Category: All Posts

The View From Table #20

The Phantom comic strip, 1/1/78, drawn by Sy Barry (possibly inked by Joe Giella)

At the NCS Reuben Awards dinner, I had the pleasure of being seated with artist Joe Staton and his wife Hilarie. Also at table #20 was Boston cartoonist Dave London (no relation to Bobby). Seated next to me was an 80-something gentleman, retired from a career in advertising, whose father worked at the MIT Radiation Lab during WWII.

Sy Barry is a retired expert practitioner of the classic comic book art style I appreciate so much. He received the King Features Elzie Segar Award, in recognition of the enduring influence of his art.

Sy Barry, accepting the Elzie Segar Award at the National Cartoonists Society dinner, August 15, 2025. That’s Colleen Doran, in fashionable peach, on the left.

Sy had a humorous and very warmly received acceptance speech. He lives north of Boston, in Andover.

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2025/08/18/celebrating-sy/

Continue reading The View From Table #20

TikTap

When I was just turning three, I had spinal meningitis. My very first memory is of being restrained and having an extremely painful spinal tap.

My parents were told to prepare for my death, as my condition was hopeless. To the best of my recollection I did not die, but my condition has always remained hopeless.

Spinal Tap II is coming! For me, it’ll be III.

HELP! Pythons!

When starting this bloggy, with its 19th anniversary coming up on 9/5, I added a gallery section that is no longer working. The first thing I put in there were scans of a fumetti (photo comic) from the May, 1965 issue of Harvey Kurtzman’s HELP! magazine.

Not to be confused with the 1965 Beatles movie HELP! that had not yet been named when the January, 1965 issue of HELP! was published.

HELP! #22, January 1965 – Airbrush photo editing by Terry Gilliam

“Christopher’s Punctured Romance” starred John Cleese as a man with an unhealthy interest in his daughter’s Barbie doll. It starts on page 17.

Terry Gilliam started at HELP! when Gloria Steinem — yes, her — was leaving. Gilliam was the art director at HELP! when he met John Cleese in New York, and “Christopher’s Punctured Romance” was the result.

When Gilliam followed Cleese to England, he recruited Robert Crumb to be his replacement. Crumb arrived just as HELP! publisher James Warren was shutting it down.

I first heard about this amazing sequence of events from Harvey Kurtzman at a Boston NewCon, in 1975 or ’76. Maybe Denro remembers better than I do.