SEIBOLD, SEGAR & HERRIMAN

I spent a few hours this weekend catching up with my comics reading. I started with Fantagraphics' Popeye series, the one with Olive Oyl on the cover. Wow! What a revelation! If you're a cartoonist laboring under the difficulty of creating gritty, earthy, and appealing characters, you could find no better inspiration than these E. C. Segar strips from 1930-32. Click to enlarge.

Olive Oyl's a great character. Time after time she dumps Popeye for someone better, then has to crawl back when it doesn't work out. Seegar evidently believed that some people are just meant for each other, and no amount of effort can change that.

I also read some of "The Kat Who Walked in Beauty," a collection of Herriman's Saturday pages from 1920. Sorry the sample strip (above) is split in into two parts. The source was too big for my scanner to take it in all at once.

This stuff is pure genius! Maybe modern readers have trouble with it because current humor is all about punchlines and hip attitude. In Herriman's day it had more to do with funny drawings, weird situations, ambience, parody of formal illustration, and silly staging. Anyway, if you've had trouble warming up to Herriman's Krazy Kat strips, but you're still curious to know why the man is so well-regarded, then this is the book for you. Buy it now, before it disappears.






The book calls these strips "panoramic." They're pretty long. Boy, some newspapers must have been as big as bed sheets!

I'm no historian, but surely Herriman was the co-inventer of the what we think of as the newspaper comic style. Herriman wasn't the first strip artist, but he must have been one of the first to work in a style which wasn't derived from book illustration and political cartoons. The style is truly funny and lends itself to infinite variety and expression.

The two pages above (fragmented, not related to each other) are from a graphic novel that's been around for years: "The Beauty Supply District" by Ben Katchor. I got it from the library for the art work and didn't even bother with the story. Now just an hour ago I discovered that the story might be worth reading after all, but it's too late...the book is due. I guess I'll have to take it out again.

Anyway, what attracted me were the backgrounds. They're so out in front that they completely overwhelm the characters, but you have to admit that they are interesting. It's funny that some artists are attracted to...to things. Artists like that can never tune out the environment and historical context. They're always aware of the door behind them, and the varnish on the table top. It would be fun to do a cartoon story where different characters get different background styling, depending on their personalities.

The last artist I spent time with over the weekend was J. Otto Seibold, the kids book illustrator. He did the Mr. Lunch and Olive the Reindeer books. That's him above.


I found this (above) unrelated picture next to Seibold's on the net. I reproduce it here for the edification of the men on the site.

Sorry for the digression. Anyway, Seibold has an interesting style. The book jacket says he was the first kids book illustrator to do his books on the computer. He works in that wall-eyed post-modern style, but he manages to make it his own.

His earlier books (above) were colored conservatively.

Now he takes big risks with the color (above), and it's paying off. Seibold was a background concept artist on Pixar's "Monsters Inc." I wonder why they didn't use any of his architectural ideas. Seibold does films of his own, but the ones I saw always missed the mark. I wish I could have directed one of them, even though it's far from my style.

Seibold lives in San Francisco with his wife, author (I can't read the first name)___Vivian. She has a store that sells Seibold-type clothes and pictures, and which has interesting mannequins (above) throughout.

Seibold's much-imitated style is everywhere now (the picture above was done by another artist). Seibold is only one of many artists who do Seibold...but he manages to stay out in front of the pack.

DO YOU HAVE THE LATEST JIM SMITH SKETCHBOOK?

I feel like such an idiot! Jim had a new sketchbook out and I didn't realize it until I saw a copy of it at the House of Secrets comic store in Burbank. My review: It's a winner! If you're an artist it's a must have!


I don't know how Jim does it. He's the only cartoonist I know who can make perspective (above) funny.

For Jim perspective isn't just a tool that adds volume and drama, it's a major part of the joke. Perspective is an attribute that his characters have, like red hair or a big nose. Sometimes you get the feeling that they're embarrassed to have all those lumps and angles.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be Jim Smith, and see the world through eyes attuned to perspective.

Even a walk down the street (above) would be interesting.

Jim looks at his shoes.

Well, back to the world of flat. If you want to see more of Jim Smith's world, go to his blog and buy his book. It's on my links in the sidebar.

REAL CLIFF STERRET FURNITURE!

I don't know how many times I've heard cartoonists say that they wish they could live in a Cliff Sterret house. That's Cliff Sterret's work above, and I too would like to have a house (or at least a room) furnished like that. Come to think of it, I almost did.

In the early 80s there was a serious attempt to sell Cliff Sterret-type furniture. It started with a design studio in Milan called "Memphis," headed up by Ettore Sottsass. That's his studio's work above. Not everything in the photo is his best work, but you get the idea.

I remember thinking at the time that this comic-strip furniture wouldn't last forever, and that I'd better buy some stuff before it disappeared. Real Memphis furniture was out of my price range so I waited for cheaper knockoffs, but when they came the quality was lacking. Not only that but Memphis didn't always hit home runs. I kept waiting for knock-offs of the better works but they were a long time coming. Memphis took a big hit because of the timidity of furniture manufacturers, and Memphis's distaste for comfortable furniture.  

The Sterret influence was obvious to cartoonists, but I don't remember any art critic pointing it out. Critics were probably ignorant of cartoon styles. 

Try to deny that this vase (above) was influenced by Sterret!

Here's (above) some Memphis teapots. In this case the influence was probably Picasso or Picabia. It's funny how teapots are always on the front line of new design movements. I guess prototype ceramic pots are easier to make than steal cutlery.

This is my favorite Memphis design...the futuristic antler bookshelf painted with kid colors. I'd still like to have a shelf like this.

This sofa (above) would look great in a comic strip. I wonder why no newspaper artist of the 1980s  attempted to parody modern furniture styling in a strip. I mean parody it the way Sterret used to. Of course by the 80s the newspaper strips were almost as tiny as they are now. Maybe there was no room. 

Also, it looks like the sofa is made of cheap plywood with fabric stapled onto foam. Memphis had good ideas but you get the feeling that no one with real furniture know-how worked there. 

The designer of this table (above) must have channeled Sterret!

Sterret liked to design the patterns in draperies and chair covers, and so did Memphis. That's their work above.

Like I said, Memphis didn't always hit home runs. The chair above looks pretty uncomfortable. It would have looked great in a comic strip or a cartoon, though! 

ATLANTIS, LEMURIA (MU), HYPERBOREA

Like everybody else I'm curious about the stories of lost continents like Atlantis and Mu, and of lost civilizations like Hyperborea. During the hippie era there were lots of paperback books on this subject. Some hippies were obsessed with it.

I wonder if some of these books were reprints of books written by Germans in the 10s, 20s and 30s. Himmler in particular was a believer in these lost continents and was convinced that these places were inhabited by proto-Aryans.

In the late 30s he sent a famous expedition to Tibet, which he believed was formerly inhabited by refugees from Atlantis. These refugees created a warrior culture, the Aryans, which was unfortunately (he believed) tainted by Buddhism. That warrior culture spread out to places like India, Persia, and Germany. 

That's Ernst Schafer above, the guy who led the expedition.

Another picture of Schafer (above). That's him on the left. Notice the Indiana Jones-type pith helmet on the right with the SS symbol on the side.

Tibet (above) wasn't open to foreigners and getting in to measure skulls, look for artifacts, etc. was a chore. Tibetans were alternately hostile and friendly and were amused to find foreigners who thought they (the Tibetans) were a superior race.

A lot of these ideas were popularized by Hans Horbiger, who in turn was influenced by Madam Blavatsky, a 19th century mystic. Blavatsky's most famous book, "The Secret Doctrine" is available free on the internet somewhere.  I found it unreadable, but maybe you'll have better luck.

Different authors had different theories, but here's the one Himmler latched on to, The World Ice Theory. According to this idea the universe is characterized by the conflict of fire in the form of stars, and ice which covers many planetary bodies.  Somehow this conflict created ice spirits which emerged when a thunderbolt struck ice in the artic region of our own Earth. These spirits lived a civilized existence in a Northern land that came to be called Hyperborea.

Eventually the spirit creatures were driven out of their land by earthquakes, vulcanism, meteor strikes, etc., fled to Mexico and South America, and eventually ended up in Lemuria, a lost continent in the Pacific or in the Indian Ocean, depending on who you read.

 




The internet is full of maps with conflicting ideas about the location of Lemuria (above). In the map above I have no idea what the term "Cara Lines" and "Negroid Lines" mean, or why a sea was thought to have existed in the middle of South America. Somehow the Hyperborean spirit beings took on a human appearance at this time. 

 


Natural catastrophes made Lemuria sink beneath the sea and Aryan corruption and decadence made the situation worse. Most of the population was lost but a few hardy refugees managed to make their way to Atlantis (above) where they established a virtual Utopia. 

After a while, Atlantis (above) sunk too. Boy, Himmler's proto-Aryans weren't very lucky in their choice of places to live!

The nature of Atlantis changes according to the romantic ideals of the era that's considering it. The nazis attributed war-like racial theories to the Atlanteans, and the hippies attributed peaceful, pastoral natures to them.  In recent decades the flying saucer people made Atlantis their own.

Anyway, the refugees from Atlantis established themselves in Tibet. At this point they became what Himmler believed were full-blown Aryans. 

Here's (above) Ernst Schafer in a photo taken in 1992.

Here's the expedition's anthropologist, Hanns Beger (above) in a photo taken in 2001. The Tibet expedition only lasted for a year or two then both men returned to Germany, where they continued to work for the SS. Beger became an assistant to a concentration camp doctor who conducted torturous experiments on Jewish prisoners.  One of these men, I can't remember which one, got into a scrape on a train in 1942 and tried to strangle a man to death.

LEYENDECKER AND ROCKWELL

Boy, this recent Leyendecker book is a doosey! I can't believe how good this guy was! I didn't get the book when it came out last year because I thought the pictures overlapped with an earlier book that I had, but I was mistaken. There's some duplication, sure, but an awful lot of what's here is new to me.

Leyendecker has to be one of the manliest illustrators ever. I wish he was alive and working today. The world desperately needs to hear what he had to say. 

The text is fascinating. I heard that Leyendecker was gay, but I didn't know the details. That's his live-in lover, Charles A. Beach, above. Maybe that's also Beach on the book cover pictured at the top. 

Leyendecker met Beach when he was 17 and Beach was 29. Leyendecker was already fully professional and took on beach as a model. Little by little Beach insinuated himself into the artist's life. According to Norman Rockwell, Beach gradually ran the household. He lined up the models, bought the art supplies, paid the gardeners...by 1923 he'd nudged Leyendecker's sister aside and completely took over the artist's business affairs.

Beach sounds like the classic guest who wouldn't leave. Beach was a big guy and used to intimidate Leyendecker's family and friends, even his clients. He especially intimidated Leyendecker's brother, also an accomplished painter and collaborator, and even began taking credit for Leyendecker's paintings.  This is amazing since he didn't paint but simply helped to stretch the canvases, and other small tasks. Leyendecker didn't seem to mind. He thought Beach was funny.

Rockwell was a long-time friend of Leyendecker, but he detested Beach who he described as "a real parasite, like some huge, white, cold insect clinging to Joe's back. And stupid. I don't think I ever heard him say anything vaguely intelligent."

The book portrays Norman Rockwell as a weasel who pumped Leyendecker for information  on contacts and clients, then stole jobs from him. Rockwell was the intensely competitive younger artist who followed his idol around, imitated his swagger, and even moved to the same town to be near him.

The book alleges that Rockwell stole his approach to cover art from Leyendecker. Rockwell's use of white backgrounds with figures that overlap the text and borders was actually copied from Leyendecker's. Ditto Rockwell's holiday themes and Americana. Rockwell's style was so similar to his mentor's that some readers of The Post couldn't tell them apart.  You wouldn't get that from the ultra-manly pictures I put up here, but the book is full of the cheerful, reverential, exquisitely crafted covers of the type we normally associate with Rockwell...only Leyendecker did it first.

The book further alleges that Leyendecker was defenseless against Rockwell because he was temperamentally quiet and reclusive, whereas Rockwell was a tireless self-promoter. Rockwell even put himself in his paintings. 

I grew up loving Rockwell as so many people did, and I admit that it's hard for me to change my opinion about him on the basis of only one book.  Even so, something about the allegations seems to ring true, if only in part.

ACTORS: HOW TO FIND YOUR SCREEN PERSONNA

Here it is (above), "The Beast." How many actors have come to grief because they sought roles that fit their real personalities, rather than their potential cinematic ones? The truth is that The Beast doesn't care what roles you play or would like to play. It arbitrarily accepts you in some roles and not in others. Or maybe it doesn't accept you at all. It's scary!

As an example, here's me in a YouTube spoof on Match.com. Fast forward to the two minute mark where I play a seedy gigolo, turning around to face the camera. I play a lot of characters in this film, but that's the one that seems to come off the best. It's odd because in real life I'm the opposite of a seedy gigolo. I only discovered that I was passable at it because I tried a bunch of random things in front of the camera that day, and that was one of the few the camera would accept...that and an old lady, another unlikely pick. You could say that the camera decided what I'd do, not me.

 In my opinion beginning film actors should film and photograph themselves constantly, then comb through the footage for what may be the few seconds that actually work. If the camera likes you,  if only for a short time, then that's a clue as to what the camera will accept from you, and you can build on that.