NEWSPAPER COMICS' GOLDEN AGE

Good old Milt Gross! That's his work above. Sometimes I think the man was incapable of making an unfunny drawing.

And Rube Goldberg (above), cartoonist extraordinaire! I love the way he thinks of excuses for people to hold their own heads, hands and knees... just what you weren't supposed to do in polite society. The thinking at the time was that poses like that made you look dumb and low class.

Here (above) Milt Gross tries his hand at the same thing. I love the opening pose with the raised shoulders and clutched arms. How do you like the mustachioed head with hair greased back?

I also like the shaking fist in the middle drawing. The pointing finger on the other hand is the perfect counterpoint. He's no doubt pointing at his own image in the mirror, but it (probably unintentionally) also looks like he's pointing at his elbow, as if he was making a dirty gesture of some kind.


  Back to Rube Goldberg (above). I like the way he used to draw strange heads then think of funny biographies to justify them.

Geez, this was drawn over a hundred years ago!

MILT GROSS AND RUBE GOLDBERG

Two of my favorite cartoonists were Milt Gross and Rube Goldberg. Milt Gross often gave top flight poses to all the players in the frame, both the aggressors and the reactors. 

Rube Goldberg staged everybody in the same shot too, but frequently gave the best poses to the reactors, as in the in the strip above.

Okay, he sometimes gave the aggressor (above) the best poses, but you you see what I'm getting at.

I've been influenced by Goldberg so in photo stories, like the kind I do on this blog, I usually give the emphasis to the listener.

 Here's excerpts from a photo story I did in June, 2009. The girl (played by me) is surprised when her stupid ex-boyfriend (off screen) approaches her in a restaurant. I'll leave out the dialogue.

 She humors him, hoping he'll go away.

 But he doesn't.

He says that, now that he knows she hangs out at this restaurant, he'll hang out there too.

 Yes sir, they'll be inseparable from now on.

 The boyfriend bids goodbye for now...

 ...but adds that he'll be back.

 Well, it goes on. You can link to the whole thing on the side bar. The story's called "The Ex-boyfriend."

The odd thing is that, despite my affection for reactive acting, the animation I worked on usually put the emphasis on the speaker.

That's because I like to work with aggressive characters. They're appealing. The audience naturally wants to see what they're doing, and so do I. Even so, I had a lot of Goldbergian fun working on the reactive scenes and I wish I could have done more of them.

BTW: the last two pictures above aren't mine.

DO ARTISTS HAVE TO WORK IN A CONTEMPORARY STYLE?

Gee, I like Milt Gross. The picture he did above is so typical of his approach. It's cartoony, earthy, intellectually challenging, skillful, and it radiates happiness and good vibes.

For comparison here's (above) a frame grab from one of the better Post Modern cartoons. Cartoons with a PM look aren't exactly to my taste, even when they're as fun and creative as this show. Gross's work seems to be the product of a noble soul who's seen the dark side of life and managed to find humor in it. Post-Modern styles seem to be the product of artists who's aim is simply to be "nice" and entertaining. That's the feeling I get, anyway. 

Maybe it's just me but I'd feel strange showing a "nice" cartoon to someone who's been unemployed for a year, or to a G.I. in Afghanistan, or to someone who's been disappointed in love. Nice is fine but it seems like a narrow focus.  

On the other hand, what's wrong with being nice? I have a friend who uses nice to capture elusive qualities like charm and youth and femininity and I'd be horrified if something I said made her stop. Maybe I'm just out of sync with my time...a toothless fogey who angrily shakes his cane at passing airplanes. 

In my own defense I'll digress to a bit of history. I'm guessing that if you asked the average person living in 1968 which contemporary artist exemplified that era, the answer you'd get would be Peter Max (above). Even the Beatles favored that style. His was "The 60s Style."

Fast forward to 2014 and the artist everybody (or at least every comics fan) associates with the 60s isn't Peter Max, it's Robert Crumb (above). That's interesting because Crumb himself was a 1910s, 20s, 30s and 40s man. You don't see much of Peter Max in his work (above). His subject matter was highly contemporary, but his artistic influences were older.

Ditto John K.  John defines the modern funny style yet two of his biggest early influences were Bob Clampett and Hanna Barbera, people who did their best work in the 40s. late 50s and early 60s. Once again, the subject matter was contemporary but the influences were older. I hasten to add that Both Crumb and John developed startlingly original styles...I'm only talking about their early influences here.

So, is it necessary to draw in a "nice" Post Modern style in order to be a mirror to your time in 2014? No, that's not what John and Crumb did.  Of course, there's always room for something good, no matter what the style...even if it's Post Modern.

BTW: Thinking about Peter Max reminds me of what I like about the man. That blue picture of the Earth above is beautiful and deserves to be remembered. Most people aren't aware that after his psychedelic period he took up abstract painting, and some of the canvases aren't half bad.

What do you think of this one (above)? My friends say it's kitsch, and although it flirts with that, it still succeeds in making me think about the mystery of color.

Max didn't design Yellow Submarine but you can see that his ideas exerted an influence. I think The Blue Meanie was the best villain in an animated feature in the last half century.

[Thanks to a commenter who identified the Yellow Submarine designer as Heinz Edelmann. I just looked him up on google and was much impressed.]

WHY ISN'T THIS PICTURE FUNNY?

Let me rephrase that. It is funny...Milt Gross did it and he's incapable of drawing anything that's not funny...let me ask instead, "How could this picture have been even more funny?" 

The answer? It could have been more funny with the addition of witnesses, as Gross originally drew it. Everything is made more funny when your goof is seen by somebody else. That way your injury is compounded by humiliation.

Interesting, eh?

SHOULD CARTOONS END WITH A MESSAGE?

I'm always amazed when Saturday Morning cartoons end with an ethical lesson. I mean the cartoon itself is often incredibly unimaginative and intellectually deadening. It's pretty clear that this celebration of mediocrity is the real message of the show, regardless of what's tacked on at the end.

TV producers aren't the bad bad guys. They're just putting on what they think the public wants. It's the public that needs to be educated about cartoons and I think I'll take a shot at that right now. Sorry if I appear to be preaching to the choir.

  

Good, funny cartoons don't need a message at the end. The whole cartoon is a positive message.

First and foremost, a good cartoon always stimulates the intellect of the viewer, even when the subject matter is stupidity.  In the cartoon above Rube Goldberg makes everybody look hilariously awkward but he manages to convey real sentiment as well. The two friends at the top and the married couple below are genuinely touching. This is the power real cartooning has. It can convey deep meaning at the same time it clowns around. 

Even the color in a good cartoon is educational. I look at this creek BG above and I'm filled with wonder about the beauty of nature, and of shadow and silhouettes and hidden places. I'm reminded that spots of color in relative darkness can be awesomely mysterious and satisfying. Backgrounds like this remind us of the ability of subtle things to amaze.

Good cartoon color is immensely stimulating, all by itself. An artist will deliberately take two colors that clash and make them work together by adding a third color that relates them. When you first see them you rebel and want to say, "Hey, you can't do that!" but before you can get the thought out, you realize that the color does work. Improbable as it is, the darn thing works. That means the picture has educated you, made you more graphically sophisticated.

It's silly to take a cartoon (above) that never even attempts to do anything like that and praise it to the skies because it has a single positive message tacked on to the end. The cartoon itself is the message. By the time the fake message comes at the end, the real message has found its mark, and that message is sometimes: "Kids, never try to achieve. Do the easy thing. Let your mind go to sleep." 

Funny cartoon drawings are often the most stimulating.  The dog above is silly and hilarious for sure, but the hilarity forces you to pay more attention to the animal, and when you do you realize that the dog is the very essence of playful good will, energy and loyalty. The drawing exudes life force and seems to say, "Isn't it great to be alive?" It makes you want to be happy and make others happy. It may take a writer a whole book to achieve that, but a cartoonist can do it in a few strokes. 

Cartoon drawings often get their effect by innovating or calling our attention to something we'd overlooked before. Here (above) the artist reminds us of the graphic nature of our own bodies, how we ourselves are designs which can be manipulated. Just thinking about this makes me want to draw. Good cartoons create artists, and people who appreciate art.

Can good cartoon drawings make kids think? You bet they can! The two hand drawings above certainly make me think. They increase my awareness of hands as an expressive instrument and fill me with awe to think that the human mind can find such a wealth of possibility in such a commonplace thing as a hand.

This drawing (above) isn't just lampooning one individual. It asks questions about the nature of femininity and beauty. It applies sophisticated design to a joke, and because the drawing is funny the questions it brings up stick in our minds.

There's something about this picture (above) that's...I don't know what to call it...mischievous.  It makes me want to acquire skill so I can play jokes on people too. The skill of the humorous artist makes me want to hone my own skill, even if it's not related to art. 

It's the job of artists to raise the bar in society. Our achievement in a public forum like TV should inspire others to be good at the things they do. But you can't inspire people if the cartoon is bland, even with a message tacked on to the end.

This (above) is a complex drawing disguised as a simple one. Here two worlds collide. It says a lot about the gulf between different types of people, and encourages us to see the clash of worlds in a humorous light, which is not a bad lesson to teach a kid. The little guy is made to seem rigid and ridiculous for disdaining the offer of friendship. No lengthy lecture. It's accomplished painlessly, in one funny drawing. 

Should cartoons have messages tacked on? I can't imagine why. Good cartoons by their nature are already full of messages, even before the end comes along, and they're more nuanced and sophisticated than the phony, tacked-on kind.

THREE MILT GROSS HANDS

Milt Gross does terrific hands. Usually they're not as detailed as this ginger root with finger nails (above) but this is a close-up so it gets the royal treatment.

Here's (above) a knobby, pointy hand that manages to be more interesting than whatever it's pointing at. With funny hands like this to learn from why are we wasting our time drawing normal, boring hands? We're cartoonists! We're supposed to be inventive!

Here's a dandy's hand. Maybe it's a deaf dandy's hand because it looks like it's executing sign language. I wonder if sign language poses could be helpful for drawing funny hands?

I love this hand because it suggests a whole set of mannerisms and a character to go with it.

Sometimes interesting hands require interesting, quirky arms like the ones on this Ted Geisel drawing (above). It's great how a single hand can suggest the way a whole character should be drawn. That's because the hand was non-standard. Drawing standard body parts dulls the imagination.