Reprint Heaven: Notes From The Wasteland

(From August, 2009. BTW -- I still work in a cubicle farm, penned like a Veal.)

Cartoon about Corporate Life By Hugh McLeod

(Note "Being Poor Sucks", in the upper-right corner)

(Image: via The Big Picture)

There are segments of the cartoon and art markets which relate to the corporate experience as a drone, and as an 'executive'.

The Drone Zone is defined by Dilbert, and any comics or Daily Calendars like it. Ironically, Scott Adams (who carefully describes himself as a 'Humorist') once cheerfully admitted he did the strip -- not as an artist or to stretch the medium (as Bill Watterson did, with Calvin & Hobbes) -- but because he saw it as a product he could market. For him, the business of Dilbert was its raison d'etre, and it's popularity could become a brand.

Yeah. Ironic. Eeeeww.

Drone Zone material is "cubicle art", a way of expressing frrustration with the bureaucracy, the Doublespeak and tribal politics and lies which corporate America cultivates -- and as a Drone in A Very Big American Corporation, I too live and labor in a cubicle, like a Veal. But -- while I see 'cubicle art' all around me, I don't have a single piece of it posted that I didn't draw myself. I can't stand it.

Okay. I have one exception. But putting up cartoons which lampoon Your Life As A Slave... It's like those posters from the go-go Reagan 80's, with kittens dangling from the bottom end of a rope, and the legend Hang In There! Or, the image of a little guy in a straitjacket, with the caption You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here, But It Sure Helps!. If I was required to put anything like them in my workspace, thirty seconds later I would be tearing my own face off with a fork.

There Are, Of Course, The Anti-Cubicle Art Posters,

Which Hang In Our Cubicles To Show What Rebels We Are.

On the other hand, 'Executive' art is all about struggle and building consensus and the competition with your peers for... something. It's just the thing to decorate a private office, or to be used in a corporate 'gifting' program. They include such things as sculptures of men or women in suits, climbing ladders, going Sisyphus-like up a steep grade, pushing a heavy burden; or having a tug-of-war. Then, there are Executive cartoons -- with the same sort of humor as Cubicle Art, just a bit more tastefully expressed. Because the Bosses deal with the same Bullshit -- and feel, unbelievably, like they're Workin' For Da Man too.

Hugh McLeod is one of those people whose cartooning -- not quite a kid's work; not quite Jules Feiffer -- could stand as Cubicle or Executive art, and I offer it without comment as a sign of our times, and of how much Corporate Commerce is part of the fabric of the culture -- everywhere.

His site is here.

UPDATE: Let's Do The Cultural Taste Test
(All Images: © Bill Watterson / Universal Press Syndicate)

"There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do."

--Bill Watterson

Bill Watterson's prolific and colorful imagination made Calvin and Hobbes an instant classic in the history of Comic strip art. It seemed to appear out of nowhere -- as if Winsor McKay had been reincarnated, and given the opportunity to tell a story: About a tow-haired little Kid (shades of Dennis The Menace and Bart Simpson) and his friend, a Tiger only he could see.

Watterson's story wasn't about the irony of the workplace

-- it was about imagination, and the real reasons we get

up and put on our slave badges every morning.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Watterson was more concerned with the quality and content of his work than in making a buck. When his distributors, Universal Press Syndicate ('The Business That Doonesbury Made') pressured him to do a full-court merchandizing press to, uh, "capitalize" on C & H's almost overnight popularity, Watterson said no.

And, while Watterson understood that space in a newspaper meant money, he had always argued that they should give more of it to comics -- that they were an art form worth the investment. In his view, Editors say they don't have room for strips with detail and design; that the strips they receive are simply drawn and don't need space. But they're drawn that way because strips aren't given the space to be anything else!

Universal's pressure on Watterson was constant, and intense enough that he took two 'sabbatical' breaks from the strip of eight months each in 1991 and 1994 (which may have amounted to sit-down strikes). Universal marketed previously-published, older daily strips to its clients as filler, yet continued to charge newspaper editors full price as though they were new content.

The editors weren't happy -- but C and H was so popular, they had little choice and accepted Universal's explanation that the break was temporary, and Watterson had stopped for "health reasons" (Business. What a world).

They also forced newspapers to run the Sunday Calvin and Hobbes strips in a format that would take up an "unbreakable" half of a page -- forcing editors to design their traditional color Sunday funnies around Watterson's work. Watterson had been sold on the move by Universal -- but editors only saw him as a prima donna, unwilling to compromise his 'art' for the realities of publishing.

Eventually, Watterson was forced to compromise -- and one wonders if Universal didn't set him up for failure, so that a 'difficult content creator' would finally 'see reason' over the lucrative merchandizing of his characters. There's no way to know, but Watterson announced not long after that C and H would be coming to an end.

Current strips in the remaining print newspapers compete for space, and generally (with few exceptions) are poorly drawn, with predictable uses of humor. There is -- literally -- no room for the Far Sides, the Bloom Countys, or Little Nemo In Slumberland; no room for unpredictability and imagination. And Watterson understood that in comic strips, like the rest of human affairs, without respect for Imagination and its power, our lives are drab, spiritless... a little like a Corporate Cartoon.

In a classic strip, Calvin is given Ritalin to control his active

imagination -- without which, Hobbes is only a stuffed toy.

Even with Watterson's two 'sabbatical' breaks, Calvin and Hobbes appeared in newspapers for ten years -- November, 1985, through December, 1995. Given the Long Goodbye of newspapers since then, C and H was probably the last American Comic Strip in the classic tradition to appear in that medium, and I miss it.

You Know How To Whistle, Don't Ya?

Gotta Share

( © Mr Fish, 2013)

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Reprint Heaven: Just Because, That's Why

(From 2010)

14th Dalai Lama (Photo: Reuters / UK Telegraph, 2009)

I once had the opportunity to see and hear the 14th Dalai Lama at Davies Symphony Hall in the Summer of 2003 at a talk he gave to support the restoration and understanding of sacred Buddhist architecture.

The woman I was dating at the time had hired a Tibetan woman to provide child care while the mom worked as a Therapist -- the husband of the Tibetan woman had been a Buddhist monk in Nepal, and had worked directly with the Lama, and was able to wrangle seats for us at his appearance.

The Lama spoke primarily in Tibetan, using an interpreter, but when the mood struck him would break into English. In one of those moments, discussing the reactions of humans to life in These Times, the Lama said (I paraphrase from memory):

Modern life -- everywhere, people moving, running; always running. And everything is so fast. Always fast, fast fast. And so we experience this, every day; and finally it becomes so much that you just have to say -- 'Fuck it!'

There was a moment of utter silence. You could have heard angels farting. And suddenly the entire audience, over 2,700 people (myself included), erupted in applause. It was incredible.

People were cheering, not just because one of the great spiritual leaders of this or any other century 'said a bad word', but because for an instant, by juxtaposing the idea of The Holy Man with A Profane Exclamation, the Lama brought his listeners to a state of attention (Hey! Dude! The Lama just said 'fuck', man!).

A true Human Being. I'm glad I was there.

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More Than Meets The Eye

Jean Giraud / Moebius (1938 - 2012)

Le Bal (Limited Edition Serigraph print, 2002)

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (known by his nom de plume, Moebius) passed away one year ago today in Paris.  He was one of the last Franco-Belgian illustrators of the bandes dessinées tradition -- literally, "drawn strips" -- whose most famous member was Belgian artist Hérge, the creator of 'TinTin'.

Giraud began his career in the 1950's, where he created, together with writer Jean-Michele Charlier, a daily strip and eventually full-fledged comics about Lieutenant Blueberry, a U.S. cavalry officer; Alan Delon meets the Old West.  Occasionally, he would illustrate  other Western tales Charlier developed outside the Blueberry story line -- which Giraud would sign "Gir".

 Original first page of "Missip[p]i River", 1967; 

Giraud's artistic style echoed pen and brushwork of American and

British comics in the mid-1960's (Click on image to enlarge. Easy! Fun!)

In America, the artistic style of mainstream comic illustration was bounded by DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Justice League) or the more recent Marvel Superheroes, and alternative-but-still-mainstream publications like MAD Magazine  -- specifically the pen-and-ink artist Mort Drucker.  Comics in the UK likewise had developed a distinctive style that borrowed from DC or Marvel, but also rooted in British-only comics like Bingo.

Comparison of styles between American Mort Drucker (left)

and Giraud's work in the mid-1980's on Blueberry (right).

Drucker used a nib pen, and was more inclined to caricature;

Giraud was a realist who favored brushes and Rapidograph technical pens.

In the Counterculture of the middle Sixties to the mid-70's, America's 'Underground' comics developed their own artistic styles far removed from those of DC or Marvel. They were a Fuck You delivered to America's Puritan cultural traditions around sexuality and materialism, first, and only secondarily an attempt to push the boundaries of illustration. It would take the development of graphic novels, and the work of American artists like Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, Charles Burns, the Brothers Hernandez and Art Spiegelman to change that.

Meanwhile, in Europe, artists like Giraud saw their medium as dominated by America's "Superhero" format, and hidebound with traditions established before the First World War.  More than in America's underground comics, European illustrators were producing images influenced by the 'psychedelic revolution' -- expanding personal consciousness to touch the Universal; having experiences which provided glimpses of 'other', alternate realities.

 Jimmy Hendrix's Psychedelic Lunch (Virtual Meltdown, 1976)

The most accessible, commercial version of these visions was exemplified by Peter Max -- his colorful deconstructions of reality were simple, beautiful; but not too complex or ambiguous for the viewer.  It didn't really challenge their preconceptions of reality, just enhanced them in a non-threatening, cartoon manner -- as in Yellow Submarine.

In 1974, Giraud joined two other French artists -- Phillipe Drullet and Jean-Pierre Dionnet -- and a businessman, Bernard Farkas, forming Les Humanoïdes Associés (The United Humanoids), to publish a quarterly magazine of cutting-edge 'adult' illustration, Metal Hurlant (literally, "Screaming Metal").

Metal Hurlant, Issue No. 1, December 1974 (Wikipedia Commons). 

The first issue was released in December, 1974, and included work not just by Giraud and Drullet but included work by American Richard Corben. Later issues would feature another American cartoonist, Vaughn Bodé (creator of Cheech Wizard, and Junkwaffel), along with Brazilian Sergio Macedo, Swiss artist Daniel Ceppi, and the Dutch illustrator Joost Swarte,whose work carries on the traditions of the bandes dessinées and 20th-century Dutch design (Swarte's work appears heavily influenced by Herge's TinTin). 

Not in Mort Drucker's style: Before the first Star Wars,

Giraud was creating pen-and-ink aliens in France's Metal Hurlant.

This 1975 illustration, 'The Usual Suspects', shows some Moebius standards -- 

Arzach [center, back row], Major Grubert [second row left, in spiked helmet],

and Malvina [second row, far right, with rifle] of The Airtight Garage;

and Giraud [front row, right], with glasses (Click on image -- yes; for the Fun).

Metal Hurlant published stories with science fiction or fantasy themes -- the most natural channels for this new imagery.  But Giraud's work was so singular and unique that it took the reader / viewer into places where space, time, and scenery twined around each other: Part Oz, part Yaqui Way Of Knowledge, and part comic strip.

Giraud's major illustrated works include Arzach, the adventures of a humanoid with a tall hat, who rides the back of a creature like a prehistoric Pertodactyl through landscapes that resemble Bryce Canyon, or the mountains of Morocco. Like the rest of Giraud / Moebius' creations, there is spare dialog but no sound effects; Arzach's world is starkly beautiful, populated by strange beings and amazing beasts, but often silent.

First episode of Arzach; Metal Hurlant, 1975-76

(Click On Image to Bigger Buh Buh Buh Bleep.)

In the episodic "Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius", Giraud presents a world existing in different dimensions, like interlocking computer simulations, each of which can be accessed if you know the secret passages. Each lower level is unaware they are part of that chain, yet still affecting (and affected by) the others. 

 Major Grubert, guest of the Wascally Wabbits and their Big Crystal Skull.

(Clickety Click Click Click.)

Major Grubert, an agent for the first level, is trying to thwart a plot to unify all levels. A resident of a lower level, Jerry Cornelius, appears to be central to the plan; Grubert keeps looking for but never quite catches him, all the while threatened by conspiratorial forces, wacky rabbits, and The Bakelite.

Grubert survives an assassination attempt while meeting an agent

in a crowded 2nd level bar (The Airtight Garage, 1975)

The Incal was an episodic story written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, with a group of adventurers moving through an Oz-like universe, batted about over the fate of the Light Incal and Dark Incal, crystals of enormous power.

 The Incal, volume 4

(Clicky-Clicky)

(Note:  Moebius and Jodorowsky sued Luc Besson, director of The Fifth Element, claiming that the film used aspects of The Incal in the script without permission; they lost the suit.)

Giraud's last major works were Inside Moebius (titled in English for the French original), and 40 Days dans le desert B (Forty days in desert B).  Inside was several volumes of autobiographical writing and illustration.

Moebius' perception of Disney's effect upon culture:

The Wrath Of The Mouse (Click To See Larger Horrible Mouse)

"Forty Days" depicted a number of Giraud's themes about the effect of our consciousness on the world around us. The meditating traveler in 40 Days certainly does that.

I began looking at Giraud / Moebius' work in 1975, when the company which published 'National Lampoon' began reprinting Metal Hurlant in the United States, with English translations, as Heavy Metal. I was stunned at how good, how imaginative it was -- incredible, rich, detailed and sure; there wasn't a sense of hesitation in a single line.

The worlds he created were complete -- from its architecture and equipment, to strange little creatures or background flora, down to the rubbish in the street. It was like looking at sketches, made while on vacation in another dimension, which Giraud had brought back to show us.  And it wasn't a terrible or totally unfamiliar, nightmarish place. Even the incredible events he depicted seemed completely comprehensible, given where we were. They were places that vibrated with a sense of adventure and amazement.

And the best art does that -- surprise and amaze; show us something we only dimly and incompletely saw, like furniture in a dark room. That kind of art literally brings some new thing into the open, and changes how we perceive the world, and what's possible in it.  Moebius' work did all of that.

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This is Your Universe, Too

Just Look At It.

© David Morrow: Milky Way Galaxy From Mt. Rainer, 2012; a submission to the

Smithsonian magazine's 10th annual photo contest (Smithsonian.com --
click on image to see a larger version - easy and fun!)

 
This is where we live -- in the Milky Way Galaxy, as seen from near Mt. Rainer in Washington State, United States of America.

This is where we live -- not as Muscovites, or Berliners or San Franciscans, Beijingians or Mumbaians, Sydneyites or Brazilianzers. Not as members of a political party, or Volvo owners, or speakers of any specific language. Not as graduates of name-brand universities versus carrying a GED certificate.  Not as members of any specific racial or cultural group; not as Americans or EU citizens, Chinese or Urdu, Spanish or Quebecois; Gay or Straight, Vegan or Carnivore. We live in a larger room than that.

I'm the last Dog who needs to be reminded of the immense problems we face as individuals, as a species; and most of them self-created.

I believe that with a different perspective on who and what, and where, we are -- something fundamental could begin to change for us. That continues to be my hope.

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me. I can still look up, though, and see.

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Repeint Heaven: Debt Ceiling Russian Roulette

(June Of 2011: The Rethugs hold us hostage, again, to their hairy-chested, tiny-penis vision of the world, where the wealthy are given treats and everyone else will receive the fabled Pie In The Sky, after we are dead.)

(Make Social Security into a New Casino! Make the HCA into a Giant Privatization of Medicare! Austerity for everyone! but especially the poor.)

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Fear Hunter

Something about the game of 'Debt Chicken' being played out between the Rethugs, and the Democrats (Aber Ganz Ohne Rücken), reminded me of Michael Cimino's 1978 film The Deer Hunter -- which included a long sequence where Robert DiNiro and Christopher Walken, taken captive by the VC/NVA, are forced to play Russian roulette (see the whole clip here at UTub).

The idea of someone being forced to play a game that involves putting a gun to the country's head, just for hysterically stupid political posturing, was an image I couldn't get rid of...

Mehr: This post is based on one, small part of an earlier creation by Max Udargo, which you should definitely see here. Max is the creator of Burton & Jefferson, and Peterbuilt Nixon, and is a much funnier dog than I am.

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Friday News: Bush Fails To Save Brother

Man Falls Into Sinkhole
(As seen on CNN)

 (Cibble News Network) -- "The ground just swallowed him up."

A Florida man fell into an 'economic black hole' that opened suddenly beneath the bedroom of his suburban home, calling out to his brother for help as he fell, a fire department spokeswoman said Friday.

"I heard a loud crash, like the economy failing after almost a decade of deregulation and a lack of enforcement," the man's brother, Jeremy Jeb Bush, told CNN affiliate WFTS. "I heard my brother screaming and I ran back there and thought it was Osama bin Laden, or our mom's Beautiful Mind, or something. My old lady turned the light on and all I seen was this big hole, a real big hole, and all I saw was his mattress."

Bush frantically tried to rescue his brother Bush, standing in the hole and digging at the rubble with a "Chang, The 3,000-Year-Old Warrior" lunch box, until police arrived and pulled him out, saying the floor was still collapsing.

"I thought I heard him holler that he'd been lied to by his friend Dick, and that I should help him by runnin' for President in 2016," Bush tearfully told  reporters.

But rescuers can't go into the hole to check -- it's too dangerous. Authorities say they worry the hole is still spreading and the economy house could collapse at any time.

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Reprint Heaven: The Best Benign Neglect Money Can Buy

How Icons Treat Icons

[This, From 2010.]

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You Don't Know Whether To Laugh at The Folly Of The Rich,
Or Weep At Level Of Neglect. Or Both.
(Screencapture: NYT Online, 2/13/10; Photo: Tony Cenicola)

Peter Max was one hip guy, once upon a time. I actually thought he was dead, but, as it turns out, he's not.


Peter Max At An Exhibition Of New Work, 2008

A charmed player in the Lottery of life in some ways, though: Born Max Finkelstein in Berlin, he and his family were able to escape in 1938 (if they hadn't -- well, let's say Yellow Submarine would have had a greatly different appearance). They fled to Shanghai, China, and in 1948, to Israel. Eventually his family moved to the United States, and young Max started a career as a graphic artist -- a very, very successful career.



Max's work produced classic Pop-Art images -- vibrant, primary colors; mirror-image split scenes; graceful gradients of complimentary tones as background to high-contrast shillouettes.



Max's art helped to visually define the Sixties (more than any of Warhol's copy-and-paint-over repetitious imagery), and even people born long after recognize what historical period Max's work represents -- like Klimt's paintings help define fin de siècle Vienna and European culture before World War One; or the work of Monet defining Impressionism; or Grant Wood's American Gothic image creating an icon for a quintessential America.


Two Vic Moscoso Versions Of Left Coast Psychedelic Pop: 1966-67

His art for the animated film Yellow Submarine became synonymous with the Beatles, with sitar music, the Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper albums; Twiggy; Carnaby street fashions; Peter and Gordon and The Who; John Steed and Emma Peel (!) in The Avengers; Patrick McGoohan shouting, "I am not a number; I am a free man!"; The Rolling Stones, and the rest of the British invasion.

Max's work was trans-Atlantic, New York art world Psychedelica -- it was new, but echoed roots in Art Noveau and packaging design. It was sophisticated but commercial -- as opposed to the grittier and more experimental Left-Coast, Haight-Ashbury, Acid Test, Avalon and Fillmore posters; Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead; Sproul Plaza sit-in, Whiskey-A-Go-Go, and Rolling Stone sort of psychedelic culture.



Needless to say, when you produce nearly archetypal, iconic modern images, and you're halfway intelligent about the business side of art, you can do well: Peter's loaded. And he knew that he wasn't only creating art, but a Brand: None of his reproduced work from the 60's and 70's appears without his Peter Max© logo.


As a Creative Guy™, I support that: You Go, Peter.

(Max's work inspired other graphic artists, font creators, clothing designers; I've always believed Moebius (aka Jean Giraud), one of the finest illustrators to come out of the Sixties and Seventies, was heavily influenced by Max's art.)


Temps - Jean Giraud ('Moebius')

However, being a Creative Guy™ doesn't exempt Max from acting like a common, garden-variety rich guy. The New York Times recently carried a story about a collection of thirty-six Corvettes -- many of them classic rarities -- which Max had purchased in a block from another wealthy collector in 1990.

Max had intended to paint the cars and, probably, sell them -- a classic 1964 'Vette (worth a good bit all by itself) would have had its value, uh, enhanced by an original Peter Max-designed paint job. And for Max, it would probably be a hoot 'n a half to apply his design concepts to the shapes of a vehicle -- something he had already done with his Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud in the 1970's.


Max's Painted Rolls, Parked In Front Of An L.A. Gallery, 2007

The Corvette was the creation of Harvey Earl, a design engineer for the Chevrolet division of General Motors, and named for a fast, maneuverable naval warship. It debuted in 1953, and (depending upon whom you talk to) either is still produced today, or lost its classic status to overproduction and design changes in the late 60's.



I'm not a car guy (though I've had a Guy's standard fantasy of buying a junked unusual or neglected brand or model, and restoring it). But like Max's art, for me the Corvette is also part of what defined the Sixties -- Route 66; the Beach Boys; the West Coast, Sandra Dee - Endless Summer; days at El Capitan, or Refugio Beach; El Cajon or Venice. Santa Barbara, and State Street on a Summer night, or the Sunset Strip in L.A., cruising with the top down while the push-button radio plays I got sunshine / On a cloudy day...


George Maharis And Martin Milner In Route 66:
And They Walked Off / To Look For America

Max's Corvettes went into a storage garage in Brooklyn; Max moved on to other things, and the Corvettes sat... for twenty years -- apparently without cleaning, or being set up on blocks, or having their engines and drive trains protected from atmospheric effects. Convertibles were left open; cats apparently nested in some (you can see fresh paw-prints, and older ones under layers of dirt, in the photos) and the upholstery suffered. The paint jobs of each car, some of them original to the vehicles, slowly oxidized and bonded with layers of grime. Tires deflated, and the cars settled to rest on their rims.


The Rarest: A 1953 Corvette, It's First Year Of Production,
And One Of Only 300 Manufactured... Nice Goin', Peter.
(Photo: Tony Cenicola, New York Times Online)

Seeing the photographs of these cars in such obvious state of neglect was... well, saddening. For Max, they were like paper or canvas; something to stretch a vision upon. But they're also a kind of art on their own. For me, and others, they're iconic in other ways -- among other things, a symbol of time passing, that people in my crowd (and me, personally) are aging, now; and one way or another how much the past is present in our memories.


(Photo: Tony Cenicola, New York Times Online)

Recently, the Times reported, Max moved the cars from the Brooklyn garage to a secured parking area in upper Manhattan, as he "considers a new idea to clean them up and repaint them". I think they belong with others who may have the attention span of a larger mammal, and financial wherewithal to restore and properly garage these automobiles.


(Screencapture: NYT Online, 2/13/10; Photo: Jenna Stern)

It may be foolish to think of caring for these cars as a way of respecting our collective national past, and our own personal connections to memory -- but, I'm only a dog, and no one listens to me.

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