The PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter, Mid-March 1962

Here's the entire PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter zine, Volume 2, Number 4, Mid-March 1962. Published by Charles and Ed Bell, The PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter was marketed toward the professional magazine gag cartoonist (Duh!) in the 1960s. The late Arnold Wagner edited. The mag connected gag cartoonists to markets and general industry news.

There are some great factoids too. Like the fact that Chon Day had a personalized license plate on his Rambler, and a Brother Sebastian flag for the antenna that his wife made:

Want more? I have two other issues scanned:
PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter April 1962
PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter November 1962

 

 

 

Working at Drawing

If you spend a lot of time with visual media, you tend to see that the emphasis is on the look of the thing. While literature may give you more of the inner life, movies and comics and games sell you on the surface, the flash, the sizzle.

Case in point: the sketches of horses up there. Not bad. I drew some preliminary thumbnails for a client.  I am not a person who draws horses every day, but, like I said, they are not bad. Do they look like it was easy drawing them? Was it effortless?

It takes a long time and a lot of drawings to draw well. And maybe it does look easy to other people, but that's because all of the bad drawings are out of my system. Well, most of them. I hope!

Like the old saying goes: You want to draw well? You take a stack of blank paper, a stack as high as you are tall, and then draw on every page, and by the time you work your way down to the last piece of paper, you're drawing better.

In order to make drawing look easy, you have to work.

And speaking doing some drawing, I gotta go do some honest cartooning toil today.

Okay? Okay!

Back to work!

The 20 Foot Santa Gallery Show

Alas, the 20 Foot Santa Gallery Show has drawn to a close.

Background: One night, some years back, a 20 foot tall statue of Santa Claus disappeared from in front of the Coffee Caboose cafe in West Ossipee, NH. It was never seen again.

Last month, there was a show of original art based on the event at the 17Cox Gallery in Beverly, MA. A portion of sales went to benefit the Coffee Caboose owners.

Among the many talented artists who participated, there was just one cartoonist: me. Oh, it's not those people talking above. I drew that last night. My piece is below:

Kieran Meehan: How I Draw Single Panel Cartoons

Visit Kieran's site NowtSoDaft.

More Kieran here.

Sketches of a Cartoonist's Life

Some drawings and a photo through the years of my cartooning life ...

Above and below sketches are from 2006.

There I am, going thru the F train turnstyle. I reason that I carried a tire gauge with me in Brooklyn, NY is lost to history.

Above: an old photo (with an old bulky monitor) of my "workstation." This is an old teacher's desk we found on the streets of Brooklyn and carried home. The "Just our of view" should read "Just out of view," natch! The coffee cup is a C-SPAN "Washington Journal" mug. Rufus the cat is still alive and well.

 My favorite sketch of "Mike at work" is this excellent 2010 drawing of me by my inky pal Mark Anderson. This was for an interview in "Stay Tooned" magazine and Mark really captured the clutter and the cat that are my life! Thanks, Mark!

Neil deGrasse Tyson on Time: Doctor Who, Star Trek or Ray Bradbury?

Who had the best handle on the concept of time: Ray Bradbury, STAR TREK or DOCTOR WHO?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson answers a question whether time is more like Ray Bradbury's linear depiction of time in the short story "A Sound of Thunder" (and, yeah, it was made into a not-so-good movie that I have not seen), the multiple universe in 2009's "Star Trek" or the way Doctor Who describes it in the episode "Blink": "a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, timey-wimey...stuff." The host is Colin Jost.

I DON'T PLAY WITH MATCHES

I DON'T PLAY WITH MATCHES is a "Fire Safety Learning and Activity Book" for kids. It's copyright 1995, 1990 by Syndistar, Inc.The artist is uncredited.

There were a pile of these inside the vestibule of my local public library. While I am in favor of telling kids of the dangers of fire, I am not in favor of seeing awful, lackluster art.

Here are a few pages.

This is "Grandpa Joe," when he was a kid, holding the melted remains of a beloved fire engine truck toy. Wearing those suspenders and the hat, he looks like maybe he was an Our Gang extra.

And here he in the modern day, telling us about fire safety.

 Many pages have the floating head of Grandpa Joe cut and pasted on.

What drove me crazy was the absence of fingers -- except when necessary. Those little nubs at the ends of arms were unsettling. 

One of my favorite pages. Who has a phone like this nowadays? And there's more cut-and-paste Grandpa Joe. Isn't it a cheat when you can see that there has been as little drawing as possible in a publication?

Whoever did this book does have skill. The inanimate objects are rendered on-model. But the people and that dog! Yipe!

Again, good advice. But the form is lacking ... big time.

The PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter, April 1962

Above "This is an exclusive photo of TV comedienne Carol Burnett receiving the NCS ACE (Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinary) award from Albert Dorne, President of the Famous Artist Schools (left), and Bill "Smokey Stover" Holman, President of the NCS. Carol, now a home-study cartooning student of the Famous Artist Schools, has always wanted to become a cartoonist and do a cartoon strip."

Here is the late Arnold Wagner's prozine The PRO Cartoonist & Gagwriter, Vol. 2 No. 5, April 1962, scanned in its entirety.

The year after this, the ACE Award went to Hugh Hefner, another wannabe cartoonist! Other recipients include Jackie Gleason, Orson Bean, Robert Lansing, Rita Moreno, Ginger Rogers, Al Roker, Denis Leary and, most recently, in 1998, Morley Safer.

I especially enjoyed the Glenn Bernhardt interview (there's a sample of one of his gag cartoons on page 12), as well as the news items like this one on page five:

[Editor] SAM BIERMAN: Is going to run personality pieces similar to what the Satevepost used to run on their back page. One of the first to be used will be DON OREHEK. A talent with know-how because behind DON'S laughing eyes are born those humorous thoughts that will last like stainless steel for today and many tomorrows."

Charles Schulz 2000 PEOPLE Magazine Tribute

Hard to believe that next month it's been 13 years since Charles Schulz died.

While at the library, I saw this old copy of the February 28, 2000 People Magazine with its "Special Commemorative Tribute" to the creator of PEANUTS. All of a sudden, it hit me that it's been a long time. After all, this is when stories like "Christian Slater wowed bride Ryan Haddon" and  the text "AOL Keyword People" on the cover crackled with popular culture context.

Rough to Finish: RACONTEUR #4

Above and below: the rough and the finish for page one of my story in RACONTEUR #4. You can see the whole story here.

Not that you can actually make it out since I sketch in such a loose spaghetti-way, but in the first rough page, our 2 characters are chatting about a spelling test. This was way too off-topic for a tale about Santa not being able to come down the chimney. (The spelling test was at least half of the story.)

You can order RAC #4 here.

The Day Joe Shuster Met Superman

Joe Shuster in the mid-1970s.

The New York Times has a wonderful small story of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster having a chance meeting with a fellow who looked very much like the man of steel, a fellow named Stanley Weiss, in 1945.

NY Times writer Dave Itzkoff:

In 1945, some seven years after he had been regularly illustrating Superman adventures written by his partner, Jerry Siegel, Shuster encountered a young man who looked exactly like the Superman character as he imagined him. He asked the man, named Stanley Weiss, if he could draw him, resulting in some sketches that have gone largely unseen for nearly 70 years, as well as some insights into the origins of this long-lived American champion. 

Shuster’s pencil sketches of the square-jawed Weiss, who strongly resembles a certain Kryptonian immigrant and his earthly alter ego, Clark Kent, will be shown publicly at the Center for Jewish History in Chelsea, at a Jan. 27 event celebrating the 75th anniversary of Superman. 

The event, “Superman at 75: Celebrating America’s Most Enduring Hero,” will also feature a discussion with comic book writers like Denny O’Neil and Jim Shooter; Jenette Kahn, the former publisher of DC Comics; and Stanley Weiss’s son, David.

The entire story is here.

Jacques Tardi Refuses Legion D'Honneur

 Photo of Jacques Tardi by Jacques Demarthon for L'Express.

Internationally known cartoonist Jacques Tardi has turned down his country's highest civilian honor, the Legion D'Honneur award.

"Being fiercely attached to my freedom of thought and creativity, I do not want to receive anything, neither from this government or from any other political power whatsoever.

"I am therefore refusing this medal with the greatest determination."

 BBC News has the whole story here. 

Hat tip to Nick Abadzis for this. Thanks, Nick!

The Fine Print

OK, so we are going to meet and talk cartooning.

We pick a place to meet -- a restaurant, let's say

And we meet there and hang out, talking cartoony shop talk.

Just for fun, here are some of the concerns we may tackle:

How do you make money in the cartooning business?
What kinds of pen do you use?
How do you color your work?
Do you send stuff via email or old fashioned mail?
How do you make new contacts?
What if a client is slow in paying?

So we talk for a while and then, of course, we drive or walk back to our studios.

But we can't take our conversation with us. We have to leave it at the door.

The place where we met now owns it.

Now, that sounds absolutely goofy. Why would a place where people meet up want to own all conversations that happen there?

It happens every day, in cyber-land.

For instance, this just happened to me: A guy who runs one of those educational sites like eHow or Ask sent me an email asking if I'd like to join as the resident cartoonist.

He wrote:

We feature Q and A (from users, not a mere interview) with people who have interesting jobs, and we've gotten more than a few emails suggesting we try and track down an articulate and online-savvy cartoonist:) Our site is non-commercial (we don't even have ads)...we're just two intellectually curious guys who thought an open Q and A with people who have cool jobs was a great idea. It's not much of a time commitment...you can expect 3 or 4 questions/day, which you don't have to answer right away -- just log in and answer when you have time. 

You seem like you'd be a great candidate, because you're obviously internet-savvy given your active blog, so check out [name of site] and let me know if you'd like to do a Q and A. We'd love to have you!

I thought maybe it would be a good idea to volunteer time to do this on their site. It's non-commercial, he said. He called my job a "cool job." I asked how he wanted to proceed.

He wrote:

Thanks for the reply. I'll paste the next steps below. And just as a primer for what to expect, it's not a typical 'interview", but rather an interactive "ask me anything" format...meaning users might submit questions any time of day (and you'll get an email notification when they do)...you're under no obligation, of course, to answer them immediately (unless you want to!), but try to log in every once in a while to answer them. 

From the patterns we've seen so far, hosts typically get 5-7 questions a day for the first couple days while their Q&A is the 'latest and greatest'...which then tails off. 

So yes, while the time commitment isn't that significant, I'd recommend waiting until you're not preoccupied with the holidays or such. 

[How to set up your account links.]

Okay! All set to begin!

But after looking at the Terms and Conditions of the site, I was stunned.

Here's what you agree to when you enroll in the site (something you have to do to participate) said in part (uh ... you can just skim this):

By communicating with [name of site], you grant [name of site] a royalty-free, unrestricted (including but without limitation, for commercial gain and advertising purposes), worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable and fully sub-licensable right and license to use and exploit such content, in whole or in part, in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed.

OK. That's not good, is it? At least not good for me.

I wrote back:

Although I would be happy to participate, sorry to say that I can't agree to your Terms.

I read them just now before setting up my account. The section that says that [name of site] has all rights to all content that's posted is what I mean. Look, you could publish a "how to be a cartoonist book" that I wrote without me getting a dime. I'm not saying that you would, but it would be your right. My feeling is that I am not the right fit for you. 

Thanks for asking and best of luck, 

Mike

I'm glad I read the Terms and Conditions. I'm sorry that [name of site] is not so just-for-fun. Wanting all rights from all people is a lot more than just some curious guys that have a Web site, don'tcha think?


So, please consider looking at the fine print.

Happy New Year