A Crowded Life in Comics –

 

Bob Weber, 

Forever the Cartoon Fan.

Rick Marschall.

“A Crowded Life,” by definition, is a personal column. It shares personal memories about the most public of expressions, Cartoonists, Dik Browne once said to me, are curious creatures, choosing to live and work in solitude, yet presenting their conceptions of what what is funny, what is interesting, what is memorable, with the entire world. Cartoonists are, like many actors are, basically shy and private; yet they expose their work, their confidence in its acceptance, they expose themselves, to a world that might be waiting expectantly, or… ready to ignore or criticize.

Odd people, cartoonists: men and women who are pixie-dusted combinations of introversion and audacity.

I suspect these semi-philosophical thoughts, although somewhat pertinent this week, are a form of evasion. I have to address yesterday’s news, as I write: the death of Bob Weber. “All good things must come to an end”? I suppose that fits, but it doesn’t alleviate the grief. Bob embodied a lot of good things, and was good – a good cartoonist; a good friend; a good friend and teacher; a good father; he was even a good procrastinator, maybe the best in a profession rife with them.

He was always ready with a smile, a story, and a memory. He was always ready to go to lunch or dinner or midnight snack, not to much to eat as to fraternize. He never outgrew a child’s delight in discovering new cartoons (even if they were 120 years old), discussing styles, meeting and encouraging young artists. He was serious about being silly but – last but not at all least – he was a craftsman who cared about his work, the personality of his characters, the feelings of readers.

Bob taught cartooning at local libraries and schoolrooms in Baltimore and, later, Westport CT, and even the Smithsonian (despite always mangling the pronunciation of “Smithsonian”). He was generous in praise of other cartoonists; his favorite probably was John Gallagher. I have seen him recall Gallagher gag cartoons, possibly for the hundredth time, yet quake with laughter as if he first saw each one.

There were times – I think overlapping – when he would have his good friend (humanity’s good friend) Orlando Busino ghost some Moose dailies and Sundays… while Bob pitched in on his son’s own feature Comics For Kids: Slylock Fox and crew. Crazy merry-go-‘round? Sure! All cartooning, all fun.

Bob was a big, hulking guy well over six feet tall. A beetle brow and Elvis-like pompadour and duck-ass hair. He came from Baltimore, a modest family and a brother whose lifelong hobby was racing pigeons. He wanted me to ask Al Kaline, after I got to meet and sketch the Hall of Famer, if he remembered Bob from the high school they attended together, but Al died before I could.

When the cartooning bug overtook Bob he attended the School of Visual Art in New York City, I think while it was still Cartoonists and Illustrators, and I think with Orlando and with Jerry Marcus, lifelong friends. He submitted to The Saturday Evening Post and other outlets his heroes and friends did.

I began to describe Bob physically, which is a fun part of this task. He always kept the hair; and his outfits of huge buffalo-nickel belt buckles and good-old-boy string ties never were mothballed. In the toney artists community and celebrity-thick Westport CT, he… was one of a kind. What came with the package was a Southerner’s persona, unapologetic and joyful. I attended many country-music concerts with Bob and discussed endlessly our favorite songs and singers and critiques; he loved Merle Haggard but told me he regretted the line from “Big City,” Keep your retirement and your so-called So-cial Security. “Some people really need that,” he cried. Sometimes Bob and Jean, my wife Nancy and me, and Gill and Helen Fox, would spend evenings in country-western bars (yes, Westport had them).

One Saturday morning Bob called me, said he learned that bluegrass pioneer Mac Wiseman was playing at a country fair somewhere in mid-Connecticut that afternoon. That’s all it took – we drove up, spent a lot of time talking to Mac between his shows, and wound our way back home, drenched in Americana.

Part of the formula that made, or maintained, King Features Syndicate as a powerhouse in the 1950s and ‘60s, was Comic Editor’s Sylvan Byck’s idea to recruit gag cartoonists from the magazines’ golden age. Pick the pockets, so to speak, of the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, and let the panel cartoonists loose. Those “minor leagues,” and ad-agency cartoonists, swelled the pages of the funny papers.

One of the call-ups was Bob Weber, surely with some of the funniest drawings and funniest gags of the lot. Sylvan once told me that he thought King should have an “answer” to Hall Syndicate’s Andy Capp, and he thought Bob Weber was the perfect cartoonist to create a lovable American counterpart – not exactly industrious; a character who had friction with neighbors; a good heart. A perfect marriage, of cartoonist and creation, at least. Moose was a classic, as it morphed to Moose Miller its became less cliched and more human; finally, as Moose and Molly, it became warm and fuzzy – but also more surreal, as Moose’s unkempt yard sprouted chicken bones, fish heads, fried eggs, and stray cats.

Only in recent months, because of dwindling newspapers and Bob’s dwindling youth (he was 87) Moose and Bob retired, a sad good-bye we noted in these columns.

I had planned to write a few words and then pick my own pocket – cut-and-paste some of the stories and memories, many from these columns. But Bob Weber stories are many, even without repeating much. I will reprint some of the drawings from through the years. (Sometimes, even when he was tight on deadlines [always] and he knew we’d see each for lunch in a few days, he would send a clipping or news item – and invariably festoon the envelopes with bold and colorful real images and faux-promos for Moose.)

So I will share some of the artwork, which says more about Bob than any of my stories. I think the first time we met was at an early Comic Convention in New York City – Seuling’s I think; maybe at the Taft – and he was with Gill Fox. I was with a portfolio full of old artwork. Fast-forward from the ‘60s to recently, a lunch (of course) in Westport (of course) with Orlando Busino (of course) and some new friends like Sean Kelly.

I have referred to Bob’s son Bob Jr, whose ambition and success have, if anything, built upon his father’s, but whose sense of humor – and drawing style – are the old man’s. When Bob Jr and Lisa lived in Westport we would see each other not always in cartooning contexts; and Bob Jr accompanied me to men’s Bible studies and such. In the golden threads of life, the timeline from SatEvePost to Moose to Comics For Kids, and other creations of Bob Jr, is a solid one. Bob Weber’s legacy is not only countless magazine gags and decades of the Moose comic strip, but Bob Weber, Jr., his proudest legacy.

And a final observation about Bob Weber: this is the first time he ever has made any of us sad.

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A Crowded Life in Comics –

Return To Sender.

Another envelope, a large mailer, from Bob Weber. I think there never was a Moose Miller Fan Club, but there should have been. One was discussed, and the Treasurer, suspiciously signing the exorbitant chapter-registration invoice as “Web Bobber,” stipulated that board of director meetings were held each year in what sounded like “Baltimore,” but was in fact Bermuda. I had kids to put through college…

By Rick Marschall

The response was so surprising to last week’s compilation of the “decorated” envelopes, I thought I would share a few more before moving on to other recesses of a Crowded Life’s memory. I previously shared thanksgivings and huzzahs that incipient collectors along the line in the postal “service” never seized. Cartoonists’ letters with sketches and artwork on the envelopes… but how would I know?

Another anomaly pertains to cartoonists who were bold enough, or “economical” enough, to draw their characters on envelopes or the backs of post cards. Chancy, especially for recipients, right? Well, one of the first fan letters I ever wrote was to Crockett Johnson, who then was drawing a revival of Barnaby. In the second response I ever received from a cartoonist it was from him (the first was from Hal Foster), and he thanks me for liking the strip; he expressed gratitude that I was making my own Barnaby book, cutting and pasting strips every day; and he apologized for not being able to send an original. But “this will have to do” – an original inked drawing of Mr O’Malley. It did just fine!

But – Cushlamochree! – after all my worrying about the Merry Mailmen of the land swiping sketches by famous cartoonists, sometime through the years I mislaid this card. It is in my piles of ju… my archives, but not located for awhile, not in time for this column.

The others, today, are to me, but also from prominent cartoonists to others. (The collecting disease is infectious). I am not showing others of related interest – for instance all the letters Bill Watterson wrote to me do not have original sketches of Calvin or Hobbes on the envelopes (so calm down, everyone) and, very much like the hermit he is, no return address except the name “Watterson.” I cracked the code.

Enjoy.

This envelope has interesting history as its subtext. Pat Sullivan had “established” his animation studio, clearly, but Felix the Cat and Otto Mesmer were not yet on the scene. The character he displays is Sambo, of the strip Sambo and His Funny Noises, which he inherited for the World Color Printing Company’s Sunday comics from Billy Marriner, who had committed suicide in Harrington Park NJ.

R. F. Outcault could be all business. One of his many enterprises was an ad agency – mostly using his characters – run, in Chicago, by Charles Crewdson and his son-in-law, a nephew of General “Black Jack” Pershing

Clare Victor Dwiggins – “Dwig”-- sent this caricature to his editor at Henry F Coates, the publisher of some of his early books of drawings. In case the postman did not recognize the recipient by the portrait, Dwig dutifully scribbled the name. It is amazing that, even in one of America’s largest cities, the name of the company and the simple city name, was sufficient to have a letter arrive. Also, cities in those days had multiple deliveries per day – better known as “per the Good Old Days.”

I have several letters – some silly; some flirtateous – from George Herriman to Louise Swinnerton, ex-wife of Jimmy. The envelopes, with his distinctive signature and full home address in Hollywood, was always there. And some envelopes – or large package wraps, like this in butcher paper! – had sketches too. Here, a self-caricature.

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A Crowded Life in Comics –

That’s a Wrap.

By Rick Marschall

One of the unexpected, unintended, unmitigated joys, pleasures, and delights of being an editor, collector, and friend of cartoonists – besides occasionally getting away with using three words when one would do – is receiving mail.

Through the years I frequently have been surprised by letters and parcels that arrive with cartoonists’ drawings festooned on the envelopes and package-wraps. Cartoon Festoons is the category, and of course I have saved them; cherished them.

I have quite a few but have always secretly wondered how many were ripped off by postal clerks and mail deliverers who were also comics fans. (And they say that “philately will get you nowhere”…)

One never knows, do one? as Fats Waller would ask. Myself, I once sent a package to a special friend in France, and on the envelope I wrote jocular note, so I thought, in French – directions to the postal worker how to proceed from the CNBDI to the house in Angouleme, with a crazy street map (it was a large envelope). The clerk at the Abington PA post office, an oaf, looked at it, took a heavy marker, and traced his own path, smiling. Shmooshing great art, as Linus van Pelt would say.

That was a mere Marschall, so imagine what obstacles were overcome when famous cartoonists decorated their envelopes and wraps, and communications arrived unsullied, unmolested, and unshmooshed. Or didn’t; how would I know?

Here are a few that DID arrive, with stamps (so to speak) of approval.

A 26-inch long package arrived from my friend the great children’s book illustrator Eric Gurney. I was trying to develop a syndicated Sunday page with him at the time.

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A Crowded Life in Comics –

Moose Tracks. 

For a while I was Editor of the National Cartoonists Society magazine The American Cartoonist, with Dick Hodgins Jr. Bob Weber sent a news item about a teaching gig of his at Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. He frequently taught in Westport, in DC, in New York.

By Rick Marschall

Word came this week that the great comic character Moose is retiring. Thank goodness the great comic creator Bob Weber is not retiring. That is, he will not be drawing the seven-day-a-week classic strip Moose and Molly, but Bob will be continuing, we hope and pray, to be the classic Bob Weber – student of cartooning, friend of cartoonists, collector, practical joker.

That is to say, this column will be neither a funeral for the strip, nor a eulogy for Bob. Just a stroll down memory lane in the neighborhood known as A Crowded Life in Comics.

It has been a privilege to know this guy Weber since the 1960s. Bob could have been created by another cartoonist – well over six feet tall, deep bass voice, a beetle brow under a retro-1950s hair style, of an Elvis pompadour and duck-tail, now silver. He would now say, “You forgot my trademark silver-dollar belt buckle,” and he would be right.

Bob was born in Baltimore – I believe he told me that he went to high school with baseball great Al Kaline – and began cartooning there. He attended New York’s School of Visual Arts so long ago (he is now 85) that, I’m not sure, but I think it was still called the School of Woodcutters And Engravers. Then he became a member of magazine cartooning’s Greatest Generation – the golden age of gag cartoonists who filled the pages of The Saturday Evening Post and other weeklies.

In 1965 King Feature Syndicate asked Bob to develop a strip about a reckless and careless neighborhood guy, a bit of a caution but with a heart of gold, always hungry, always borrowing stuff, never mowing his lawn, always ready for a picnic. In Hollywood it’s called “type casting,” but in Bob’s case, in the strip world, it was called type casting. I mean the kind of characters Bob drew in the mags.

When my wife Nancy and I moved from Connecticut to Bucks County PA, there was a surprise party thrown by cartoonist friends in appreciation of our leaving, or something. This was Bob’s special drawing. It is always appreciated when a cartoonist puts more work into a memento than one of his average Sunday pages…

King Features Comic Editor Sylvan Byck once told me that two years after the success of Hall Syndicate’s British import Andy Capp, KFS thought an American version could find a home. Maybe Bob told me too, I can’t remember which was the chicken and which was the egg about this sales concept – but Moose certainly was not a copycat, rather close enough to check a box on Americans’ want-lists, whether readers knew it or not. The lovable guy down the street. Moose quickly starred in 200 papers.

As I noted, Bob has been a friend – became a friend, as anyone who meets him does become – since the ‘60s. He loves to talk cartoons as much as draw them. Which probably explains why he always was behind schedule. We went to the San Diego Comicon together in 1976, but he was so tight on deadline, he hardly left his hotel room,  producing six dailies and a Sunday, but missing great events and attendees! After the Con we meandered up the coast, visiting Will Gould (Red Barry) and going to bookshops in Los Angeles, while Moose languished.

When Bob drew this sketch for me, probably during Bob and Rick’s Excellent Adventure to Comicon and Beyond in 1976, Moose was already an established hit, 10 years old.

Years later, when I lived in Connecticut, Bob’s new reason for procrastination became mine too – actually a great pastime for cartoonists, a vital lifeline for creativity, notwithstanding the opinions of editors and wives. That is, lunches once or twice or five times a week. In Fairfield County, the group I was lucky to belong to usually included Bob, Orlando Busino, Jerry Marcus, Ron Goulart, Gill Fox, Jack Berrill, Joe Farris. Sometimes Klaus Nordling, Jack Burns, Herb Green, Robert Kraus. These repasts usually convened in Bethel or Ridgefield, occasionally in Westport or Norwalk. Many conversations were about the “old days.” I often brought show-and-tell items from my collection, and we frequently wound up at my house, thumbing through archives.

Bob has always been a great practical joker. I still employ a Weberism, asking supermarket clerks, when they are nearly finished with a big order, to tell me when it reaches $20; “That’s all I have with me.” Once I was the butt. I was new to Fairfield County, eager to meet the fraternity at a BBQ at the house of Frank Johnson, one of Mort Walker’s assistants, eventual soloist on Boner’s Ark and Bringing Up Father. Bob “reminded” me that it was a costume party. Needless to say, I kind of stood out in my cowboy hat and boots and wooden pony.

A few years ago Bob drew for me the newer, mellower Moose. He became the softie hugger of the patient Molly; and the strip’s resident grouch was Chester Crabtree.

It was natural that the son of Web Bobber (alter ego) would be a cartoonist too. Bob Jr is a little more reserved than his dad, but draws in his style. When Bob Jr was young I brought him to a few Saturday morning Bible studies; and he married a terrific beauty named Lisa, also a Christian. Bob Jr took a job at King Features, pitched a children’s feature of puzzles and games and gags (he sometimes bounced concepts off me – the modest guy hid a fierce ambition), and he eventually scored with Comics for Kids. Then the associated Slylock Fox. Then a website for aspiring young cartoonists. His features are major successes.

Eventually Bob Sr pitched in on his son’s feature, more than Junior helped on Moose (you can tell when the great Orlando Busino helped on Moose, mostly by his distinctive lettering).  

Whether Bob Weber will continue to help out on his son’s Sunday pages I have not yet asked. With Moose and Molly now retired after a great 55-year (!) run, Bob will have spare time.

… That is, unless someone calls about having lunch up in Bethel.

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A Crowded Life in Comics –

San Diego Memories

 

by Rick Marschall

I am not at Comicon International this week, and if you are reading this in Yesterday’s Papers at release time, you probably are not either. On the other hand, you might be. True cartoon and comics fans don’t put their worlds on hold when a convention like San Diego consumes 18 hours of days during the Con: they somehow fit them into their “normal” waking hours.

I have received many texts and calls, asking if I am there this year. Not this year, but I have attended most of them since 1976. Some memories here from an event whose functions including making memories, not only tracing them or collecting them.

In 1976 I attended with Bob Weber, who drew and still draws the Moose comic strip. I was living in Chicago; he divided his time between Baltimore and Westport CT. Bob loves hanging with other cartoonists and talking cartoons; and he has a fan’s enthusiasm for meeting artists for the first time, and sharing his fan perspective.

True to form for this poster child of a deadline-challenged cartoonist, Bob traveled cross-country, but was so late with his strips for King Features, he stayed in his hotel room almost every moment of the Con, drawing and inking strips. Once the Con ended, he was free, and we spent a week tooling up the West Coast, visiting cartoonists and haunting used-book stores.

A few years later, during the peregrinations between the El Cortez, the US Grant Hotel basement, the old convention center, before the monstrous current site, I was then an Editor at Marvel. To make a long story short – it is worth a separate column – the Con largely was still for collectors alone, virtually; and more and more pros and legends dropping in. My big project at Marvel at the time I recall was the three-issue process-color Weirdworld epic called “Warriors of the Shadow Realm.”

I convinced Stan Lee and Jim Shooter that the Comicon was something where Marvel should establish a beachhead. I proposed taking tables and showing the latest products. Then, since Peter Ledger, colorist, was delaying the third book – John Buscema and Rudy Nebres having finished their work – I suggested a PR gimmick of having Ledger actually paint his pages for the public. My motive was to make sure he finished the damned book, which he might not have done if we left him in New York City.

Actually my larger motive was to scam a trip to Comicon. Indeed, Marvel footed the bill for me and Ledger, and my assistant Ralph Macchio, and production wiz (and great friend) Elliot Brown, even Shooter too… to set up a large Marvel display. The pages were squeezed out of Ledger (who decided after the Con to stay in the US and not return to Australia).

Gary Groth, just having founded The Comics Journal, became an impromptu sidekick as I and Ralph and Elliot tore up Southern California, from Tijuana up to L.A., for the week afterward. We stayed out of jail; but Ledger did not; another story for later…

By the way, Comicon Board members, many of whom became very close friends, told me that the stunt I pulled off – Marvel’s presence; sales, promotion, and “meet the artists” – was the first space reserved by a comics publisher at the heretofore fan event.

Shel Dorf had founded Comicon and was always more of a strip fan, than a superhero or animation guy. Even after the Con had expanded beyond his dreams, and capacities, he always was deferential, I supposed due to my historian’s cred, and would take me one or two evenings during the Con to dinner at the Hotel Del Coronado, very gracious. That is how I met and had sane conversations with the likes of Ray Bradbury and Alex Toth (reasonably sane).

Ironically, eventually, sensible management of the Con really outpaced Shel’s vision and abilities, and a couple years Board members actually asked me to run interference if Shel erupted over being persona non grata at the event he founded. He never made a scene.

          Four historians share a moment at SDCC: R C Harvey, Shel Dorf, Rick Marschall, Ron Goulart

Before movie madness and video games and red carpets consumed Comicon, there was another-world aspect each year, of casual meetings becoming special; and special moments occurring routinely. So I will share three sketches that became special to me:

          Russ Manning drew Tarzan at and on the old El Cortez Hotel.

          I asked Noel Sickles, Milton Caniff’s onetime inspiration and studio-mate, to draw a sketch. “Of what?” he asked. I should have requested Scorchy Smith… but I suggested an impression of San Diego. 

          Everybody’s favorite gentleman, Batton Lash, was an old friend of mine from School of Visual Art days; before he and Jackie Estrada were wed. Bat, sadly, died this past year. He drew this page featuring his classic Wolff and Byrd characters.

We all have ‘em. Sketches and memories. Jackie Estrada published a great book of Con photos she took over the decades, fun and “candid” surprises on every page.

For a few years after launching Hogan’s Alley magazine, I held get-togethers – usually lunches or dinners at a local Mexican restaurant – for Friends of Ol’ Hogan as Tom Heintjes would call them. Here is a group of such friends on the steps. Good ol’ John Province would have been in the shot, except that he took the photo:

          Gene Hazleton; Rick Marschall; Shelly Moldoff; Ron Goulart; Dick Sprang; Vin Sullivan.

Whether attending as a fan, or speaking or interviewing, strolling or displaying at a booth, Comicon always provided memories. Friends from Europe would attend and hope that I would play Tour Guide afterwards to Hollywood, the deserts, Tijuana, Palm Springs, Julian… and I was always happy to oblige. Friends I made at the Con sometimes blossomed into greater friendships and extra-curricular activities. For a while I sought to establish a formal alliance with the Angouleme Festival in France, arranging for guests to attend San Diego; and helping Fay Desmond and Jackie Estrada navigate the communications, including room service at rural hotels, in France…

I hope the multitudes are manufacturing many memories this year too…

⧭

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