The Write Advice: CARTOON 001

Calvin and Hobbes

© Bill Watterson 

 

You might also enjoy:

 

How To Make Write (2013) by GRANT SNIDER

 

The Many Faces of the Novel (2014) by GRANT SNIDER

 

Think About It: LITERARY SPECIAL

Think About It: LITERARY SPECIAL

Artist unspecified

– People don't read anymore…

– …they write!

You might also enjoy:

 

The Many Faces of the Novel (2014) by GRANT SNIDER

 

Think About It: USEFUL FRENCH PHRASES

 

Think About It: CAREER CHOICE SPECIAL

 

Think About It: USEFUL FRENCH PHRASES

Artist unspecified

You might also enjoy:

 
Think About It: CAREER CHOICE SPECIAL

 
Masters of Cartoon Art 002: WINSOR McCAY

 
Masters of Cartoon Art 001: MATT GROENING

 

Think About It: CAREER CHOICE SPECIAL

Artist unspecified

Special thanks to PA for sharing this cartoon.

Much appreciated as always!

 

You might also enjoy:

 

Think About It 015: NOAM CHOMSKY

 

Think About It: SPECIAL NEW YEAR'S EVE EDITION

 

Masters of Cartoon Art 001: MATT GROENING

Think About It: SPECIAL NYE EDITION

Masters of Cartoon Art 001: MATT GROENING

Life in Hell © 2012 Matt Groening

Life in Hell © 1984 Matt Groening

Life in Hell © 1992 Matt Groening

#1 – 3 reposted from Life in Hell Archives

Thanks to original uploader! 

Life in Hell © 1986 Matt Groening

#4 reposted from Willard's Wormholes

Thanks Willard!

Use the links below to read an article about North American cartoonist MATT GROENING (creator of The Simpsons and Futurama) and view more classic Life In Hell strips:

 

http://www.avclub.com/article/between-zap-and-simpsons-matt-groenings-life-hell-213583

 

http://lifeinhellarchives.tumblr.com/

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
Dread and Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip (2009) by STUART HAMPLE

 
Good Grief! REMEMBERING CHARLES M SCHULZ

 
The Write Advice 068: JULES FEIFFER                                         

Dread & Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip (2009) by STUART HAMPLE

© 2009 Naomi-Stuart Productions Inc & Hackenbush Productions Inc

Long before the phenomenal success of Midnight in Paris and the public festival of finger-pointing that was the whole Soon-Yi / Mia Farrow media debacle, there was another Woody Allen whom very few people seem to recall these days –– the hapless, neurotic, self-deprecating title character of a 1970s comic strip titled, appropriately enough, Inside Woody Allen.

The strip, which ran from 1976 until 1984 in newspapers all around the world, was the brainchild of a newspaper cartoonist and former advertising artist named Stuart Hample.  Thankfully, Hample possessed the skill and talent necessary to make Allen's character as real and funny on the page as it was on the screen.  The gags he created — sometimes alone and sometimes with the input of Allen himself or with other writers — were literate, insightful and bursting with cultural and psychoanalytic references that seemed to capture the zeitgeist of 1970s New York while never allowing the reader to forget that this was a daily newspaper comic strip and not a philosophical dissertation they were reading.  While that may not seem like much of an achievement, it was actually quite a remarkable one for its time, particularly when you consider that Hample often had to battle the strip's distributors, the very powerful King Features Syndicate, over what kinds of gags he was 'allowed' to do so as not to alienate the strip's 'non-intellectual' readers. 

It also helped that the comedian liked the idea of being turned into a comic strip character and granted Hample unlimited access to his private notebooks.  Allen also gave the artist tips on how to present his character, insisting that he shouldn't be the sole focus of the strip and that it should occasionally feature real people from his own life.  (Suggestions the syndicate quickly vetoed, telling Hample they wanted the Allen character to become 'more sympathetic' and 'more lovable' and even suggesting that he should get married at one point so he would have a wife character to argue with on a regular basis.)  His cooperation made what could very easily have been a shlocky, exploitative exercise in milking a fast buck from a popular celebrity (Annie Hall was poised to win the Oscar for Best Picture the year the strip premiered) into something that stands alone in its own right as a worthwhile, funny and enduring piece of cartoon art.

I have a lot to thank Stuart Hample for on a personal level.  It was my avid reading of Inside Woody Allen each Sunday in the Sydney newspaper The Sun-Herald that introduced me to the work of Woody Allen and helped to form and develop my own sense of humor.  While I might not have understood every joke –– some of these were a little too sophisticated for the average eleven year old to wrap his head around –– I understood enough to realize that this was something special that I wanted to read more of.  I loved the strip so much that I used to cut it out of the Sunday Comic Section (alas, something which no longer exists in today's severely scaled-down, close-to-extinct newspapers) and paste it into an exercise book so I could re-read it at my leisure –– something I had only ever done with Peanuts before that.

STUART HAMPLE and WOODY ALLEN, 1976

One thing is certain: if you like Woody Allen's films, you are certain to enjoy this beautifully presented, lavishly illustrated book. 

Unfortunately, STUART HAMPLE died of cancer on 19 September 2010.  Use the link below to learn more about his life and work.  (He wrote and drew an earlier comic strip called Rich & Famous and later wrote plays and scripts for the 1980s sitcom Kate and Allie as well as creating many popular children's books.) 

 

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/stuart_hample_1926_2010/

 

Use this link to hear a 2009 radio interview STUART HAMPLE gave to promote the launch of Dread & Superficiality:

 

http://www.inkstuds.org/stuart-hample/

 

 


You might also enjoy:

 
Good Grief!! REMEMBERING CHARLES M SCHULZ

 
Some Books About… BUSTER KEATON

 
Think About It: LITERARY SPECIAL 

 

Last updated 14 April 2021

 

Good Grief!! REMEMBERING CHARLES M SCHULZ

CHARLES M SCHULZ
26 November 1922 –– 12 February 2000

 

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'

Snoopy.  Linus.  Lucy.  Schroeder.  Peppermint Patty.  And, of course, that Everyman for the ages –– good ol’ Charlie Brown.

Nearly all of us can close our eyes and immediately form a picture of what these characters look like.  They’ve become as much a part of Western culture, and of our collective imagination, as the eternally echoing ‘D’oh!’ of Homer Simpson.

It’s amazing how familiar they remain to us twelve years after their creator’s death, how recognizable their faces are even to those of us who would never admit to reading anything as childish as a comic strip –– let alone buying a Peanuts book or watching a Peanuts TV special –– if our ultra-cool lives depended on it.  And what's more remarkable is how familiar and even comforting their personalities are to us, how well we think we know each character as an individual and, in some cases, as a pint-sized reflection of ourselves.  There’s Snoopy the daredevil fighter ace who battles the Red Baron in the skies of World War One France but still manages to sleep safe and sound on top of his doghouse in his owner’s backyard all day.  There’s Lucy the crabby-minded supplier of cheap (and not very useful) psychiatric advice, Schroeder the budding virtuoso and devotee of Beethoven, Linus the philosopher who still needs his security blanket and believes the Great Pumpkin will magically rise from the pumpkin patch to reward all the good children who believe in him come each Halloween.

But the most memorable character is the one who appears to be the least memorable, some might even say the dullest in many ways.  Most heroes are brave, resourceful and admirable.  Sometimes they’re audacious like Bugs Bunny, eccentric like Sherlock Holmes or superheroes in the literal sense like Batman or Captain America.   But not Charlie Brown.  He manages and pitches for what must rate as the world’s most consistently unsuccessful baseball team.  He’s bullied by his dog (who refuses to refer to him as anything but ‘the round-headed kid’), continually embarrasses his little sister Sally and is tricked time and time again by Lucy, who always manages to pull that darned football away right before he kicks it.  His kites routinely get eaten by trees and he’s in love with a little red-headed girl he’s much too shy to talk to while remaining completely oblivious to the fact that Peppermint Patty, whose ball team always beats his, thinks he’s kind of cute. 

He is, to put it another way, everyone who’s ever failed at anything or felt nervous or inadequate or in any other way just plain not good enough, your ordinary run-of-the-mill under-achiever brought vividly to life with just a few carefully placed pen strokes scratched onto paper by an artist who understood the concept that less really does equal more. 

Or, to put it another way, Charlie Brown is you and me.  White or black, rich or poor, bottom of the heap or what we’ve convinced ourselves is the success-defining top of it, the fact remains that all of us feel like losers sometimes, that none of us feel as clever or beautiful or charming or rich or talented or appreciated as we’re entitled to feel sometimes.  That was Schulz’s message if he actually had one to share beyond the very important (and vastly underrated) one of teaching us how to laugh at ourselves.  Recognize your flaws and fess up to what’s ordinary and mediocre in yourself and try not to deplore the same lack of wit, grace and intelligence in others.  Don’t judge.  Don’t sit on your high horse (or in your Ferrari or in the hot tub of your palatial Beverly Hills mansion) telling the world how great you think you are just because you’ve been lucky enough to earn, win or inherit a bit of money.  Be compassionate.  Be generous.  Learn to appreciate people not for what you think they should be but for what they are and what, in many cases, they probably can’t stop being even if they try.

If it’s true that, along with movies and jazz, the comic strip was America’s greatest contribution to twentieth century culture, then Charles M Schulz was its Buster Keaton and its Louis Armstrong all wrapped up in one astoundingly wise, self-effacing package.  His strip, originally titled L’il Folks, broke new ground in terms of what could and couldn’t be done in the comic strip in that it featured no adult characters whatsoever.  (No adult ever spoke or was ever mentioned by name in it, which is now taken for granted but was a revolutionary idea at the time Schulz originally conceived it.)  The action involved the same stock cast of eight or nine main characters, supplemented over the years by the addition of new characters like Pigpen, Franklin (the first negro character to appear regularly in a syndicated US comic strip), Marcie and a peculiar little yellow bird named Woodstock who soon captured the public imagination in the same way his already world-famous friend Snoopy had captured it a decade or two before him.  There were no fistfights or fast-paced action sequences in Peanuts.  No cliffhanging soap opera plots to keep excited readers returning to the strip each day.  Instead, Schulz created a kind of stillness on the page that forced the reader to stop and consider what he was saying whether they happened to agree with the humanist message he was attempting to convey or not.  He made millions of dollars, yes, but few people ever stop to consider how he made his millions –– by giving pleasure, hope and comfort to people every day of his life, alone and unaided, for close to fifty uninterrupted years.

Not bad for a barber’s son from Minnesota whose first published drawing was a picture of his dog and whose work was rejected for inclusion in his own high school yearbook.

Rest in peace, Mr Schulz.  You’ve earned every minute of it.

 

THE CHARLES M SCHULZ MUSEUM is a great place to read more about the life and work of North American cartoonist CHARLES M SCHULZ, as is the official PEANUTS website. 

 

 

You might also enjoy:

 
Dread & Superficiality: Woody Allen as Comic Strip (2009) by STUART HAMPLE

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 002

 
The Write Advice: CARTOON 009