Strange is good (A fan's evolution continues)

I think VIP -- Virgil Partch -- was the first cartoonist I could identify by style, which is to say, I think seeing his work is part of what made me, maybe about the time I was six or seven, hip to the idea that, when the pictures looked the same, they were drawn by the same person.

My folks may have had some VIP stuff around the house, maybe another collection or even some "by products," but where I mostly saw him was in a collection they had, "Best Cartoons of the Year 1944," from which the above self-portrait is taken, as is this autobiography of sorts:

Which I didn't read, because I was a little kid and if I wanted to read something, the house was full of books with words in them. I had purposely picked up one of the books with mostly pictures.

Like this one:

Here's the thing: I wasn't old enough to be real clear on what comics were funny and what comics weren't. Which is to say, there were adventure comics, and they weren't funny, and there were comics where mean kids or rich, snotty people fell in the mud, and those were funny.

And then there were a whole lot of comics in the middle. And so here's this picture of a naked lady on the subway, and she looks kind of sad, and none of the men are looking at her, and the women who are looking at her are being mean. I don't remember worrying about not having a particular reaction to it all, but I do remember just kind of looking at it and thinking, well, it was a pretty strange picture.

I think VIP would have accepted that response. He'd have to, because it's the same one I've got today.

And if I thought maybe that one was strange, I sure as hell thought this one was. And funny, but in a really, really strange way:

I was less amused by what the guy was able to accomplish than I was by the expression on the woman's face. And, again, the reaction of a six- or seven-year-old boy is probably as valid as anyone else's, and VIP would likely have been satisfied with it.

And, again, I don't have another one anyway. I still enjoy looking at her and watching her laugh, and what I like most, from a cartooning point of view, is that the characters are not in the least realistic -- I mean, the numbers of fingers aside, you can't do what he's doing -- but at the same time, her laughter is absolutely infectious, maybe more than it would be if she were more realistically depicted.

And, then, speaking of realism, I didn't want this table for my house, necessarily, but I kind of wanted to see it and have it be in a place where I could kind of mess around with it. Put my friends in it, have my friends put me in it. I recognized the punishment/hostility factor in the cartoon, but, as with the naked lady on the subway, I wasn't sure what it all meant, except that it was fascinating to look at.

I said at the beginning that I thought VIP was the artist who made me aware of style, and I do think he probably was, but we also had a William Steig book around, and an ashtray with one of his drawings, which I still have. I certainly recognized one hand in all of those pictures.

If you think of Steig as the guy who drew "Shrek" and "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble," well, sure, he did those, but he didn't publish his first children's book until I was a freshman in college.

When I was a little tiny kid, he was populating my subconscious with folks like these:

"People are no damn good"

"If you are good-natured, people step all over you."

 

"Whoever wants the answer must come to me."

 

"Why pick on me?"

 

"Mother loved me, but she died."

 

I have no idea why Steig's pictures didn't give me nightmares. But Amelia Earhart said that the reason you don't feel any fear of heights in an airplane is because there is no connection between it and the ground, as there is when you are on a high building or a bridge.

I think Steig's art is so surreal that it was bizarre, but not scary. There was nothing connecting it to the earth.

In any case, between Steig and VIP, I had a lot to think about as a young lad, and I'm not quite sure what I came up with in the end, but maybe art doesn't require you to come up with anything in the end.

So never mind.

Comments

[phred]

Did we grow up in the same house and I just didn't notice you? My parents had VIP and Steig books, as well as some Charles Addams collections. They didn't have Lariar's Best Cartoons series--I had to add those later.

[vppeterson]

Of course we had Charles Addams!!! And, though he never mentions it, we also had a lot of Thurber (with maybe too many words for him then) and my favorite there is the Dog Who Bit People.

[pastordan]

William Steig also illustrated--wonderfully--many of Will Cuppy's books.

[Mike Peterson]

I could have included Charles Addams here, but he may get his own post another day -- quick memory is a giant octopus coming out of a manhole cover snatching people away and someone saying, "It doesn't take much to draw a crowd in New York City." Plus the family, who were not nearly as lovable looking as their TV versions would be.

As for Thurber, yes, too many words, and when I was ready for words, I picked up Benchley instead. *shrug*

I did read "Fables for Our Times" at Grandpa's, however -- but the big attraction there was getting Grandpa to read "Nize Baby" to you. Milt Gross, too, is an entire entry ...

[Mary in Ohio]

Some family member had magazines with VIP cartoons - and I read whatever was available on those long chatty visits when I was a kid. My reaction was pretty much like yours. Thurber was an early favorite, and I discovered the Addams anthologies at the college bookstore. Somewhere in there was The Toonerville Trolley, hence my first calico: Powerful Cat Trinka.

[Kathleen]

I loved VIP, back in the days when his cartoons appeared in True and/or Argosy because they were often too explicit for the Sat Eve Post. They weren't very explicit, but this was the 40s and 50s.

[Woodrowfan]

He also designed a beer can as part of a cartoon series in the 1950s.

http://www.rustycans.com/Graphics/Rainier-cartoon3.jpg