Thanks to everyone who participated so far. If you don't know who to vote for, then you can actually vote for more than one. Yeah, that's right: the poll is designed for the wishy washy flip flopper.
And there are some other contender cartoonists (Kliban, Crumb, Spiegelman, Hanna and Barbera) who are NOT in the poll. As many people have pointed out in their private emails to me, they SHOULD be in the poll.
Well, yeah, and Outcault and Crane should be higher in the numbers in my opinion. Grumble. grumble ....
And I left out a personal favorite: Percy Crosby. I can only hope that one day his work will be reprinted and he'll be rediscovered.
*Sigh*
I thought it was an interesting question that I took as written: most influential, not best, most famous, etc. You could look at that to mean most influential to society as a whole, in which case I don't think anyone beats Mr. Schulz, who got freakin' spacecraft named after his characters.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I took it to mean most influential in the field of cartooning and voted for Milt Caniff. Everytime cartoonists and comic book artists of "a certain age" are interviewed, they all say they wanted to draw like Caniff. That influence has trickled down two or three generations now, to artists who don't even know where it came from. The same could be said for Alex Raymond.
Scott Kurtz. Heh. You're funny.
Thanks for picking up on the word "influential," Brian. I did not want to use words like most successful or most important.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your interpretation, and I also think that Caniff is a worthy contender -- but Schulz is the clear front runner.
Scott Kurtz? Jury's still out. His non-syndicated, editorless business model may be his legacy. Talk to you at the next millennium, my friend! Hope we'll be around to clink some champagne glasses!