Cartooning Is Alive And Well

A reply to Bill Watterson by Mort Walker

If any of you were here yesterday and heard Bill Watterson's speech, I'm one of those old dinosaurs who draw stupid strips. But no one but me has drawn my strip in all of those 40 years and I do take great pride in my work even though I try to play golf two afternoons out of seven.

I also have assistants. You need someone to point out your mistakes. Your wife can't do it all.

I got into this work because I wanted to get out of the life of poverty I'd been enjoying since I was born and I'm still in it because I don't want to return to that state. At least I am a surviving dinosaur. And much of my success is due to my syndicate which encouraged me and gave me advice, and had 20 salesmen out there plugging my stuff. We've had our differences, of course, but we work together beautifully.

I use ideas from my assistants because it's hard to stay fresh and interesting for almost half a century, but I'm the editor. I always work on their ideas.

I wouldn't be here today if wasn't doing something right.

I am probably the wrong person to ask to speak about the state of the art of cartooning. I'm much too much of an optimist. My glass is neither half full, as Mike Peters', nor half empty, as Bill Watterson's; it's always full.

But in this case I have some solid facts to back up my optimism. I can see the whole panorama from my ivory tower and I can happily tell you that not only is cartooning alive and well, it's jumping and jiving.

In almost every area -- artistically, legally, financially, and creatively -- it has made great strides. And through my rose-colored glasses (I'm really equipped for this job), I can see an even better future for cartooning.

40 years ago, after I had just sold Beetle Bailey to King Features, I attended one of my first meetings of the National Cartoonists Society. Hal Foster, the creator of Prince Valiant, got up to talk. He said, "The days of comic strips are over." He felt that editors didn't like the comics and were trying to get rid of them. I went home sick. My dreams were shattered.

The next morning I called Sylvan Byck, my editor at King Features, and told him what Hal had said. Sylvan told me to forget it, that there were always prophets of doom around. Sure enough, Beetle Bailey began to prosper and I was relieved.

A few years later, the editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin made a major speech which was picked up and printed throughout the country. He called the comics "The sick chicks of the newspaper business." I am a very impressionable person. I always believe the person who is speaking at the moment. I believed him. Then Sylvan Byck spoke. He said, "Bull," and I believed him.

To prove the point, Prince Valiant is still being carried on very nicely by John Cullen Murphy 20 years after Hal Foster. And no matter what the Philadelphia editor said, comics are still one of the best read sections of the newspaper and very important to the health of most papers.

My wife, Cathy, and I were in Dallas two weeks ago for the Newspaper Features Council annual meeting. We had put together a program of Cartoons for Literacy for the Council in which we enlisted 33 cartoonists to do public service ads to help readers know what to do to help the literacy cause. These ads will be distributed to 1,700 newspapers across the country. To launch this crusade, we were putting on a show at the library with press and TV coverage. Everything was going along fine until we stepped into the middle of a dispute between two Dallas papers, the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times-Herald.

As we were preparing our show, the Morning News announced they were paying Universal Press Syndicate $1,000,000 to yank 24 comics and features from the Times-Herald and put them in their paper. What a squawk! The Times-Herald complained that they had taken on many of these features at their inception and built a loyal readership for them, only to have them taken away. They sued. It was quite a tense situation we came into, trying to work with both papers who were at each other's throats, trying to include cartoonists from each paper, and trying to get both editors to come to our show and make speeches. Somehow it all came together beautifully. Nobody was killed except illiteracy.

But the point I want to make is that this is a prime example of the importance of comics. Newspapers are willing to go to battle, to fight, to take each other to court, perhaps to die, because they can't have their comics. In Denver, one paper paid $60,000 a year to lure Garfield from the other paper. There have been lawsuits in Boston and Philadelphia over comics, just to name a few major battles.

One of the reasons for this continued interest in comics is that the comics are continually interesting. Almost every year there is a new breath of fresh talent entering the field. Garry Trudeau ushered an entirely different element into the comics, biting political and social satire. It started a trend, as all new successful features do. Then Gary Larson introduced the weird and way-out format spawning a whole new look to the comics pages. Recently, Bill Watterson startled everyone by coming out with just plain brilliant talent. It wasn't fair to the rest of us. Can we sue?

Another wonderful trend has been the entrance of more minority cartoonists, and there will be more. The NFC ran a minority scholarship contest which was won by a young black man from Los Angeles. He is now studying at the Joe Kubert school. It was a heart-warming experience to see this young man win. When he was called with the news, his mother was heard to exclaim in the background, "Thank you, Lord. It's miracle." It seems that he had wanted to go to the Joe Kubert school for 10 years and couldn't afford it.

Another encouraging sign is the price of original cartoons and a growing market for them. When I started my collection as a boy, cartoonists were giving their work away free. I remember when Hal Foster began to get too many requests and decided to charge $5 for each Sunday page to discourage people. Of course, now those pages sell for well over a thousand each. An auction of originals by about 20 cartoonist at the Dik Browne benefit last year brought in over $30,000 for the Sarasota Hospital. Forbes magazine reported a single Mickey Mouse cel auctioned for $450,000. Incredible. Just a few years ago, they were selling for $5 a piece at Disney World. There are now chains of galleries around the country selling animation and comic strip art. My most horrible memory was the time about 20 years ago when the lobby of the New York News had tables full of originals from the Tribune Syndicate morgue with signs encouraging people to take what they wanted. I assume what wasn't taken was thrown away.

That was one of the reasons worked so hard to establish the Museum of Cartoon Art 15 years ago. I felt like these masterpieces of cartoon art should be preserved for future generations. It wasn't easy starting the Museum and we went through some bleak times in the beginning, but now we are rolling along solidly.

In fact, we are doing so well that we plan to expand in a building five times our present size in a new location. Norwalk, Connecticut is rebuilding its harbor area with malls and offices and apartment buildings. Next to the Maritime Museum is an old building that we hope to get $3,000,000 grant to restore. We will spend another $1,000,000 on our displays, video library, hands-on room for kids, dozens of cartoon statues, some of which will move and talk. Costumed characters like Popeye will greet people. Caricaturists will be at work, movies will be shown hourly and the whole atmosphere will be colorful and fun and still educational. We are predicting between 200,000 and 300,000 visitors the first year. Cathy calls it a cross between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Disney World.

Incidentally, you may have heard about the theft at the Museum where the curator who was in charge of our archives was stealing from it. He confessed and was convicted, but we didn't recover much of the artwork until the last minute in a sting operation that was worthy of a TV show, involving the FBI, a New York district attorney, and a dozen cops. They set up a purchase of 44 pieces of Prince Valiants and Dick Tracys with a dealer who was represented by respected law firm. When the deal was made by a representative from our side who was wearing a tape a recorder, the cops moved in and recovered our artwork. In some strange way, the whole affair was satisfying in that it proved to me the worth of cartoons. It must be worth something if it's worth risking your career and reputation and freedom to steal.

Just to remind you that I haven't left my ivory tower, I'm still up here getting a good look at the state of cartoons. And here's something else that's looking good. More and more cartoonists are beginning to own their own creations. Many years ago when I had darker hair, cartoonists were virtual slaves. They had to work in what they called a "bull pen," a fenced-off area in the newspaper or syndicate office. They usually had a "keeper" who hesitated to even let them out for lunch for fear they wouldn't come back -- which often happened.

We all know cartoonists are a bunch of kids who play jokes on each other, drink and have irresponsible fun. At least, that's what our wives and the syndicates feel. After a while, our guys broke out of the pen and began working at home. But the syndicates kept control through the contracts. They even began inserting a "work-for-hire" clause into the contracts a few years ago which stated that they created the features and we were only hired to do the work. What an insult. I refused to sign my contract for over a year until they took out that clause. Now, finally, more and more of us are getting ownership of our creations, the way it should have been all along. Patience has its rewards. In this case, it only took 95 years.

Another salient view through my rose-colored glasses is focused on the book business. I was told in 1956 by a publisher to whom I had presented a book proposal, "Nobody will buy book of reprinted comic strips." "What about Peanuts?" I asked him. "Oh, that's different," he said. I didn't sell a book for another 12 years, and I've had almost 100 printed since then. Now we see cartoon books reprints all over the bestselling lists. The last edition of Calvin and Hobbes had an advance print order of over 1,000,000 copies.

On top of all this we have our Broadway versions of the comics, movies of Batman, Superman, Dick Tracy, and more on the way. Television is coming onto comics in a big way. Of course, you've seen Peanuts and Garfield. But watch for Hagar and Blondie on Wednesday, November 1st [1989], and Beetle in February [1990]! And licensing is experiencing a comic boom that would take an 8-B ball point pen to letter. Everyone has to have cartoons on T-shirts, advertising, toys -- it's a billion dollar business. [Here's Mort Walker missing the entire point of Watterson's speech] Disney theme parks are coming up like roses all over the world. Is there anyone on this whole globe who does not know Mickey Mouse? Walt, with all his marvelous vision, probably didn't see this far. Cartoons have become an important part of our everyday lives. They enrich us.

They also enrich a few cartoonists, I'm happy to say. Two of our beloved world-class cartoonists are on the Forbes list of the highest paid entertainers in the country, ranking right up there with Mike Tyson (he's really funny), Pink Floyd, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Def Leppard, and Jane Fonda. Hey! That's pretty heady company for Charles Schulz and Jim Davis, who claim they only draw to make people happy. I know that to be true because I knew them both when they didn't have a dime and were still drawing because they liked to draw, just the way they are today.

Cartooning has become a multi-million-dollar business and I don't see anything wrong with that and I'm proud to be a part of it. There was a time when I'd tell people I was a cartoonist and they'd say, "That's nice. What do you do for a living?" I'd kinda hang my head. Well, I don't have to hang my head anymore. I know that all cartoonists don't make that kind of money, but every one of us contributes to the vibrancy of America by commenting on the foibles of society, adding to the language, analyzing events, and just being a vital part of what's going on, adding to the fun of living.

Someone in the business world was commenting to me recently about his dealings with some of the oil companies. He said, "Y'know, some of those princes are really crummy." Which reminded me instantly of a line from Pogo, "Why turn a perfectly good frog into a prince?"

There is so much wisdom in that simple line. And this happens day after day in cartoons. I think the public and numerous astute institutions have finally hurdled the boundaries of approved literature and found a whole new garden of profundity. Cartoons say a lot to a lot of people.

There is nothing wrong with cartoons. I say this because there are still people out there who think cartoons are juvenile, poor art, not worthy of intelligent consideration.

In truth, cartoonists are the best read authors in the world. Each and every day they tussle with the human condition and shed new light and insight in simple, understandable words. These cartoonists are historians; they are psychiatrists; they are healers.

A kid wrote me last year that his teacher was sick in the hospital. He took him his collection of Beetle Bailey books. And -- honest to God -- the kid said he got well. That was good feeling. We've all known what good laugh can do for us.

However, the power of laughter has been authenticated. Norman Cousins has worked in this thesis for several years using humor to soothe and heal. Many cases of serious illnesses have been reversed through laughter. So true is this therapy that doctors all over are studying and recommending it as method to be considered seriously. I mean, getting funny is getting serious. As readers scan the comics pages every day, endorphins are released into their systems creating euphoria, resulting in general healing process. Maybe someday we'll need a doctor's prescription to read the comics.

This comics explosion is not just an American phenomenon. It's worldwide. It is astounding. If I can tell you my experience without sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, I'll tell you, O.K.? Cathy and I went to Sweden last year to launch a Beetle book at a book fair. The line from my booth snaked around the aisles and out the front door. After a few minutes the fair manager came and told us we'd have to move to a remote section of the building because we were blocking all the booths. He said this was the biggest turnout they had for anything in their history. O.K., forgive me for reliving that personal experience.

But I just heard of how Japan is using cartoon books to teach reading, mathematics, and skills of all kinds. Even the head of Mitsubishi had his biography done in comic book form. They say that everyone in Japan reads comic books.

I think I've made my point from the top of the tower. This is a moving, breathing, and growing artform. If it gets to be a business sometimes, don't worry. They say if you're not in show business, you're not in business.

What I love about it is it's a joy to be a part of it. It's vibrant and exciting and it changes every day. Look at the comics page today. You don't have a stack of dopey jokes. You have a spread of human experiences, zapped with humorous spark, a smorgasbord of life from politics to working women, to mothers with children, to people with pets, to pets with people, to all kind of people with all kinds of other people. The comics page covers the whole gamut of life, and sometimes even extraterrestrial. What a way to start the day. With a smile. The comics cut through the smog of life and let the light side show through. I think we should consider our cartoonists as a national treasure and name streets after them! Thank you.