UTTER TRASH

UTTER TRASH

by Mike Baron

Cartoonist's Curse: Worse Than Insomnia Better Than Unemployment

Bad news for all would-be cartoonists: Bet you didn’t know about the curse which went along with the job. That’s right, it’s called “Cartoonists’ Curse,” and it’s the 47th most dangerous occupational hazard in the U.S. according to a Dept. of Labor study, and it’s almost universal in the trade. It’s likely to strike amateur as well as professional, and although it has been mistaken for simple insomnia in the past, the AMA now recognizes for what it is; a state of mind that presents real physical difficulties for the victim.

Simply stated: Cartoonists’ Curse means the artist has to stay up every night until the wee hours or he won’t get any work done. Seems it’s impossible to come up with good ideas in the day, not to mention the hazards daytime inking presents. Only while the rest of the world knocks off the racket for a few hours is it possible to lay pencil or pen to paper with satisfactory results.

And when you stay up late at night, you got to listen to something, most likely the radio. And brother, if you don’t have good radio like all those crazy suckers in the deep Midwest, then you’re going to draw weird, weird shit. Like R. Crumb, see. R. Crumb always works in the big cities like Detroit, Los Angeles, New York. So all the while Crumb is poking his size D nose into muggings and family squabbles, and shooting parlors, at least he can go back to the drawing board at night and know that he can hear some decent tunes. Like that little radio he’s got pasted on the cover of The Last Supplement to The Whole Earth Catalog is blasting out a little “Help Me Rhonda”; kind of anchors everything together. You canplace that scene.

But in Wisconsin and Oklahoma, Wyoming and — way out there — Canada -=?, do you know what they listen to? Osmonds, Canadian America ripoffs, C&W. Rand Holmes comes from Canada. Rand Holmes finally shook off Harold Hedd No. 2 (“anus clenching adventure with.. .”), and the art is fantastic, a heady, minutely detailed distillation of Wally Wood and biker cartoons. But, and this is where the radio comes in, the whole book, a 32 page story, details an adventure wherein Harold and his greasy associate Elmo get suckered into piloting a surplus WW II four engine Lancaster from the dope fields in Oaxaca to a makeshift landing port on a farm outside Vancouver. It’s a neat caper pulled off in stupendous fashion, but it’s five years behind the times. People were ready for it in 1969; great dope deals were in the offing. Homes’ vision of hippy life and times is so accurate it freezes things for good. The art is absolutely convincing. But in 1974 I don’t know.. . Rand has probably been working in a time gap caused by local radio programming. He ought to get a powerful radio to start pulling in the sounds from the coasts and the. big cities. Despite all, Harold Hedd No. 2 is still the ultimate dope fable.

Fellow down the street from me is taking over Little Orphan Annie. His name is Dave Lettick, and he’d been stockpiling his own daily adventure strip for major syndicate presentation when the Annie slot opened up. “I knew it would be my last chance to both write and draw a serialized strip. . , As far as relevance goes, I don’t mind a little relevance, but I don’t want it to be blatant. I think I’m going to clothe the relevance. I know I resent preaching. The stories will be paced like the old Dick Tracy. I’m going to feature Daddy Warbucks prominently, but I’m going to change his character so that he will be less political. I see Annie as a little girl who will try and try at anything until she succeeds. She’s going to look younger and simpler.”

Lettick, who looks like a Richard Corben drawing — massive cheekbones, heavy brow, piercing eyes — is a selftaught illustrator, a lover of the serialized newspaper strip who has watched them atrophy in the face of television, which presents the stock plots and characters of a 14 week strip in an evening’s presentation. David is blissfully unaware of comic books in general.

Lettick was commissioned by Buddha Records to do the cover for David Frye’s Richard Nixon, Superstar. David feels rather strongly about the Dick, as do we all. His portrait accurately conveys his feelings; however, it did not convey Buddha’s feelings. Can you believe it? Buddha rejected David’s Dick! They said it was too vitriolic! They didn’t want to offend anyone! That’s the same policy Dick used to get elected. I’ll bet Buddha’s sorry now.

And I’ll bet Dick is sorrier than Buddha. But he’s not half as sorry now as he will be in a few months when certain comic projects purporting to tell the full and final truth behind the most corrupt administration since Grover Cleveland faked his own suicide with an overdose of rotten garlic buttons. Certain broadsides in various stages of development will blow the top off Watergate (if they hit the stands while we still live). Comix are the last refuge of truth. Larry Gonick is currently putting together his massive, multivolumed Watergate Comix. Cinematically, it can only be compared to 2001 — with Dick as the Monolith. Larry, who’s been researching this baby for eight months, is using actual dialogue culled from secret CIA files. His own Dick, as vicious as anyone’s, accompanies Dave Lettick’s.

TURN TO PAGE 78.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 52.

Hold everything, Sapphire! After two months of scripting and drawing, Lettick is off Little Orphan Annie because of editorial differences! David took his proposed story into New York for a meeting* with the Chicago Tribune I New York News Syndicate editors; guys whose job it is to guide the destiny of comic strips, even as you\Or I might plan a week’s menu in advance. According to David, a left wing terrorist group kidnaps Annie and demands that Daddy Warbucks clean up Lake Erie. Daddy’s own factories are clean as could be, but he has the devil’s own time convincing the typical American capitalist polluter to clean up the lake just to save Annie. David spent a lot of time on the story, working out a philosophical structure with the aid of academic cohorts. Then New York News told Lettick what was really going to happen: the art style would change again, for the fourth time in six months; Daddy Warbucks would return to his simplistic, right-wing stance; the readers didn’t want to think and Lettick had better lay off the philosophical routine £ and the readers didn’t want to laugh, and David had better lay off the jokes. Annie is now looking for a new artist.