Still at sixes and
sevens, trying to figure out how all this shakes out long term.
In the short term, I'm
just going to do more writing here at AMOC, hopefully, on a weekly basis the
day before Rolly comes in so he can e-mail it to Matt.
Read the WALT KELLY
(1969) section of SPARRING WITH GIL KANE.
I'm not sure how much more of the book I'm going to read. The
"here's what this is presenting itself as" and "here's what I
think I'm actually reading" is jarring and not edifying in the way that,
say, John's Gospel and the Koran are edifying.
Interesting? Um,
interesting but not in a way you would get from the contextualizing of it.
Kelly is being interviewed by Gil Kane at a National Cartoonists Society
function. In this case, the missing information is that Kelly's POGO animated
special has tanked ("the voices were good") not long before that and
Kelly is definitely in "Is That All There Is?" mode. This was
supposed to be a triumphal appearance as the POGO animated special carried him
to new and undreamt-of heights. I always
think of Roy Orbison's signature line as one of the Travelling Willburys
"I still have some love to give" just before he died. Then George
Harrison died and now the Travelling Willburys are…Jeff Lynne (sp?) and Tom
Petty (deceased?). New and undreamt-of heights don't happen in your sixties (or
fifties or forties, usually), but it's a very common syndrome. The more
successful you WERE, the more susceptible you ARE to "Is That All There
Is?"
[I'm very happy that I
got to bypass that because I never really WAS successful even in the context of
what Gil called comics' "small fame" even before I was demoted to
non-human/sub-human in 1994 when issue 186 came out. One fifth the popularity of ELFQUEST, One
tenth the popularity of the TURTLES. One-one hundredth the popularity of
SPAWN. I never arrived AT "Is That
All There Is?" because that's where I've always lived. Yes. This is all that there is or ever will
be in this vale of tears. IT'S A GOOD LIFE IF YOU DON'T WEAKEN, as Seth
put it.]
Kelly had been
drinking and was belligerent. He had
roughly four years left to live (he died while I was at the Detroit Triple Fan
Fair in October of 1973 where I interviewed BWS, Mike Kaluta and Russ Heath).
He would die of diabetic complications, so the fact that he was drinking at all
let alone to the point of inebriation is a very bad vital sign. By 1969, A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS (1965) was
already becoming the cartooning success gold standard and clearly Kelly was
hoping to match or exceed that -- partly riding the coattails of that Hollywood
success ("Okay, what's LIKE Peanuts?" leading naturally to
POGO) and hoping that his best days were still before him.
[Which they weren't in
those frames of reference but they were in terms of cartooning brilliance.
I didn't read POGO until Watergate when I was reading it in my Dad's Globe
& Mail. It was extremely toxic
and bitter with Spiro Agnew as a jackal and J. Edgar Hoover as a bulldog. It
was hard to tell which was more darkly brilliant -- the writing or the
art. And that was still in the future,
that work wouldn't be done until Walt Kelly was officially dying. The NCS -- and Gil Kane as an eloquent
spokesperson -- is trying to pay tribute to the fact that Kelly is in That
Cartooning Pantheon. And Kelly is having none of it. He's bristling at the
Lifetime Achievement Award quality of it. Which everyone does who gets to that
point. "But, I'm not DONE yet!". It's a Denial phase thing. Another
aspect of "Is That All There Is?"
"Let's talk about your work at Disney in the classic animation
days." It was plainly galling to him. By NOW, POGO should have been the
next Mickey Mouse and he the next Walt Disney. He shouldn't still be eclipsed
by Disney's cultural radiance. In those frames of reference, yes, it was
all over for Walt Kelly and had been since the mid-1950s with the first POGO
comic-strip collections. You don't become the next Walt Disney in your
sixties.]
Technically, A CHARLIE
BROWN CHRISTMAS is a piece of garbage. It makes THE FLINTSTONES look like SNOW
WHITE.
TECHNICALLY. But that's really the source of
its success. The reason it got made when so many things aren't. It cost nickels and dimes to put together
because the strip itself is complete minimalism. TECHNICALLY, there's
nothing to it. Front view, side view, close-up, wide shot, WAY too long musical
numbers which just repeat the same stock images. But, it's A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. Skyer no higher. Schulz insisted that the Luke chapter 3
"For, lo, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For
unto you is born this day in the City of David, a saviour which is Christ the
Lord…" be kept in. FOUGHT for it. You're getting a scalp rush, right?
THAT's why it's the gold standard.
Kelly would die in his
60s shuttling between his home base and Hollywood. It would be a stretch to say
A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS killed him but only in the sense that "Elvis
died when he went into the army" and "John Lennon died when he met
Yoko Ono" are a stretch. I'd call
it "cruel but fair". An inability to see that A CHARLIE BROWN
CHRISTMAS was a Once In a Millennium Thing for a cartoonist. Schulz had no idea he would never be that
successful with anything again. It was SO "thrown together". Just imagine what we could do with a Major
Hollywood Budget!! Answer: Met Life
commercials. Is That All There Is?
Sorry, "Sparky" -- yes, A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS will prove to be
"it". SNOOPY COME HOME is just
SNOOPY COME HOME. Met Life commercials
are just Met Life commercials.
Anyway, back at the
NCS meeting…
Kelly starts doing a
riff on having two girlfriends and his wife finding out and chaining him to his
drawing board. Which I think is why Rube
Goldberg "chimes in" (as the book puts it) from the audience. It's either Goldberg's last NCS meeting or
one of them. He's 86 and will be dead before Christmas of the following year. I
think that what happened was that Goldberg realized "Oh my god, he's doing
me." Which is an extremely
eerie moment because Goldberg in 1945-46 -- when Goldberg basically created the
National Cartoonists Society -- had been the age that Kelly is in 1969. i.e.
early 60s. i.e. a little younger than I am right now. It's as if I'm frozen in
this…50-year-old tableaux where only Goldberg and I know what's going on. Not a
fun reading experience, And everyone else is washing out to a sepia tone and
the sound quality is going tinny.
"Uh, Rube, Gil Kane's supposed to be interviewing him.
You're not supposed to interrupt". Goldberg can't save Kelly from his
place in the audience but he can at least try to contextualize things
for him. Try for some sort of ameliorating gloss in this Nightmarish
Cringeworthy Moment. I'm here, Walt. I
know what you're trying to do, but It
isn't 1946 any more, Walt. We don't DO
that anymore. Don't DO this to YOURSELF.
There IS a place for
this, is what Kelly is obviously wrestling with through an alcoholic fog,
listening to Gil Kane's smooth-as-oil intellectualisms. Yes, I want these nice things said about my
work. Yes, I want my work discussed in these superlative terms this nice young
man -- whoever he is -- is using. Maybe
in THE ATLANTIC or TIME magazine. Like
Milt Caniff and Al Capp used to get.
Like Charles Schulz is getting now.
But, that's there. i.e.
the imagined Walt Disney moment when it finally all comes together. The
Academy Awards. The Tonight Show. The Emmys. Here, in a squalid hotel meeting room
in Somewhere, Connecticut I'm supposed to be cracking everyone up as a
former NCS president. I don't even know
who three-quarters of these people are.
"Like I used to do".
Yes, Rube. Like you
used to do. What happened, Rube? Where did it all go? This used to be so
much…fun. IS THAT ALL THERE IS?
I'm here, Walt. Think
of the great cartooning and illustration names you most admired. We may be the
only two in the room who know who we're talking about, but WE do know who we're
talking about. And that's important. WE remember.
It ISN'T important.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi shouldn't surprise you in your sixties. If it does,
you're Doing It wrong.
Goldberg was
financially independent before he became a cartoonist because of his father's
money. His father was a land speculator
and…everyone is completely euphemistic in the comics field about these
things…either a loan shark or a Shylock or just a loan officer. It's always
hard to tell if it's an anti-Semitic pig with lipstick on or genuine
anti-Semitism. Or -- self-evident truth
of Goldberg's father's generation -- look, Jews have to make money, too, in the
19th century USA and there aren't many doors open to us. Call it what you will, non-stupid Jews are
always just getting ready to survive the next pogrom. And the next pogrom is always just up ahead
where and when you least expect it. Don't kid yourself. And don't try to kid
me.
So Goldberg, was
insulated by that, by his father's money, always just did whatever took his
fancy and I think he started the NCS as a vehicle for himself because he had
been a Vaudevillian comic temporarily and what was then called a toastmaster
(and still is if you're on that circuit).
He probably wasn't good enough to make a living at it at a high
elevation, but as I say he didn't need to.
I think what he thought was, "I know all these guys. They're good
guys. Anti-Semites but not anything out of the ordinary with any bunch of goys
in the 1940s. A little less now that the
concentration camps have been liberated. That's probably just temporary.
But! Some of them are very funny because
they make a living being funny. I'M funny.
Funnier than most of them. Why don't I start a Cartoonists' Club? We can
rent a room somewhere, bring in some dancing girls, a cash bar, a buffet table
and basically spend two or three nights a year getting corked and cracking each
other up." And, by all reliable
reports, that's what happened. It was just a big piss-up social-club thing and
-- no big surprise -- Rube Goldberg got elected its first president. In no
small part, I'm sure, because he was the quickest and funniest of them
all. It's one thing to be funny on
paper. It's another thing to be funny on a Vaudeville stage or at a banquet
head table when the hoots and the catcalls are always just around the corner
and when everyone is already three sheets to the wind. Good ol' Rube. A credit to his race. One
funny Kike, I'll tell the world. Picture facing that intentionally and coming
out of it in one piece. For Rube
Goldberg it was "This isn't nearly as pressure packed as an actual
Vaudeville stage. This is fun."
The thing was most of
the NCS were "also-rans". They
were wealthy to varying degrees and they had however many subscribing
newspapers they had to make them middle class or upper middle class but they
were all "running ahead of the freight train". Year after year after
year: trying to stay 12 weeks ahead of publication date. No time off, no
vacations, just work, work, work, work.
Dreaming of the animation or movie deal that would make them wealthy
enough to hire someone else to draw their strip so all they needed to do was
drink, eat and play golf. At the NCS
meetings without their wives (as opposed to the NCS banquets with their
wives) they Blew Off Some Major Steam. The NCS Newsletters (which I've read a
lot of courtesy of the Billy Ireland Library at Ohio State University and Eddie
Khanna's generosity in getting everything photocopied and mailed to me-- Milt
Caniff saved EVERYTHING and his widow donated EVERYTHING) are like mimeographed
Shriner's newsletters, embarrassingly badly written and concerned with suburban
trivia and Family Newspaper-style salaciousness. Could everyone please pay their dues? Just a reminder that you need to pay for the
banquet ahead of time and it's $5. Please send your check to Marge Devine ASAP.
The Major Cartoonists are underrepresented because, basically, they won. They
were actually known by the general public. They actually were wealthy and did
hire people to do their work for them. Except Schulz. Key point. They didn't
need to go to an NCS meeting with a bunch of drunks to be a Famous Cartoonist
(capital F capital C). They WERE Famous
Cartoonists. Every one of them a fraction of what Charles Schulz and PEANUTS
were. Bigger and smaller fractions, but
everyone outside of Schulz a fraction.
Except at the non-wife
meetings themselves which had their own social chemistry and where everyone was
a Famous Cartoonist. Where Rube Goldberg shone, year after year for at least
the first decade of the NCS's existence, with exactly the kind of story Kelly
was trying to tell about having two girlfriends on the sly and was clearly just
making a mess of.
And Goldberg, as I
say, being 86 at that point and obviously not drinking to the point of
inebriation -- if at all -- has also bypassed the "Is That All There
Is?" trauma Kelly is clearly enduring. He's a) still wealthy and b) in the
dictionary. Goldberg, Rube
(1883-1970) U.S. cartoonist; full name Reuben Lucius Goldberg. As
creator of the comic strip characters Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts (and
inventor of complex mechanical devices to achieve simple tasks), Boob McNutt,
and Lala Palooza, he satirized American folkways and modern technology.
However, even there,
comics scholarship was catching up with him.
Bill Blackbeard's comments in Maurice Horn's THE WORLD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
COMICS which would be published in 1976 had obviously been circulating for some
time:
His foolishly
complicated inventions which gained him dictionary-entry (for "Rube
Goldberg contraption" etc.) appealed to the same broad audience base, even
though it was not his unique idea. W. Heath Robinson had developed fanciful
inventions of his own in various cartoon series for English magazines and
newspapers in the 1910s, while the American strip cartoonist, Clare Victor
Dwiggins, introduced devices very similar to those of Goldberg's in a New York World Sunday page called School Days of the 1900s, which
Goldberg must have read before he ever drew any of his own comic contraptions,
since his early Mike and Ike ran in the same comic section. A curious
case of a strip cartoonist better known than any of his characters (except
possibly Mike and Ike).
But, at age 86,
really, what was the difference? And 50
years later, what's the difference?
Everyone knows what Rube Goldberg contraption means. There is absolutely no danger of that
becoming a W. Heath Robinson contraption or a Clare Victor Dwiggins
contraption by popular consent at this late date.
Eisner made the
acquaintance of New York
Sun editorial
cartoonist Rube Goldberg…
he was sitting in a
chair off by himself, one
hand tightly gripping
his cane…Goldberg
said, "The Spirit, what kind of thing is that?"
"Well, it's
different than the daily strips,
Eisner said. "I
believe the medium is an
art form and that
there is tremendous
opportunity for
literary potential in the
field."
Goldberg looked at
Eisner, banged his
cane down, and shook
his head in
disgust.
"Bullshit,
boy!" he said. "You are a vaudevillian
like the rest of us.
It's just vaudeville,
just plain vaudeville; don't ever forget that
."
A SPIRITED
LIFE p. 168
"Will took me to
my first NCS meeting," Jules
Feiffer recalled,
"and I heard my first argument
about whether to admit
women. Rube Goldberg
didn't want women
admitted because you couldn't
say 'fuck' in front of
them. Alex Raymond was the
only one who stood up
for admitting Hilda Terry
("Teena"). I don't remember Will saying a word."
A
SPIRITED LIFE p. 169
More soon, God
willing!
Dave
not one but TWO Cerebus...es pencilled/inked/colored/and lettered(?) by the Late Great Marie Severin! (I infer that's what they mean by "stuff"...)
