Mr. Media Interviews by Bob Andelman
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Stephan Pastis, "Pearls Before Swine" cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview, Part 2
(Return to Part 1)
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: We have a couple people in the chat room who have some questions so I’m going to step in and ask for them. It’s funny because some people are asking questions, and then other people are answering them, for example.
STEPHAN PASTIS: You don’t need me.
ANDELMAN: They don’t need me either. I think they can do better themselves. When you were talking about that Minnesota Senator, the suggestion was that that was Paul Wellstone.
PASTIS: That’s right.
ANDELMAN: See, we just rely on this. And then someone asked, “Where did you get your pre-law degree?” and then the answer came: “UC-Berkeley.”
PASTIS: Yes. It wasn’t pre-law, though. My major was, as all law students I think have, is political science. Yeah, that was Berkeley. Then law school was UCLA.
ANDELMAN: Do you draw by hand? Do you use the computer? I’m trying to think of the device. I saw Chris Brown (“Hagar the Horrible”) use it.
PASTIS: Yes. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I would say Wacom. I tried that, and I couldn’t do anything. I think Scott Adams does it on one of those and I think Darrin Bell uses one of those. He does “Candorville.” No, I just do it on paper, and I draw on a flat table, a flat, old, 80-year-old desk. Yeah, it’s pretty low-tech, but when people see the room I draw in, what they usually say is, “That’s what you draw on?”
ANDELMAN: I wonder what guys who may be listening, like Mark Tatulli and Rick Kirkman, what they use? Just my way to see if they’ll call. I know that they’re out there. One of our chat room guests says that some of their favorite “Pearls” strips involve breaking the fourth wall, and do you have any plans to do more of these?
PASTIS: Yeah, I do that a lot. It could definitely be overdone. Darby Conley said this once to me, too. He does “Get Fuzzy.” And this is really true. He writes the strip to entertain himself, and I try to do that, too. I think you have to make yourself laugh, and it’s sort of hard to do it. But anyway, one of the things that makes me laugh is that sort of stuff. I’ve seen quotes like by Bill Watterson (“Calvin & Hobbes”) and I think one by Sparky once where they say that that’s a mistake, and who am I to argue with them? But I enjoy doing it, and the response is generally favorable. I think putting myself in the strip is probably a bit weird, but I like doing it. In fact, I like it so much. Here’s the size of my ego for you. I put myself on the cover of the next book, The Crass Menagerie: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury, and I look like I do in the strip with the hat backwards and the goatee and the t-shirt, and I’m surrounded by my characters kind of creating havoc in the room. So I get to break the fourth wall on a book cover, for once, which I haven’t done before.
ANDELMAN: And when you’re in the strip, Stephan, are those the days that Darby Conley draws the strip? Because I’ve seen you reference over the years that there are certain times that he writes the strip and that he draws the strip?
PASTIS: He draws my strip?
ANDELMAN: Yeah.
PASTIS: He’s never drawn. He’s given me a few ideas, which I’ve used. And there was that week once where he stole a week of my strips and pasted his own characters over my characters as crudely as possible, which we thought was funny, but I know that anybody who only read “Get Fuzzy” and had no idea what “Pearls” was was just nothing but confused…I think that week had the little, tiny crocodiles attacking a zebra, and in Darby’s strip, there were little, tiny crocodiles attacking Satchel, and I don’t think that made any sense to anyone who only read “Get Fuzzy,” but we liked it. So there you go.
ANDELMAN: Here’s a comment. Someone wrote in: “Our family’s favorite four strips are ‘Opus,’ ‘Dilbert,’ ‘Get Fuzzy,’ and, of course, ‘Pearls.’ What, in your opinion, do these strips have in common, and what makes them so popular?”
PASTIS: Well, I can’t speak to mine, but as to the others, boy, those are three of my favorites as well. Berkeley Breathed was really and still is today just a great inspiration to pretty much my entire generation of cartoonists. I don’t think I’ve run into a guy who doesn’t cite him as an influence. And I’ve been lucky enough to meet him a couple of times, and I feel really lucky. In fact, I put Opus in a strip one time, and he actually sent me a “Bloom County.” In exchange, I sent him the Opus strip. So I actually have an original “Bloom County,” which I just cherish. It’s amazing.
ANDELMAN: Wow.
PASTIS: So, yeah, he’s a big influence, and Darby’s just great. Darby, he can draw like crazy. He’s funny. He has a rhythm that nobody else has. The joke may or may not be in the last panel. The best line may be in the second panel. Breathed had that too a little bit, and it just makes for a very original strip. And he created characters in Bucky and Satchel that are two of the best characters created today. And, of course, Scott, I owe my whole career to. I learned how to write a three-panel strip from literally sitting in the bookstore and studying “Dilbert” books. I always tell people that, too. People that write to me and ask how to write a comic I say buy a bunch of “Dilbert” books because that’s how I learned. All four of them are edgy, too. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but it does seem to me that the strips that have succeeded in the last ten years have all been in the edgy category.
ANDELMAN: There’s certainly a different generation. I was thinking when you were talking about what collections are people buying. I know my eleven-year-old daughter is a huge “Zits” and “Baby Blues” fan so she’s stockpiled those books. “Dilbert” hit a high point where it was a cartoon for a while, and then it kind of tailed off, and it hasn’t quite reached that point. But there’s you and Darby and Tatulli and well, that’s about it.
PASTIS: No, there’s a lot of great strips. “Cul de Sac” is terrific. Richard Thompson, that’s a new one. In fact, I just talked to him last week. I just called him and told him how great I thought the strip was. I think “F-Minus” is great. Gosh, there’s “Agnes,” “Brevity,” “Pooch Café,” “Speed Bump.” “Coverly” is brilliant. “Bizarro,” “Rhymes with Orange.” There are lots of great, young strips. I think the revolution is on, so to speak.
ANDELMAN: Part of the problem is that most people are subject to whatever their newspaper editor puts in there because they don’t take the time to track these things online. As a matter of fact, one of the questions here is, “How do you feel about online comic readers who seek out strips online instead of in the newspaper? Is that taking money out of…”
PASTIS: That’s the great two-edged sword. When United signed me, they signed me to put me into newspapers, and then they backed out because they thought it would never sell. So they put me online to see how I would do, and when Scott Adams endorsed it, the hits skyrocketed, and I made it. That wouldn’t have happened without being online. So I don’t exist but for that. So that’s in the good category. I don’t run in Des Moines. It’s one of the biggest cities that I don’t run in. So if you live in Des Moines and there’s no online, you would never have heard of me, but because I’m online, someone there can read it, and then they can write their paper and tell them to pick up the strip. Those are the good things. The bad things are you make very little money. No one really has figured out how to do this yet, to make money online. So that’s one bad thing. Another bad thing: when a newspaper cancels you, you will get a reader writing you saying, “Hey, my paper dropped you this week, but it’s okay cause I can read you online.” You’re thinking, “No, it’s not okay because I lose money from that.” So that’s not good. So it goes both ways, and I don’t know what the answer is, and right now, I don’t think anyone else does either. It’s very confusing. What should we be doing? Should we pull off entirely and not make ourselves available online? Should we only make a week available? Should we stagger it so it runs behind what you see in the newspaper? I think King Features does that. I don’t know.
ANDELMAN: It won’t make you feel any better, but “Mr. Media” started as a syndicated weekly newspaper column that Universal Press carried about 1996 to 1998. And that was at the time they were just starting to put comics online, on the web, and they were trying to figure out what the financial model was. And part of the reason that the column ended was that they couldn’t find a way to make money online then. That was 10 years ago, and obviously, it’s still not producing revenue for you guys.
PASTIS: Right.
ANDELMAN: Okay. Rick Kirkman, one of the guys on “Baby Blues,” has come out of the darkness and has asked this question in the web chat. He says, “I can’t keep silent anymore. Isn’t it time that you come clean about the dirty little secret about ‘Pearls Before Swine?’ That is that you have to pay big bucks to all the cartoonists whose characters appear in your strip that allow you to do it.”
PASTIS: Oh man, where would I get those big bucks? Yes, that’s absolutely true. I pay large sums of money. Do you want to know how much I paid to each?
ANDELMAN: Yes, particularly how much you paid to Rick Kirkman.
PASTIS: Oh man. He’s a good guy. Rick’s a good guy. I’ve been to Rick’s house. He had a big, fierce, ferocious dog that scared the bejesus out of me. I’m afraid of dogs. You know when you go to a person’s house, by the way. This is a tangent. You go to a person’s house, and they have a dog, and the dog really barks. And the person pretty much always says, “Oh, he’s friendly. He just does that when you walk in. You can pet him or whatever.” And that makes me feel a little better, but since I’m afraid of dogs, it doesn’t make me feel a lot better. When I went to Rick’s house, his dog did that, right? And my heart was racing. I’ve been bitten three or four times. And my heart was racing, and I said, “Well, can I pet him?” And Rick looked at me and goes, “You better not.” And at that point, holy smokes, all I remember from that visit to Rick’s house is how scared I was of that dog. And I know he’s listening now, and he’s thinking to himself, “The dog wasn’t that scary. Stephan is a big wuss,” but I was very scared.
ANDELMAN: I’ll watch the web chat to see if he responds to that.
PASTIS: Hey, by the way, that “Baby Blues” parody, it appeared a couple years ago where I had Rat babysit the “Baby Blues” characters. And Rat was drunk, and he sent the kids on a beer run, and they ran into a gas station and killed the kid from “Zits.” That really triggered a lot of negative response, as if I had let a real person take care of real kids and had them be drunk. It was amazing. And Rick made the mistake of defending me to some people who wrote to both of us, and it seemed they were almost as mad at him as they were at me for “letting” me do this to the “Baby Blues” characters. But, yeah, it was really weird, but, yes, both he and Jerry were great about it. They’re great sports. They’re good guys despite what Rick says about me.
Click Here to Keep Reading!
© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: We have a couple people in the chat room who have some questions so I’m going to step in and ask for them. It’s funny because some people are asking questions, and then other people are answering them, for example.
STEPHAN PASTIS: You don’t need me.
ANDELMAN: They don’t need me either. I think they can do better themselves. When you were talking about that Minnesota Senator, the suggestion was that that was Paul Wellstone.
PASTIS: That’s right.
ANDELMAN: See, we just rely on this. And then someone asked, “Where did you get your pre-law degree?” and then the answer came: “UC-Berkeley.”
PASTIS: Yes. It wasn’t pre-law, though. My major was, as all law students I think have, is political science. Yeah, that was Berkeley. Then law school was UCLA.
ANDELMAN: Do you draw by hand? Do you use the computer? I’m trying to think of the device. I saw Chris Brown (“Hagar the Horrible”) use it.
PASTIS: Yes. I don’t know how to pronounce it, but I would say Wacom. I tried that, and I couldn’t do anything. I think Scott Adams does it on one of those and I think Darrin Bell uses one of those. He does “Candorville.” No, I just do it on paper, and I draw on a flat table, a flat, old, 80-year-old desk. Yeah, it’s pretty low-tech, but when people see the room I draw in, what they usually say is, “That’s what you draw on?”
ANDELMAN: I wonder what guys who may be listening, like Mark Tatulli and Rick Kirkman, what they use? Just my way to see if they’ll call. I know that they’re out there. One of our chat room guests says that some of their favorite “Pearls” strips involve breaking the fourth wall, and do you have any plans to do more of these?
PASTIS: Yeah, I do that a lot. It could definitely be overdone. Darby Conley said this once to me, too. He does “Get Fuzzy.” And this is really true. He writes the strip to entertain himself, and I try to do that, too. I think you have to make yourself laugh, and it’s sort of hard to do it. But anyway, one of the things that makes me laugh is that sort of stuff. I’ve seen quotes like by Bill Watterson (“Calvin & Hobbes”) and I think one by Sparky once where they say that that’s a mistake, and who am I to argue with them? But I enjoy doing it, and the response is generally favorable. I think putting myself in the strip is probably a bit weird, but I like doing it. In fact, I like it so much. Here’s the size of my ego for you. I put myself on the cover of the next book, The Crass Menagerie: A Pearls Before Swine Treasury, and I look like I do in the strip with the hat backwards and the goatee and the t-shirt, and I’m surrounded by my characters kind of creating havoc in the room. So I get to break the fourth wall on a book cover, for once, which I haven’t done before.
ANDELMAN: And when you’re in the strip, Stephan, are those the days that Darby Conley draws the strip? Because I’ve seen you reference over the years that there are certain times that he writes the strip and that he draws the strip?
PASTIS: He draws my strip?
ANDELMAN: Yeah.
PASTIS: He’s never drawn. He’s given me a few ideas, which I’ve used. And there was that week once where he stole a week of my strips and pasted his own characters over my characters as crudely as possible, which we thought was funny, but I know that anybody who only read “Get Fuzzy” and had no idea what “Pearls” was was just nothing but confused…I think that week had the little, tiny crocodiles attacking a zebra, and in Darby’s strip, there were little, tiny crocodiles attacking Satchel, and I don’t think that made any sense to anyone who only read “Get Fuzzy,” but we liked it. So there you go.
ANDELMAN: Here’s a comment. Someone wrote in: “Our family’s favorite four strips are ‘Opus,’ ‘Dilbert,’ ‘Get Fuzzy,’ and, of course, ‘Pearls.’ What, in your opinion, do these strips have in common, and what makes them so popular?”
PASTIS: Well, I can’t speak to mine, but as to the others, boy, those are three of my favorites as well. Berkeley Breathed was really and still is today just a great inspiration to pretty much my entire generation of cartoonists. I don’t think I’ve run into a guy who doesn’t cite him as an influence. And I’ve been lucky enough to meet him a couple of times, and I feel really lucky. In fact, I put Opus in a strip one time, and he actually sent me a “Bloom County.” In exchange, I sent him the Opus strip. So I actually have an original “Bloom County,” which I just cherish. It’s amazing.
ANDELMAN: Wow.
PASTIS: So, yeah, he’s a big influence, and Darby’s just great. Darby, he can draw like crazy. He’s funny. He has a rhythm that nobody else has. The joke may or may not be in the last panel. The best line may be in the second panel. Breathed had that too a little bit, and it just makes for a very original strip. And he created characters in Bucky and Satchel that are two of the best characters created today. And, of course, Scott, I owe my whole career to. I learned how to write a three-panel strip from literally sitting in the bookstore and studying “Dilbert” books. I always tell people that, too. People that write to me and ask how to write a comic I say buy a bunch of “Dilbert” books because that’s how I learned. All four of them are edgy, too. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it, but it does seem to me that the strips that have succeeded in the last ten years have all been in the edgy category.
ANDELMAN: There’s certainly a different generation. I was thinking when you were talking about what collections are people buying. I know my eleven-year-old daughter is a huge “Zits” and “Baby Blues” fan so she’s stockpiled those books. “Dilbert” hit a high point where it was a cartoon for a while, and then it kind of tailed off, and it hasn’t quite reached that point. But there’s you and Darby and Tatulli and well, that’s about it.
PASTIS: No, there’s a lot of great strips. “Cul de Sac” is terrific. Richard Thompson, that’s a new one. In fact, I just talked to him last week. I just called him and told him how great I thought the strip was. I think “F-Minus” is great. Gosh, there’s “Agnes,” “Brevity,” “Pooch Café,” “Speed Bump.” “Coverly” is brilliant. “Bizarro,” “Rhymes with Orange.” There are lots of great, young strips. I think the revolution is on, so to speak.
ANDELMAN: Part of the problem is that most people are subject to whatever their newspaper editor puts in there because they don’t take the time to track these things online. As a matter of fact, one of the questions here is, “How do you feel about online comic readers who seek out strips online instead of in the newspaper? Is that taking money out of…”
PASTIS: That’s the great two-edged sword. When United signed me, they signed me to put me into newspapers, and then they backed out because they thought it would never sell. So they put me online to see how I would do, and when Scott Adams endorsed it, the hits skyrocketed, and I made it. That wouldn’t have happened without being online. So I don’t exist but for that. So that’s in the good category. I don’t run in Des Moines. It’s one of the biggest cities that I don’t run in. So if you live in Des Moines and there’s no online, you would never have heard of me, but because I’m online, someone there can read it, and then they can write their paper and tell them to pick up the strip. Those are the good things. The bad things are you make very little money. No one really has figured out how to do this yet, to make money online. So that’s one bad thing. Another bad thing: when a newspaper cancels you, you will get a reader writing you saying, “Hey, my paper dropped you this week, but it’s okay cause I can read you online.” You’re thinking, “No, it’s not okay because I lose money from that.” So that’s not good. So it goes both ways, and I don’t know what the answer is, and right now, I don’t think anyone else does either. It’s very confusing. What should we be doing? Should we pull off entirely and not make ourselves available online? Should we only make a week available? Should we stagger it so it runs behind what you see in the newspaper? I think King Features does that. I don’t know.
ANDELMAN: It won’t make you feel any better, but “Mr. Media” started as a syndicated weekly newspaper column that Universal Press carried about 1996 to 1998. And that was at the time they were just starting to put comics online, on the web, and they were trying to figure out what the financial model was. And part of the reason that the column ended was that they couldn’t find a way to make money online then. That was 10 years ago, and obviously, it’s still not producing revenue for you guys.
PASTIS: Right.
ANDELMAN: Okay. Rick Kirkman, one of the guys on “Baby Blues,” has come out of the darkness and has asked this question in the web chat. He says, “I can’t keep silent anymore. Isn’t it time that you come clean about the dirty little secret about ‘Pearls Before Swine?’ That is that you have to pay big bucks to all the cartoonists whose characters appear in your strip that allow you to do it.”
PASTIS: Oh man, where would I get those big bucks? Yes, that’s absolutely true. I pay large sums of money. Do you want to know how much I paid to each?
ANDELMAN: Yes, particularly how much you paid to Rick Kirkman.
PASTIS: Oh man. He’s a good guy. Rick’s a good guy. I’ve been to Rick’s house. He had a big, fierce, ferocious dog that scared the bejesus out of me. I’m afraid of dogs. You know when you go to a person’s house, by the way. This is a tangent. You go to a person’s house, and they have a dog, and the dog really barks. And the person pretty much always says, “Oh, he’s friendly. He just does that when you walk in. You can pet him or whatever.” And that makes me feel a little better, but since I’m afraid of dogs, it doesn’t make me feel a lot better. When I went to Rick’s house, his dog did that, right? And my heart was racing. I’ve been bitten three or four times. And my heart was racing, and I said, “Well, can I pet him?” And Rick looked at me and goes, “You better not.” And at that point, holy smokes, all I remember from that visit to Rick’s house is how scared I was of that dog. And I know he’s listening now, and he’s thinking to himself, “The dog wasn’t that scary. Stephan is a big wuss,” but I was very scared.
ANDELMAN: I’ll watch the web chat to see if he responds to that.
PASTIS: Hey, by the way, that “Baby Blues” parody, it appeared a couple years ago where I had Rat babysit the “Baby Blues” characters. And Rat was drunk, and he sent the kids on a beer run, and they ran into a gas station and killed the kid from “Zits.” That really triggered a lot of negative response, as if I had let a real person take care of real kids and had them be drunk. It was amazing. And Rick made the mistake of defending me to some people who wrote to both of us, and it seemed they were almost as mad at him as they were at me for “letting” me do this to the “Baby Blues” characters. But, yeah, it was really weird, but, yes, both he and Jerry were great about it. They’re great sports. They’re good guys despite what Rick says about me.
Click Here to Keep Reading!
© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Baby Blues, Berkeley Breathed, Bloom County, Darby Conley, Dilbert, Get Fuzzy, Opus, Paul Wellstone, Pearls Before Swine, Scott Adams, Stephan Pastis, Wacom, Zits
¶ 10:04 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Mort Walker, "Beetle Bailey," "Hi & Lois" cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview, Part 1
Mort Walker is the dean and -- in some ways -- the curator of American cartoonists.
Best known for his long-running strips “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi & Lois,” Walker, 84, is also a bedrock member of the National Cartoonists Society, and he’s the founder and energy behind the National Cartoon Museum.
This is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of Mort’s company over the last 20 years. I enjoy interviewing him because he says what’s on his mind, and what’s on his mind is never dull.
But just in case my questions aren’t sharp enough for this American comic strip master, I’ve called in reinforcements.
Ray Billingsley, creator of the “Curtis” strip and an old friend of Walker’s, kindly contributed questions today. So did a newer member of the fraternity, Mark Tatulli, creator of “Heart of the City” and America’s fastest-growing new strip, “LIO.”
Mr. MEDIA/BOB ANDELMAN: Mort, welcome to Mr. Media.
MORT WALKER: Good morning.
ANDELMAN: Did I get your age right?
WALKER: Yeah, very good.
ANDELMAN: Sorry. Should I not have brought that up?
WALKER: It always sounds old to me, but like I say, I’ll have to get used to it.
ANDELMAN: No, I don’t think you ever have to get used to it as long as you don’t act that way. I don’t think it’s an issue.
WALKER: They call me the Energizer Bunny around here. You wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” and they say, “Oh God, not another idea.”
ANDELMAN: The boys are probably waiting for you to slow down a little bit.
WALKER: Yeah, well, I hope I never do.
WALKER: Well, one thing, you have to start with an idea so I’m always doing ideas. At breakfast, I usually get two or three gags. I have to have my pad with me, my clipboard with me all the time. Yesterday, my wife had to go to the doctor, and I went with her, and I was sitting in the waiting room, and she was in getting an MRI for an hour. I got 19 gags while I was waiting for her. So you never really waste any time. Then I get back and start doing my strips. I do all the penciling on the strips, and my son Greg does the inking. I usually can get those done in the morning. My work doesn’t take me an awful lot of time so that gets me involved in a lot of other things. I got a brand-new business I started.
ANDELMAN: What’s that?
WALKER: It’s a magazine. It’s called Mort Walker’s The Best of Times. And I got started because we have a lot of weekly magazines and newspapers around here, and I usually pick them up. They’re at the exits of the grocery store, the delicatessen, or wherever you’re in, and they’re piled up in a corner somewhere. And I looked at them, and I said, “They really don’t have much in them that’s very interesting.” Most of it is a repeat of what’s in the daily newspaper. So all of a sudden I thought my paper here in Stamford, Connecticut only uses about 10 of the King Features. King Features is the largest syndicate in the world. It’s syndicated all over the world. They have 140 features that they syndicate, and my local paper, as I said, only uses ten of them. That leaves 130 features that are available, and they’re all famous writers and cartoonists and puzzle writers and so forth. I thought, I could put out a great newspaper using all the excess that the local paper doesn’t use. And so I started this newspaper, this magazine. It started as a newspaper. Now it’s a magazine. And it’s full-color, 40 pages, and we sell advertising to make money.
ANDELMAN: Wow.
WALKER: Each issue brings in about $20,000. Well, that’s not bad.
ANDELMAN: Sounds like something you could spread out around the country, too.
WALKER: King Features puts it all together for me. I just tell them where the ads go.
ANDELMAN: Now, you don’t sound like a guy who has any intention of slowing down.
WALKER: No. I thought of a new comic strip yesterday morning, and I haven’t even got anybody to look at it yet so it’s not doing us any good.
ANDELMAN: Oh my goodness.
WALKER: I did about 15 gags of it for us, and I’m still waiting for my editors. I have a son that works with me here in the office. His name is Neal. He also does all my drawings for the foreign markets. I give him the gags, and he does the drawing. They print them. Beetle’s the number one comic book in Scandinavia, and they just can’t get enough work. They reprint everything I’ve got, and they need at least that much more to fill up the comic books. So I have to have somebody working on those things all the time.
ANDELMAN: You came up with a new strip idea. How different would a strip by you be today than it was 40 or 50 years ago?
WALKER: I don’t know. I just sort of do what I like and wait and see if anybody else likes it. I don’t know that this is ever going to come to fruition because it seems like I’m always thinking. I’ve got about 10 comic strip ideas in my drawer right now that have either been rejected by me or rejected by the syndicates.
ANDELMAN: The young guys who are gonna hear this interview are gonna be shocked that a guy with your experience still gets rejections from the syndicate.
WALKER: Yeah. I took some stuff in to the syndicate a few years ago, and the editor says, “Mort, we got enough of your stuff.” And I said, “But my stuff is the stuff that’s selling!” “Beetle,” “Hi & Lois,” you take “Blondie” and “Hagar the Horrible,” which I worked on. Those are the top-selling strips they’ve got. And all the new ones that they try last for maybe a year or two, and then they die. I said, “Why don’t you get along with my stuff?” Well, they look at my age, and they think How many more years do we have for you? So I don’t know. I can’t stop it, though.
ANDELMAN: Well, what hope is there for a new cartoonist coming up if an experienced veteran like yourself can’t get a new strip going?
WALKER: Well, look at the strip called “Zits.” That’s a brand-new strip and boy, it’s going great guns. I like it very much. Very well drawn, gags are good, everything. If you got the stuff, you’ll make it.
ANDELMAN: I wasn’t gonna go that way right now, but that was something Ray wanted me to ask you about. What do you think of the direction that present-day cartoonists are headed? Are there any particular strips that you like right now?
WALKER: There are a lot of them I like, but I guess about half of them I don’t. And usually, it’s because they’re hard to read, I don’t get the gags, the drawing is confusing, or it’s something that I’m not that interested in. I think a lot of them make the mistake of doing gags about animals or robots or something like that, or bugs. People are interested in people. And I try to create characters that everybody can relate to. Everybody knows a Beetle Bailey. Everybody knows a Sarge. Everybody knows a General Halftrack or Miss Buxley. And it’s funny how often in my fan mail, like yesterday, I got a letter, and somebody said, “Your favorite character is Cosmo. Can you send me a picture of Cosmo?” And I’m thinking, Cosmo, I only use him maybe once a month. I don’t know. It’s interesting.
ANDELMAN: You mention “Zits.” Are there others that you like particularly?
WALKER: Well, of course, “Hagar” is one of my favorites. And “Mother Goose and Grimm,” I always get a laugh out of that. Boy, I’d hate to start on all my favorites cause I got a lot of them.
ANDELMAN: Let me ask you about a couple of them specifically. What about “Get Fuzzy?” Is that one of the ones…you mention animals. I’m guessing maybe that’s one that you’re not so crazy about.
WALKER: I read it about half the time, and I don’t get that much out of it. I know a lot of people like it. Then I argue with people about it while they just say you just don’t get it. So I think that there’s an appeal level that some people have for certain strips that I don’t have or other people don’t have. It’s an individual thing.
ANDELMAN: What about “Pearls Before Swine”? That’s a very different strip, generationally speaking.
WALKER: I read it. A lot of times I get a laugh out of it. I find it a little confusing, and I don’t relate to it as well as I do a strip like “Zits.” Altogether we have 10 children. It’s a second marriage for both of us, and we have 15 grandchildren. I can see all my children in that strip. That’s the way they act, and it’s amusing to me the way they treat their parents and everything. I can relate to it.
ANDELMAN: Does it bother you in “Pearls” that sometimes the attacks on like “Family Circus,” for example, or other strips? Does that bother you, or does that amuse you?
WALKER: I don’t think it’s an attack cause he’s used Beetle Bailey in his strip. I always write him and thank him.
ANDELMAN: Mark Tatulli, this is one of the things he had wanted me to ask you. He wondered if you had ever read “LIO” and what you thought of it.
WALKER: I don’t see it.
ANDELMAN: Oh, you don’t?
WALKER: I get three papers everyday, and it’s not in any one of those. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it.
ANDELMAN: Mark will be disappointed, but I appreciate you being honest about it.
WALKER: Well, I’ll look for it. I just got back from Ohio, and it wasn’t in that paper. So I just don’t know.
ANDELMAN: Let me ask you about something that’s pretty close to your heart, and then we’ll move on to some of the questions that Ray had for you. Since the Cartoon Museum closed in Boca Raton a few years ago, I know you’ve devoted a great deal of time and energy and money, for that matter, to finding a new home. The last time we spoke, which was probably about three years ago, maybe four, it looked like you were heading toward the Empire State Building. And I was wondering if you could update us on what the status of the project is.
WALKER: We got killed there, and it was very unfair. We had a contract to go to the Empire State Building, and as a result of the contract, we went out, and we hired a staff of people and fundraisers. And we spent about half a million dollars preparing to move in there. Suddenly, we got a notice from the owner, who I’d been dealing with, that they had to cancel the contract because they have another attraction on the second floor called “Skyride,” which is a simulated helicopter ride over Manhattan. They sell their tickets. They were gonna sell our tickets. Instead of rent, we would split the profits. They figured that each one of us, they’d make three and a half million, and we’d make three and a half million. I said, “No more fundraising for me!” It was a perfect deal, I thought. And the Skyride people said, “We don’t want the competition. If you sell the museum tickets, we’ll sue you.” And so they cancelled our contract. They said, “But we’ll give you a cut rate in rent, and we’ll only charge you $850,000 a year in rent.” They just killed all of our sponsors, all of the people that were gonna give us money. They just figured we’d never make it, and so we’re out of business. Not only that, but they kept our $185,000 in security deposit.
ANDELMAN: You must’ve been crushed when that fell apart.
WALKER: It just killed us. We had no more people who were gonna give us money and no place to go. I had lent the museum $400,000, and I just couldn’t go on doing that.
ANDELMAN: Wow. And so where does the project stand now? Is there anything you can tell us?
WALKER: We have a new home for it, but I can’t announce it yet.
ANDELMAN: Okay. But there is something in the works.
WALKER: Yes.
ANDELMAN: Do you know when you might have something to reveal?
WALKER: They’re supposed to have a meeting on the 15th to discuss it. We’ve looked at the new headquarters, which are beautiful, and we haven’t had a board meeting on it yet. So that’s the reason they told me not to announce it yet.
ANDELMAN: Let’s go to some of the questions that Ray Billingsley had. You guys have known each other a long time.
WALKER: He used to hang out. When he was a kid, he used to hang out at the museum.
ANDELMAN: Is that right?
WALKER: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: Oh, so you do go back a ways with him.
WALKER: Oh yeah. He was just a teenager, and he was a very talented young man and very nice and everything. We formed a friendship, and we’ve been together. I’ve made speeches in his behalf and so forth. He’s a very nice guy.
ANDELMAN: Ray sent me an email and said, “You’ve got to talk to Mort for Mr. Media.” Ray’s interview was one of the most popular that’s ever run on the Mr. Media site so I have to bow to his advice on this. One of the things that Ray wanted to know was who was your first influence as a cartoonist?
WALKER: I think that it was probably “Moon Mullins.” Frank Willard was the cartoonist. We used to get the Sunday paper on the front porch, and my father would ask me to go down and get it. And I’d bring it back, and I’d get in bed with him, and he’d read the funnies to me. And when he read “Moon Mullins,” he started to laugh until tears came down his cheeks, and I just got the biggest kick out of that, seeing somebody laugh like that. And I can even remember specific strips that he read to me. And I think it influenced me and influenced my style of humor and characterizations and everything. I think that was my earliest influence.
ANDELMAN: Do you think you’ve always been trying to make your dad laugh?
WALKER: Yeah. Well, it’s a nice thing to do for people. In fact, I do it all the time anyway. I go to the grocery store, for instance, and Cathy goes down one aisle, I go down another aisle. Then I can’t find her again. I’m looking around, and the manager comes up and says, “Can I help you? What are you looking for?” And I go, “I’m looking for my wife. What aisle do you keep wives in?” And my wife says, “Can’t you ever go out without trying to make everybody laugh?”
ANDELMAN: Or trying to develop material for a strip?
WALKER: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: Would we recognize your dad as a character in any of your work over the years or other family members for that matter?
WALKER: I don’t think my father was in there, but a lot of my friends were. Beetle Bailey’s based on my old high school buddy and college roommate, and his name was David Hornaday. And he was a big, lanky, lazy kind of guy, and everybody liked him and everything like that. And he was just goofing off all the time. I remember I went by to pick him up to play golf one day, and his mother said, “David’s still in bed. You gotta go wake him up.” I went up, and I shook him in bed, and I said, “David, David, wake up! We’ve got a tee-off time at nine.” He just grabbed his pillow, turned his back to me, and went on sleeping. I took his bed, and I turned it upside down. He fell out on the floor and just reached out and got his pillow and went on to sleep. I said, “David, you ought to be in a comic strip.”
ANDELMAN: So does he collect residuals on that?
WALKER: Well, he’s dead now.
ANDELMAN: Oh.
WALKER: They used to play him up in his paper back in St. Joseph, Missouri, all the time on the front page. And I said, “Does it bother you?” He said, “A little bit, but I like it okay.” I don’t know that you’d really like being compared to Beetle, but…
ANDELMAN: Well, he’s gonna live on in some way, right? Did I read that Lt. Fuzz was actually closest to you at the time?
WALKER: I based it on my experiences when I first became a lieutenant in the Army. And I was so impressed with myself being an officer, and I was only 19 years old at the time. So using my official status, I walked into our sergeant’s office, and it was all cluttered with used coffee cups and papers and litter on the floor. And I said, “Sergeant let’s get this place cleaned up,” and he looked at me. Instead of saluting, he said, “Oh, knock it off, Lieutenant.” So I based some of my experiences of trying to be an officer on Lieutenant Fuzz.
Click Here to Keep Reading!
©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Mort Walker is the dean and -- in some ways -- the curator of American cartoonists.
Best known for his long-running strips “Beetle Bailey” and “Hi & Lois,” Walker, 84, is also a bedrock member of the National Cartoonists Society, and he’s the founder and energy behind the National Cartoon Museum.
This is the third time I’ve had the pleasure of Mort’s company over the last 20 years. I enjoy interviewing him because he says what’s on his mind, and what’s on his mind is never dull.
But just in case my questions aren’t sharp enough for this American comic strip master, I’ve called in reinforcements.
Ray Billingsley, creator of the “Curtis” strip and an old friend of Walker’s, kindly contributed questions today. So did a newer member of the fraternity, Mark Tatulli, creator of “Heart of the City” and America’s fastest-growing new strip, “LIO.”
ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST ON iTUNES.
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Mr. MEDIA/BOB ANDELMAN: Mort, welcome to Mr. Media.
MORT WALKER: Good morning.
ANDELMAN: Did I get your age right?
WALKER: Yeah, very good.
ANDELMAN: Sorry. Should I not have brought that up?
WALKER: It always sounds old to me, but like I say, I’ll have to get used to it.
ANDELMAN: No, I don’t think you ever have to get used to it as long as you don’t act that way. I don’t think it’s an issue.
WALKER: They call me the Energizer Bunny around here. You wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” and they say, “Oh God, not another idea.”
ANDELMAN: The boys are probably waiting for you to slow down a little bit.
WALKER: Yeah, well, I hope I never do.
WALKER: Well, one thing, you have to start with an idea so I’m always doing ideas. At breakfast, I usually get two or three gags. I have to have my pad with me, my clipboard with me all the time. Yesterday, my wife had to go to the doctor, and I went with her, and I was sitting in the waiting room, and she was in getting an MRI for an hour. I got 19 gags while I was waiting for her. So you never really waste any time. Then I get back and start doing my strips. I do all the penciling on the strips, and my son Greg does the inking. I usually can get those done in the morning. My work doesn’t take me an awful lot of time so that gets me involved in a lot of other things. I got a brand-new business I started.
ANDELMAN: What’s that?
WALKER: It’s a magazine. It’s called Mort Walker’s The Best of Times. And I got started because we have a lot of weekly magazines and newspapers around here, and I usually pick them up. They’re at the exits of the grocery store, the delicatessen, or wherever you’re in, and they’re piled up in a corner somewhere. And I looked at them, and I said, “They really don’t have much in them that’s very interesting.” Most of it is a repeat of what’s in the daily newspaper. So all of a sudden I thought my paper here in Stamford, Connecticut only uses about 10 of the King Features. King Features is the largest syndicate in the world. It’s syndicated all over the world. They have 140 features that they syndicate, and my local paper, as I said, only uses ten of them. That leaves 130 features that are available, and they’re all famous writers and cartoonists and puzzle writers and so forth. I thought, I could put out a great newspaper using all the excess that the local paper doesn’t use. And so I started this newspaper, this magazine. It started as a newspaper. Now it’s a magazine. And it’s full-color, 40 pages, and we sell advertising to make money.
ANDELMAN: Wow.
WALKER: Each issue brings in about $20,000. Well, that’s not bad.
ANDELMAN: Sounds like something you could spread out around the country, too.
WALKER: King Features puts it all together for me. I just tell them where the ads go.
ANDELMAN: Now, you don’t sound like a guy who has any intention of slowing down.
WALKER: No. I thought of a new comic strip yesterday morning, and I haven’t even got anybody to look at it yet so it’s not doing us any good.
ANDELMAN: Oh my goodness.
WALKER: I did about 15 gags of it for us, and I’m still waiting for my editors. I have a son that works with me here in the office. His name is Neal. He also does all my drawings for the foreign markets. I give him the gags, and he does the drawing. They print them. Beetle’s the number one comic book in Scandinavia, and they just can’t get enough work. They reprint everything I’ve got, and they need at least that much more to fill up the comic books. So I have to have somebody working on those things all the time.
ANDELMAN: You came up with a new strip idea. How different would a strip by you be today than it was 40 or 50 years ago?
WALKER: I don’t know. I just sort of do what I like and wait and see if anybody else likes it. I don’t know that this is ever going to come to fruition because it seems like I’m always thinking. I’ve got about 10 comic strip ideas in my drawer right now that have either been rejected by me or rejected by the syndicates.
ANDELMAN: The young guys who are gonna hear this interview are gonna be shocked that a guy with your experience still gets rejections from the syndicate.
WALKER: Yeah. I took some stuff in to the syndicate a few years ago, and the editor says, “Mort, we got enough of your stuff.” And I said, “But my stuff is the stuff that’s selling!” “Beetle,” “Hi & Lois,” you take “Blondie” and “Hagar the Horrible,” which I worked on. Those are the top-selling strips they’ve got. And all the new ones that they try last for maybe a year or two, and then they die. I said, “Why don’t you get along with my stuff?” Well, they look at my age, and they think How many more years do we have for you? So I don’t know. I can’t stop it, though.
ANDELMAN: Well, what hope is there for a new cartoonist coming up if an experienced veteran like yourself can’t get a new strip going?
WALKER: Well, look at the strip called “Zits.” That’s a brand-new strip and boy, it’s going great guns. I like it very much. Very well drawn, gags are good, everything. If you got the stuff, you’ll make it.
ANDELMAN: I wasn’t gonna go that way right now, but that was something Ray wanted me to ask you about. What do you think of the direction that present-day cartoonists are headed? Are there any particular strips that you like right now?
WALKER: There are a lot of them I like, but I guess about half of them I don’t. And usually, it’s because they’re hard to read, I don’t get the gags, the drawing is confusing, or it’s something that I’m not that interested in. I think a lot of them make the mistake of doing gags about animals or robots or something like that, or bugs. People are interested in people. And I try to create characters that everybody can relate to. Everybody knows a Beetle Bailey. Everybody knows a Sarge. Everybody knows a General Halftrack or Miss Buxley. And it’s funny how often in my fan mail, like yesterday, I got a letter, and somebody said, “Your favorite character is Cosmo. Can you send me a picture of Cosmo?” And I’m thinking, Cosmo, I only use him maybe once a month. I don’t know. It’s interesting.
ANDELMAN: You mention “Zits.” Are there others that you like particularly?
WALKER: Well, of course, “Hagar” is one of my favorites. And “Mother Goose and Grimm,” I always get a laugh out of that. Boy, I’d hate to start on all my favorites cause I got a lot of them.
ANDELMAN: Let me ask you about a couple of them specifically. What about “Get Fuzzy?” Is that one of the ones…you mention animals. I’m guessing maybe that’s one that you’re not so crazy about.
WALKER: I read it about half the time, and I don’t get that much out of it. I know a lot of people like it. Then I argue with people about it while they just say you just don’t get it. So I think that there’s an appeal level that some people have for certain strips that I don’t have or other people don’t have. It’s an individual thing.
ANDELMAN: What about “Pearls Before Swine”? That’s a very different strip, generationally speaking.
WALKER: I read it. A lot of times I get a laugh out of it. I find it a little confusing, and I don’t relate to it as well as I do a strip like “Zits.” Altogether we have 10 children. It’s a second marriage for both of us, and we have 15 grandchildren. I can see all my children in that strip. That’s the way they act, and it’s amusing to me the way they treat their parents and everything. I can relate to it.
ANDELMAN: Does it bother you in “Pearls” that sometimes the attacks on like “Family Circus,” for example, or other strips? Does that bother you, or does that amuse you?
WALKER: I don’t think it’s an attack cause he’s used Beetle Bailey in his strip. I always write him and thank him.
ANDELMAN: Mark Tatulli, this is one of the things he had wanted me to ask you. He wondered if you had ever read “LIO” and what you thought of it.
WALKER: I don’t see it.
ANDELMAN: Oh, you don’t?
WALKER: I get three papers everyday, and it’s not in any one of those. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it.
ANDELMAN: Mark will be disappointed, but I appreciate you being honest about it.
WALKER: Well, I’ll look for it. I just got back from Ohio, and it wasn’t in that paper. So I just don’t know.
ANDELMAN: Let me ask you about something that’s pretty close to your heart, and then we’ll move on to some of the questions that Ray had for you. Since the Cartoon Museum closed in Boca Raton a few years ago, I know you’ve devoted a great deal of time and energy and money, for that matter, to finding a new home. The last time we spoke, which was probably about three years ago, maybe four, it looked like you were heading toward the Empire State Building. And I was wondering if you could update us on what the status of the project is.
WALKER: We got killed there, and it was very unfair. We had a contract to go to the Empire State Building, and as a result of the contract, we went out, and we hired a staff of people and fundraisers. And we spent about half a million dollars preparing to move in there. Suddenly, we got a notice from the owner, who I’d been dealing with, that they had to cancel the contract because they have another attraction on the second floor called “Skyride,” which is a simulated helicopter ride over Manhattan. They sell their tickets. They were gonna sell our tickets. Instead of rent, we would split the profits. They figured that each one of us, they’d make three and a half million, and we’d make three and a half million. I said, “No more fundraising for me!” It was a perfect deal, I thought. And the Skyride people said, “We don’t want the competition. If you sell the museum tickets, we’ll sue you.” And so they cancelled our contract. They said, “But we’ll give you a cut rate in rent, and we’ll only charge you $850,000 a year in rent.” They just killed all of our sponsors, all of the people that were gonna give us money. They just figured we’d never make it, and so we’re out of business. Not only that, but they kept our $185,000 in security deposit.
ANDELMAN: You must’ve been crushed when that fell apart.
WALKER: It just killed us. We had no more people who were gonna give us money and no place to go. I had lent the museum $400,000, and I just couldn’t go on doing that.
ANDELMAN: Wow. And so where does the project stand now? Is there anything you can tell us?
WALKER: We have a new home for it, but I can’t announce it yet.
ANDELMAN: Okay. But there is something in the works.
WALKER: Yes.
ANDELMAN: Do you know when you might have something to reveal?
WALKER: They’re supposed to have a meeting on the 15th to discuss it. We’ve looked at the new headquarters, which are beautiful, and we haven’t had a board meeting on it yet. So that’s the reason they told me not to announce it yet.
ANDELMAN: Let’s go to some of the questions that Ray Billingsley had. You guys have known each other a long time.
WALKER: He used to hang out. When he was a kid, he used to hang out at the museum.
ANDELMAN: Is that right?
WALKER: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: Oh, so you do go back a ways with him.
WALKER: Oh yeah. He was just a teenager, and he was a very talented young man and very nice and everything. We formed a friendship, and we’ve been together. I’ve made speeches in his behalf and so forth. He’s a very nice guy.
ANDELMAN: Ray sent me an email and said, “You’ve got to talk to Mort for Mr. Media.” Ray’s interview was one of the most popular that’s ever run on the Mr. Media site so I have to bow to his advice on this. One of the things that Ray wanted to know was who was your first influence as a cartoonist?
WALKER: I think that it was probably “Moon Mullins.” Frank Willard was the cartoonist. We used to get the Sunday paper on the front porch, and my father would ask me to go down and get it. And I’d bring it back, and I’d get in bed with him, and he’d read the funnies to me. And when he read “Moon Mullins,” he started to laugh until tears came down his cheeks, and I just got the biggest kick out of that, seeing somebody laugh like that. And I can even remember specific strips that he read to me. And I think it influenced me and influenced my style of humor and characterizations and everything. I think that was my earliest influence.
ANDELMAN: Do you think you’ve always been trying to make your dad laugh?
WALKER: Yeah. Well, it’s a nice thing to do for people. In fact, I do it all the time anyway. I go to the grocery store, for instance, and Cathy goes down one aisle, I go down another aisle. Then I can’t find her again. I’m looking around, and the manager comes up and says, “Can I help you? What are you looking for?” And I go, “I’m looking for my wife. What aisle do you keep wives in?” And my wife says, “Can’t you ever go out without trying to make everybody laugh?”
ANDELMAN: Or trying to develop material for a strip?
WALKER: Yeah.
ANDELMAN: Would we recognize your dad as a character in any of your work over the years or other family members for that matter?
WALKER: I don’t think my father was in there, but a lot of my friends were. Beetle Bailey’s based on my old high school buddy and college roommate, and his name was David Hornaday. And he was a big, lanky, lazy kind of guy, and everybody liked him and everything like that. And he was just goofing off all the time. I remember I went by to pick him up to play golf one day, and his mother said, “David’s still in bed. You gotta go wake him up.” I went up, and I shook him in bed, and I said, “David, David, wake up! We’ve got a tee-off time at nine.” He just grabbed his pillow, turned his back to me, and went on sleeping. I took his bed, and I turned it upside down. He fell out on the floor and just reached out and got his pillow and went on to sleep. I said, “David, you ought to be in a comic strip.”
ANDELMAN: So does he collect residuals on that?
WALKER: Well, he’s dead now.
ANDELMAN: Oh.
WALKER: They used to play him up in his paper back in St. Joseph, Missouri, all the time on the front page. And I said, “Does it bother you?” He said, “A little bit, but I like it okay.” I don’t know that you’d really like being compared to Beetle, but…
ANDELMAN: Well, he’s gonna live on in some way, right? Did I read that Lt. Fuzz was actually closest to you at the time?
WALKER: I based it on my experiences when I first became a lieutenant in the Army. And I was so impressed with myself being an officer, and I was only 19 years old at the time. So using my official status, I walked into our sergeant’s office, and it was all cluttered with used coffee cups and papers and litter on the floor. And I said, “Sergeant let’s get this place cleaned up,” and he looked at me. Instead of saluting, he said, “Oh, knock it off, Lieutenant.” So I based some of my experiences of trying to be an officer on Lieutenant Fuzz.
Click Here to Keep Reading!
©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Beetle Bailey, Curtis, Dik Browne, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, LIO, Mark Tatulli, Moon Mullins, Mort Walker, National Cartoon Museum, Pearls Before Swine, Ray Billingsley, Zits
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