This is the first of 20 profiles I did of cartoonists and their strips for the Post-Star of Glens Falls, NY, beginning in January of 2003, after I had redone their comics page. Jerry Bittle had done "Geech" for years; his newer strip, "Shirley and Son," was about to debut in the Post-Star.
Jerry was easy to interview because we had been e-mailing back and forth for some time. He was a very funny guy and not only had some great stories of his own but wanted to hear, and laugh at, your stories, too.
This piece ran January 6, 2003. On April 8, Jerry died of a heart attack while on vacation with his family in Honduras. We were each 53 and I had one more funny story I had promised to tell him.
The first question is the obvious one, but the answer is a surprise: No, Jerry Bittle has never been divorced. In fact, he's been married for 26 years.
"I have a lot of friends who have been divorced, though," he says. "My best friend from high school just went through a really bad divorce, and we talked a lot about it. And I've got a lot of close women friends who went through it, too, so I've heard both sides. I guess people who go through a divorce have a real need to talk about it."
They also have a real need to laugh about it, and Bittle's two-year-old strip, "Shirley & Son," has readers of more than 75 newspapers around the country laughing, as 5-year-old Louis; his mother, Shirley; and his father, Roger, go through the very common, modern experience of life in two homes.
"I try to make it as realistic as I can, and the feedback I get from my mail is that I do," Bittle says.
Part of that realism is that, for Louis and his best friend, Max, nothing is particularly remarkable in the fact that Louis' parents don't live together.
"Kids are pretty accepting," Bittle says. "For Max, that's just how Louis lives."
Sometimes, the strip is simply a kid strip, a story about a funny, bright little guy and his best friend who get into trouble from time to time. Bittle admits there may even be a subconscious connection between Louis and Max and Beaver Cleaver and Larry Mondello. The only difference is that Louis is apt to get two lectures instead of one.
Still, his life is good. He has a best friend, a dog and two parents who love him.
It's not so easy for Shirley and Roger.
Shirley does not like the sense of failure that her divorce brought into an otherwise ordered life, but she's a bright and thoughtful woman, more apt to listen sympathetically to her bitter friend at work than to join in the complaining. She's also uncomfortable with dating, though, like
other attractive divorcees, she has her opportunities.
Meanwhile, Roger struggles to step up to the additional duties of a single dad, although, unlike other cartoon fathers, he isn't the constant butt of cheap and easy jokes.
"I'm trying really hard not to dump on Roger," Bittle says. "At the beginning, I got a lot of mail from divorced fathers who were expecting a lot of male-bashing, but only one of them has not written back to say that they were wrong, that I'm handling it well. I'm waiting for his letter," he adds with a laugh.
Roger tries. He may take Louis to lunch at Hooters and is often guilty of overscheduling weekends. But he has also gone to parent/teacher conferences when Shirley was unable to get out of work ("Will it still count?" Louis asked.)
He's a good father, and Shirley knows it.
Still, Bittle is not looking ahead to any reconciliation between them.
"I've had readers write in, wanting Roger and Shirley to get back together, but that's not how the strip was conceived," he says. "People will say, 'Wouldn't you like to provide an optimistic outlook for kids?' But I think it would just be offering them false hope. Parents don't get back together again."
Besides, humor comes from conflict.
"I try to keep a subtle grind going between Shirley and Roger," Jerry Bittle says. "There are a lot of hurt feelings between them that keep that edge in their relationship, but they still see the good in each other."
Next Sunday: Jeff Mallett and Frazz
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