Bill Watterson

 

It's been almost 20 years since Bill Watterson decided to cease publication on his beloved comic strip CALVIN AND HOBBES. I feel like Watterson created the last quality newspaper comic strip. I suppose that  statement is debatable. However, that's the way I felt and still feel. It was well drawn. It was well written. And it made me laugh. Three important elements when you are creating something that is SUPPOSED TO BE funny. And which is not always the case in many strips.

 

Watterson was basically king of the world during that time. He even pushed to have a full page for his Sunday strip so the quality wouldn't suffer. And he got his way! Which earned the ire of fellow creators such as Bill Keane of Family Circus.

 

I shouldn't speak ill of the dead (but I will anyways) but Calvin and Hobbes is a better strip than Family Circus ever was. Besides, why need extra space to have Billy running around in his little dotted path around the house and backyard to whatever crap he was supposed to be doing. Or a comic drawn by Billy (eternally age 7) because Bill Keane took the day off to shotgun a 40 of Old English with Jim Davis and Cathy Guisewite.

 

It was a surprise to everyone when Bill Watterson decided to bring his comic to an end on December 31st 1995. A decision that more than irritated many people. Although possibly not Bill Keane who I hear was nursing a hangover from a night of beer pong and jello shooters with Andy Capp creator Reg Smythe from the rumor I just made up now.

 

I actually respect Watterson for his decision. Sometimes it's good to end something while people still miss it rather than when you've rehashed the same joke like so many comics that came before Calvin and Hobbes.

 

At the time he stated his interests had shifted in a different direction. And I respect that too. I think it would be a greater tragedy to have had him continue to create Calvin and Hobbes strips only to resent the very characters he created.

 

Not to mention characters who are STILL beloved by millions. Not bad for a guy who made a decision NOT TO merchandise his characters in any way.

 

Which made Bill Watterson's new strip such a welcomed sight for me. He has done very little comic work since the end of Calvin and Hobbes seeing his latest strip was delightful in its simplicity. It reminded me very much of George Herriman's Krazy Kat stylistically. But it was so recognizably Bill Watterson.

 

I'm not sure if this is heralding a series of new comics for Bill Watterson. If not, it's still good to have this one.

Have a talented kiddo? Sign them up for my Cartooning Class!!

Some very good instructors and very good friends seen in the image above.

The class is about a couple weeks away. But there is still time to sign them up for my sign them up for my  Saturday Cartooning Class for 8 to 10 year olds.

What you can expect from this class is ALL things cartoon. Funny animal, superheroes, pop art, character design, comic book art and comic strip art. I even throw in lessons on how to create drawn animation just for good measure.

Although I do incorporate lessons that teach students how to draw established cartoon characters, I try and encourage them to create their own original characters. Or if they DO have a character they created outside the class, I encourage them to work with that character on projects.

I'm even known to create characters on the spot for them to do a cartoon style story with. Some of the results I've found highly entertaining and even more inventive than I could have possibly imaged.

You can either stop by the Worcester Art Museum when an archaeological team finally unearth the roads from all the snow we got last night and today or you can sign them up by clicking on the link below:

Drawing For Cartoons 8-10 years

Classes can fill up quck so don't delay!!

Spring offerings at WAM

Obviously an older photo because when was the last time you remember Jim Davis ACTUALLY drawing Garfield?

Spring is just around the corner... well... my Spring Classes are just around the corner. This year I will be teaching a Saturday Morning Cartooning Class at the Worcester Art Museum for ages 8 to 10 years.

The class is students who are both new to drawing cartoons and those who draw cartoons all the time. It's also a great opportunity for students not only work with characters they have already created but also create new characters. The biggest thing I encourage students who take classes like mine, or Andy Fish's or Scott Nelson's cartooning classes is don't just think of these as characters to use just in the class. Create characters you can use outside of class.

And basically I'm going to go through ALL THINGS cartoon in this class. Comic strips, comic books and cartoon animation. We'll be doing it all!! Or at least all I can fit into eight weeks.

Click on the link to sign up today:

Drawing For Cartoons: 8-10 Years

Pogo: We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

I have probably mentioned several times in this blog how much of a fan I am of Walt Kelly and his comic creation Pogo. I'm not sure how much many young readers would understand a great deal of the humor of the strip nowadays. It was very much a strip rooted in the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. Much of the political humor is based in the McCarthy era and unless you're studying that time period in a history class, I'm not sure how much a young reader would understand the jokes.

Berke Breathed's Bloom County can be seen the same way. Another favorite strip of mine that is very rooted in the 1980's politics and pop culture.

However, it's Kelly's artwork (and Breathed's as well) that transcends time.

A great deal due to the fact that Kelly started out as an artist at Walt Disney from January 6, 1936 to September 12, 1941. And looking at his designs for Pogo Possum and many of his friends in the Okefenokee Swamp, you can definitely see the Disney influence. Mostly in the way he draws the eyes on his character. That was very Disney. He actually contributed to animations like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Dumbo and The Reluctant Dragon.

Ah, well, it's no use prevaricating about the bush. Getting to my initial story (which includes the image above) I had recently gone on a little day trip with Sydney up to Concord MA when I found out my Thursday night class had been canceled due to the weather. We ended up poking around some really great shops one of which was this really cute little book shop called The Barrow Book Store. It was a neat little place with that great smell of used books in the air.

Well, as we were poking around I happened to see in the art and humor section a copy of We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us sitting there on the shelf. My eyes instantly lit up. You can ask Sydney and she will attest to this.

This book is rare to say the least!! If you want to see how rare it is, log onto Amazon.com and you will see the cheapest copy you can get of it starts out at $26.95!!

AND HERE IT WAS SELLING FOR $8!!!!

So naturally I had to get it!!

For those unfamiliar with that phrase coined by Pogo, it was originally for an anti-pollution campaign started by Walt Kelly for the first Earth Day.


Later Kelly had planned on doing it as a short animation with partner and future wife Selby Daley. Kelly had been greatly dissatisfied with Chuck Jones's treatment of his characters in A Pogo Special Birthday Special. Kelly had actually contributed voices for some of the characters as well as some of the story. However, he had mentioned that the story he had written had been completely altered.

I admit to be someone who really liked the special (being an admirer of both Kelly and Jones). And to be fair to Chuck Jones, he got the characters of Pogo closer to the look and the feel of the strip than many comic strips turned animation like Heathcliff or Dennis the Menace in the 1980's.

Kelly actually started doing most of the animation himself. A great deal of the time from his bed since he was very sick at the time. Kelly even recorded many of the voices as well for the animation.

The cartoon ultimately went unfinished due to Kelly's ill heath. However, most of the storyboard was used as the basis for the first half of the book version. With the second half being a collection of Kelly's daily Pogo strips that came out at that time.

The 1960's to the 1970's are probably some of Kelly's best artwork. Not only with his own characters but also with many of his caricatures. Likenesses J. Edgar Hoover, Spiro Agnew and George Mitchell all appear in the volume.

If you're ever able to obtain a copy of it, I highly recommend you pick it up. It's a great book and a portal into a bygone time. And probably some of Kelly's finest work to date in my opinion!!

Bud Sagendorf

Nobody ever really got Popeye just right after EC Segar died. But Bud Sagendorf got it pretty close. But to be fair to any artists who followed Segar, I don't think that Segar himself would have been able to get Popeye right either even if he had lived. There was a lot going against both Popeye and Segar himself.

Namely the ever ominous form of William Randolph Hearst. According to the book Popeye: The First Fifty Years, Bud Sagendorf who had been Segar's assistant on the Popeye strips for many years recounts how Hearst demanded: "Popeye is loved by the children of America... Stop his swearing... Stop his brutality... Make him respectable".

Segar was furious and was quoted in saying "The fun will be gone. There's nothing funny about a sissy sailor!"

What makes all this worse, W.R. Hearst was a complete hypocrite. One one hand here he was acting like some shining night for morality and decency in America. He was also the person who started the smear campaign against marijuana.

But on the other hand, he was having an opened affair with actress Marion Davies while married to his wife Millicent.

So, a foul-mouthed sailor who occasionally punched a horse and people smoking marijuana for recreational use was highly immoral. But cheating on your wife is completely fine.

Not that I endorse the legalization of marijuana in any way. I'm just saying it smacks of hypocrisy to me. However, what Hearst doesn't mention is the fact that his campaign demonizing marijuana has really nothing to do with a moral issue. But the fact that people smoking it for recreational use cut into the hemp crop which he used to make his newspapers with.

Again, someone in power who is no better than a schoolyard bully. But I digress...



Nobody has really captured the spirit of the original Popeye strips since Segar's death in 1938. However, Bud Sangedorf's long run with the character is a definite close second.

The stories in Sangedorf's strips don't have that charm of the Segar strips. Segar was the master of creating these ongoing stories that borderline surreal. But those years as Segar's assistant do help him out with his approach to the character. The stories in the Sagendorf Popeye are more along the lines of the one-liner gags that newspaper strips have fallen into over the years.

Most comic strips seem to fall into the same formula. First Panel: setting up the joke. Second (and occasionally Third) Panel: Filler. Third (and occasionally Fourth) Panel: The Punchline.

And for the most part, even though it wasn't the same Popeye as Segar's, Sagendorf remained truer to the character than any of the animations created by Famous Studio, King Feature and Hanna-Barbera. Although, HB seemed to use a very watered-down version of Sagendorf's Popeye for their Saturday Morning Cartoon series.

I have a fondness for Sagendorf's character design for Popeye and the Thimble Theater cast primarily because that was my first introduction to the one-eyed (and thanks to the crappy Famous Studio character design occasionally two-eyed) sailor.

It was Sagendorf's character design of Popeye that adorned my lunchbox in kindergarten. I was constantly trying to copy the images on that lunchbox when I would draw Popeye, Olive, Wimpy and Bluto (sometimes called Brutus).


There is a great book I picked up at Worcester's one and only Pop Culture Emporium That's Entertainment called Popeye: The First Fifty Years. It's not a bad book loaded with Sagendorf's interpretations of Popeye and the rest of the cast as well as a few of Segar's original strips.

If you happen to find yourself an inexpensive copy I highly recommend you pick it up. It's particularly good if you have a child who loves to draw. The will have a great time trying to draw the characters in the book.

Popeye Blog

Let me set up the scene for you all. It's between 1978 and 1980. Within that stretch of time you could find me (roughly between the age of 3 to 5 years old) planted all glassy-eyed and slack-jacked in front of the television set on Saturday mornings watching Hanna-Barbera's The All-New Popeye Hour. Probably on CBS. It seemed like CBS had cornered the market on Saturday Morning Television during that time I could be wrong though but it doesn't matter.

I had mentioned it before, but between the ages of three and and five I was all about Popeye. I owned the lunchbox in the picture above. I think Popeye was probably the second character I learned to draw really well as a young lad. The very first was Fred Flintstone.

I loved the cartoon and I loved the movie starring Robin Williams. Even though I did not enjoy the HB incarnation of Popeye when I watched it years later, the movie still stands the test of time for me and I still love to watch it.




If you hate the character of Popeye it's most likely you were introduced to the later Famous Studio, King Feature or Hanna-Barbera versions of the one-eyed sailor. However, Famous Studio would periodically draw him with both eyes opened. It seems the thought of a toothless sailor with one of his eyes shut permanent wasn't cute enough for Famous Studios saccharine standards.

Like I said in my previous blog, I have always loved the Fleischer Studios version of Popeye. That one is still probably the best version of the character to date as far as animation is concerned.

But I've been introducing myself to the original EC Segar cartoons of Popeye and his Thimble Theater friends for the first time. And to be honest, as much as I love and adore the Fleischer animations, the original comic strips are even better than the animated Popeye.



The comics page today is a shell of what it used to be like as far as both the artwork and the stories they told are concerned. There were no real set rules in the original Popeye comics that we have today. There were no spinach and no Bluto or Brutus as he is sometimes referred to. There was no real formula to the storylines of the Popeye strips. None of the eat spinach to pound Bluto (or Brutus) to save Olive that we know Popeye for today.

The storylines are absurdly funny as I found in Fantagraphic Books first collection of the Popeye strips. And what I love most is the dialogue Popeye uses like "I'll lay ya's among the sweet pea's" and "I socked him permanent". Which most likely translates that he killed whoever he hit.

Two of my favorite strips from the first collection was one where Olive is trying to get Popeye to stop fighting so she makes him count to 1000 to calm him and not hit Johnny Doodle. Some dopey guy Olive was fancying over Popeye. Well, he goes the week and finally when everyone is sitting down to dinner Popeye finally gets to 1000 and hits Johnny Doodle.

The other cartoon I really liked was one where Popeye and his buddy Castor Oyle (Olive's brother) are going fishing and some big jerk starts paying tricks on Castor to ruin his time fishing so to get back Castor tells the guy that sneaking up behind Popeye and yelling BOO! and watch him run. The big jerk does just that and Popeye runs up to the guy hitting him in the face saying "I'll BOO ya! Blow me down I'll BOO ya!" which then Castor says to the guy smiling "I forgot to tell you which way he'd run, mister!"

Another great thing about Segar's art. If you're meant to hate a character he went out of his way to make the character look like someone you would love to punch ;-)

Reading the volume has made me appreciate both Popeye as well as how well Jules Feiffer. What amused me the most was reading the Sappo comic strips that went along with the regular Thimble Theater ones that had an artist named Mr. Splat who seemed very similar to the Mr. Geezil character from the movie who had an undying hatred for Wimpy. Both characters were constantly saying "PHOOEY!" after every sentence.

For the longest time I thought the movie was the origin of Popeye until I read the Fantagraphic collection of Popeye cartoons. It just shows what an enjoyable film Robert Altman produced and how true it was to the spirit of the original comics.

Again, for those of you who hate Popeye, you might have just been watching and reading the wrong things over the years. Pick up Fantagraphics coffee table collections of the original Segar cartoons.

If you don't like Popeye then... well... I think you might have issues ;-)