The documentary The Cartoonist: Jeff Smith, Bone and Changing Face of Comics tells a story many of us would like to believe could be true for everyone: Hard work and talent win out.
Now out on DVD — I received a copy as a Christmas gift (thanks again, Carole) — The Cartoonist relives Columbus-native Smith’s rise from creator of a handsome Ohio State University campus newspaper comic strip; to his work as an animator; to producing and distributing his own comic book (at least until he convinced his wife to take over as business manager); to Scholastic Books, publisher of Harry Potter, picking up Bone and giving it new life in vivid color. (Read my earlier post on Bone here.)
Talking heads along with Smith himself include Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud, Harvey Pekar (who lives in Cleveland, Ohio, remember), Ohio State Cartoon Research Library curator Lucy Shelton Caswell (gosh, I haven’t seen her in years), Paul Pope and Terry Moore. (See my post on Moore’s Strangers in Paradise here.)
While the documentary is always chatty and entertaining —Smith tells of living in a cabin while filling orders and packing boxes to send sometimes fewer than a handful of comic books to stores — I would have liked a bit more discussion of technique and process. Smith’s work appears deceptively simple — think Walt Kelly and Charles Schultz. It’d be great to hear him talk about that. But probably the producers, Columbus production house Mills James Productions, was aiming for a more general audience.
Maybe next time. Otherwise, this is highly recommended viewing.
Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s new anthology, The TOON Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics, contains exactly what the title boasts — a smorgasbord of comics from 1945 through 1958 that includes Uncle Wiggily, Droopy, Supermouse, Little Lulu, Dennis the Menace and Sugar and Spike, among other wily children and wacky animals.
I have to admit these were before my time. I did read Sheldon Mayer’s Sugar and Spike — the mischievous toddlers whose “baby talk” could be understood only by each other — so that must have lasted into the 1960s or been reprinted. Certainly I recall Dennis and Walt Kelly’s wonderful Pogo as black-and-white newspaper strips, and Uncle Wiggily as a board game. But the rest exist as legend.
And that’s probably the key to appreciating these brightly colored samplings for those of us too young to wax nostalgic. Today we can admire the formidable art of Carl Barks’s Uncle Scrooge, Jules Feiffer’s Clifford, Dr. Seuss’s Gerald McBoing Boing ….
There also are other great cartoonists represented here who went on to fame, such as those future MAD magazine geniuses Harvey Kurtzman, Jim Davis and Dave Berg. (See my post on Kurtzman here.) Plus, this collection contains Pogo and his pals before they became politicized.
Another reason to treasure this treasury is to remember a time when comics came with a message, if not necessarily the one parents expected. One Dennis book ends with his mother comforting him with the adage that “Nothing (sad) matters as long you have at least one good friend.” With that, Dennis perks up and rushes off to share his “samwich” with his one good friend, his dog Ruff.
