Category: Cartooning

Big Apple Con — Groo-some Guys

'Kirby: King of Comics'It’s already been a few days since the Big Apple Con. Marvel Comics artist John Romita Sr. was feeling under the weather and couldn’t make it to the show, and that was disappointing. But I was pleased to finally meet Mark Evanier in person, who I have mentioned countless times, and whose biography of Jack Kirby, Kirby: King of Comics, will be released in February. Here I am sneaking up behind Mark, trying steal one of his lollipops. The orange gadget is Mark’s Blackberry. That thing was constantly getting a call or e-mail. Evanier is a multi-tasking machine!

Mark Evanier and DOuG pRATt

Mark collaborates with MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragonés on the long-running comic book Groo the Wanderer. Here’s Dennis hanging with Sergio.

Dennis Rogers with Sergio Aragonés

Sergio is a riot. “Shy and retiring” are words that do no apply. In fact, Aragonés seems to have no plans to retire at all! He was inking Groo pages while he talked, and it was a lot of fun watching him work. I’m very familiar with Sergio’s cartooning over the years and the art he’s doing now is stunning, especially when seeing his originals.

Sergio Aragonés Banner For Groo

The Mr. A Cookie

I’m back from NYC, and in an upcoming post I’ll have something VERY special to tell you about the trip, but first I want to show you a cookie I got in Penn Station at a wonderful bakery/eatery called Zaro’s.

Zaro's Black & White Cookie

I hope Steve Ditko knows about this, because it could be called the Mr. A cookie! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ll have to watch the first two minutes of this part of the superb program In Search of Steve Ditko.

Dog Rat In New York

For the next couple of days D.F. Rogers and I will be at the Big Apple Con in — where else? — the Big Apple. I hope to finally meet Mark Evanier in person. Dennis and I also hope to talk to comic book artist Joe Sinnott, just like we did 30 years ago! I’m traveling light, and won’t be taking a laptop computer, so unless the hotel has more than just Wi-Fi hot-spots for Net/Web access, my next post will be sometime Sunday.

The Complete ‘Dream of the Rarebit Fiend’

Long before the cartooning innovations of Charles M. Schulz, there was Winsor McCay. Preceding his masterpiece, Little Nemo In Slumberland, McCay drew a comic strip called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend that I featured very early in this blog’s existence, here and here (sorry, the video isn’t embedded).

Maude DuFour - 1891Windsor McCay NYT clipping - December 23, 1914McCay the artist dominated the industry, but McCay the man was dominated by his wife Maude. The portrait of Maude is how she looked when she met McCay. They had a whirlwind romance and eloped in 1891. If Maude looks young, that’s because she was 13. Some accounts give her age as 14, while others say she was still briefly 12 after she ran off with McCay, who was 10-12 years her senior, depending on Maude’s true age. McCay made phenomenal amounts of money for a time as a cartoonist, animator and vaudeville performer, while Maude spent his money and allegedly took lovers. There were public difficulties, such as the account published in The New York Times on December 23, 1914 (click image to enlarge).

Maude and Winsor McCay

A new, complete collection of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, is available for the modest sum of $133 US. The Boston Sunday Globe has a nifty slideshow about it that you can watch by clicking here. The video player has a Rarebit cartoon by McCay, called ‘Bug Vaudeville’. Be prepared, however, because it’s long, repetitive and tedious.
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The Michaelis Method

My buddy D.F. Rogers points out that the synopsis of David Michaelis’ biography of N.C. Wyeth isn’t all that distinctly different from that of his biography of C.M. Schulz.

N.C. Wyeth by David Michaelis

For forty-three years, starting in 1902, N.C. Wyeth painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and murals, as well as illustrations for a long shelf of world literature. Yet despite worldwide acclaim, he judged himself a failure, believing that illustration was of no importance. David Michaelis tells the story of Wyeth’s family through four generations — a saga that begins and ends with tragedy — and brings to life the huge-spirited, deeply complicated man, and an America that was quickly vanishing.

After a lot of furious flipping through various portions of the Michaelis biography of Schulz, I am now slowly and deliberating reading it front-to-finish. Yes, Schulz was complicated, but in the book “complicated” does indeed seem to mean the same thing as “negative.” By definition, a single significant aspect of someone’s personality isn’t what makes them complicated.

Schulz Dirt Bike Riders Rider

I got a laugh of out Monte Schulz’s comment about his brother Craig that’s in a previous post.

I just wanted David Van Taylor to tell a more complete story and to give some clarification to a story my brother tells regarding “us” riding our dirt bikes on the roads and not being bothered by the cops — none of us except him either owned or rode dirt bikes, and David only used that clip to “show” how pampered we were back then, and privileged, neither of which was true.

The reason it’s funny to me is my brother rode dirt bikes, but I never did. I would have the same reaction as Monte if my brother said “we” in a way that sounded like a reference to our family, rather than to his friends. Here’s Craig on a dirt bike.

Charles and Craig Schulz