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When I Was In the Funnies.
By Rick Marschall
The first time I was in the comics – my name, anyway, not
my face or heroic self – I had a difficult time actually showing it to friends
and relatives. Details at 11.
First. When I was hired by the Connecticut Herald in
1972 after a few months at a small north Jersey weekly, the Valley Star of
Englewood, my duties were few and specific: reporter; political cartoonist;
columnist; editor of the weekend magazine section, Leisure Plus. I lived
an hour away but was alerted about the opening from Jerry Norton, a friend and
official with Young Americans for Freedom, the campus conservative group
founded by William F Buckley. YAF was headquartered in Washington DC; Jerry was
publication director and taught me how to fake editing; and I worked in YAF’s
mail room. A YAFer of all too familiar a type – barely 21, but wedded to tweed
jackets, turtleneck sweaters, pipes, and a fake British accent – was leaving
his job and wondered if Jerry knew a conservative who could apply.
The Herald was a conservative paper, an anomaly in
Fairfield County, but the liberal journal had been purchased by William Loeb to
add to his New England newspaper chain. Check that box. He was a rabid comics
fan, which occasioned many conversations. Check that box. And he was the son of
William Loeb, private secretary to President Theodore Roosevelt, an interest of
mine since childhood (mine). Bingo.
I applied and got the job, even though it was an hour’s
commute from my parent’s home in New Jersey (yes, a struggling recent grad). I
was sat at Smith’s desk, right next to a man I shall tell more about some day
here, Harry Neigher – one of the last of the Winchell-style three-dot gossip
columnists, celebrity interviewer, and the Herald’s cartoonist, a chore
he was happily to put aside. He became my serious mentor.
On the first afternoon I discovered that he (in fact,
nobody there) could stand the pompous Gaines Smith. “Our Gaines is our loss,”
he told me.
If it sounds like I was handed a lot of assignments… I
thought it was not enough. In its glory days, the Herald had been the
biggest paper in Connecticut, even publishing Springfield, Mass., editions.
When I joined it was a ghost of its former self, but small enough that I was
obliged to do all that writing and drawing, but also edit wire copy, help
compose the weekend paper at the printing plant (when Watergate broke, it was a
Saturday night and I had a ball). It was still the days of typewriters and
carbon paper; a “morgue” of clippings and old photos; and yelling “Copy Boy!”
when you pulled a finished story from the typewriter. We had no copy boys; no
one came to the desk. But that didn’t stop us from calling out.
An ancient Harry Resnick shuffled around the ad department.
He was Al Capp’s uncle, and had helped pitch Li’l Abner to syndicates
back in 1934…
But I stray. I’ll return to the Herald (in a way, I
wish I could: the best job of my life) some week.
One of my first assignments was to revamp the weekend
color comics section. No one liked it – especially the readers, according to
polls – so I added “Features Editor” to the hats on the rack.
Cutting to the chase. One thing I noticed was that the
paper seemed have every clone of Blondie in existence. OK, Fairfield County
was iconically suburban, but cartoon housewives, mostly blonde, glutted our
funnies. Hi and Lois; Dotty Dripple; the Berries; Trudy; Family Circus; Dennis
the Menace; even Prince Valiant, who had married Aleta, if you recall. I’m
kidding about Hal Foster’s page but there were other carbon-copies.
I canceled many – of course not all – and brought in some
contemporary stars, some old classics (United Features wanted to test my sanity
for ordering Captain and the Kids) and even brand new strips. I laughed
so hard at Frank and Ernest samples that I signed a contract before its
debut.
One feature that went was Trudy by Jerry Marcus.
This was before I knew Jerry, and loved Jerry, and became a weekly lunch buddy
(with Orlando Busino, Bob Weber, Gill Fox, Ron Goulart and others), but what
really persuaded me was more than a hundred cards and letters pleading for
Trudy’s return.
“A” for effort. I quickly noticed that most postmarks were
from Ridgefield (where Jerry lived); and the same phrases popped up, like “Trudy
is our favorite neighbor” and “Trudy is part of our Sunday mornings.”
Well. All cartoonists like to have their features in the
local paper, and have (real) neighbors see it. I reinstated Trudy and,
except perhaps for the Post Office, no one regretted that.
Several years later, after getting married, working for
three syndicates in New York and Chicago, working as Editor for Marvel Comics
and a writer for Disney; I moved back with wife and family to Connecticut. And
back to weekly lunches with the cartoonists.
One day Jerry gave me an original Trudy daily panel
(The Herald had folded, so I was not seeing it). It is reproduced here –
Trudy answers the phone; the call is for her husband; but she monopolizes the
call first with gossip. Jerry slipped in my name as the caller. Cool! You’d be
surprised, or maybe not, how often this “inside” stuff happens in comics.
But – completely unknown to Jerry, the other names he
plucked from the air, made the who caption too complicated to explain to
relatives and friends. (I’d have to wait almost 40 years to share it here.) OK,
the “Ted” is Trudy’s husband… but also my son’s name. “Nancy” is a generic name
in the conversation… but also my wife’s name. “Betty,” another suburban name…
is my sister’s name.
It looked like Jerry was doing a biography, or an
obituary, of me and family. It was a great gesture, but the drawing went
straight on the wall, tough to explain except to Mensa members once a month
(and they are too dumb to remember the details).
When we moved from Connecticut, to take a teaching job in
Philadelphia (College of Art, now University of the Arts), Jerry did a private
drawing that was easier to explain. So special, and funny, and I used it as a
change-of-address notification and for much else. Special is special, and it
was specially colored too.
And since those days, Trudy has always been, after all, my
favorite imaginary neighbor.
