’t have a car. I had walked there through the Mission. I walked all the way from Golden Gate Park, where I stayed with my friends and I walked back with the bags filled with comic books. It was great.

GS: I used to walk all over San Francisco. It was a good city for that; very picturesque. I haven’t been back there in a while. My agent, Manfred, still lives in Marin County. I visit him occasionally.

Paul Mavrides and Spain Rodriguez are in San Francisco.

UJ: Is Moscoso still there?

GS: Yeah, he’s in Marin County in a little town. I see them once in a while. If you live in Paris, you can be sure that everybody you know is going to come to Paris to visit you sooner or later.

UJ: Do you have any big news you want to share

30

UJ: Do you get to Amsterdam much?

GS: I’ve got a Dutch publisher and there are comic book festivals there.

UJ: Lambiek is there too. It’s a great comic store.

GS: Yeah, Kees died last year, but his son has taken over the store.

Robert & Suzanne signed the Cartoonists Across America guitar photo courtesy of Rory Murray and I was trying to get work and they said, “We don’t have anything for you; we’ve got one job, but nobody will take it. The environment is just too filthy.” I asked what it was. “They need an art director down at Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s.” I had already met him at a car show 4 or 5 years earlier. I went down there and showed Ed my portfolio and he said “If I knew you were alive, I would have hunted you up.” And man, my life changed, right like that. All of a sudden I had a lot of money and security and happiness. It just changed my whole life. Working at Roth studios was like this remarkable world of celebrities and bikers and cops and musicians. Every day so many people passed through there. My job was imagination and I had to meet deadlines. I had plenty of imagination. It was just made for me.

If I had to figure out a job that would be perfect for me, that would have been it. So that’s all I can say about that. with our readers?

GS: I’m going to the comic book festival in Serbia.

It’s fun to go to new places and get treated royally at least one time. There’s a Japanese edition of the Freak Brothers, but it’s not very good and I don’t think it sells. They just copied the format of the comics and that’s unknown in Japan. If they made a big expensive edition it probably would have done better.

UJ: I don’t think the Asians generally like subversive politics, maybe.

GS: And probably they’re unfamiliar with marijuana so they don’t understand the Freak Brothers. There’s a reaction in Holland; they’re doing so well that there’s billions of German tourists coming over there. In one city they made it against the law to sell marijuana to anyone but Dutch people. They’re talking about having the same law in Amsterdam, but of course it’s such a big deal economically that there’s a lot of resistance to changing the law. Mavrides and I were judges for a marijuana seed growing contest

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

UJ: That’s great. He was a friend of mine. I painted a mural in his store with some Dutch cartoonists and my partner from Germany. He was a nice guy and really liked comics.

GS: He said that was the first comic store in Europe.

UJ: Your wife represents Robert Crumb. He’s doing very well.

GS: Yeah, the Book of Genesis has been published in a lot of languages already; and he has a big show currently at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Comic art is more prestigious in France, I think, than it is in America.

UJ: The Belgians have quite a few well-known cartoonists; Hergé, Peyo, and Franquin.

GS: There’s a comics museum in Brussels that’s very impressive. They’re very proud of their cartoonists there.

UJ: You did a Grateful Dead album cover.

Did you do any other album covers?

GS: I did one for Doug Sahm and Bob Dylan; another failed album… (laughter) UJ: For those of us in our generation, we love the art on albums.

GS: Great artwork on some of those by Mouse, Kelley, Moscoso, and Rick Griffin. They did some great posters, too. So that inspired me. I did some rock posters in Texas and some of them are OK. One of my favorite poster artists was Bob Fried in San Francisco. At Rip Off Press, we were going to print rock posters, but the quality of our printing was so bad that artists wouldn’t have anything to do with us. But then we discovered comic books and they don’t have to be well- printed, so we were off and running.

UJ: Those early ones are worth a lot of money.

GS: Not as much as Zap #1, first printing. I think that’s worth $12,000. One time there was a paper shortage. I forget why, but we couldn’t get any paper at Rip Off Press except pink paper; so we printed one edition of the Freak Brothers on pink paper and wrote on the top, “Collector’s Item” and the collectors didn’t like that. They said you can’t call it a collector’s item, only the collectors can decide what a collector’s item is.

UJ: Any last words of wisdom for our readers?

GS: Wisdom isn’t my strong suit. 

Ray Bradbury:

The Most Influential Writer in My Life

by Greg Bear

Ray Bradbury is for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired, happy to share and even re-live a youngster’s awkward joy at discovery. We first met in 1967 and immediately began a lifelong correspondence.

My friends and I attended so many Bradbury lectures and events in California that he would spot our grinning faces in the audience and tell us, with a wag of his beefy finger, “I’m not changing a word just because you’ve heard it already!”

Throughout my high school years, my classmates and friends were happy to inform our English teachers that we had the straight scoop on one of Ray’s stories, direct from the author himself. I wonder if they actually believed us!

In 1969, Ray took three of us, and my Grandmother (who drove—Ray did not drive and we had neither car nor license) out to lunch in Beverly Hills: hamburgers and shakes at Frascati.

There, he told us about eating his first steak in Mexico. He was in his mid-twenties, very poor; and from that cross-border odyssey, neither entirely happy nor sane, came so many stories, including “The Life Work of Juan Diaz”, where he tried to exorcize the horror of descending into the catacombs of Guanajuato. He concluded our memorable meal by telling us, “When you’re rich, you can take me out to lunch!” And so we did, but before we were rich.

In 1970, we invited Ray to be our guest at the first Comic-Con in San Diego, and the fact that he agreed (along with Jack Kirby and a select group of other luminaries) made all of us, the fledgling committee, believe we were creating

something real and glorious. He attended every single Comic-Con until just a couple of years ago, when his health would no longer permit it, and drew huge crowds for his talks and interviews.

From the beginning, Ray enthusiastically supported my artwork and writing. As I sold more

31

stories, and finally bundled them into collections, I would deliver freshly printed books to him and he would cry out, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and encourage me to do more. He never treated me as anything other than a colleague—and for us, he was always that amazing, miraculous kid we got to hang out with. You know, the kid who told his readers they could send him letters care of Life Magazine, or spin stories of hanging out with Walt Disney, or of having Ray Harryhausen as the best man at his wedding.

Ray expressed his admiration for Nikos Kazantzakis and his The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises. Later, I relayed Ray’s enthusiasm for Kazantzakis to the translator, Kimon Friar, and helped them exchange addresses. When Ray produced his own play of Leviathan 99 at the old MGM Studios in L.A; I posted fliers at my college, went to L.A, met him after the performance— and commiserated when it folded a week later, leaving him tens of thousands of dollars in the hole. I still have a few of those fliers—and his letter announcing he was back to another round of lectures to pay it all off. He dearly loved theater, and to this day, his plays are performed in Los Angeles and around the world.

It was my privilege to arrange for the Science Fiction Writers of America to present Ray with his Grand Master Nebula in 1989. Nowhere near full payback.

So I spent a lot of fine times with the man.

But behind it all was the genuine love I have for Ray’s fiction. To this day, I can’t begin a Bradbury story without feeling his immediate presence, his amazing ability to make me nostalgic for a place I’ve never been, or recognize an emotion or a connection I may not have experienced. Ray was storyteller, showman, alchemist—a master who remixed his own life and made it the stuff of legend, the core within much of the myth of The Twilight Zone and modern American fantasy in general.

For our last visit, my wife and I drove out to the Bradbury family home in the Cheviot Hills of Los Angeles, as we had so many times before.

Ray was bedridden, but sitting up, receiving visitors, cheerful, as always, it seems now—and we spent a good hour talking about movies, about work, about new books and writing. As always.

I noticed a hefty volume of the collected “Buck Rogers” newspaper strips left on the floor by staff, or family, or previous visitors, and held it for Ray to see. “You did the intro for this, Ray!” “I did?”

“Here’s your name. A great intro.” “Read it to me!” Ray could no longer read much, and friends

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

would come by to read to him…

But I’m drifting again into that awkward tense.

This story has to end.

And so here’s my ending, and it’s all true: I read aloud to Ray his own words, the story of his first love for science fiction, the wonder and joy of discovering Buck Rogers at age ten. One of his literary sons sits by his bedside, reading that fine introduction, and then lifts up, brings close to his pale, difficult eyes, the first page of 1920s era strips, and Ray is suddenly ten years old. He’s Ray Douglas Bradbury, starting all over, and he beams and cries, “Wonderful! Wonderful! It’s all still wonderful!”

And it is.

Greg Bear, October 2012, reprinted by permission of the author

Ray Bradbury

by Thomas Luth

I owe a very great deal to Ray Bradbury. Honestly, I might well have ended up functionally illiterate if not for him. As a kid, I did not like school, and thus, did not like reading. I know the teachers were doing what they believed was best, but I believed they were misguided. Whenever I found a book I wanted to read, like Ian Fleming, for example, the teachers would express their disapproval, and hand me something more “suitable.” I hated those suitable books! They were boring, and even irritating. So, I learned reading is a punishment.

It became something I avoided, except when I absolutely had to read it to complete a class. I developed what some would call a “bad attitude.”

This went on for a number of years, until eighth grade. One day Mr. Knight, our English teacher, did something different; he had us listen while he read a story. Rather unusual for an eighth grade class. It was an unusual story, about someone who grew mushrooms in his cellar. It was written by some guy named Bradbury. I actually enjoyed the story; alot. When I got home I mentioned to my mom this story by this Bradbury guy I really liked. Mom thought she knew that name, and said she thought my brother Perry had read some of his books. I asked him if he knew of a writer named Ray Bradbury. I got a reaction that you might expect if you asked the Pope if he knew of some guy named Jesus. Yes, he knew him; he liked him.

I went to the library and got one of his collections of short stories. I liked the first story I read, and then the next, and the next after that. I even went back and got more of his books; and more after that. I heard he wrote novels too. I was hooked.

But that was still just the beginning. Mom mentioned that he was going to be speaking at the local library, and I had to meet him. He spoke, and I was captivated. Truly, the single most inspiring person I have ever met. He knew how to encourage and to fight off excuses, without either brow-beating or coddling the listener.

His passion to write, and his passion to see others create as writers, artists, musicians, etc., continued on page 33

Remembering George Gladir a Eulogy by Batton Lash

September 27, 1925 – April 3, 2013

I want to thank George’s wonderful family; his wife Mary, his daughter Nina and her husband John, for inviting me to speak.

Some of you might’ve heard this story before, so forgive me. I first “met” George Gladir when I was seven or eight years old. I found a beatup copy of Archie’s Madhouse in my cousin’s basement. There was a story about a mad scientist who invented a time machine. The fly in the ointment, however, was the scientist’s assistant . . . a lackey who had a passion for baked goods.

The assistant undermines the mad scientist and takes over his invention. With a time machine, you see, the assistant can have his cake, go back in time, and eat it too. Well! I thought that was

Batton Lash & George Gladir

so funny and so clever, that it stayed with me for decades. When I finally met George through our mutual relationship with Archie Comics, I learned he was the author of the story that so appealed to me as an impressionable child and influenced my sensibilities as an adult.

Now you know whom to blame.

When I first met Nina and told her that story, she rolled her eyes, giggled and said, “That’s my father’s humor, all right!” And that humor was sometimes silly, sometimes droll, but always with a gentle touch. And that was the way he was in life. George’s scripts were always funny whether they were silly, satirical or poking fun at teen-age foibles. For over fifty years, George delighted and captured the imaginations of the proverbial children of all ages.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. How many millions of kids were enchanted by George’s brainchild? The teenage antics, the silly spooks and goofy monsters . . . Sabrina was the perfect vehicle for George’s humor. And that concoction yielded a true pop culture classic and an enduring character who, mark my words, will still be around long after we’re all gone!

George loved rock and roll and old movies, and would incorporate those passions in his scripts for Archie and Cracked. And those scripts would

32

never be dashed off. George would meticulously research whatever subject matter the plot called for. An editor once told me that George attached copious newspaper and magazine articles– all the background material– to his scripts. Too much information? Not at all. It was all part of the process. George was just passing along what he learned on to the reader.

Was that “Old School?” Confidentially, I hate that term. George’s approach should be “The School.” He knew how to write with the minimum of words and the maximum of message. And he delivered.

George was part of that generation of comics professional whose large portion of work went un-credited at time of publication. But times change, and thankfully, so do comic book industry policies.

Well, some of them anyway. By the 1990’s, George was getting much-deserved credit for the scripts he wrote, as well as being recognized as the creator of Sabrina. Fans now knew his name, and they knew they were in for a treat when they saw George Gladir’s name in the credits.

I was very privileged to know George and to get to “hang out” with him. I always thought he immediately bonded with me after learning that, like him, I was a transplanted New Yorker living in Southern California who didn’t know how to drive.

We’d often go to the US Grant on Broadway in downtown San Diego. They used to have a neat little cocktail lounge off the lobby, and that’s where we would go for lunch. And, sometimes, for cocktails.

The lounge had red leather booths, a piano in the corner, middle-aged waiters with waistcoats, tiny bow ties and even tinier mustaches. It was very– forgive me! –“Old School.” But George loved it, as did I. I learned he was born on the East Coast, served in WWII, and was even an intelligence agent!

He didn’t go into much detail about that, though.

He’d say, tongue in cheek, “There still might be people around.” We talked about growing up in New York, movies, and of course, comics.

Even though we discussed the comics business, George was not one to gossip, nor was he one to truly bad-mouth someone in the business, even though that someone had done him wrong.

Angry? Yes. Disappointed? Most certainly. But George always tempered his remarks, no matter how upset he was. George was a gentleman. And he was quite generous. He was always ready to pass along knowledge of what he had learned as a writer, to encourage a newcomer, or to offer sage advice to a fellow professional.

I was impressed that George was not one to rest on his laurels or to coast on a steady gig; no, George was always looking ahead. He saw that

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

comics were now part of a multi-media mix. He also saw opportunities to own new characters he created. He told me of ideas he had for several new comic book series that were just wonderful.

Ideas in which he wanted to reunite with previous collaborators like artists Orlando Busino and John Severin.

One such idea that George got into print was Cindy and Her Obasan, which incorporated George’s penchant for the Japanese culture, rock ‘n roll, and his knack for parody by giving Cinderella a 21st century twist. And it reunited George with one of his favorite collaborators, the great Stan Goldberg.

I thought they did a terrific job. But George was not satisfied. He knew it could be better.

And he continued to develop his new character and tweak the concept. There was some good reaction to Cindy, some stalled starts, and some failed promises. But George was not going to let that get him down. He was relentlessly upbeat and positive. He never stopped working on his new characters, nor did he ever stop believing in them.

He went back to work and forged ahead.

George led by example. And his example, I believe, was to learn from the triumphs and tragedies in life, and be prepared to move ahead.

Appreciate what has gone before, but always look forward.

I think George would be honored and, maybe, more than a little embarrassed by the outpouring of heartfelt tributes that have appeared since his passing. I know I’m not alone when I say that my life has been richer for knowing George.

And I know I speak for everyone here, and for all of George’s friends and fans around the world, when I say to Mary, Nina and John that you have our deepest condolences for your loss. We all loved George and we’ll miss him immensely.

But we can take heart that he’ll never really be gone. George leaves behind a wonderful body of work that will introduce him to new generations; work which will no doubt delight and capture the imaginations of the proverbial children of all ages.

Thank you. Batton Lash 4.9.2013

Bradbury continued from page 31 was contagious. He had no time for negativity or excuses. He explained how there was always a way, and it was more than just a pep talk, it was a life-changing event. From that day, I must have seen Ray speak a couple dozen more times. The last time was three years ago at the Torrance Civic Center. He was physically frail, but his mind and his spirit were as alive and passionate as ever. I thanked him again for all of his wonderful work, and he said “Thank you, that means a lot”. It was the look in his eye, showing that he sincerely meant that and felt it within his heart that touched me.

As with everything in his life, he meant it with every fiber of his being.

I just finished reading his “Zen and the Art of Writing,” a collection of his essays on writing, and I am moved and inspired as I have been every time I have heard him speak. He will forever be with me, and I am grateful to have known him, and will treasure those moments forever.

I am also grateful knowing that there will be young readers stumbling across “some guy named Bradbury” for long, long into the future, and that there may yet be hope for the human race.

Dillon continued from page 7 performing art. I remember in the 60s there were programs demonstrating how to paint, but they’re gone too. It doesn’t seem like an art-friendly society these days, especially the graphic arts.

UJ: What was it like working with Leontyne Price on Aida? I love the art in that book.

DD: When we were working on Aida, we didn’t communicate in any way. The editor is the person we worked with, but we went to the opera at Lincoln Center with our editor. We met Leontyne Price and her brother/ agent at a reception at Lincoln Center at a book signing. She was warm and so dedicated to her art, and we were awed to say the least.

UJ: Your son Lee is also an artist. You worked with him on the book, Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymus Bosch. What is he working on these days?

DD: Yes, Lee is an artist too. He actually worked on several books with us.

He not only did the frame for Pish, Posh, but also painted. We were passing the work back and forth to the three of us. He and his partner, Greg Schmit, started a greeting card business back in 2001 and they also have a gallery that shows his and our work. It was supposed to patron him so he could paint and sculpt, but it has turned into a full time job. I hope he can get back to it some time.

UJ: I am always recommending your books whenever I speak at libraries. I really believe in the power of books, especially really great illustrated books.

More and more bookstores are going out of business now in America and sadly, many libraries are also closing. What can we do to foster a culture of reading for future generations?

DD: I, too, hate to see libraries and book stores close. I can’t imagine a world without books. We are in the middle of an industrial revolution and I don’t know where it will go. Before books, stories were told for generations. The printing press changed that. Now, with technology we could even go back to storytelling; or talking books. I do believe people will always read, but the method is changing.

UJ: What advice do you have for a young artist now?

DD: That’s hard. I guess one thing would be to learn the new technology as a tool to create with; but never give up working with the traditional tools.

Draw. Keep drawing. Always aim to perfect the work. Great thought and execution is what sets one artist above the other. Sometime it’s hard work.

We always got annoyed at the “art is fun” idea. There is always a time in the process where you aren’t sure about where it’s going or what isn’t working.

You have to get past that. The “fun” comes when the problems have been solved and it’s a matter of placing highlights and perfecting things.

UJ: What does the future hold for you now?

DD: I’m not sure. I guess time will tell. http://leo-and-diane-dillon.blogspot.com/

33

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Book Reviews

by Phil Yeh

Albert Okura: The Chicken Man with a 50 Year Plan LCM Publishing

I first met Albert Okura, the owner of the Inland Empire based chain Juan Pollo, at the beginning of 2012.

I am painting a mural on the walls of his unofficial McDonald’s Museum at the historic site of the first McDonald’s restaurant in San Bernardino, California on Route 66. As this mural has taken us over a year to finish, I have had many opportunities to get know the man on a personal basis. When Albert gave me a signed copy of his life story last May 2012, I sat down and read it cover to cover in one sitting.

Anyone with an interest in starting a business should take a look at this easy to read book filled with lots of photos. It’s also a fun read for anyone who has tasted the delicious chicken from the more than 30 Juan Pollo locations. Okura is honest about the business and very candid about the ups and downs of the people around him, including himself. The reader will get a very good sense of what he has done in the past and what his grand plans are for Juan Pollo in the future. He also explains how he came to buy the location of the original McDonald’s and also the town of Amboy, in the Mojave dessert on Route 66. I am writing this near the end of April 2013 and as I continue painting, I too, have a vision for revitalizing the stretch of Route 66 in San Bernardino. Okura’s vision is very contagious.

Pop Culture with Character A look inside Geppi’s Entertainment Museum

By Dr. Arnold T. Blumberg Gemstone Publishing

I want to review this excellent volume about Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore, because I am a comic book artist who doesn’t read or collect comic books. I do, however, write and draw them occasionally; and have always believed that this art form deserves the same respect that is often given to so called “fine” art in museums around the world. Ted Sturgeon said in

34

his famous quote that 90% of everything is crap and in the 21st century, it seems more like 99% but that said, we should look at the remaining 1% and ask ourselves why is pop culture important?

Is it original and does it offer anything of value for humankind?

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster gave the world something of value when they created Superman in the 1930s. The adventures of this character changed more than a few lives, even if only for a few moments, for a kid under a tree or the bedcovers. Most things aimed at children usually begin with a book and then quickly become a toy, or a TV show, or a film. In the golden age of children’s book illustration (1870-1930), kids were focused on the book itself; and some of the best illustrators worked at that time. Think about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W.W. Denslow. It was first published in 1900 and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down more than 113 years later. I believe that pop culture has a place in our history.

So does Steve Geppi, the Baltimore mailman who launched Diamond Comics Distributors and many other businesses. He built this beautiful museum to house many items from his own personal collection; as well as other material, all part of the Camden Yard Complex, where the Baltimore Orioles play. Geppi is a minority owner of the Orioles, by the way.

This book by Dr. Arnold Blumberg, the curator of the museum, gives the reader a sense of pop culture history with full color photographs. If you cannot make it to Maryland, this book is the next best thing, showcasing rare toys and dolls from the 1700s, to an explosion of cartoons and comics in the early 20th century. Any writer or artist can go through this book and see some of the world’s great creations, in order to get inspiration. I urge you to bring your children and grandchildren to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum if you can, but this book is a great substitute. It is all there; Charles Schulz’s Snoopy, to Peter Laird & Kevin Eastman’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to George Lucas & Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones.

Super Siblings Lord of The Clarks

By Patrick Scullin Banshee Comics

A few years ago, I moved up to the mountains above San Bernardino to be with my wife, Linda Adams Yeh. It’s a town of about 5,000 people called Running Springs and is not the kind of place

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

where you’d expect to find a cartoonist--especially one who draws a comic strip called Super Siblings.

The premise is very novel; a brother and a sister who have secret identities as a good guy and a bad girl. Oh yeah, and they have to be home in time for dinner. We went over to meet the man behind this strip. Patrick Scullin is a really nice guy and so is his wife, Kandra--an artist in her own right.

They have two sons, Harrison and Hunter, and we hit it off immediately.

Patrick had been drawing his strip on the web (like a lot of cartoonists I meet these days) and I told him when a book collection was put together, I would love to review it.

Well, the book is out; collecting the comic book adventures of Super Siblings, which features Conrad, a.k.a. Scout, as the good hero and his sister Courtney, a.k.a. Banshee, who uses her powers to do bad things. What’s great about this book is that the comic book pages allow for more action, while the comic strip focuses more on the Clark parents, unaware of their kids having superpowers. James, the dad, is a typical pop culture geek; the kind that now dominates our country. The mother, Donna, is described as a perfect mom and the gags here are more domestic than fantasy. This writing is funny and Scullin’s simple, clean, black & white layouts show that he knows what the modern audience wants. Having the father play the typical geek role is unique, because his wife is normal and his kids seem to be, too. But they also have these secret identities which really gives the whole thing a perfect twist.

I would love to see this animated and in color!

Visit www.SuperSiblingsComics.com and www.

Facebook.com/SuperSiblings for all of you in the modern world.

Shadow Show: All-new stories in celebration of Ray Bradbury Edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle William Morrow Publishers

We lost one of our greatest writers, as well as one of our greatest defenders of the book and the library last year. We had a long relationship dating back to 1975; I was looking through my mail and there was a simple light blue postcard asking if he might submit some poems to our publication. It was signed “Ray Bradbury”. I was 20 or 21 and was stunned. We had met very briefly a few years earlier at the first San Diego Comic Con in 1970, but I am sure he had no idea who I was. I had read almost all of his books at my local library as a

kid, and when we met, I said, “Mr. Bradbury, I want to be a writer but I can’t spell.” He smiled and said, “Don’t worry, they have editors for that. Just do it.” A simple declarative sentence like so much of his writing and I was off on a long career of turning my ideas, no matter how strange, into stories.

That’s what happens in this anthology featuring stories by Margaret Atwood, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Dave Eggers, Alice Hoffman, Charles Yu, Julia Keller, and many more talents. Each offers a short story and, after it ends, a little bit about Ray Bradbury and how he influenced their lives. Gaiman’s story, The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, is especially fitting. I am often met with bewildered looks when I mention somebody who I assume EVERYONE knows. What if we just cannot recall the really important people who had something original to say, because our heads were filled with vapid reality stars and trivial nonsense? What’s worse, we never knew any of these important people in the first place? It’s the age of information and few people seem to have any idea as to what is important.

Most people have a hard time editing the meaningless from the important stuff. The book ends with Harlan Ellison talking about his friendship with Bradbury in only that special crazed way that Ellison can. I have not seen Ellison in many years but it’s nice to “hear” him on these pages. It made me smile and remember.

Buffalo & Breadfruit

By Martin Bradley Monsoon Publishing

We went to Malaysia in February 2010 and again in December of that year.

I had always wanted to see this country, ever since I first visited Singapore in the 1990s.

We were tourists for the most part, but we also painted a couple of murals and spoke in a few schools. I really enjoyed the people we met there, but then I have to say that all of the people on this world are very friendly. Our brief stays would not even begin to give us a true picture of the country. We stayed in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur and also a few days with our friends, Jill and Glen Engel-Cox, who were working in Malaysia for a couple of years. We asked many questions of the people we met and learned a lot. We made new friends but still how much can you really know about a place in a few days?

Martin Bradley went all in, which is what he writes about in his brilliant book on marrying his Malay wife, converting to Islam, and moving to Malaysia! Bradley grew up in England and was raised a Protestant. His experiences dealing with the government are perfect for describing most governments and their endless forms. Bradley is in love and has made a commitment to changing his religion, too, and we follow his journey giving up alcohol and pork, etc. He is very honest, and often funny, in talking about how he deals with the dramatic changes in his life. You really get a sense of this country, from the modern shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur (far bigger and better than most I have ever seen in the States) to life in the country.

Bradley doesn’t like malls and neither do I. This story is told in a light breezy style that really gives the reader, especially if one has never been to Malaysia, a real sense of the place. Having been there twice, I would go back in a heartbeat. And after reading Bradley’s book, I will see the country with even clearer eyes, which makes travel that much richer. Bradley also has an excellent e-magazine called Dusun: e-journal of Asian Arts & Culture. You can get the e-book of Buffalo and Breadfruit at amazon.com and you can read Dusan at http://issuu.com/martinabradley

35

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

continued from page 3 in the San Fernando Valley. We hope to follow this interview with a conversation with his wife, Suzanne, a talented painter in her own right.

We also had a chance to sit down with another founding member of ZAP, Gilbert Shelton, who was a guest at the 2012 San Diego Comic Con. I first met Gilbert when I was a teenager, having trekked up to San Francisco with Mark Eliot. We were two high school kids with hopes of joining the ranks of professional cartoonists. The freedom and artistry of the Underground really appealed to us. Artists always need to break down the walls of society to explore what is new. Artists of all fields, all over the planet, should have that freedom to question authority without censorship.

It is fundamental that we should have as much freedom as possible to create. It doesn’t matter if the work is good, or to my personal tastes; but to be real art it should be original.

A lot of very good friends have left us in recent years. I mentioned Ray Bradbury, Leo Dillon and Jean Giraud in the last issue. All three of these artists gave us something original. Ray’s landmark book, Fahrenheit 451 should be something every one on this planet reads. We have a tribute to Ray in this issue. We also have a new interview with Diane Dillon in this issue. She was the other half of this extraordinary award winning team known collectively as The Dillons.

Our dear friend Dave Thorne passed away in 2012. Uncle Jam featured an interview with

Dave and one of his most successful students, Jon J. Murakami in the 99th issue. Dave was a cartoonist and teacher, who really gave all of us who had the privilege of knowing him some great wisdom. He created The Aloha Spirit and of all his cartoons, this one to me, best showed the true spirit of the man. In later years, Dave drew a color comic strip for Hawaii’s biggest newspaper, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, called Thorney’s Zoo. It was brilliant. Dave wasn’t originally from Hawaii, but his wife Lorraine was; and when he visited Hawaii with her in 1961, (they both met at the University of Wisconsin) he was hooked.

He became one of Hawaii’s most loved teachers and cartoonists. Burl Burlingame, former StarAdvertiser features reporter said of his Kailua neighbor and friend, “Dave was the Yoda or Jedi master of Hawaii cartooning.”

Most recently, our good friend George Gladir left us. George was known best for writing hundreds of Archie comic book stories and for co-creating Sabrina the Teenage Witch. At his funeral, Supernatural Law’s creator Batton Lash had some kind words about his old friend. We will reprint them in this issue. George understood what I had in mind when I created Cartoonists Across America & The World in 1986. He featured our tour in two issues of Archie comics over the years.

I would like to believe that with all the electronic devices available, the need for books be they electronic or real books, would be growing; but sadly illiteracy is growing more in the United States and aliteracy, having the ability to read but

never reading one book, is going off the charts.

Laziness becomes the by product of our “busy” lives. We all seem to have the time for hitting the “like” button and sending out silly and often totally worthless tweets and texts, but fewer Americans than ever before take the time to sit and enjoy reading a book…or spending a few minutes in a garden or a park without electronic distractions…or having an actual conversation with ANYONE in person or on the phone. I think that it’s beginning to be a concern for the whole world.

What I value most about my own life is having those real conversations with real friends and family. I value the trips around the world I have been fortunate to have; and before I could afford to travel in real life, all of the journeys I made through books. I have always told my children that life was short. You blink when you are a 15 year old and then you are 30, blink again, you are 45 and blink again, you are 60.

My father TeFung recently celebrated his 90th birthday. He was born in the year of the pig. He came to this country from China in 1948 to finish college. He met and married my mother Ruth Williams in Chicago, when it wasn’t popular for inter-racial marriage in this country. Nine months after he got here, Mao took over China and my dad did not see his family for 31 years. I wrote about that journey home in 1979 in Uncle Jam. The first time I saw my family on my dad’s side was when I was 25. I had a chance to meet my grandfather, although my grandmother had already passed.

He was born in the year of the horse as I am. In February, we had a huge birthday party in a Los Angeles area Chinese restaurant, complete with hours of Beijing Opera performed by my dad and his friends.

My siblings even brought lion dancers into the restaurant!

My childhood friend Edward Fong presented a beautiful handmade proclamation from the city of Los Angeles.

Ed is the official calligrapher of the city where we both grew up.

When we were at Henry Clay Junior High more than 40 years ago now, we sometimes had Ed write our names in his nice handwriting on our school book covers. In many ways, it seems like just yesterday. As I said, you blink and you are almost 60 years old.

---Phil Yeh 

36

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Garner Holt continued from page 27 all the way down to the SUN Telegram (the local newspaper) here in town. I put all my allowance on the table. I said “I’d like to buy an ad for my haunted house”. Well, here’s a stupid 14 year old; they’re not going to sell me an ad. They’re like “Are you crazy?” I was very dejected and very unhappy that they wouldn’t sell me an ad. There was a guy standing there; it turned out his name was Steve Cooper. He was a reporter for the SUN. He heard the whole story and he says “I’ll come out and look at it”. He came out and, long story short, he took some pictures.

About a week later my parents opened up the newspaper and to their horror and my delight, there was a full page article about Garner Holt’s haunted house. My parents were “Are you kidding me, this is in our backyard”. We had 400 people show up for Halloween at 25 cents a head. We took them through. It was a success, but it was kind of a disaster; because I had dirt floors and it was an old shack. It started pouring rain, so all the floors turned to mud. There was electricity going on and we were throwing switches and getting shocked. People were going through it and dropping their purses in the mud. One of the walls collapsed. It was a big mess. Everybody laughed and we had a great time. Fast forward a little bit later, I was still in junior high and I got a call slip to the office, which wasn’t unfamiliar to me. This one was from a lady at Central City Mall (before Carousel Mall in San Bernardino). She said “I am the promotion director and I’d like to talk to you about building a haunted house for us, because I heard yours was very successful.” I asked my parents if they would buy me a business suit and they did. I went to Goodwill and got a briefcase and dressed myself up as a businessman. My parents had to drive me to my first business interview. I sold the idea of this haunted house for $500; which to me was like a half a million dollars at the time. My parents kept saying “How are you going to do this? How are you going to make it work?” I told them I would like to build it in a trailer, so I could just pull it in. I knew everybody. I went all over the place getting junk, so I knew an old man that had a burned out construction trailer. I bought it from him for $200. My dad pulled it back to the yard and I spent a whole year fixing it. I built it out and made a haunted house out of it. We ran that haunted house successfully in the mall for 3 or 4 years. The promotion director for one of the chain stores saw that and asked if we could build a haunted house for a mall in Orange. I said “Absolutely”. I still do to this day. I say absolutely and then I figure out how to do it. I equate it with diving off the diving board and then deciding if the pool is full on the way down. That’s always been my mentality. Go for it and figure it out later.

I started to build my Uncle Sam figure for the high school for the bicentennial in 1976. I was born in 1960, so that year I was turning 16. I used old aircraft parts; surplus parts; surplus electronics. I had a friend that did some control system stuff

37

Garner Holt Photos courtesy of Linda Yeh for me that knew more about what products we needed.

UJ: So you just taught yourself as you went?

GH: Yeah, I just had to do it. If I needed an eyeball, I figured out how to make an eyeball.

Find a place to buy it for practically nothing or figure out how to get a wooden ball and paint it to make it work. I built this figure and it was very well covered in the news. It was on TV. We invited channel 4 out and they came out and filmed it. That was the beginning. I did another version of Uncle Sam over the summer and I was in a radio/TV production class at school.

They just had come out with the VHS machine where you could film something and watch it.

Somebody said “Why don’t you take a film of Uncle Sam and send it to Disney?” “That would be cool but they’re not going to look at the tape.

That’s ridiculous.” Reluctantly I did it and said they’re not even gonna care.

Earlier on back in my junior high days, I had carried around a National Geographic all the time that talked about the Lincoln figure that was built for the World’s Fair in 1964. It had a man’s name in there, Wathel Rogers. He was kind of the father of Disney animatronics. He was just a genius and the father of all the original stuff: he and Bob Gurr. The National Geographic article mentioned about Disney and Wathel Rogers taking this recorder out to see the Lincoln figure; so I revered the name Wathel Rogers. After I sent my tape to Disney, I never expected to hear anything again. About two weeks later my grandma came running into my room and said “Garner, Garner, there’s somebody on the phone from Walt Disney Productions who wants to talk to you”. “You’re kidding!” I about fell off my chair. The woman

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

said “We got your tape of Uncle Sam. We’re very impressed with what you’ve done and a couple of gentlemen would like to come out to your house and see your Uncle Sam if they could.” I said “Oh, my gosh yes”.

She said “The gentlemen coming out will be Wayne Jackson and Wathel Rogers.” I about had a heart attack. That’s like some film student getting a call saying Cary Grant is coming out to your house. I was in shock.

He eventually came out and I took him on a tour of my little shop in the garage and showed him Uncle Sam. My mom gave them cookies and milk. That began a little bit of a relationship with Disney. I asked them sheepishly “Since you had a tour of my shop, could I possibly tour your shop?” so eventually I went down and saw it. I really started to push the whole concept of doing animatronics. I started doing a little bit of commercial work. My first commercial job was with an exhibit company. It started rolling along enough to where some mail order and other things enabled me to move out of the garage into a small storefront facility, which was about 1700 sq. feet. I was able to make a go of it with a lot of support from my parents. I made it work just as a one person shop for 10 years and did various exhibits and haunt things. Later on I had some commercial opportunities in Las Vegas. I talked my way into some executive board rooms there and ended up getting to work on an attraction at MGM. That begat a whole other slew of projects in Vegas and Stateline. The thing I did in Stateline turned into a connection with Knott’s Berry Farm, so I worked at Knott’s Berry Farm. I built a unicycle-riding figure. I finished it around 1989.

I figured I needed to invent something that was really unique because everybody else up to that point had a singing bear, or one playing a guitar; the same old thing. I thought about what I could do that is really unusual, so it hit me “What if I could make a figure look like he’s riding a unicycle that was very realistic.” I kept thinking of different ways to do it and it got more and more elaborate.

It was a pretty good illusion. It was like a magic trick. It was on a track, but it looked like he was free. It was a human character. I spent a long time figuring out how to do it and built it pretty much single handedly. I had to build the electronics. I had to sculpt the face, because I couldn’t afford a sculptor. The only thing I didn’t build was the costume. I made it work and got a lot of attention.

A lot of people were impressed with it. Disney saw it, so ultimately I got Disney’s attention; enough that the entertainment department came out and saw me and wanted to know if I could work on some parade float characters. I just about had a heart attack. This was the first time Disney had asked me to do something. I quoted a good price and told them I could do the best job in the world.

I pulled out all the stops and gave them twice as much as they paid for. They got a character that was very successful. They said I did great work and they started shoveling stuff to me. Every time I did something successfully I would get a bigger

Chuck E. Cheese’s shows worldwide for the past 15 years or so.

UJ: Do you travel a lot?

GH: No, I don’t travel personally.

In fact we build 32 Chuck E. Cheese’s shows at a time and ship them back to Tulsa. They put them in a warehouse and pull them as they need them.

Today we continue to expand, continue to do dark rides.

We just finished the Bill Butler & Phil Yeh in the Garner Holt studios cars attraction at one the next time. They got bigger and bigger and Disney. We have 12 car figures there. Just did the bigger. Over the years it got to the point where I mermaids for Disney. We did about 90% of the was doing everything from simple characters up animation in the 2 Mermaid rides in Florida and to big parade floats.

California. We continue to move on. We’ve got 3 different dark rides we’re working on. We’re UJ: How did you know what to charge? working on some military stuff and a lot of exhibit GH: That’s a difficult thing. Along the way over stuff. We’re working on things for retail. the years I developed somewhat of a business sense. I’m not perfect. Just like any other business; UJ: Do you work for museums? some jobs you bid and make out and some jobs GH: Yeah, we have a lot of museum projects. you don’t make out, so you learn from them and Probably the smartest thing I did when I try to figure out where you made your mistakes. started the company years ago, not being a real Over the years you just have to develop an idea businessman, was look at the competitors to see of what things cost you, and you price things the why they went out of business, what was not best you can. We still have trouble pricing the working for some of them. I thought what I could things that we do, because as experienced as we do to avoid that. I found out that most of the are, somebody can walk in and say I need a 40’ people that did animation focused on the theme tall horse. Well we built a 40’ tall horse before. park industry. They figured they could just work Or they could say they need a 40’ tall mermaid. for Universal and Disney. If you put all your eggs Well we’ve built a 40’ tall horse, does that equate in that basket, it’s not going to work, because how to a mermaid? It’s not something anybody’s often does a new Disney park or a new Universal ever done. You have to use your experience to park pop up. You can’t wait for them to build a go through every possible aspect; all the pitfalls, new ride. I knew I needed to be diversified into a what’s likely to go wrong, how fast your staff lot of areas that I’m really not as interested in, like works. It’s a difficult thing and you win some, themed retail. We did FAO Schwarz and a lot of you lose some, still to this day. You look at it at companies who did restaurants. We got involved the end of the year and say “Was this a good year in museum displays and exhibits. We have a or not?” As long as you are ahead at the end of the traveling bug show that we take to museums. year, then they all cancel each other out. You just We’ve done a lot of resort casinos and Indian do the best you can. casinos. We did some stage show work in Vegas.

We continued to develop a relationship with We did the ….horses in the Caesars Forum Shops.

Disney and with others. The more work we did We did things for MGM Grand. By being willing for Disney, the more people with other companies to focus on getting work from all these diverse were impressed. Clients would come to us and say areas, that was probably one of the keys to our “You’ve done all this work for Disney; you can do longevity and the success we’ve had. Most of the what we need you to do.” Most of the competitors other companies didn’t think ahead to do that. could never say that. We’ve done more work for Disney to this point than anybody combined in UJ: Are you looking for young animatronic the entire industry. We’ve done almost 400 figures people? for Disney and no one will ever catch that. It GH: We’re always looking for people. We have would take 20 years to catch that. It kept playing a core team of people I’ve built over the last 35 on itself. Customers would see all the cool Disney years, with my first employees. Over the years stuff we were doing and they know our quality. people come and go and things change, but we In the meantime, somewhere along the way, I got have the best of the best here. We have some of other important key clients. We’ve done over 450 the best C.G. people, the best sculptors, the best

38

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

writers, the best artists, the best mechanical and plastics people. We expand and contract based on our projects. A lot of people, once they get in here, we don’t want them to leave and they don’t want to leave; but we’re always sampling and always checking. Even if we don’t need a sculptor today, I will accept any sculptor’s resume and meet with them and look at their portfolio; because I’ve had people walk in here that aren’t any good at all and I’ve had people that are great. A Japanese kid walked in here one time with an elephant in a shoe box and I sat there and looked at it. It looked like it was a real elephant standing there that was only 6” high. Needless to say he began working for me. He went on to Hollywood and got involved with some of the bigger films. He was here for many years. If I can’t hire people today, I put them in my files. We always know when Disney downsizes because we start getting resumes the next day. We interview people and that gives us the opportunity to scour the industry and pick the best of the best. I’m always interested in talent of all types; anything that’s artistic and creative.

UJ: Do you have advice for our readers?

GH: When I got my start, there was no school for animatronics. I met everybody I could in the business. I started meeting Disney people. I went to the park and would see a man that had a blue shirt on. I knew he was a maintenance guy and I would talk to him. I tried to meet everyone. I would call makeup artists like Dick Smith and meet them on the phone and go to shows. The focus that I had was really ‘do it yourself’. Figure it out yourself. Talk to people; get connections; help people help you; understand it and do it.

When I speak at entrepreneurial conferences, I say “Not one of you people in this room will ever win the lottery, so get over it. Don’t sit there and say I’m going to start my business when I win the lottery”. People wait to be given a free ride. More and more kids are like that; they wait for society or somebody to discover them.

I think my philosophy is find what you really love to do, what you are passionate about. I was very fortunate that I found out what I was passionate about when I was 14 years old. The unfortunate people are those people who can never light on anything. If you bake cakes or you ride skateboards, or whatever you do. No matter what it is, if you love it so much that you think about it day and night don’t let anyone dissuade you from doing it. If you like skateboards and your parents think you’re crazy because all you do is ride skateboards, turn it into a business and ultimately own the world’s largest skateboard company. Do what you love. Don’t sell cars if you hate doing it. I’m all about living my life; having a good time. I love what I do so much that I’m not really working. If you can find something to do the rest of your life and get paid for “not working”, you’ve got it made. http://www.garnerholt.com Photos courtesy of Linda Yeh

Mural continued from page 28 is a wealth of information about San Bernardino.

He graduated from San Bernardino High School in 1948 and seemed to have a photographic memory as we talked about the city’s history. I had done a few murals for the San Bernardino Public Library since 2006, but as I was fairly new to the area, I really didn’t have a real sense of the city’s history. Jim asked me to come and paint a MIA/POW emblem on The Inland Empire Military Museum on E. Street (Route 66) next to the unofficial McDonald’s Museum. I had worked with the Paralyzed Veterans Association on their newsletter for 2 years, when I was based in Long Beach. I liked the vets that I had worked with back then, so I told Jim that I would try and do the logo as best I could, even though I had suffered a stroke and didn’t really know how I would do on a ladder.

I was up on a very tall ladder during a heavy wind in the winter, on the shady side of The Military Museum. I could look at a 100 foot wall of the unofficial McDonald’s Museum across the parking lot of the same complex. That wall was in the sun all day and seemed to be calling out to me. Albert Okura, the owner of the museums and of Juan Pollo, a local chain of more than 30 chicken restaurants in the Inland Empire, would stop by each day. Over the next month, I got to know Albert. He grew up in Los Angeles and was a couple of years older than me. He liked comics as a kid, and especially the work of my friend, Sergio Aragones in MAD Magazine. As I painted the prisoner of war logo, I started really thinking about creating a new mural for the city of San Bernardino on the wall.

This building not only serves as the unofficial McDonald’s Museum, but it is also the corporate headquarters of Okura’s Juan Pollo empire.

Richard and Maurice McDonald had opened up a Bar-B-Q restaurant in 1940 on this spot. In 1948, they remodeled the place and the menu, thus creating the fast food that bore their name.

Phil Yeh and Rory Murray Their original offices are still there in the back, but the original restaurant was demolished years ago.

When the new building came up for sale in 1998, Okura saw a chance of turning it into an unofficial McDonald’s Museum after reading about the history of the place. Next to a huge, old McDonald’s sign, Okura even put up a plaque to remind the world of what happened right here in San Bernardino on Route 66. I learned that Ray Kroc, the man who bought the brothers out in 1962, had a falling out with them. Kroc moved the corporate headquarters to Illinois, vowing that no one would ever hear about Richard and Maurice again. I have always liked to stand up for original creators, such as the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster whom I interviewed in 1975. I interviewed Jerry in his LA apartment, relating the fact that the men who had created this symbol of justice didn’t seem to get much themselves. I knew that I had to do my part to bring attention to the city of San Bernardino and to this important part of pop culture history. I talked to Okura about painting a very detailed mural all about the city and the people who played a role here. He was very keen on the idea, but could not offer me much money; although he said that we could get other sponsors. What the heck, I had suffered a stroke, and I needed to get my right hand back in shape. What began in March 2011 continues to the time I am writing this (April 2013) and we don’t see it ending until the fall of this year.

Jon J. Murakami speaking at dedication

Sandy Fischer Cvar painting portraits

39

The folks in the California Room at the Feldheym Central Library in San Bernardino have been great, especially Sue Payne who gave me an article about Chester Carlson. This man has become a real role model for me. Talk about perseverance; he graduated from San Bernardino High School in 1924 and was dead broke his whole childhood. But he got a degree in physics from CalTech and went on continued on page 41

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Copies in Seconds

By Dave Owen Simon & Schuster

“In the spring of 1912, shortly after Chester had turned six, Olof moved the family to San Bernardino, which was then a small town sixty miles east of Los Angeles.”

So writes Dave Owen in his 2004 book, Copies in Seconds which tells the true story of how a kid born in the worst poverty I have ever read about and an unknown company would create the biggest breakthrough in communications since Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press around 1450. I am not exaggerating the extent of poverty in his childhood. I have read countless biographies for more than 50 years and when I say that his life was hard, it was very hard.

When in his junior year at San Bernardino High School in 1923, Chester’s mom Ellen died of tuberculosis. Ellen had been his biggest supporter.

His father Olof soon lost all the money Chester had saved working countless jobs since he was a child. This was in the age before there was any kind of welfare from the government. His father and his teenaged son had to live in a former chicken coop with Chester sleeping outside in a sleeping bag he made himself, hoping to not hear his father’s coughing and not to get sick himself.

Since he was a young kid, Chester had worked at everything from washing windows to selling fish. He worked as a janitor for a number of

40

local businesses including the San Bernardino Sun where my friend John Weeks writes a daily column about the city to this day. Chester was encouraged to go to college on a work/study program by his cousin Roy who was five years

older. Chester entered Riverside Junior College where he was inspired by his physics professor Howard Bliss, who urged him to go on to CalTech.

Chester graduated from CalTech in 1930 but this was at the height of the great depression and jobs were very hard to find.

Chester had cleaned a printing shop in the past and also tried his hand at publishing. He had always written down his ideas for inventions.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

In 1936, he was living in New York and taking night classes in New York Law School. He could not afford the law books and used to copy these endless passages by hand, which led him to think about inventing a way to copy these pages easier.

In 1937, Chester Carlson would patent his invention of dry copying. It would take many years and the support of a small firm called the Haloid Company of Rochester, New York, to perfect the process. This fascinating book takes you through years of tireless work and of the whole team of engineers and scientists, led by Haloid’s president Joe Wilson, who really believed in Chester’s invention. A classics professor at Ohio State came up with a name that Haloid felt was a better fit than Chester’s previous name of electrophotography.

Thus, Xerox was born.

Chester Carlson died in 1968. He worked just as hard giving his money away, especially to causes that promoted world peace. U Thant, the secretary-general of the United Nations said this about Chester, who became his friend, “He was generally known as the inventor of xerography, and although it was an extraordinary achievement in the technological and scientific field, I respected him more as a man of exceptional moral stature and as a humanist.”

I believe that Owen’s book deserves to be read by every student on this planet. In an age where total nonsense is being fired off electronically to our youth, this book can give real inspiration to a new generation. Chester Carlson’s life will inspire anyone!

Mural continued from page 39 to invent what the world now knows as Xerographic copies. My wife gave me this wonderful book about his life called Copies in Seconds, and I happily suggest it to everyone. (See my review in this issue!) John Weeks, a columnist for the San Bernardino Sun and a friend, wrote a coffee table book in 2010 for the bicentennial of San Bernardino. I have

Phil, Jim Valdez, & Mayor Patrick Morris read and reread this book thinking of more details we can add. My Los Alamitos high school classmate Sandy Fischer Cvar came out to paint the portraits on the south wall, which is dedicated to San Bernardino.

Her portraits have added a whole new dimension to this work and each time I am there on a weekend, Jim Valdez suggests a new person to be added!

Nick Cataldo, another real history buff, gave me the facts we needed to include the Earp family on this mural. It seems that they have a very long history in the region, beginning when their father, Nicholas, brought the whole clan out from Iowa in 1864. Wyatt was just 16, so this was before he and his brothers headed off to Dodge City, Kansas and Tombstone, Arizona to earn the legendary status of being some

41

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Meagan Williams

Candice Campbell with Ronald McDonald

Model Photos by ~ Allen Freeman www.afreemanphotography.com Allen is co-editor (with Catherine Madinger) of a modern pin-up magazine Sweet Dreams Magazine. www.sweetdreamsmagazine.com

42

Anna Clark, Candice Campbell, Kat Sheridan, Simone Strauss, Meagan Williams, Mimi Cortes, Stephanie Twaite Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

They also run Inland Empire Models & Photographers Group. http://tinyurl.com/IEMPG

Meagan Williams

43

Sandy Summer, Catherine Madinger, Ashley Powell, Melissa Meador, Victoria Rose, Mimi Cortes, Felina Vie Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Mimi Cortes

of the greatest lawmen who ever lived. They always came back to San Bernardino County, and we hope that the mural reminds folks of this fact. Academy award-winning actor Gene Hackman was born in San Bernardino, and Sandy painted his portrait from The French Connection on an image of the marquee of the California Theatre, which is still standing.

She also paid tribute to one of my favorite entertainers, Will Rogers; who is depicted on two big murals on the California Theatre in San Bernardino, painted by artist Kent Twitchell.

Rogers made his last public appearance at the California Theatre in 1935. San Bernardino was also the location of the first U.S. appearance of The Rolling Stones in 1964, who

Kathy and her father, Te Fung Yeh, at the mural dedication. May 2012

Hollywood landmarks being painted

by Brendan Moore on the North wall

44

Veteran’s Day parade and car show at the mural, November 2012 sang Bobby Troup’s classic song, (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66. Colonel Paul Green is on the mural, having flown combat missions during World War II as one of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen. Col. Green served as Base Commander for the Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino.

Dorothy Inghram (we interview Dorothy for Uncle Jam #97 along with Ray Bradbury), was the first African American school teacher in the county and the first African American principal in the state of California. Ms. Inghram passed away in 2012 at the age of 106. We put Bradbury on the mural in front of The Sturges Center for the Fine Arts, because he had a historic appearance there in 2007. Sponsored by the San Bernardino Public Library, more than 700 people of all ages heard Bradbury paint a wonderful picture of the future. My friend, Tim Powers, moved to San Bernardino years ago. He wrote On Stranger Tides which was adapted into Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean. Sandy has painted Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow on the mural. We added Garner Holt as well, because he is a successful, creative artist born in San Bernardino. He is still in the city today making wonderful animatronics for Disney, Universal Studios, Chuck E. Cheese’s, and many Mimi Cortes other firms around the globe.

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Detail of railroad cars being painted by Beth Winokur on north wall Students from several local schools helped us get the basic colors painted on the south wall and several local artists came by to add their touch. Most notably was Greta Gregorian, from Los Angeles, who came all the way to paint more than a few days. Rory Murray, a local San Bernardino artist, has been instrumental on getting up on the roof, where he lettered a tribute to the McDonald brothers. He helped me finish the MIA/POW logo on the Military Museum as well.

Until you have painted on uneven stucco, you have no idea just how difficult it is to do lettering and portraits! My friend, metal sculptor Dan Romero, came out and put up a fantastic 3D sculpture of palm leaves. One of our guest artists even flew out from Hawaii! Jon J. Murakami is one of the island’s finest cartoonists. Last May, before Mayor Morris dedicated the mural, Jon graciously added three of his Dragons of Hawaii playing their musical instruments.

Completing the scene wonderfully is Okura’s and Danny Castro’s collection of a carousel horse, an old car, and assorted McDonald’s sculptures. Okura had them all set in new cement in front of the mural, and little by little, the whole museum is getting improved. I usually do these murals in one or two days, but this mural has taken me over a year. I’m adding tons of detail, getting my right hand in shape. I was never much for following traditional forms of therapy.

A few months ago, I decided to paint the north wall, but this time we will do the entire county of San Bernardino.

San Bernardino is the largest county in the United States by area (Alaska has boroughs). I am doing this wall as if I am painting a canvas and not in my normal flat mural style.

A couple of days into painting the other side of the building, a woman I had met at the D Gallery in Lake Arrowhead stopped by to reintroduce herself and to volunteer to help me paint. Beth Winokur has proven to be both imaginative and a very good artist. She is painting a row of railroad cars

45

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

Model Mimi Cortes at the Veteran’s day parade

46

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

South side of the mural from Los Angeles through San Bernardino County, with the names of various cities in the county. She is doing them as the old fashioned fruit labels with a twist. Another young artist, Brendan Moore, volunteered to come up from Riverside and paint various landmarks on the mural. Rory Murray is still helping with the sky and the little lettering on signs. We have added Route 66, but instead of classic cars which are the theme of the other side, I am painting motorcycles in tribute to my old friend, the late Hal Robinson.

His art in Easyriders magazine played a huge part in my own life. It is all starting to come together and we hope to have the north wall completed in fall 2013.

Since I have been painting in San Bernardino for well over a year, my imagination has run wild. I envision a complete restoration of the interior of the museum, as well as converting the old offices of the McDonald’s brothers into working artists’ studios. I can see renovating all the buildings up and down E Street with unique non-chain restaurants, art studios, galleries and museums. One of these museums would be dedicated to Chester Carlson, a poor kid from San Bernardino who changed the world. Another would celebrate Route 66 with its history of classic cars and rock ‘n roll. My hope is that the images on these murals will inspire people to bring San Bernardino back to its former glory.

47

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

48

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

49

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

50

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

51

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013

52

Uncle Jam Quarterly, Volume 39, #102 Summer 2013