Snapshot IV: Al Feldstein Al Feldstein was the editor of Mad magazine for over three decades. He told the festival audience about his beginnings in the comic book business and the career path that led to Mad. In the late 1940s, Bill Gaines became publisher of E.C. Comics after his father Max died in a boating accident. Being new, Gaines followed the current business model -- flood the market with whatever type of comic book was popular at the moment. Feldstein joined E.C. to produce a teenage comic called Going Steady With Peggy -- modeled after the Archie comic books. It ceased publication when the teenage comic fad ended. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created a sensation with the first romance comic books. They became the best-selling titles on the market. Feldstein started drawing romance comics for E.C. When sales dropped, Gaines looked for the next trend. One day, Al said to Bill, "This is really dumb. You're publishing what sells. When the trend dies, you die. Stop being an imitator, be an innovator." Together, they hatched the idea of producing a line of horror comic books. Then Gaines suggested that they try science fiction. Feldstein had never read any but took to the genre quickly after reading a pile of sci-fi pulp magazines. Mad comics came about because editor Harvey Kurtzman needed another title to work on to increase his income. E.C. Comics had a brief run due to anti-comic book sentiment in the mid-1950s, chiefly stirred up by a book called Seduction of the Innocent. "I suddenly discovered I was one of the prime seducers," said Al. The Comic Book Code came in, restricting what could be published. The anti-comics fervor put most comic book companies and artists out of business. E.C. Comics canceled many titles and was struggling to survive. Mad switched from comic book to magazine. Al Feldstein lost his job in comic books and was wondering what to do next. As fate would have it, a contract dispute between Mad publisher Gaines and Mad editor Kurtzman led to Kurtzman leaving and Feldstein being invited back to E.C. A profit-sharing agreement at Mad proved very lucrative for Editor Feldstein over the years. After decades as chief Mad-Man, he retired to Montana to paint western landscapes.
****** Snapshot V - The Milton Caniff Tour During lunch break on the first day of the Cartoon Festival (Friday October 15), I hiked across the somewhat wintry campus of Ohio State University to view an interesting art exhibit at the Cartoon Research Library gallery. It was called "Drawing Fire: Controversial Comics by Milton Caniff" and featured a combination of Terry and the Pirates/Steve Canyon original art along with fan letters and slam letters pertaining to the comic strips on display. When character Raven Sherman died in the Terry and the Pirates strip, Caniff devoted a brief sequence to showing her burial. Some readers sent letters of condolences to the syndicate, often addressed to another character in the comic strip! Some readers criticized Caniff for showing the death of a main character in a comic strip. Some even accused him of hurting the moral fiber of the nation's youth. Letters pertaining to other comic strips in the exhibit were from readers so outraged that they threatened to cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper while demanding that Caniff send a written apology to them for the "offense." From a 2005 vantage point, most of the so-called offensive comic strips seem pretty tame. However, I was glad that Caniff collected and saved the letters from his readers over the years. It showed that the life of a successful cartoonist is not all india ink and zip-a-tone. ******** Snapshot VI Jay Lynch Underground cartoonist Jay Lynch gave a highly entertaining talk on Saturday morning. I spent quite a bit of time with Lynch over the weekend and found him to be not only a droll wit but also quite a historian of American humor. He started his talk by showing slides of favorite comics. "Here's Bunky from Snuffy Smith. Baby or midget we don't know!" He showed the cover of Dandy Comics #5, a funny animal title from the 1940s drawn by Vince Fago. "I remember first looking at it while drinking out of a baby bottle." Lynch considered E.C. horror comics an early high point. "Like watching a good B-movie," he said. But Lynch went even further in his praise by stating, "All modern culture was started or influenced by 225 Lafayette Avenue." (That was the home of both E.C. Comics and Paul Krassner's satirical mag The Realist.) In the early 1960s, Jay Lynch and his cartooning cohorts were writing for small press satire fanzines with names like Smudge and Wild. Many of these cartoonists would go on to create the underground comix of the counterculture era. Displaying perfect comic timing, Lynch showed a wacky example of underground cartooning: "Here's a slide of Gilbert Shelton's 'Set My Chickens Free!" After the briefest of pauses, Lynch continued, "LSD did play a role in these cartoons." This line brought down the house. Summing up the influence of Harvey Kurtzman and Mad, Jay Lynch offered the following observation, "It's almost like Mad was an underground comic and we just continued it."
******* Snapshot VI Bob Levin & The Air Pirates The Air Pirates were a group of San Francisco underground cartoonists who produced a couple of comic books that featured Mickey and Minnie Mouse and parodied the whole Disney cartoon world. Once it came to the attention of Disney's corporate lawyers that the cartoonists intended Air Pirates Funnies as an ongoing series, the cartoonists were taken to court. Many years and legal fees later, the judge ruled in favor of Disney for copyright infringement. Comics Journal writer and Bay Area resident Bob Levin had always been fascinated by the case and it became the basis for his book, The Pirates and The Mouse. Levin met a self-styled literary agent who fed him dreams of incredible media success. "Bob, your time has come," the agent said. "Meet me at the health club hot tub and I'll have a publisher to meet you!" That didn't happen but Levin was promised a big advance from one of the many publishers that would be eager to publish his book. So encouraged, He set to work on a proposal. The would-be agent wasn't completely full of hot air. Some publishers did express an initial interest in the book. But it turned out that all the promises of a big advance disappeared after the various publishers contemplated a possible lawsuit from Disney. The Pirates and the Mouse was eventually published by Fantagraphics and was critically well-received. Levin never heard a word from the Disney Corporation or its lawyers, pro or con.
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More visitors to the Thurber House: Dan Collins, Bucky Jones.
Roy Doty, Bob Bindig.
Quite a lively turnout for the Thurber House show.
Ron Hill, Polly Keener.
Michael Jantze, artist/writer of The Norm, contributes to a jam board at the Thurber reception.
Polly Keener, Dave Coverly.
Jef Mallett, of Frazz fame. And --someone correct me if I'm wrong -- Hilary Price?
Earl Musick, Chris Payne.
Lexington GLC member Bob Queen.
Randy Rider, a member we don't see enough of.
Two of the stars of the gallery exhibit, Jeff Stahler, David Catrow
Gallery visitors.
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