I started writing children’s books when I was stationed in Newfoundland. We had things to do, but our time was never that full. I began to do some little stories and watercolor illustrations. And we were living on a barracks ship at the time, so I’d hang them up to dry, I’d hang them up on the bulkhead. After about a week or so, the commanding officer called me in and let me know that naval officers did not draw pictures of gremlins and palaces and castles and goblins, looking at me in a way like, “What are you, some kind of queer?” I had to stop it. He forbade me to do that. But I was hooked.
There are some things Jules likes to draw and some things he does not like to draw. I love maps, and I always wanted to do a book with map endpapers. Jules didn’t like to draw maps, didn’t know how to draw maps, and wasn’t interested in drawing maps. So I drew the map and he traced it over so it looked like part of all the other illustrations. At one point near the end where the armies of Wisdom appear to rescue them from the demons, when they’re rescuing Rhyme and Reason, he didn’t like to draw horses. The army was mounted on horses, so he asked me one day if he could put the army on cats. I said no, I didn’t think that was a terrific idea. So he drew one silhouette of a horse and then projected it back several times so that was all there was, and he put some people on it.
But like many artists, Trudeau looks back on the early stuff with horror: the inadequacies he sees in it worsened by the knowledge that it was an almost instant success. “Doonesbury began syndication when I was 23. I wasn’t trained. I was undisciplined. I learned my craft in full public view in hundreds of newspapers. It wasn’t pretty.”
You went in with your batch of maybe ten or twelve cartoons – it varied from person to person – and these were rough sketches. There was a little waiting room outside Lee’s office where you’d sit around with the other cartoonists. Lee would see you in the order in which you arrived. So you’d come in and they’d say, “There are two people in front of you – Bernie [Schoenbaum] and Sam [Gross] are going in, and then it will be your turn.” You would hand over your batch to Lee and he would flip through it right in front of you. Horrible! And you’d wonder, is he smiling? Does he find that funny? Do all these cartoons suck? Why isn’t he laughing? They suck. I know they suck. Worst batch ever! And I still feel that way. At some point they’re just going to say, “You know what? You’re horrible. You’re not funny anymore. Just go! This was a big mistake. Out!” Finally, if they’d bought anything during their previous art meeting, he would pull it out from this little folder and hand it to me. He usually wouldn’t say anything about it.
"The concept is simple. Send in a question that you would like answered. A celebrity will answer you, and I will illustrate the whole thing. If you send in a photo you will get caricatured, too! Send in your questions to questions@shrinkscomic.com"
Although this is over three generations old, a lot of the questions are still pertinent:
Of course, some of the questions are no longer valid. Like:
Posts
All Comments
