Joe Sacco Interview

Media Circus interviews cartoonist/journalist Joe Sacco, whose work I admire.

"What I realised with my own career as a journalist is that no one is going to knight you and dub you Foreign Correspondent. The chance of you doing something on a mainstream level is one in a million. No one is going to give you a passport and a flack jacket and say 'GO – we trust in your genius!' You kind of have to do it yourself."

20 Years Ago: STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION

Ha ha ha! No WAY!

Yes -- WAY!!!!




20 years ago Roddenberry created TNG and it was premiered and it was a Big Deal. OK, so the video effects are no longer cutting edge and the bridge set looks like the lounge at the Howard Johnson, but it was, at that time, the only science fiction show on TV with a continuing group of characters. In 2007, now there's something Sci Fi every night.

Love the announcer (Ernie Anderson?) who gets all bass on us when he says that Data's an "ANDROID." Hee hee.

Link via Trekmovie -- the best source for things TREK.

Selling Cartoons to Magazines

I've been getting questions about what I do. How does something I draw at home, on a board, get into a magazine like Harvard Business Review?

Here's the process:

I send cartoons to HBR maybe once a month. I send a batch of 10-20 cartoons. I mail hard copies, with my contact information on the back of each one. I enclose a SASE. Yeah, I mail paper to them. Paper is better. This is my opinion. The editor doesn't have to disable a firewall, click to see the cartoon, and then print the cartoon if they're interested in it. You send an envelope full of cartoons, and all the editor has to to do is open it and there they are; tangible, and ready for them to go to a meeting.

They have meetings throughout the year. I'm not sure how many, but it's probably between 5-7 meetings a year. I've never attended any of these meetings, but I know from descriptions that a number of editors are involved and decisions on cartoons are group decisions. Maybe the cartoon editor does an initial sort, but the final batches are picked by a group.

I try not to edit myself too much. I try to send cartoons that I feel are appropriate. And I also throw in odd things here and there. Harvard bought a cat cartoon from me this week, and who knew that a business mag would buy a cat cartoon?

I got a question a while back asking about a batch of cartoons I mailed to Wall Street Journal. I can't find the comment (It's lost somewhere on another thread in this blog.), but the fellow had a good question: he was asking about a batch of cartoons I mailed to the Wall Street Journal. He wanted to know if I requested a set price from WSJ for the batch, or if they just bought a couple, and they decided on the price to pay me. It's the latter.

When WSJ (or any other publication in the business of buying cartoons) is going to buy from you, they have a set rate. All the magazines do. You can't negotiate a different rate.

Once, during a Q&A panel discussion on cartooning, someone asked how I chose where to send my cartoons. I said I started with the markets that paid the most, and worked my way down.

Anything can happen during this process: you can not be able to sell to a market despite your best efforts, you may run out of good gags, a publication will suddenly go from buying your great cartoons to not buying them, etc.

The people who give up are the norm. The rest -- the ones who slog through the not-selling, the no-idea, the collapse of markets times -- those are cartoonists.

Interview with Wiley

Comic Book Resources talks to Wiley Miller about his strip, Non Sequitur, as well as his foray into children's books.

They all said the same thing — "we love the art, we love the humor, but we'd like to see it with a central character." They figured having a central character would give them a single image that would make it easier to sell. They, of course, were wrong.

Zuda Comics Creators' Contracts

This summer, DC Comics began a Web site where creators could submit their new, undiscovered, graphic novel work, with anticipation of (a) high trraffic and (b) getting picked up for publication by DC, a division of Time Warner Communications. The site, called Zuda, was, at first, hazy on creators' rights. Here's a July 7, 2007 interview from Newsarama with two of the DC editors who are behind the initiative.

The site is run like a contest, with finalists and then, a winner. There are, as of now, a series of contracts to be signed. Here's a comment from that Newsarma interview:

"Once one of the creators is selected, it’s a much more complicated relationship with contracts and so on, where there are participations and all of that."

"Complicated relationship" means that "You" (the creator of the winning work) "grant and assign to Zuda, its successors, licensees and assigns, solely and exclusively, in any and all languages and media, whether now known or hereafter devised, throughout the universe, for the term of copyright, all rights in and to the Material (collectively, the "Rights")." The entire contract is here.

So ... you are giving DC the rights to your work. All the rights "throughout the universe."

I walked away from a book deal with another publisher (not the first) that wanted all rights. Another cartoonist, a good colleague, stepped up and filled the void, giving the publisher what he wanted. This is OK with me. I have no grudge against the guy, but I had to ask the cartoonist about it. He wasn't stupid. He knew it wasn't a good deal.

"But the cartoons they're going to buy -- they're just sitting here in my drawer, not making me any money. So, you know, I figured, 'what the hell,'" he told me.

The book was published last year. This book will be republished in CD-ROM format this year, and all of the people who created the content will not see any money, except the publishers, who crafted the contracts. I don't know how he feels about all this, but I would feel pretty bad.

So ... just to submit your work to the kids at Zuda, you have to agree to sign away rights. T. Campbell writes, "It's silly to think that publishers are evil for wanting to retain rights as long as they can." He adds more comments today, and there are good links there. Certain rights are OK for a corporation to have, but the Douglas Adamsy language of having all rights in all pandimensional universes is wrong.

Hat tip to Journalista! and good ol' Dirk Deppey.

Publisher's Weekly reports on reaction to Zuda's contracts here, and mentions that there are some people who are getting a different contract. Better? Worse? I don't know.

Mike Lynch Cartoon in September 2007 Harvard Business Review

"Oh, it's a great place to work -- but the ergonomics are crap."

I have a second cartoon in HBR this month, as my pal, cartoonist Rod McKie, pointed out in the "comments" section in my previous Mike Lynch Cartoon in September 2007 Harvard Business Review.

But I could not figure out what Rod was raving about. He is, of Scottish descent, and there is a streak of madness in most Scots. I could only see the one cartoon of mine on the HBR site, so I pooh-poohed Mr. McKie's comment as completely dotty. I was wrong.

It was a surprise when I got a hard copy of the issue and saw that the crazy Scotsman was right. I did have another cartoon in there. But it was a little different. The picture was the same, but the line was changed to:

"Oh, it's a great place to work -- but the ergonomics are lousy."

OK, so they don't want the word "crap" at Harvard. Whaddya gonna do? The editor's rewrite conveys the spirit of the cartoon, but I felt that it lost some of its impact. But jokes or words having to do with a bodily function tend to make people nervous. Ah well.

Cartoonists Photos

Over at the Eli Stein Cartoons blog: photos of cartoonists at their drawing boards from a 1950s magazine.

Eli, more posts like this, please!

All Things Bionic

OK, I haven't seen the new BIONIC WOMAN show, but it'll be better than those Lindsay Wagner mattress ads, you bet. After all, it's produced by one of those guys who did the new BATTLESTAR show (David Eick) and the villainess is gonna be Katee "Starbuck" Sackhoff.


Above: Any excuse to run a photo of Katee Sackhoff, now a smokin' adversary to THE NEW BIONIC WOMAN. I'm hoping her lungs are bionic so she doesn't have to worry about cancer.

I went to the NBC site that promises that the "most anticipated" show will either appear tonight, Wednesday, September 26, according to the video preview, or, as it says twice on the page, on Wednesday, September 25. Screen capture of that NBC site above. Typos, goofs -- I see 'em a lot more. Today's lesson: "Most anticipated," at NBC, does not mean "most copy edited," OK? OK!

Regardless, if you miss it tonight regardless of what the date is, you can download the premiere tomorrow over at Amazon Unbox for a couple of bucks. "Unbox" is the trade name for its viewing on your computer service. Any truth to the secret malicious spyware stuff that I hear about this service? Anyone got anything to hide? FISA Act? Hello? Anyone? Wanna go thru my underwear drawer? Well, Katee can, if she drops by. But, smoke outside, babe.

Tenuously related: Bill Haverchuck dresses as the Bionic Woman for Halloween in this FREAKS AND GEEKS clip.

Linky Round Up

Lots of great stuff today from, well, other people's blogs and sites:


From the ASIFA blog comes a great series of scans of BLONDIE strips, along with excerpts from the book COMICS AND THEIR CREATORS (1942). Every time on I look at ASIFA, I wind up spending a lot of time there.

Please explain the above Peter Arno cartoon to Jeff over at GoofButton.com. It's from PETER ARNO'S MAN IN THE SHOWER collection. I'm lost on the context as well.

Current PRINCE VALIANT illustrator Gary Gianni is interviewed over at Comic Book Resources.


Don't give away your creations to corporations. Case in point: the latest on the ongoing Siegel estate's legal claim on SUPERBOY.

Above cover of The Man giving it to the Laddy of Steel (from SUPERBOY #55) taken from The Comic Treadmill site.


Syndicated cartoonist Sandra Lundy continues toward her goal of running 5 miles upon her 50th birthday this spring. Go Sandra!



Above photo of Mr. Schulz from a Sonoma area article from 1999 titled LAST LAUGH.

And let's not forget that the PBS Show American Masters will spotlight Charles Schulz next month! PBS press release here. The October issue of VANITY FAIR has an excerpt from the forthcoming doorstop-sized Schulz bio by David Michaelis. Alas, no link to article on line for free. Must go to large chain bookstore and sprawl out on floor with overpriced coffee drink and read the real, physical mag.

Big hat tips all around to Journalista!, Comics Reporter, Collected Comics Library, the Between Friends Blog and Editor & Publisher!

Saturday Evening Post, November 14, 1953: Part Two

Continued from Part One ...

MAN FROM ATLANTIS Pilot 1

Here's a link to one of the highest rated TV movies of 1977, MAN FROM ATLANTIS, starring the pre-Dynasty star Patrick Duffy. I haven't seen it since it aired, and maybe it's as good as I remembered. Maybe not. There was a short-lived series, after a couple more of these TV movies aired, and they were of diminishing interest. This is due to either their not being so good, or me getting more involved with girls.

STAR TREK alums Herb Solow and Bob Justman produced.

The 1970s had scant Sci Fi on TV, and most of it was drek. But some of it was rather fun drek. Enjoy until YouTube pulls!

Saturday Evening Post, November 14, 1953: Part One

Here are 10 cartoons from a 54 year old issue of the Saturday Evening Post.

Cartoonist Roy Fox shows us that lusting after women was a funny topic to be mined for gags back in the unenlightened 1950s.
Harry Mace carried on in the same theme. Mace created the syndicated cartoon panel "Amy" in 1962, which Jack Tippitt took over. There's a photo from the SEP cartoon look day at the Eli Stein blog here.

Stan Hunt was a New Yorker regular. He just passed away last year. I love that unfinished lamp just floating in the background!

MARMADUKE creator Brad Anderson struts his vervey brush style in the above cartoon that still works. This was just about a year before his United Features' syndicated panel about the big dog debuted.

When MARMADUKE turned 50 years old, fellow cartoonists attending the Reubens that year got a nice pen in their good bags with the notation on the side: "MARMADUKE - 50 Years of Woofs!" A 2004 interview with Mr. Anderson is here.


Peter Porges, a guy who is still alive and well and living in NYC, contributed the above wordless cartoon. His work appeared in a lot of mags, including Mad & The New Yorker. He no longer draws cartoons, he told me. But he did come out of retirement to contribute a drawing on the cartoon mural wall of the Overlook.

Ted Key, who currently lives in Pennsylvania, not only created HAZEL -- but he also created the PEABODY AND SHERMAN series of cartoons for the Jay Ward BULLWINKLE show, and wrote screenplays for Disney. I've asked around, but no one I know has seen Mr. Key in years.
Sometimes a one word gag line nails the cartoon so well, as Herb Green shows here. Mr. Green was a frequent contributor to a lot of the major mags, and rarely appears on any other Web site so says Google. But I do see his name in a lot of cartoon collections.

Boris Drucker does the art above. In his day, Drucker was in all the big markets. Syracuse University had a major exhibition of his work in 2005. He was one of the six Jewish WW II soldiers featured in the recent documentary FROM PHILADELPHIA TO THE FRONT.

Hmm. What is that woman doing? Anyway, the cartoonist, Joe Zeis, has a great tribute site here. Text is in ... um ... er ... I think it's in Dutch.

Tom Henderson finishes up today's round up. He's in the Top 100 US Cartoons and Comics, he was a mentioned as a favorite of Paul Gimabarba's in a Cartoon Fiend interview (Hi Paul!), and there are a few at this Dutch cartoon site (the same one with the Zeis cartoons).

More cartoons from this issue here.

New Starship Exeter Episode

Well, not a new episode per se. STARSHIP EXETER, a fan-made STAR TREK film project, has completed and released Act 3 of its episode "The Tressaurian Intersection."

It's been something like 18 months between Acts 2 and 3, and that is one helluva big commercial break. EXETER, like other TREK fan-films on the Web, is created by fans in their time after their real jobs, and given away for free viewing right here, on your computer screen.

Like a lot of these fans-turned-moviemakers, the EXETER team buys costumes and builds sets and writes scripts, all in their spare time. This explains the delays until some new material is ready. And they do poke fun at themselves for these terribly long waits.

These are fun and interesting, but a lot of their appeal is to the all ready large TREK fan base. If you've never seen any of these, try out the teaser/titles of "The Tressaurian Intersection" at STARSHIP EXETER's Movies page for a sample of the production values. It's my favorite couple of minutes of TREK fanfilms.

The one-stop-shopping place to find out all about all of these TREK fan films (some based on TOS, some on TNG, VOYAGER, etc.) is at the Star Trek Fan Films Web site.

"What? Where? When?" and The Daily Cartoonist

Above: The Daily Cartoonist as it appeared this morning.

This is written with all respect that is due.

The Daily Cartoonist, "the source for industry news," would be given a failing grade by my high school journalism teacher for its lack of use of the inverted pyramid format in this "An Evening with Richard Thompson" item.

Who is Richard Thompson? Why no hyperlinks? Where is this? When is this? How do people RSVP? Do people RSVP?

I Was Almost Denied Liability Insurance

... because I am in a "high risk profession." Really!!

As a cartoonist, explained my insurance broker, I can be open to libel and slander.

I laughed.

He wasn't joking.

So, I told him that he should maybe look at my cartoons and make a judgment. I emailed him some cartoons from WSJ & so on, along with the link to my blog. Here's what I sent him:

Cartoon from 7/3/07 Wall Street Journal

Cartoon in 7/7/07 WSJ

Cartoon in July 2007 Harvard Business Review

Cartoons in July 2007 Prospect and This Week magazines

I also sent a link to a piece where I talked about drawing cartoon finishes for WSJ.

He forwarded these to some insurance underwriters.

Sure enough, a couple of insurance agencies pulled out.

My agent was, finally, able to find an insurance company.

Has any other cartoonist had this happen to them?

I asked illustrator Steve Brodner if he ever heard of being a cartoonist being so high risk that an insurance company won't touch them. He never heard of it.

And now I see cartoonists jailed in Bangladesh, threatened with death in Sweden, and -- this is just breaking in the past couple of days -- when a Connecticut schoolteacher gave a comic book (by an award winning literary graphic novelist whose work is now being serialized in the Sunday NY Times mag) to a 14 year old student, parents lash out calling the book "pornographic." The teacher resigns. The comic book, by the way, had been collected in hardcover graphic novel format by Random House. Tom Spurgeon, of the Comics Reporter, comments here.


Above: Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks showing a dog with the head of Mohammed.

Above: From the Reporters Without Borders site, the translation of the above cartoon drawn by Bangladeshi cartoonist Arifur Rahman:

The drawing was accompanied by this dialogue:

Boy, what’s your name?
My name is Babu.
It is customary to put Mohammed in front of the name.
What is your father’s name?
Mohammed Abu.
What is that on your lap?
Mohammed cat.

Images of the Bangladeshi cartoon and the Swedish cartoon are from the Comics Reporter site.

Is my insurance agent right? And is American media, under the guise of sensitivity, missing the whole point of freedom of expression when it chooses not to show the very cartoons that are getting people upset? They cover the "controversy," get in some talking heads -- but they do not show the cause and talk about it.

And it's not just satirizing Islam that's a big no-no, it's now graphic novels. Heck, even my Wall Street Journal cartoons? These "damn pictures" are dangerous.

Last year, Harper's magazine published all 12 of the Danish cartoons, with a long analysis by Art Spiegelman. Everyone knows about the Danish cartoon controversy -- but who has seen the cartoons? Who has placed them in context? If you went to buy the June 2006 Harper's at the Indigo book chain in Canada, then you were out of luck. The chain, citing security concerns, pulled the mag from its nationwide chain.

My insurance agent, I decided, is pretty prescient.

Tokyo Comic Book Chain Store: Animate

Above: cool Moomin toys and a book-dispensing vending machine from Chris Butcher's Tokyo trip.

Christopher Butcher posts a ton of photos from his visit to Animate, a mega comics store in Tokyo, at his Comics 212 blog.

The amount of manga and anime in this multi-floor chain comic book store is overwhelming. Even if you're not into this kinda stuff, take a peek for a minute.

Big hat tip to Dirk Deppey at the TCJ news blog Journalista!

Cartoon-related Link Round Up

• Cartoonists Roy Delgado and Bob Weber visit Donna Barstow and Playboy's Marty Murphy.

• The I'm Learning to Share! blog gives us a quick series of links and pics of surrealist illustrator Boris Artzybasheff. Cartoon composer Raymond Scott gets some MP3 links there as well.

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories gives a bounty of pirate images in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day:

Various illustrations here and here,

Alex Raymond and Dave Stevens here,

Pirates plus ghosts comic book story from Feature Comics #37, October 1940 link 1, link 2,

a link to EC's Piracy comic book here and here,

and art (part 1, part 2) from Douglas Fairbanks' silent film The Black Pirate,

and, finally, a couple of masters: Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth (part 1, part 2).

• Via the Jay Stephens Cute Creeps from Outer Space blog comes this great Seth cover to MAKE magazine.

New STEVE CANYON Strip

In honor of STEVE CANYON's 60th year, there is a new STEVE CANYON. More over at Publisher's Weekly's THE BEAT. Follow Ms. MacDonald's link to the TCJ boards for more art and links.

With a hardcover collection of TERRY AND THE PIRATES, R.C. Harvey's doorstop-sized bio, and the upcoming Caniff-centered OSU Festival -- this is the year of Milton Caniff!

And the town we move to is called Milton too! Yipe!

Mike Lynch Cartoon in September 2007 Harvard Business Review

"Oh, vowels are so 2006!"

An office trends cartoon (or, if you're texting, an "offc trnds crtn by mk lnch") cartoon appears in this month's HBR, a very high paying and difficult market to get into. Nice to be in this issue with my colleagues P.C. Vey and John Caldwell. (No disrespect to Mssrs. Zasadny and Schochet -- I just haven't met them as yet.)

John and P.C. are appear everywhere (New Yorker, Mad Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and so on). I always think it's a good thing to be seen in the company of these two widely published pros.

Hat tip to Pletch, who saw this first and let me know. Thanks, Pletch!

New ZIP & LI'L BIT Adventure Begins

"The Sky Kayak," an all-ages friendly graphic novel, is the title of the sophomore series of Zip & Li'l Bit adventures, created by my pal Trade Loeffler. Today is the first day of the first page of the story, with succeeding pages appearing, twice a week, until the story is finished.


The site has a new daily blog, and you can see last year's adventures there as well. This is a great all-ages story that Trade is doing and it's ripe to be collected between hardcovers!

Roy Delgado's Memories and California Trip

From left: Suzanne Lemieux Wilson, cartoonist Marty Murphy, Playboy Cartoon Editor Michelle Urry and cartoonist Rowland B. Wilson from Westport, CT, circa 1981.

Cartoonist Roy Delgado shares some memories of cartoonist Rowland B. Wilson, as well as a recent photo (and related remembrances) of Jim Whiting, George Gladir, Suzanne Lemieux Wilson and Bob Weber from Roy's trip out west.

Thanks for sharing these, Roy -- and I love the factoid about Sam Cobean.

By the way, as Roy points out, veteran cartoonist Jim Whiting has written a memoir titled Analecta: Selected Reflections of a Cartoonist's Life. More here.

TV Guide March 27-April 2, 1971

This is the second 1971 TV Guide I'm looking at. I talked about the January 9-15, 1971 TV Guide last week. (By the way, a big tip of the hat to Orlando Busino. Click above for Orlando's updates on Rowland B. Wilson and a mystery signature, which Detective Busino solves. There's a photo of Mr. & Mrs. Wilson at this link courtesy of Roy Delgado.)

The Guide used a good amount of art and cartooning as a routine part of its art design. Nowadays, everything's photos, photos, photos. And that's too bad.


Another helping of 2 great cartoonists:Rowland B. Wilson and Bob Weber. Great to see these fellows, best recalled for their gag cartoons, used as illustrators.



Although, sometimes I have to admit that the art just isn't doing its job. Above: a guy holding a gun, looking at .... ? For a movie with the word DUEL in it, why not have a bit of action? Man firing a gun, for instance.


A half page of Schulz art lets us know that PLAY IT AGAIN CHARLIE BROWN is a premiere.


The ads for STAR TREK and FLIPPER seem pretty standard for now: photo, logo, channel, when it's on.


And here's my favorite gatefold: an ad for NEWSBEAT, which looks to be hosted by Siamese twins, and some bad art for STAR TREK depicting what looks like a flying saucer and then, in an odd Charlie Brown touch, a kite above the hand-drawn logo. This is so badly drawn, and seemingly unnecessary since there was all ready an ad for TREK a page before, that I have to believe there was some blackmail going on.

Well, might as well go off-topic and just look at a bit of nostalgia.

The TONYS! The nice thing about the Tonys, as well as a lot of shows that would have a singer on them, is that the Guide would list what songs were going to be performed and who was going to do the performing. I don't think that's done any more.



A good week for Charles Schulz. Here, he appears in a show based on the Guinness Book of World Records. It doesn't sound too interesting to me, nor could I find out why Schulz was one of the guests, but dear ol' Flip Wilson is trying to reassure me with his big time mugging that all will be fun.

The great purge of the CBS "rural shows" had begun. I'd always heard that one year, CBS took out all of its high performing small-town shows and retooled itself. Here's the report from the front lines as they were putting together their 1971-72 TV season.



And here is our TV nostalgia digestif: Shirley Jones and Jack Cassidy, in the waning years of their Hollywood marriage, preen around in cool '70s fashions. The giant bird cage makes it all the more unsettling!

Wally Wood's Alka Seltzer Ad

Wood's former assistant Bhob Stewart talks about the story behind the Wally Wood Alka Seltzer ad. Some wonderful art and prelim storyboard skethes for the TV commercial here. Who knew that there was a TV commercial with Wood art in it? I sure didn't.

And there's some great stuff here:

Video plus indy comics in "Celeb chef Anthony Bourdain meets Harvey Pekar."

Remembering a sharpshooter who did a show at Bhob's high school, the making of a drawing from Squa Tront #12, and more.

Bookmarking Bhob's Potrzebie blog now!

A big hat tip to Mark Evanier!

John Cullen Murphy Gallery Show

John Cullen Murphy exhibit at the Art Students League in NYC thru October 14, 2007.

(Photo from my friend Jim Keefe's site where he interviews Mr. Murphy. There are links to more art there as well.)

Press release follows:

LEAGUE EXHIBITION CELEBRATES JOHN CULLEN MURPHY, PRINCE VALIANT ARTIST

Focusing on one of its notable alumni, the Art Students League of New York has mounted an exhibition devoted to the career of John Cullen Murphy, best known for drawing the Prince Valiant comic strip for more than three decades. The exhibit, ranging from student drawings to late watercolors, will be on view in the school’s main office through October 14. Murphy, an artist who was proud to call himself an illustrator, also found time to produce portraits of friends and luminaries, travel sketches and landscapes, all featured in the exhibit. The League is at 215 West 57th St. in Manhattan. Office hours are 8:30 – 8:30 Monday through Friday and 8:30 – 4 Saturday and Sunday.

Born in 1919, Murphy drew from an early age and attended the Art Institute of Chicago as a child. When his family moved to New Rochelle, New York, he had the good fortune to meet a neighbor by the name of Norman Rockwell. The artist asked the freckle-faced boy to model for one of his Saturday Evening Post covers, which appeared on September 22, 1934. Murphy began to take his drawings to Rockwell for weekly critiques. Once he produced illustrations for a Hemingway story which the artist assigned him, much like the assignments Rockwell had had decades earlier at the Art Students League.

On Rockwell’s advice, Murphy enrolled at League in 1937, where he studied with Walter Beach Humphrey, Charles Chapman and, most importantly, George Bridgman. Like generations of artists, Murphy would call upon Bridgman’s dynamic understanding of human anatomy throughout his career. Three of Murphy’s figure drawings from the Bridgman class are on view at the League.

Murphy left New York in 1942 to serve in the Army. Assigned to the South Pacific, he did portraits of high-ranking officers and sketched his fellow soldiers and New Guinea tribesmen. He also managed to sell cover art to Liberty magazine and continued to land commissions when he returned to the United States in 1946. Murphy sold illustrations to the Metro-Goldwyn movie studio and to Colliers, Esquire and Holiday magazines.

Drawing sports, particularly boxing, was one of his strengths. (When Murphy enrolled at the League, he had already sold several boxing posters to Madison Square Garden.) In 1949, he was invited to collaborate on a boxing comic strip, and for the next 20 years illustrated Big Ben Bolt. This career move was unanticipated, but it suited him. Murphy settled with his family in Greenwich, Connecticut. He worked out of a backyard studio, where his children now recall him “puffing at a pipe and keeping an ear on the ball game,” another childhood passion.

Murphy’s involvement with Prince Valiant began with his auditioning to succeed Hal Foster, creator of the strip, in 1970. He landed the job and continued as illustrator until shortly before his death in 2004. He once compared the work to stage design, explaining, “You want to have it as powerful as you can, so you have big, strong blacks… It’s a combination of drawing and composition and lighting.” Over the years, Murphy’s illustrations earned him six Story Comic Strip Awards from the National Cartoonist Society. High points of the League exhibit are the script, preparatory sketch and final ink drawings for the Prince Valiant strip. The exhibit also features Murphy’s breezy sketches of strolling monks and attentive hotel doormen from travels abroad, as well as watercolor paintings of Maine and Connecticut landscapes.

Long before today’s career counselors began advising people that they might hold five or six jobs rather than one, artists like John Cullen Murphy lived the idea. His creative adaptability may impress today’s League students as much as his drawing skills. Both are on view in this exhibition. Murphy believed that his facility with different media and his life-long ability to pursue art in different veins grew out of the rigorous training received in part at the Art Students League. Recognizing that, his widow, Joan Byrne Murphy, has established a one-year scholarship in drawing instruction at the League in his honor. The first of these annual scholarships was awarded in June

New Web Site for Marisa Acocella Marchetto

Marisa Acocella Marchetto has launched her "one and only 100% official" Web site. You can read more about her CANCER VIXEN graphic novel, see her cartoons from Glamour and New Yorker, and her her blog there.

The site looks great and it was just put up recently. A very good place to see more information about Marisa, her life, and get involved in supporting breast cancer research.

Big hat tip to Marisa for letting me know!

New ZIP AND LI'L BIT by Trade Loeffler

From left: Trade Loeffler, Mike Lynch and Jim Salicrup out on the Lower East Side

My pal Trade Loeffler has a new Zip & Li'l Bit adventure. THE SKY KAYAK begins Monday. Bookmark it unless you want your cyberpals to call you a fool in a mean, deep Mr. T-like voice.

Congratulations to Tony Murphy

Above: Tony Murphy and Dan Piraro at the Society of Illustrators, December 28, 2006.

Congratulations (belatedly) and thanks to cartoonist/pal/former-fellow-Brooklynite Tony Murphy upon the impending launch of his new Washington Post Writers Group comic strip IT'S ALL ABOUT YOU. Samples of the new strip here.

If you live in NYC or Boston, then you saw the strip in one of those free daily papers. You can also see it in th Funny Times monthly paper.

Again, congratulations, Tony, and, again thanks for lending a hand a couple weeks ago when we moved from NYC to NH. If it wasn't for you and Trade we never would've been able to make it!

Congratulations to Brian Fies

Above: Mike Lynch and Brian Fies at the Overlook Lounge. See the cool cartoon mural behind them?

Congrats (belated) to Brian Fies, the creator of the graphic novel Mom's Cancer ...


... upon his winning the 2007 "Best New Talent" Harvey Award!

Sandra Bell-Lundy Begins BETWEEN FRIENDS Blog

Above: me and Sandra Bell-Lundy at the 2006 Reubens. Don't we clean up good?

Welcome Sandra Bell-Lundy, the cartoonist behind King Features' BETWEEN FRIENDS comic strip, to the blogoshere.

The BETWEEN FRIENDS BLOG debuted August 31, 2007, and Sandra has talked about her strip, her characters, her character who has a crush on Viggo Mortensen, taking up running in your middle age, graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi ... and there's even a photo of her cute new puppy, Newman.

I enjoy reading her reviews and the thought process behind her strip, which debuted in 1994. I hope she'll keep us up to date with her running progress!

Mike Lynch Cartoon in Chronicle of Higher Education

"Mom! You promised! NO PHOTOS OF ME IN THE COCOON!"

Cartoon drawn in January 2007. Sent to four markets before it sold on April 26, 2007:

1/22/07 Reader's Digest REJECTED

2/6/07 The New Yorker REJECTED

3/11/07 Prospect Magazine REJECTED

4/23/07 First for Women NO RESPONSE

4/26/07 Chronicle for Higher Education SALE!

Yes, a weird cartoon! I don't usually do the whole anthropomorphic thing, y'know? I have no idea what I was thinking of. Perhaps that's for the best.

Adrian Sinnott New NCS LI Chapter Chair

Above: Sinnott & Lynch

The National Cartoonists Society Long Island chapter (the "Berndt Toast Gang") announces a new chapter chairman: illustrator Adrian Sinnott.

When I moved from NYC to NH last month, we were looking for a volunteer to step in and be the ringleader. Adrian was kind enough to be the BT Gang's "man behind the curtain" like I had been. I wish him much good luck. The lad will need it. Corralling cartoonists is not for the weak.

Above: a faked news item from Joe Vissichelli. This made the email rounds and the actual, real Daily Cartoonist site picked it up. This is a larger, more readable version than what's on the DC site.

And, so long as we're on the subject, below are a few strips by the group's namesake, Walter Berndt. He drew Smitty for more than 50 years. More on the history of the Berndt Toast Gang here.




Above: The Berndt Toast Gang logo drawn in Berndt style by Frank Springer.

Cartoonist Photos from the San Fran Examiner 1930-48

For sale via eBay, a vintage collection of photos from the San Francisco Examiner. A link to the seller here. I do not know the seller and am not a part of the auction. But I did want to share some of the photographs and the descrips. There are more at the above link.


1948 vintage photo (10" x 8") of cartoonist George McManus who draws "Bringing Up Father". He is dressed as Jiggs.

1930 vintage photo (10" x 8") of cartoonist James Swinnerton looking at his portrait by Peter Ilyan. Actually the photo is glued onto a background (right top) and all on cardboard. He is President of the Bohemian Club where the painting is displayed. In 1892 he became a staff cartoonist for Hearst's San Francisco Examiner. Produced a weekly cartoon The Little Bears. Some critics have called the bears series the first comic strip, preceding The Yellow Kid by three years. He then did Mr. Jack and the long lasting Little Jimmy.

1947 vintage original photo (7.5" x 9.5") of cartoonist Milt Caniff who draws Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips. Carol Ohmart is the model for the character Copper Calhoon.

Another link via today's Journalista!

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive presents two Coronet Magazine articles on legendary adventure-serial cartoonist Milton Caniff — one of them written by Caniff himself.

Above: a comparison I made of model/actress Carol Ohmart and Caniff's Copper Calhoon. Looks like Milt hired the right model!

TV Guide January 9-15, 1971 UPDATED

Here's a TV Guide I picked up in the local vintage shop last week.


We all know it's Andy Griffith on the cover. He's promoting his NEW ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, which co-starred Lee Meriweather and Anne Morgan Guilbert ("Milly Helper" from the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW). Andy's NEW ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW would last 3 episodes.

Anyway, it was ads like the one below that got me interested in sharing ....

Above: a full page color comic strip ad for Doral cigarettes. The cigarettes ruin Baldoni the Magician's act, but like a true addict he cannot hate his beloved ciggies for it.

Veteran British cartoonist Rowland B. Wilson's color art adds to this Hockey piece written by Red Smith. Nice to see art by a PLAYBOY and NEW YORKER cartoonist doing illustration. I wish this was done more today.

UPDATE from my friend and great cartoonist Orlando Busino:

It was good to see the illustration by Rowland B. Wilson. I just received a notice from his widow. He's one of four people to be honored at the Van Eaton Gallery in Sherman Oaks, Ca September 15 6 pm to 9 pm. The program is called DISNEY'S HEROES OF THE IMAGINATION . Free to the public.

For info : http://www.vegalleries.com/old_site/heroes.html



A little ad for the Truth or Consequences show with a little cartoon drawing. I liked the 1970s lettering. Again: this is not something you'd see today. You'd see a photo of Bob Barker -- not a little cartoon, and that's our loss.



Another nice drawing and there is the eensiest signature on this, but I can't make it out. Again, another small example of hiring illustrators when a photo is usually used today.

UPDATE: Orlando Busino writes that the "eentsy" signature belongs to John Huehnergarth. Thanks, Orlando!




And, for so many, the best gatefold ever: your TV Guide crossword and a "Draw Bambi -- er -- I mean Winky" ad. Oo la la!

Easy to get sidetracked with 1970s technology ads. Large, bulky TVs in dark wood veneer cabinets were to be conspicuously consumed in this time period.

"Send no money!" The pre-iTunes world held the idea of taking your own music with you as still exotic and new. "Cassette snaps into top of player ... trouble-free ... no tape to touch ... no bulky cartridges .... weighs less than 3 pounds."


Above: Fashions that Ms. Loren is wearing. Are these in again?

And finally: a history making debut! ALL IN THE FAMILY's first episode premiered Tuesday January 12, 1971. Of course, it was opposite Julia Child flogging her Art of French Cooking book on BOOK BEAT and a couple of ho hum movies (Well, maybe that ASSAULT ON THE WAYNE TV movie with Leonard Nimoy and Joseph Cotton might be OK.), so it really was the best thing on. It would be a couple years before CBS placed the show on Saturday night for its killer Saturday night line up that included MARY TYLER MOORE, M*A*S*H and THE CAROL BURNETT SHOW.

Sundry

My cartoonist pal Rod McKie knows a lot about manga and he wants to share -- and so he has begun his new Imanga blog site.



Booksteve's Library remembers Snoopy and the Red Baron -- and the singing group The Royal Guardsman with their 1960s pop tie-in song of the same name. There's also a page of jokes from a Gold Key comic book of the same era.


Another fondly remembered bit of pop culture from the late 1960s - early 70s: the short-lived TV series THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER, which begat, among other things, a Dell comic book series. The I'm Learning to Share blog cites co-star (and Academy Award winner) Miyoshi Umeki's recent passing, and shares some audio from her 1959 Mercury record titled "Miyoshi." (What else?)

And don't miss this killer EDDIE'S FATHER site. If ever there was a time for this series to come out on DVD (with the now heavily tattooed, grown up rock-n-roll guy Brandon "Eddie" Cruz providing commentary), it's now.

Same blog, another linky: a gallery of Pogo paperback covers.


Golden Age Comic Book Stories has a lush series of Lou Fine's art from a Black Condor comic book story in two parts: part one and part two. Make time to poke around the site for more treasures.

From one of my fave blogs, Johnny C.'s Hole in the Head blog, comes another issue of Women's Household magazine. This one, from August 1974, highlights quiet suburban horrors such as obscene photos of tuna shortcake.

There is another link to Words of Wisdom by Orson Welles, but the audio device is not working for me, dag nab it.


Above: IDW Comics "variant" cover to its second issue of STAR TREK YEAR FOUR. To quote Mike Sterling from his Progressive Ruin blog:

This is the "retailer incentive" variant cover for Star Trek Year Four #2, but IDW really missed a bet not making that the regular cover.

Also, looking at that makes you realize, in regards to the forthcoming Star Trek film "reboot" -- it's a fool's game to recast Kirk. I mean, how do you top perfection?

You go, Steve!
And, finally, another TREK link: Edward Gorey's adaptation of The Trouble With Tribbles episode (as if you don't all ready know about it). This was discovered by Shaenon K. Garrity and went viral last week. Hat tip to Mark Anderson who let me know about it.

Roy Doty's 85th Birthday Party

Courtesy of Craig Boldman comes word on this past weekend's surprise 85th birthday party for Roy Doty, held in Dublin, Ohio on Sunday, September 9, 2007.

Photos and descrips. here, at the Great Lakes NCS Web site.

The Today's Inspiration blog site, run by the inestimable Leif Peng, held a weeklong forum on all things Doty:

9/4 Roy Doty Draws a Crowd

9/5 Roy Doty's Coronet Page Toppers

9/6 Roy Doty: Crowd Control

9/7 Happy Birthday Roy Doty!

Some incredible illustration work there!

Leif's blog was picked up by the highly trafficked Boing Boing site. I hope that darn Boing Boing didn't ruin a perfectly great surprise for Roy!

End of Marriage Leads to New Content in Revamped Strip

From Dave Astor at Editor & Publisher comes an article End of Marriage Leads to New Content in Revamped Strip. Dave writes about cartoonist at Lynn Johnston, her FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE strip and the impact of her real-life husband Rod leaving her this past April (!).

The recent "Liz & Anthony getting back together" storyline, perhaps the last original story arc for the long-running comic strip, has its critics.

Johnston said she reunited Elizabeth with Anthony partly because of advice from late "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. "'Sparky' accused me of having too many characters," she recalled with a chuckle. "'It's so confusing,' he said. He was right." So bringing back Anthony rather than introducing a new permanent love interest for Elizabeth made sense in that respect.

A timeline of the relationship has been posted on the FBorFW site.

Big hat tips to Dave Astor at E&P and Dirk Deppey.

Meet the Reader's Digest Cartoonists

In the pecking order of cartoon markets, READER'S DIGEST is considered one of the best: best paying, widest circulating -- and, as if you didn't all ready know, terribly competitive. RD's cartoon editor sifts thru a lot of cartoons before the final few are chosen. I submitted for years before my first sale.



Above: the READER'S DIGEST cartoonists' bios page. It starts with "A," so the opening cartoonist of the RD roster of cartoonists is my pal, good ol' inky Mark Anderson.

The DIGEST saves me for the bottom of page 2 of its 3 pages of cartoonists. And there's even a plug for this here blog. Too bad I moved and made from NYC to NH in the past 2 weeks. I better ask to be properly edited.

The nice thing about this site, which RD chose to put up recently, is that we all get to see what we look like and find out a little bit more about each other. I've met and talked with more than half of the 26 cartoonists listed, and consider a good number to be friends. Yeah, even though we're all competitors, we're all friendly.

This is also a vindication that the cartoonists are a unique part of the magazine and will continue to be.

Postscript: It's been rotten to see GOOD HOUSEKEEPING magazine go from buying its own cartoons to pulling old NEW YORKER magazine cartoons and slapping them on its pages. At least, that's been the practice in the past couple of issues I've seen. GH has been running its own cartoons for over 50 years, and to lose its unique imprint by running another magazine's warmed over work demeans that tradition.

And why is Hearst (GH) buying from its competitor Conde Nast (NYer) anyway?

Meet a Cartoonist

Who would have thought that over a year and a half ago when I started this here blog that it would still be running and there would be so many people reading it. As I sit here among the boxes in my new unfurnished studio, I am a tad nostalgic. Part of this is because we have plumbing problems in the house and I can't just call the landlord! I gotta call a plumber and shell out real money.

Anyway, here's the first entry from Tuesday, February 07, 2006, back when I was a NYC apt. renter and had a readership of about 5 or 6 people. A lot has changed since then; we've moved to New Hampshire and I pay the m-word instead of the r-word. But the process is still the same: make cartoons, send them off in the world, and hope for the best.

Meet a Cartoonist

This cartoon of mine appeared in Punch Magazine, before it folded. thought it was an appropriate thought to start this, my first blog entry.

I'm a full-time freelance cartoonist living in NYC. Mostly, I draw what are called single panel or gag cartoons for magazines. I've got a couple of cartoons to draw for Wall Street Journal. WSJ approved a couple of roughs and now I have to draw finishes. I don't like drawing finishes since they never look as good as the roughs. So, I was putting it off, reading blogs, and I read Jim Salicrup's blog. I like Jim and his blog was really interesting --even just the lists of stuff he bought at the comic store. And then I thought, what the heck, I'll defer drawing for even longer and start my own blog!

I better go draw now. After all, it's 3 weeks till rent's due! More cartoon talk another time ....

Kathleen Parker: A cartoon is a cartoon is a cartoon

Washington Post Writers Group Columnist Kathleen Parker writes about newspaper editors declining to run a potentially offensive cartoon: OPUS by Berkeley Breathed. There are links to the last two Sunday strips, which 25 newspapers have chosen not to run, at the above link.

Whenever a paper decides not to run something, it's off to the Internets to go and find it. The more controversy, the easier people can find the thing and make up their own mind.

Don't Tell ANYONE About This ... Especially Roy Doty

Veteran cartoonist Roy Doty, whose Wordless Workshop book is a must have for a new homeowner (like me), is the focus of good ol' Leif Peng's Today's Inspiration blog all this week. You'll be amazed at Roy's work, whether you're familiar with his cartooning or not.

Now, I'm asking you NOT to tell Roy himself about this, OK? Leif will fill you in at the above link.

If you want more information, please pass along an email to me at fatcats3 [at] gmail.com ASAP. And thanks in advance for not telling Roy Doty!