Jules Feiffer on Harold Gray, Al Capp, and Milt Caniff

GROTH: Did you like [Harold] Gray's work?
FEIFFER: Loved it. And loved Sidney Smith's work.
GROTH: Do you like Chester Gould?
FEIFFER: I loved the drawing. I thought that Dick Tracy was exciting, but quickly got bored with it.
GROTH: I assume you have to overlook the politics on both Annie and Tracy.
FEIFFER: Oh, I don't care. It never bothered me one way or the other. Gray's right-wing politics was far less of a problem for me than Al Capp's because Gray had right-wing politics, but he wasn't a mean-spirited man. What was disturbing about Capp's right-wing politics was that it was done within the context of a rotten guy. He was simply mean, nasty, angry. Angry without generosity of spirit. And I must say, without integrity.
GROTH: Now, could you admire that work in some way, notwithstanding that?
FEIFFER: I admired it in the early days, because I could admire the craft of Li'l Abner back in the '40s and '50s. The writing and the stylization and the drawing, which is a little stiff, but still always loved his line. His pen line. And his characters. It was great fun. But it was nasty. Capp was one of my boyhood heroes along with Kelly and Caniff and Eisner, but Capp really got increasingly bitter, and his work changed. As his bitterness took over, the quality of the work declined, and then I simply stopped reading it. I used to save Li'l Abner. They were part of my treasures.
GROTH: I wanted to ask you if you could talk just a little bit about Caniff, because I know I you admire him.
FEIFFER: He and Capp were very great friends, and they were card-carrying opposites. Capp as I said was ungenerous, while Caniff was the most generous cartoonist, and one of the most openly kind men I've met anywhere. Without being a wimp. You felt that he had real character and real strength, but he was fine in every aspect of the meaning of that word. Just simply a fine man. Very supportive of me from the beginning. But I'm not describing him this way because of that. I've seen him with others. He was, that old-fashioned word, a gent. If there ever existed an elder statesman of the cartoon profession, he was its only example that I can think of.