Conventional Wisdom: Drawing Lines In The Sand

With San Diego just around the corner, Ninth Art continues its reminiscences of conventions past with newspaper strip aficionado Frank Smith's story of a chance encounter with a creator who gave him a new appreciation for creator's rights.
14 July 2003

I didn't discover creator's rights through Image Comics. As a matter of fact, when Image first started releasing comics, I drew a line in the sand. See, I didn't really like any of the artists who had gone over there. Something about Image seemed ill founded. I realise now that I was simply a young curmudgeon reluctant to witness change. Also, I thought Rob Liefeld's X-FORCE was the pinnacle of terrible comic book storytelling. Hence, YOUNGBLOOD left much to be desired. It all felt derivative of better works.

In retrospect, I think Image has done a lot of good for the comics industry. 'Creator-owned' is nearly a genre unto itself. But anyway, my initial reaction to the Image-coup wherein simply everyone left Marvel was to read more DC books. I submerged myself in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES for one and I also returned to my first love: newspaper comic strips.

At the time, Bill Watterson was still drawing CALVIN & HOBBES and it should go without saying that I loved this strip. Berekely Breathed was doing OUTLAND. BLOOM COUNTY had proven to a modern audience that a comic strip's life could be finite. OUTLAND was an appropriate coda and a tonic for the days when CALVIN & HOBBES and THE FAR SIDE would be forever absent from the comic pages.

Pundits can decry the death of the newspaper strip as much as they like, but these strips do have lasting significance. There's a reason why PEANUTS continues in reruns long after Charles Schulz's death. And I don't think the reason is simply that nothing else has moved in to replace the void. A world without a daily PEANUTS strip is a bleak world indeed.

My favourites from childhood were PEANUTS and GARFIELD. I couldn't get enough of those stupid GARFIELD collections. When I returned to GARFIELD after experiencing 'The Fall of the Mutants' and 'Inferno', WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS ? GARFIELD suddenly wasn't nearly as compelling. It was, in fact, the height of tedium. The character was incapable of growing.

The situations were repetitive. And quite honestly, I didn't really care. Garfield the cat was but a corporate logo much like Mrs Butterworth or Charlie Tuna. When you see GARFIELD, you know to expect the comic strip equivalent of thick and rich maple syrup or dolphin-free tuna fish. Is it Monday again? Holy shit, let's see what Garfield has to say about that. Oh! Oh! And his love of lasagna. That cat!

The first comic strip character I ever hated was CATHY. This has been said before by others, but it's worth repeating as I had a similar feeling: I couldn't decide if she was supposed to be intentionally abstract or just grotesque. I avoided her like the plague. MARY WORTH, APARTMENT 3-G and REX MORGAN, M.D. - those King Features comic strip melodramas - were little more than daily non sequiturs.

PEANUTS was like a haiku. CALVIN & HOBBES was a philosophical discussion and THE FAR SIDE was a daily dose of Dada.

There's a comfort in the newspaper strips that is comparable to the comfort of comic books. Just like how you can always pick up a copy of SPIDER-MAN at your specialty shop. You can always open up the comics section and find General Halftrack lusting after Miss Buxley. Dagwood will be taking a nap. Rex Morgan will be talking about some other somesuch. Asthma maybe. And Garfield will be extolling the virtues of lasagna.

So, in the year following the creation of Image comics, I retreated towards comic strips. I also began backtracking and discovered Winsor McCay (LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND), George Herriman (KRAZY KAT), Lyonel Feininger (THE KIN-DER-KIDS) and the EC Segar POPEYE. So when I'd catch one of Bill Watterson's rants about how newspaper comics used to occupy an entire newspaper page, I also began to lament for those days.

Outside of alternative weekly papers, Watterson's strip was the only one attempting to be anything more than a glorified greeting card. Breathed had stopped doing OUTLAND. THE FAR SIDE ended. And Schulz's linework was growing increasingly unsteady. But what's important about these strips ? CALVIN & HOBBES, BLOOM COUNTY/OUTLAND and THE FAR SIDE ? is that they were done by one person without a studio and they were thus allowed to end.

I went to a lot of comic book conventions around this time. I'd spend the day digging through quarter bins or exasperating comic creators with complete runs of their most obscure ? and often best forgotten ? work that I wanted signed. For every Julius Schwartz edited issue of BATMAN that I have autographed, I also have entire runs of CAPTAIN ATOM signed by Pat Broderick. Go figure.

At one such convention, there were a few Image creators holding court for all of the fanboys. I took advantage of the attention these cartoonists were getting to roam about the room.

In the back of the hall, I spotted a single table with a cartoonist doing sketches of Garfield. These were perfect sketches of Garfield. I stopped by out of morbid curiosity and because there was a lull, the cartoonist and I began chatting. Sadly, I've since lost his name to time. As anyone who has ever been to a comic book convention knows, it's not uncommon for a cartoonist to draw sketches of characters that they are not personally known for drawing. Sometimes it's fun to give a cartoonist a request for something they've never drawn before. Sometimes it's not. In this case, I had yet to suss out what this guy was doing handing out sketches of Garfield. He wasn't Jim Davis. That much was certain.

In grade school I often did wobbly sketches of comic characters for other kids. Batman would cost you a dollar and Superman ran two dollars because I could never get his symbol to look right. So I regarded this guy drawing sketches of Garfield with the same kind of ironic distance that is reserved for caricature artists hanging around outside of Central Park.

I said to him: "I like your Garfield, man".

The cartoonist looked up from his sketching to say a curt, "Thanks".

Impulsively, I asked for a sketch. As he began drawing I asked why he was drawing Garfield.

"Because I draw GARFIELD", he said.

He went on to tell me that he worked for Jim Davis' studio and had worked there for many, many years. "Check out the first few strip collections. You'll notice that the style is completely different. The style changed when Jim hired a studio. It's pretty common in the industry."

The cartoonist went on to tell me that he had been writing and drawing GARFIELD for years and that all Jim Davis did was approve the strips and then sign his name on them. I had a new reason to dislike GARFIELD, but it didn't seem as justified. I was incredulous.

Until this moment, I'd never really given a thought to who owned and who didn't own characters. Image should have given me an idea, but I was obstinate and thickheaded. I didn't get it. I thought the Image founders were just being spoiled brats. Here was a man who worked in complete anonymity. At least with comic books, the creators who worked as writers/artists-for-hire had their names published on their work. This was something entirely different. GARFIELD felt very corporate, all of a sudden.

The studio system had been in place long before GARFIELD. Bob Kane's studio was infamous for not crediting writers with their work. Oftentimes going so far as to keep the artists in total anonymity from the editors. So yes, I still disliked GARFIELD, but when confronted with the business aspect of the strip's creation ? it suddenly seemed much more forgivable.

Most popular comic characters are handled as works-for-hire, which means that the artist and writer can take any liberties they so like as long as the character itself maintains its status quo. It's an almost creative stasis. My hatred of GARFIELD's repetitiveness was explained all in one moment. That's what the studio wants. The strip itself doesn't even matter. So long as GARFIELD appears daily and doesn't offend anyone, nothing else matters.

Image Comics had the right idea in putting the power and the money into the creator's hands, but they didn't have the actual creations to back it up at first. Had they stuck it out and bucked the system like Bill Watterson, I would have had immense respect for the Image founders. But that's me. I drew a line in the sand a long time ago.

Frank Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

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