Happy labor dabor youtu.be/KBXsx1ZHg…
💬 Jules Feiffer on Gary Groth and others' criticisms of Will Eisner, from The Comics Journal 124, August 1988
[For context, Gary Groth had written an editorial in an earlier Comics Journal criticizing Eisner’s work. He basically goes on for quite a while about how overrated he thinks Eisner is. It’s not that great in my opinion]
“Eisner was interested in comics. And if you’re in comics, somebody has to hit somebody else, somebody has to drive a car over a cliff, somebody has to blow up an airplane, somebody has to be a good guy, and somebody has to be a bad guy. But, more than anyone else in that form, up to that time, and past that time, Eisner was able to squeeze more human interest and more dimension and take heroes and use them–as he used the Spirit–as side characters to telling another story. Sometimes that story was too sentimental, sometimes the story was too trite, but often enough it was full of wit and cautionary values and fascinating visual perceptions that went beyond the visual and made it part of one’s perceptions, the way seeing early Fellini films became part of our perceptions as we left the theater and the world was redefined visually by 8½ or La Dolce Vita. Whenever you finished reading Eisner, the world was redefined by his eye, his camera eye. That contribution was so original, and so innovative, at that time to this time, that I think that anything else one can say about it, whatever shortcomings, whatever lack, whatever you feel–whether I agree with it or don’t agree with it, and disagree with much of it–is beside the point. Whether it’s valid or not, you cannot tell me that this is less than the contribution that Jack Kirby has made, or less than the contribution that Frank Miller is making. … I’m sure there’s much to criticize in Eisner’s later work. But there’s much to applaud in the fact that after not touching that work for many, many years, he came back to it, and he’s looking at it with a fresh eye, and he’s not doing bullshit violence, and he’s not buying into the mainstream, and he’s going off on his own track, and it happens to be a track that’s personal to him, and whether he’s stretching that enough or not is beside the point. As critical as one can be of some of that stuff, it’s still more interesting to a reader whose interest is larger than one of the caped hero-genre and flexing their muscles, to a reader whose point is somewhat larger than the further deification of the Sly Stallone syndrome. He’s trying something. And that should be encouraged and applauded, rather than trying to bury him.”
💬 Jules Feiffer on his and other cartoonists' view of comic strips as art, from The Comics Journal 124, August 1988
GROTH: Were your parents proud in any sense that you were a cartoonist, that you were working on an art form that you were developing?
FEIFFER: Oh, it was never thought of as an art form by anybody in those years. Including cartoonists. I remember Walt Kelly’s hackles would rise if you talked about cartooning as an art form.
GROTH: Oh, is that right?
FEIFFER: Oh, yes.
GROTH: Do you think he believed that?
FEIFFER: It’s hard to know what these guys believed. I mean, they came out of the newspaper gang, where artists were sissies in a way, and they were proud of being newspapermen, journalists, working in bullpens. And doing work that was disposable. As Caniff has said, you never thought twice about having your originals thrown out.
GROTH: I was under the impression that in the 20s and ’30s, the time when Herriman was working, and Segar, and McCay that it was thought of as an art form.
FEIFFER: No. I don’t know what McCay would have thought, and who knows about Herriman? But most of them didn’t think twice about that. I always thought of it as an art form. My love for Eisner, my love for Caniff, I always thought these guys were artists, and when I brought it up, they got very defensive.
GROTH: What did they think of themselves as, then? Craftsmen?
FEIFFER: Yeah. “This is my job. I’m a cartoonist. What’s all this big deal about art?” Something vaguely unmanly about it.
GROTH: How did Eisner look at it?
FEIFFER: Same way. Eisner now accepts the term “artist” but he certainly didn’t when I was working for him and tried to use it.
GROTH: Did he reject it?
FEIFFER: Sure, he rejected it entirely. He would admit that. That’s not going to be discomforting to him. He remembers those arguments.
[This is interesting, given how strongly Eisner pushed for people to see comics as art in his later years. I guess Feiffer must have had a big influence on him in that regard.]
💬 Harvey Pekar on the potential of comics, from The Comics Journal 123, July 1988
“Comics is as good, as expressive, as versatile an artistic medium as any other, including the novel, theater, and film. You can write as well in comics as in any other form. Comic book writing is very similar to writing drama: you write dialogue and directions, to the actors and director in one case, to the illustrator in another. You can write any way you want in comics and you can draw any way you want. using any style you like.
…
Comics have a far greater aesthetic potential than is generally realized: if more gifted people employed the medium, this would become evident, and comics would be taken far more seriously.”
💬Katherine Collins on the troubles at Disney in the late 70s and 80s, from The Comics Journal 120, March 1988
“Ironically, of course, a year after this interview, trouble did in fact begin to brew at the studio. The first manifestation of this was when Don Bluth led a group of experienced Disney animators in a mass exodus, to create their own studio. The group subsequently produced The Secret of Nimh. The entire Disney organization began to go into severe convulsions in the first half of the 80s, when it became apparent that the leadership of the Old Guard was increasingly at sea. The Disney film division was making very little money, and was producing movies that were a bad joke. The animation department seemed to be adrift, taking five years to produce the the indifferent The Fox and the Hound and another five for the truly awful The Black Cauldron. A series of “greenmail” takeover attempts by corporate raiders finally resulted in an overthrow of the management, and the creation of a new regime (in power today) which had succeeded in turning the re-named Walt Disney Company into a standard, but successful Hollywood movie studio, which also happens to have an animation department. The atmosphere at the studio today is relatively workaday, with neither the hum of excitement of the great days, nor the disconcerting lassitude and air of unreality which pervaded the lot in the late seventies.”
[This small footnote is fascinating to read in the context of Disney history. Collins doesn’t give a specific year when this interview was done, but Don Bluth left Disney in 1979 so we can assume it was around 1978. It was published in 1988, only a year before the Disney Renaissance in 1989. The Little Mermaid was in production as this was being published. It just shows how bad things looked at the time, and that no one could have predicted how much of a hit The Little Mermaid and subsequent films would be.]
When you’re so lost you’ve even lost your sense of the direction of words.
Nancy, by Ernie Bushmiller, from July 16, 1953.
💬 Floyd Gottfredson on how he got the job drawing the Mickey Mouse strip, from The Comics Journal 120, March 1988
“So I went in to animation then and started training as an in-betweener, and the first 18 strips were pencilled by Ub. They were written by Walt. Walt had lifted gags out of the animated shorts–the Mickey shorts up to that time–and adapted them to the strip. Ub pencilled the first 18, and Win Smith inked them. Then, after the first 18, Win pencilled and inked the strip, and Walt continued to write them. But he tried to get Win to write them, and Win kept stalling. And I don’t know whether he just didn’t want to take on the extra work…
In April–now the strip was launched in January 1930–and in April, Win came in to my desk, my animation desk, and he was pretty red in the face and quite agitated. I could see it. He says, “I think you got a new job.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “I just quit.” And I said, “Why the hell would you do that?” And he said, “No G.D. young whipper-snapper’s going to tell me what to do.” So he walked out into oblivion. And, of course, the young whipper-snapper turned out to be Walt Disney. [Laughter] But Walt had been after him all this time to write the strip, and Win kept stalling. And finally Walt called him into the office that morning and had a showdown with him. And Win, who had sort of a short fuse anyway, blew up and walked out…
About a half hour after Win left the studio, Walt called me into the office and asked me if I would take over the strip. I said, “Well, Walt, I’ve come to realize that you were right when you told me that the comic strip business and the newspaper business was no place to go, that animation was where it was.” And I said, “By now I’ve become quite interested in animation. I’d like to stay with it.” He said, “Well, just take it over for two weeks until I find someone.” And at the end of a month, I began to wonder if he was looking for anyone, and at the end of two months I began to worry for fear he was going to find someone. [Laughter] Because I had adjusted to the strip now, and was beginning to like it. So I continued for 45 and a half years. [Laughter]”
💬 Mort Walker on his inspiration for Gamin and Patches, from The Comics Journal 116, July 1987
“Actually Gamin in some ways is patterned after a kid I met in Naples, Italy, who took me for $15 for a diamond ring. [chuckles] He came up and said he wanted to sell me diamond ring, and I said I wasn’t interested in a diamond ring. But he said, “This is my mother’s diamond ring… look, I’ll show you, it’s a real diamond.” He went over to a storefront and made a big scratch on the glass. All of a sudden that made me interested! So we went back in an alley and I still said, “Look, I don’t really want to buy this, but how much is it?” He said it was $25 and I said I would pay no more than $15. He said, “OK!” [Chuckles] It was his mother’s wedding ring, see? Well, the doggone thing turned green before I got back to the hotel, and the diamond was scratched. The “diamond” was piece of glass. And I thought, “Doggone it, this kid was smarter than I was!” He really pulled one on me, and I’ve been fascinated with those type of people ever since, and they’re all over the place. In Jamaica I had a kid who took me up in the mountains and dumped me, and here I was again — outsmarted by a little kid!”
When your dog is well trained in one area but not in another.
Louie, by Harry Hanan, from July 12, 1953.
💬 Milt Caniff on depicting the military in Steve Canyon, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
SABA: I must say that 10 years ago, you and I would have probably been on very different sides of the war.
CANIFF: Not necessarily, and this is a funny thing. It’s come up quite frequently. Let me put it this way: the people who were fighting the war in Vietnam were not there of their own choosing. They were there because they were drafted. They didn’t enlist for “Down with Hitler” and “Down with Hirohito,” which would cause a lot of guys to enlist. Almost without exception, they were there because they were drafted. Once a guy is drafted and he’s stuck in a place, that’s where my relationship with him begins. I never got into the reasons for him being there. It’s just the fact that he was there, that’s all. Then he became my way of mirroring what was going on, and what a miserable job it was being there. But not why he was there. I didn’t like that war any more than you liked that war. But because I was showing these GIs doing their thing, it sounded as if I were a hawk. I didn’t feel that way about it at all.
💬 Milt Caniff on Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
“…although Capp and I were rivals, we were old friends. I even took over Colonel Gilfeather from him. Capp once wrote a story about that. He said, “My work was once given to guy named Milton Caniff-what ever happened to him?” [laughter]
…People used to think we were bitter rivals, which we never were, because Li’l Abner and my stuff had no rival points. We always got along well together. He was always very generous to me. In the times that he was doing a lot a of radio and television appearances, he had nice things to say about me. In fact, he would turn the conversation around to that end. He always liked Alex Raymond, and while Alex was alive, he used to do the same thing for Alex.”
[Al Capp was a very self-centered man, who was never shy about saying what he didn’t like about other people, especially people in the same business. So if he spoke well of someone, it was a great honor. I’ve never read anything from Capp that was negative towards Milt Caniff, so that really says something. Not saying he never said anything negative, just a that I haven’t read it]
💬 Milt Caniff on cliffhangers, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
“I do six novels a year. The difference is that there’s a carefully contrived umbilical between the end of one of my stories and the next, so that the audience doesn’t get turned away. When you say ‘The End,’ then lots of people take you to your word, and that’s the end of it and you. And, my trick is to hold you from the end of one story to the beginning of another. It’s a trick, a technique, that’s as old as Scheharazade again, because that’s exactly what she did. Just before the end of the story, she would say, ‘Oh, well, tomorrow…,’ and so on.
…when I first started in this whole thing, the New York News people suggested that I write to Harold Gray and to Chet Gould, who at that point had just ascended. They had become widely read. I was supposed to ask if they could offer me any advice. I wouldn’t have done this on my own, by the way. Not that didn’t highly respect them, but I didn’t want them to feel obligated, and I didn’t want to feel obligated to them. But I did because the editor suggested it. Harold Gray said something that was so pertinent: he said that each day you tell a little of what happened yesterday, and tell something of what’s going on now, and then tease them into reading tomorrow’s strip. But always a little new, a little old, and a little maybe. Very good advice. And he used this, because nothing in his drawing ever gave him the chance that I have of shooting all around the character with the telephone and so on. It was always the same drawing, more or less. But his storytelling was so skilled that he was able to hold you to Orphan Annie. If you became an addict, you were hooked."
💬 Milt Caniff on working as a cartoonist, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
CANIFF: …I’ve heard a cartoonist say this, and it always saddens me when I hear it–“Oh, good God, I hate to think of sitting at that drawing board today.” Well, they ought to get into some other trade if that’s the way they feel about it. To just go there under compulsion, as if you’ve been put in the trireme to pull an oar every day. Of course, it’s hard work, but I used to have a managing editor who said to me, “Son, you asked for work when you came here.” He’s the same editor who said, “Draw this for the old man who buys the paper. Don’t worry about the kids.” Kids don’t read newspaper comics. Everyone thinks they do, but they don’t.
For a unique vacation experience, visit Echo Canyon.
Herman, by Clyde Lamb, from July 5, 1953.
💬 Milt Caniff on "shifting camera angles" in comics, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
CANIFF: …all the years that I’ve been at this thing, I’ve never drawn two panels the same. Ever.
SABA: Not that you know of, anyway.
CANIFF: Well, it doesn’t occur to you at the time, but when you have two people talking, you still shift the camera around, so to speak, so that it isn’t dull for the viewer, and it also isn’t dull for you.
SABA: This is one of the things that you’re justifiably famous for. You really initiated that technique of being able to have a lot of dialogue go on in a comic strip by shifting the camera angles, as they’re called. I don’t believe that was done at all before you came along, or at least, not to any extent.
CANIFF: No, it wasn’t, generally speaking. I was seeking some device, something to make it noisy, and to make a grab for the audience. Part of it was the heavy blacks. It made the thing just look noisy on the page, and draw your attention that way. The other thing was, when you started to read it, you weren’t riveted to one point of view across a horizon, you see.
…
CANIFF: It’s the kind of thing that the good directors do. Hitchcock, for instance, does this very effectively, and I probably picked it up from him, or from some other director before him that I liked. And I used the movies' technique simply because the movies were accepted, and was simply trailing along behind them in a different medium. And, I would do this with storylines, too. I would read Saturday Evening Post and Colliers and things of that day, to see what was being read by people. When I came along in a different medium, I could almost play the same tune on a different horn and grab the same people.
When you somehow got roped into hosting a party you didn’t want to attend.
Just Nuts (also known as Dumb-Bells) by Charles “Gar” Dunn and Joe Cunningham, from July 24, 1925.
💬 Katherine Collins on studying comics history, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
I don’t suppose that in fact there really is any prerequisite that you have to know anything at all in order to enjoy, or even create, popular art, as long as you’re having fun. But I think it adds to the depth of reader’s enjoyment of any reading if he knows the context and traditions from which a work has sprung. Too often, work that is regarded as fresh, innovative and vital, is in fact just a pale rehash of something done originally, and better 40 years before. How is a reader to savor the full resonance of story which follows an archetypal pattern if he doesn’t know anything that was published before last year? I believe that it is the ignorance of the general comics readers that is responsible for the generally low standards in today’s mainstream comics. They simply don’t know any better. And of course, the main reason for this ignorance is that nobody encourages people to study comics or take them seriously…
When your facial hair choices frighten children.
Kitty Higgins, the topper to Moon Mullins by Frank Willard, from July 26, 1936.
💬 Katherine Collins on Caniff's view of his own work, from The Comics Journal 108, May 1986
“I think it is a very interesting, enlightening, and complete interview, and gives a very good picture of Milton Caniff’s thinking. You will see, however, that despite my repeated rephrasing of the same basic question–are comics Art or aren’t they?-that he never truly addressed what I wanted to discuss. And as it turns out, that lack of discussion was his answer. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t care. He probably wouldn’t know how to think about that question if he wanted to. At the time, this drove me I crazy. I couldn’t believe it. How could he not think about it, considering his achievements? Didn’t he think that his terrific ability to portray character, to convey mood, to evoke emotion, gave him the right to demand to be taken seriously? The answer, apparently, was no. His answer was, as he often has said, he just wants to sell newspapers.”
Catching strays from passing children.
Henry, by Carl Anderson, from July 22, 1954
<img src=“https://micro.arkholt.com/uploads/2025/the-atlanta-constitution-thu-jul-22-1954-.jpg" alt=“A young buy walks along and meets a portly man wearing a hat. The boy gestures for the man to follow him. The boy takes the man to a service station garage, points to the man’s belly, and then points to a sign outside of the garage which says, “For Your Safety - Let Us Inspect Your Spare Tire”">
