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By the time you read this, King Features Syndicate should have debuted their new comic strip. "Inside Woody Allen." The strip is written by Allen and drawn by New York artist Joe Marthen,
Allen, the accomplished comedian, has done plays, movies, and short stories and, according to King Features publicist. Ted Hannah, comic strips are the last area for Allen to move into. The strip deals directly with Allen and according to Hannah, "I am told his entire life will appear" in the strip.
The strip is not ghost written, says Hannah, "Mr. Allen is stickler for details. When he undertakes a project, he takes charge of it."
"Inside Woody Allen" has the largest prepublication list of markets of any strip in the history of comics, said Hannah. Approximately 200 newspapers around the world will initially carry the strip. The strip's US debut is scheduled for October 4.
GROTH: You drew the Ben Casey newspaper strip for quite a while. What's the difference in approaching a daily strip and a 17-page comic book story?
ADAMS: For one thing you have to retell your story every three panels, which is really ridiculous. You also have to create enough interest in three panels to sustain an audience, which is very hard to do. Most of the strips that come from comic books don't do that, and that's why most of the strips that come from comic books are destined for failure. I consider myself a partial expert in the field because I took a strip that was not destined to do well and took it up to 265 papers and kept it at that level until the strip ended. There are all kinds of other standards that have to be in comic strips. The one thing that's most important about comic strips is that they're dead, and they should remain dead as much as possible.
GROTH: How do you mean?
ADAMS: Comic strips are waste of time. Who needs a three panel story? A joke, maybe, a three panel joke, but not a story. Not when you can watch Star Wars, or watch television shows or read comic books. They're a big waste of time.
GROTH: You're saying the newspaper strip is totally...
ADAMS: ...Out of date. When things die they should be left to die. They just ought to die. All things ought to die. Just die! Goodbye! They died ten years ago, maybe longer ago than that. I don't why I did mine. The Marvel magazines is a lot more the direction that comic books should be going in. Is The Hulk in color or in black and white?
GROTH: In color.
ADAMS: That's where it's gonna be at. A change in format [to full-color magazine comics] will happen because it is economically feasible and marketable. It is economically feasible from a distribution and retail point of view. With one drop of the cash register you've made 35¢. Beyond that, it's a package that will last longer. It's a package that people are used to handling.
YRONWODE: ...So your art has been variously described as cinematographic ard your writing as short stories. Were you much influenced by films and literature?
EISNER: That's absolutely true. Both films and short stories- particularly the highly specialized short story writers like O. Henry and Bierce, de Maupassant -- here was a whole period in the 30s during which the short story was an art form unto itself. Today, people are still writing short stories, but it doesn't command the writing market as it did once before. I had only two... well, actually three major influences: the motion pictures I saw -- and I saw lots of 'em -- short stories I read, which nurtured my own imagination, and my own Life experience, which figured heavily in the things I did.
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YRONWODE: Your work has been compared to Fritz Lang...
EISNER: Yes, Feiffer's said that... people say that...
YRONWODE: ...and Orson Welles...
EISNER: I saw every one of those the early experimental Man Ray films and others. I felt a very strong kinship to Orson Welles in those days. The old Fritz Lang movies were around. I saw every movie I could. I didn't always cataloque them by director because in those days, with the exception of Orson Welles, I was not as conscious of directors as I am now. Movies were like our television -- we consumed 'em at about the same rate of speed that you consume television today. Movies became part of one's life experience. This is something which perhaps sociologists should someday explore -- Jules Feiffer touched on it in his writings and I think he's aware of it because he grew up in somewhat the same environment that I did. Movies were part of our life experiences just as television is for the people who stay home and watch it every day of the week. To many people, moving picture characters and television characters are real people -- when the actors die they get very upset.
Well, movies were part of my life and so they had an influence. As far as ídeas and so forth, movies were their medium and comics was my med1um. I saw comics as an art form, legitimate within itself and, just as movies borrow from comics and are influenced by comics, so I was influenced by movies. And the theatre, by the way. I had strong interest in theatre and I often tell my students [at the School of Visual Arts] to see in terms of lighting and stage sets. Theatre was very strong; my father did stage sets when he first came to this country -- that is, scenery and backdrop paintings. Among my first experiences is the memory of visiting Second Avenue Jewish theatres where I could see the men working on backdrops. I have a feeling for theatrics. I did some in high school too -- some stage design. In fact I did a play with Adolph Green where I did all the stage sets in a very modern form and he did the music and the words.
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YRONNODE: What comics did you Like as a kid?
EISNER: There were lots of comic strips. Of course one of the comic strips I was influenced by was Popeye. That will probably surprise you.
YRONWODE: Really?!
EISNER: You know, a year ago I guess, somebody wrote a book showing all the early comic artwork of comic artists and I unearthed some stuff I did when I was 15 or 16 and it looks just like Popeye - a cold imitation of Segar's work. I was terribly influenced by that. was very fond of Alex Raymond's work, and Caniff's Terry and the Pirates. Fortunately, when I was a kid, strips proliferated in this city. We had tremendous numbers of 'em so I was exposed to wide range. There was Krazy Kat -- Herriman influenced me tremendously. I remember the tremendous impact his crazy backgrounds had on me. I recognized it as art, and that is exactly what it was. I don't think he even thought of it as art to the extent that I did.
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EISNER: ...Unfortunately, you see, letterers in this business never had a real chance to make creative contribution for two reasons. First, economically it didn't pay them -- at $3.00 a page they've really got to grind it out in order to make a living -- and second, a lot of cartoonists don't regard the balloons, the lettering itself, as anything other than a major nuisance. The letterer is probably lower down the totem pole than the eraser. I think that's a shame because I think the lettering is very important.
Incidentally, in A Contract with God I did all my own lettering because I regarded it as integral to the art. I should add that you'll find more creativity in lettering among the "gag" or humor comics than in the so-called realistic strips. Walt Kelly's Pogo had very creative lettering.
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YRONWODE: Who did the coloring?
EISNER: I would do the color guides. Jules Feiffer would do a lot of the coloring. That's why I was so amused when he said [in The Great Comic Book Heroes] that The Spirit never had any socks. (Laughter] We had problem -- we never knew what color the socks were. You see, if you made the socks red that would look too ridiculous, but red or yellow would be the only colors that did not clash with or disappear with the brown shoes or the blue pants. He couldn't have blue socks 'cause that would look like an extension of his pants and he couldn't have black ones "cause that would look real weird, and he couldn't have yellow socks 'cause it would look like an error and so we would invariably try to fudge it and of course the engraver would just color 'em flesh... [Laughter]... so he would never have socks! I didn't realize this until Feiffer pointed it out many years later when he said, "Do you realize that The Spirit never has any socks?" I said, "You're crazy!" and he showed me couple of panels -- and by God, he's right! Also, by the way Feiffer signed the artwork; that was his job: to sign "Will Eisner" on it. [Laughter]
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YPONWODE: You don't see color as an essential part of comics...
EISNER: No, I don't think color is essential. Color can kill certain effects. I see the entertainment side of comics divided again into two kinds -- there's the comic that's sensory experience, visually sensual experience, and there's the comic that tells a story utilizing pictures as a language. In those a very delicate balance exists between story, or text and the art. To me, comic or sequential art is a language and the use of color is like putting print in 24 point type as opposed to doing it in 10 point type - I don't think it will enhance the value of the story, although it may add another dimension. And then, very often, enormously powerful, full color art swamps the story. About the only ones whose work seems to be able to survive thing like that are men like Corben and Giraud, or Moebius as he's called. Both men, particularly Giraud, seem to be able to do a feature whose color is compatible with the story. Occasionally Corben will overwhelm the reader with a powerful work of full color art that really knocks you off your chair -- and you almost forget what the story's about. Well, anyway, that's how I see it. I think the story is paramount... I have to work in terms of what I'm trying to do -- and at this time I have no intention of trying to be anything but a story teller. I see comics as a form of literature for the future.
YRONWODE: And then there's the book...
EISNER: Ah yes, that's the other project. I worked on that for two years and it's also out now -- the book is called A Contract with God. This is what I've devoted my major serious efforts of the last few years to. It's something that I've wanted to do for a long time. In the foreword of the book I explain why I did it and how it came to be, so there's really no sense in repeating that - hopefully people will buy the book and read the foreword and then they'll know what my reasons were. For the purpose of this interview I must say that I am still the same Will Eisner of 1942-43, trying to expand the horizons of my medium, my medium being a sequence of pictures on paper. I believe that sequential art is the oldest communicating art form, I think it has the validity of any other art form -- and while it may not have the breadth and dimension of motion pictures and it may not have the ability to cover abstracts the way lines of words do, and it may not be able to do a lot of things -- it has served humanity since early man because it has the ability to transmit a story. So I am at work now, hopefully not singlehandedly -- I'd like to be joined by other artists -- in an effort to produce literature in sequential art form, or what you would call "comic art." I've been struggling with the word "comic book" for 30 years now...
YRONWODE: It's a bad word...
EISNER: It's a terrible word - but every time I try to change it, I find that people force me back into it. I had finally settled on the term "graphic novel," thinking that would be an adequate euphemism, but the class I teach is called "sequential art" -- and of course that's what it is -- a sequence of pictures arranged to tell a story.
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YRONWODE: The style of inking you use in A Contract with God is quite different from what you did in The Spirit - you're not using the coarse brush that you used to use - there lot of fine pen lines. In fact, and this is sort of off-the-wall, I don't know if you're into Winsor McCay at all...
EISNER: Of course I know his stuff very well.
YRONWODE: ...Well, he started off with a relatively simple inking style in Little Nemo in 1905, but when he got older and began to do those editorial cartoons during the last 10 years of his life, he got into an extremely fine crosshatching style -- he avoided solid blacks altogether at that point...
EISNER: Yeah, sure- we all seem to go that route. Michelangelo too - in his later years he began to have a looser approach to his carving. The unfinished statues that you find in Plorence are an example of that. And Milton Caniff - look at the change in his work over the years. As one gets older, as one matures, the tight line, the finely constructed line, loses its value. Perhaps one gets more interested in the theme than in the technique.
People don't remain the same, they change over the years. The only features that never altered their structural line are features like Mickey Mouse. Even Al Capp changed - although he never loosened up to the point of sketchiness. When you have a strip that's very very personal to the artist, a strip which isn't drawn by formula, you'll find that the art will change. Usually it will tend to get looser. There's a lack of patience with having to retain that heavy line. In The Spirit that heavy, very controlled line was an effort to retain color, color which had to be applied after all by someone else. We had to give them what we used to call "trap arcas." Now that's not necessary- the technology has advanced, color can be applied in other ways. Besides, I like that loose line I think it looks nicer... more expressive.
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YRONWODE: ...I want to know what you see as the cutting edge between humor and tragedy and I want to know why you seek that balance, why you carry it to those extremes. On one page innocent victims may be littering the landscape and on another page you may be parodying a singing commercial. You take it from extremes of really gut-wrenching despair on the one hand and then you turn around and just yuk it up.
EISNER: Aren't those two things really the very essence of life? Really between extreme tragedy and extreme humor what is there? I suppose I never think about it that way until I'm interviewed, I've never really sat down and analyzed it, but think satire is a form of rage, an expression perhaps of anger. There is kindly humor and there is bitter humor. There's kindly tragedy and there's bitter tragedy. There is a relationship between the two in my mind -I can't keep them separate. Every time I do a very tragic scene, I can see humorous scene within the same frame and it can be converted. A man walking down the street and falling into manhole can be very tragic thing -- or it could be very funny. So much depends on what else is involved. I see humor as an incongruity. There are lots of definitions of what humor is- some think it's man's inhumanity to man, some think people laugh because they're glad it isn't happening to them, some people laugh because of happiness, or kindness, or even fear -- but I see humor as a kind of incongruity.
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YRONWODE: And do you think that scenes like that like could damage youngster's minds?
EISNER: No, I don't agree with Dr. Wertham. Well, actually, I believe that all literature "damages" the mind in that it influences the mind. I think you can't say that comics depicting violence and mayhem should not be shown to children because once you start doing that you're setting up a literary and intellectual diet for somebody. And who can set up a diet for society? I don't believe that censorship can be administered -- countries have tried it over and over again and it just doesn't function well. I'm against it, against any form of censorship other than the restrictions imposed by the creators' own taste, or sense of responsibility to moral values.
GROTH: I always found the adventure strip in the newspaper format a little unsatisfying because you summarize the plot every day and you only have several panels to tell the story. I always found it a little unsatisfactory, more suited to a humor strip.
MARSCHALL: I can see where some people would feel that way, but I don't think so. It's just that it's a little different than if you didn't have those demands. But that's like saying you would find Saturday morning movie serials unsatisfactory, and you know what makes for satisfaction? Sometimes the very devices that are forced upon you to cope with the day-to-day situation can work to a charming end. Harold Gray for instance, who I think is the greatest storyteller in the history of comics -- strips or books -- dealt with that in a very novel way, For most of the run of the Orphan Annie strip every day's strip would be a different day's action. That was very hard to do, but he pulled it off very well; I don't know anyone else who's attempted it. Another thing is, he would recap a story, not by a simple caption -- he would very seldom use captions -- but he would have characters go into soliloquies or dialogues. My favorite story of his, from '36-'37, lasted 14 months; by the time the whole story ran, you'd see it from the angle of every character, either through a soliloquy or a dialogue, but every character through the course of the story had recapped the action: it was a fascinating insight into the story almost like what Wilkie Collins did in The Moonstone, only not that heavy-handed. So there was a case where a guy had the restrictions of having the story chopped into seven pieces each week and overcame it beautifully. Not everyone can do it.
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GROTH: You don't think it might be that we're living in more impatient times. We're getting films like Close Encounters and Apocalypse Now, which overwhelm newspaper strips in a way.
MARSCHALL: Well, they do, but you're talking about apples and oranges. It seems axiomatic to me that if you're willing to read a story broken up in panels or to wait one day to read the continuation of a strip, you should be willing to wait 13 weeks for the whole story. Why not? If you accept the format of the continued strip you don't sit there and wish "Oh, why can't I read this for an hour and a half straight, like I sit in the movie theatre for an hour and a half?" People don't think that way. They've accepted the cliches of the form -- not the content, the form -- and then it doesn't bother you. You only hear that argument used as an apology by the story artists and writers who don't have confidence in their own work and the syndicate managers who are at a loss to explain the unpopularity of continuity strips. I'm really convinced it's just because they're badly done. They're boring.
"Peanuts is a great strip, but no one has ever said, publicly, that they don't like Peanuts. But then no one has ever said they don't like motherhood or the Bill of Rights. I'm sure there are such people in the country, but they keep it quiet; it would take guts to say those things publicly- especially about Peanuts. In America you must like Peanuts, even if you really don't."
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"I really don't think my politics changed. You see, I've always been for those who are being shamed, disgraced, ignored by other people. That group has changed. Now it's the poor bastard who's rich -- well, I don't mean rich, and of course I always had Bullmoose -- but the poor son-of-a- bitch who worked, who was being denounced by the liberals. For Chrissake, these people are keeping the country afloat. They were denounced, and it got me damn mad. So talked about it, and I continued to talk, because one of the things found was that when was all for the liberal attitudes -- and I believed in them -- the conservatives showed me only icy contempt. I never got a letter from them. They just hated me. When I began attacking the liberals, the conservatives maintained their icy silence, but the liberals began denouncing me by the thousands of letters every week!
"I started asking myself, with these letters, 'How could a girl from Smith know this language?' and 'How the hell did a clergyman learn that expression?' They denounced me in the foulest terms. And I must say that it convinced me that if this is what attracted liberals, I'd better keep at it." [in other words, his politics of only looking out for himself and getting enjoyment out of being mean to people never changed a bit. I can agree with this]
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"Modern art is the revelation of disordered minds. It is created by the untalented, sold by the unscrupulous and bought by the uninformed. Genuine art today is found only in auto ads, fashion drawings, and comic strips. And comic strips are the best art being produced in America today. I judge them by the same standards I apply to Daumier and Michelangelo. And by those standards comic strip art is damn good.'
That the drawing in Blondie fluctuated not a stroke when Chic Young died is remarkable only because we may not have realized that Jim Raymond had been drawing the strip since Chic's eyes went bad in 1950. Sharing a byline since 1974, Raymond has been with Blondie since 1935. And in 1937, Raymond both wrote and drew the strip for a year while Young, recovering from the shock of his first son's death, escaped to Europe. (At the time, the strip was loaded with jokes featuring Baby Dumpling, the Bumstead's first-born-a too painful coincidence.)
Jim Raymond's more well-known brother, Alexander, also worked on Blondie for the first three years of the strip, leaving to create Flash Gordon, Jungle Jim, Secret Agent X-9, and, later, Rip Kirby. (When Baby Dumpling was eventually given name, he was named after the elder Ray- mond brother.)
"You don't set out (to be national institution)," Caniff said; "you set out to stay on the payroll. When you get into syndication, you are there to sell tomorrow's newspaper-not today's because the reader already has today's-but tomorrow's, to sell tomorrow's newspaper, endlessly.'
ADAMS: Remember that when Herriman did Krazy Kat, the complexion of the world was very different. There wasn't that much entertainment, so when you were doing a syndicated strip, the newspaper asked you to be entertaining. In other words, that's how you could sell newspapers: by being entertaining. If it were true now- if all the televisions, radios, and movies were destroyed, or our economy got in such a slump that all we could do was buy the newspaper-then it would be the job of the newspaper to be entertaining. Since we have all those other things, it's ridiculous for the syndicated strip to be entertaining because it's outclassed everywhere it turns. There's no way to be entertaining except to make a laugh. You can make a laugh, but even then there are comedians on television every night telling jokes. It's just all over the place. So, if that is taken away -- and it is taken away -- if the ability to entertain is taken away by other media competing, then what is there left to do? Krazy Kat would never be done now. It's just not as entertaining as Saturday morning television for kids or the television shows or movies are for adults. That's why it would never be done. We're in a different time.
In 1952, three years after the national syndication of Pogo began, Kelly ran Pogo for President against Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. Pogo lost (as you may have noticed), but the popularity of his campaign showed Kelly that the time was ripe to enter a whole new field of com- edy.
"It was the sort of period," Kelly wrote, "in which the naive boy cartoonist began to examine the gift horse's feet. He looked to see if they were straw or clay... Crime investigations, a political campaign directed by PR men, real and fancied traitors in gov- ernment …made the believer count all his beans to see if a few had stuck to the pot. I finally came to understand that if I were looking for comic material, I would not ever have to look long. We people manufacture it every day in a hundred ways. The news of the day would be good enough. Perhaps the complexion of the strip changed a little in that direction after 1951. After all, it is pretty hard to walk past an unguarded gold mine and remain emptyhanded."