The story and brief adventures of an unsung hero in cartooning...some in his own words!
So, initially, this was going to be a short video project for my comics course in uni. My professor thought it would be nice, considering I'm a film major, to forgo the creator research essay and instead get right in there and rub some elbows. He also didn't know if he could stand me talking about Akatsuka over the 2k word maximum, but I digress. If you're reading this, Professor, please keep it OTL ("on the low"...no comments, no reposts, no associations, and no university award submissions), as anonymity is something I wish to keep. Thanks!
If you'd like to read the last entry, a brief chat with China, IL creator Brad Neely, click here.
This one is going to be really special. Special in that, I, along with Janocha's unnamed-from-herein friend, dined after the show at the Taco Bell Cantina off 8th and 35th, where he told a sprawling story of growing up reading comics, taking on the east coast indie art scene, and eventually becoming assistant to Mort Walker. A good portion of his career has been underdiscussed, but, with his book The Life and Art of Mort Walker covering a good portion of his boss' work, I thought it fitting to hear what he had to say on his history.
At Neely's table was Janocha, signing a copy of The Life and Art for him. After me and Neely talked, I caught up with him, asking about the various things he was up to, and mostly following him around for the rest of the showday. The next and final article will be about all the other odds and ends of the show, mostly as a closer to those I really wish I could talk about and have talked for longer.
I'd asked if it were alright to cover him for a project, and he was perfectly fine. He reveled in the camera, answering some brief questions and getting a lot of b-roll that eventually went unused. Well, aside from the photos in the article, which I've cobbled together from that. But regardless, he was a joy to talk to, and I'll elaborate on some little stories before transcribing what he had told me at the Taco Bell.
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| Gamin and Patches by Addison (Walker), dated February 2nd, 1988. Janocha was initially hired as assistant for this strip. |
Janocha headed to the Dummy Zine table, where several longtime industry guys were hanging out. Of those expected to show was Gary Hallgren, with whom I don't think I need to give any introduction for, but due to some health problems, was unable to attend. I sent him a text after the trip wishing him health, and he returned a few days later with thanks. Though, he's not the subject of the article.
He briefly chatted with Kim Deitch, Mark Newgarden, and Bob Camp, all with whom I also talked with and will detail in the next article. I bought myself a Dummy subscription, and am looking forward to the OK Soda issue, set to be out by the end of the year. All of the guys at the table were connected in some way, which will be elaborated on sooner than later.
Janocha suggested that we go to a restaurant or bar to film some of his proposed segment of the project, and I happily obliged. We stepped outside of the venue, and headed West down to find his car.
For 45 minutes, it seemed, we couldn't find the car.
Standing on the corner of 7th and W 18th, we rallied around people walking the streets to ask where a particular building was. Janocha had taken pictures of where he was parked, but going down the street invited a lot of trouble for the similar-looking brownstones with varying shades of white, red, and the obvious. "We should maybe continue down W 18th," I said. The other two instead suggested we head East, but not before we talked with some tourists: an Aussie family and a Nordic family. Janocha took the time to introduce himself to the Nordic family, saying that he worked on Billy, which the parents recognized.
Me and Janocha headed West, to where he'd found his car. "Of course, the woman here is the smartest of the bunch," he joked, "anyways, have we decided where to go?"I'd wanted to go to a Real Authentic New York Pizza Joint, but finding one with seating and an owner who would be reasonable to record was tough. Digging through Google Maps, I'd found one, but I wasn't sure about it. We ended up passing it, and arriving at the Taco Bell, where the rest of the night was spent.
On the drive there, I talked about my mother. I'd explained that I was growing a bit frustrated with her, but wished she'd understand what I was going through. I love her to bits, don't get me wrong, but sometimes repeating yourself is the only option in some circumstances. I was getting tired of it, frankly. But, it all came from a place of good intentions, regardless. Janocha explained that he had lost his parents not too long ago, and that as you get older, you'd be in the best interest to spend as much time as you can with them. Life is finite and frustrating, but beyond that are people who love you and want to see you succeed, especially your parents.
I thought about it. I'd had these feelings of mortality before regarding family and friends, but never to my parents. It hit me. I grew somewhat sorrowful, but understanding. There are people who love you, even in the absence of anyone around.
The Taco Bell was a bit packed, so I ordered a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, Nacho Fries, and an alcoholic frozen Baha Blast. They call it "Twisted Baha Blast", which is different from a "Dirty Baha Blast" in that it's not a Mormon invention. Apparently they only sell alcohol in certain places around the country and not anywhere near where I'm at, so I decided to bite the bullet and try it with rum. Pretty good, actually!
For the rest of the article, I'll let Janocha speak on his career. He was very kind, and hopefully we can talk again in a longer context.
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"I should talk a little bit about myself. I was raised in West Chester, Pennsylvania. And we, like many, in 1959—so in the 60s—newspapers were still pretty popular. And most cities had two or three newspapers. Philadelphia had the Philadelphia Daily News, but it also had the Inquirer, and it had the Bulletin. Most of the funny, funny cartoons were in the Bulletin. And that's the one that we got in West Chester, Pennsylvania. We got that during the weekends.
"On Sunday, my father wanted the Inquirer. Beetle Bailey was in the Bulletin. So, I would see it, as a child in the mid-60s, in there. But it wasn't one of my favorite strips. Peanuts was [my favorite]. And BC, the comic about the cavemen, and Family Circus, and some of those were there. But I looked at Beetle Bailey.
"I think it was because it was military. I couldn't identify with it, but I liked looking at it. Anyway, so the point was—and I knew of his work, of course—and saw it throughout the years. I've always loved comics, so that was great. I went to Syracuse University to major in illustration. Syracuse had a booth there.
"Mort Walker's four of his children went to Syracuse, and he donated the first 15 or so years of his original art to Syracuse. I was Mort Walker's assistant. He hired me in 1987, and I was there. He passed in 2018, and I was with the studio for another three years before [I was] let go.
"Anyways, I went to Syracuse, and I knew Mort's daughter was there, but I just thought, oh, maybe someday I'll meet Mort Walker. Little did I know, I moved to New Rochelle and lived there after graduating. And Mort had created the Museum of Cartoon Art, which was in Fort Chester. It was originally a ranch. So, I would go there, and on the first Sunday of every month, they would have a guest speaker.
"They would have a major cartoonist come up, and what an exciting thing that was to finally meet the cartoonists that I saw in the newspaper and animators, and that was why I moved to New York. I moved there with no job. I did work with Disney, and I sold something to Marvel, so I found my way. I wanted to get into Mad Magazine, and I did have a tour of Mad Magazine.* [Marvel had] Crazy Magazine.
"But because Cracked was in Florida, I went there [to Marvel], and they looked at my stuff, and I created a character called Buddy Brad, the little Bad Brat or something.**
"I just did a two-page spread about malicious things to do in a food store, like secretly take the soda bottles and turn them so that they all go flat…put bananas in the freezer section, put, you know, like tomatoes in something and mush it so that it smashes stupid stuff, but in a kind of bad, menacing joke way. But they bought it, and they paid. What was exciting to me was there was a—he's now a friend of mine—named Bobby London, who created a comic strip called Dirty Duck that was in Playboy, and it was in National Lampoon, and he was freelancing with them too, and when I found out that Bobby London was getting into Crazy, that he was getting the same page rate—180 bucks a page—and that I was this nobody that just came off the street, I was like, ‘I made it’.
"I was just excited about that. But my timing
was horrible, unlike you bloggers, because I moved here in 1981, I hit the
streets in early 1982 looking for work. We had a major recession in 1982.
I think we're about to have one coming up this year.
"But, of all of the print magazines that I liked, I went to Harvey Comics, and I met with Alfred Harvey, one of the creators of the entire industry, and he wanted to buy me. They were, after 40 years, closing. My timing sucked.
"If I had not gone with print media and gone with animation, at that time, I would have been smart. But long story short, I sold that. I sold that one thing to Crazy, they bought a second thing, but then they went on [after] that.
"I went to the Cartoon Museum, and I met artists regularly, as I was here, over the years, trying to freelance and do ‘it’. I met [Walker’s] son, Brian, and I don't remember everything about it, but he met me every week. What was weird was, I loved comics so much, and I wanted to do a comic strip, but I always said it would be cool to work as an assistant to a big cartoonist. But that was in the back of my head! I said it, and it just was maybe a bucket list [thing]. Well, darn it if it didn't happen.
"I’d met with Andy Warhol one morning, and they had open studios every day in the late afternoon. He was an interesting character. He said, ‘you live in New Rochelle, that's insane.’
"Like, he had this just, very kind—I'm making fun of him—but it was like, you know, he didn't live in the city. He looked at my work—and this was in 1984, as I remember—he just did a piece celebrating the 50th anniversary of Donald Duck. It was on the wall. I mean, now it's probably a ten million dollar thing. It was just a massive thing.
"He looked at my work and said, ‘would you like to do a feature in Interview Magazine?’ And I'm like, ‘where would that be?’ But still, I read it, it's very good. I just walked in off the street, and he's like offering me a position. He ran up, and he called Gael Love. I can't believe I remember her name, but that was about 10 months ago.
"I hustled up for an immediate interview. And she was tough. I mean, if I was caricaturing her, I would have had a cigar in my mouth. She said, ‘kid, you got to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, come in with samples.’ I could draw it, and I drew up samples, but I don't know anything about fashion. I needed to meet with a writer that was in the club scene. For a couple of years, I hit clubs with people. Nothing crazy, but when I think about it, I was into a bunch of places that makes for a good story. I put myself in those situations, sleeping in people's apartments…I didn't know any strange stuff.
"There was one day in February of Sunday—look it up, the date—in 1987, I'm in New Rochelle, and I looked on the TV, and Andy Warhol had died suddenly from a heart operation or something. I've had two open-heart surgeries, so I made it through, but he didn't make it through. I was crestfallen.
"I was like, ‘oh my god’. I still could probably do it for this magazine, but without Andy there on a first-name basis, it's just not the same. So, for me, I lost that opportunity.
"Later that day, the landlady says, ‘call for you’. And I'm like, ‘hello?’
"‘This is Mort Walker.’ Yeah, right!
"Because I had met him at the museum, and we sat and talked every month, just chit-chat, nothing special. I was recommended by his son and one of the curators there! He was starting a new comic script in the newspapers.
"He wanted to hire a young assistant, and he didn't even know who I was on the phone. He was just told by his son's recommendation. I was busy at that time, working.
"I had finally found work at Broadcast Arts Studio,*** working on the first season of [Pee Wee’s Playhouse] for CBS. I was instrumental…we did storyboards of various things, the dinosaur [family] in the mouse hole, and the story of Jason's brain, and all the kinds of vegetables in the freezer.
"It was fun. It was really—I mean, I worked for Walker, and that has a cachet—but there's some people, like today, ‘you worked on Pee Wee Herman’. Especially when I think about Pee Wee's Playhouse. We could talk about Pee Wee Herman for the whole hour. Oh, God, I don't have the time for that, that would be great to just hear about.
"What gets me is there was a woman from my home state that was one of the art directors, and I remember the day she walked around and looked at me and said, ‘I'm not going to put you in the credits’. I really screwed up that day.
"I should have abandoned that. My name should have been in the credits. You watch that show, and the credits are not there.
"But, live and learn. I was busy, and Pee Wee led to—I animated on the opening credits of Madonna's Who's That Girl? It's a lousy film. With the design for that, Madonna's character, very Betty Boop.
"Daniel Melgarejo was the designer of that. A dear man—he was fantastic, he was—but he and another friend, during the 80s, they were homosexuals, they died of AIDS. I have two dear friends. During the 80s, it was an epidemic, and he was one of those casualties. I worked with him earlier at the Disney Studios. I was an anchor in their character merchandising department.
"I'm kind of glossing over some things, but we met up again doing that. We were working on a TV pilot, Wayside School, and all kinds of things. So, I finally was really getting into work that was exciting to me.
"Also, in 1987, we had the rebirth of animation. You had Pee Wee's Playhouse that was claymation and weird stuff—an homage to the past. You had Ren and Stimpy, with John Krisfaluci. You had The Simpsons starting, and you had Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures on CBS, which was controversial, but you had bust-ass new animation that was kicking it. I was actually kind of part of that, which was exciting. Finally, after six years of looking for work…to finally be part of a revolution like this...it was cool. Even though you got an hourly rate, it wasn't...in retrospect, what we did was exciting. Working there was okay.
"Anyways, I got that phone call that night from [Walker], and I'm like, ‘dammit! Great, you want to offer me a job. I'm busy as hell. I'm doing exciting stuff.’
"‘What do I do?’ I said, but I'm not going to turn down the third top cartoonist today. I mean, I could kick myself right now if I say no. So, I told him I was busy. ‘I'll see you next week’ or something. He begrudgingly went, ‘okay’. He called the next day. ‘I can't wait that long.’ I didn't tell him I can't come to work today. I've got to go and see what I’ve got.
"I drove up to Stanford, Connecticut, which I didn't know where the hell it was. I walked through the door.
"His home was the studio of Duncan Gordon, of the Mount Rushmore Sculpture. It was built 100 years ago. It was the grand place to start with. I walked through the door and he's like, ‘Oh, you!’ He didn't even know who he was calling. But he recognized me.
"And he wanted some letters of recommendation. He liked what he had. And I, at that point, had known some famous cartoonist, Jack Davis, from Mad Magazine, was a friend. I stayed at his home for a weekend. Talk about another guy who lived really long. But, the guys from Pee Wee did begrudgingly give me a letter of recommendation.
"I knew some of the people at Terrytoons, the studio that did Mighty Mouse, Heckle & Jeckle, Tom Terrific, Deputy Dawg. I met all of them. They lived in New Rochelle, the remaining ones. I had that recommendation letter. And a groundbreaking woman born in 1893. She was the first comic strip artist in the country. A woman. A dear person. I would go visit when I didn't have any work. I'd just pop in and go see her. So, I had that letter.
"Mort was very impressed. I started working with him in April of 1987. And immediately started meeting him.
"The first day I worked, I got a call from him. Picked up the phone. It was Dik Browne, in New Haven, Illinois.
"He's like, ‘Bill, is this Bill?’ This is Dik Browne. Welcome to...’
"I said, ‘oh man, I'm gonna like this job.’
"Later that month was the big Truman Convention for the National Latino Society here in New York. I met Charles Schulz. I met Charles Schulz in New York. He was a complicated man. I shook hands with Charles Schulz when I was 27 years old. They had a circle line that day for outside tourists to go. I said, ‘sure, I can go on this part of the weekend.’
"Jerry Robinson, who was the first assistant to Bob Kane on Batman, who created Robin and the Joker, this towering figure, introduces me. I'm shaking hands with Charles Schulz as we're going by the Statue of Liberty. I would have loved to have that photo."My years of walking these streets in New York, God bless them. Barely, if I made $300 a month, $250 for the rent, I need to make $350 or something just to pay for gas and to pay for eats. But, forget saving any money. I could survive! I did that for years. It was tough. But, sure as shit, the Walkers offered me a job. Gave me a salary of $27,000. I grabbed onto that and wasn't foolish.
"I earned a bit more than that as the years
went by. I was with this studio for 35 years. So, you know, in a way, I
became stuck. I was enriched in other ways. I've met so many cartoonists, both
on my own volition or through him, over the years. It's been an enriching
experience.
"The MoCCA Festival here is a grand thing. It's the Society of Illustrators—which I should be maybe a member of—who created this thing about 15 years ago or so. There's actually a week in the Society of Illustrators of changing exhibits of cartoon-related artwork.
"They embrace cartooning and understand that illustration is grander than the old days when it was just Norman Rockwell. And, you know, cartoon artists are illustrators too. They illustrate stories.
"And there's so little print media now, and people want their things quickly and simply, and cartoonists can deliver a narrative that's inviting and important, so it's a valuable aspect of visual communication. They embrace that. And they have this great festival, which I go to every year. It's fantastic. As you see, there are several hundred vendors there that are just small guys making their own little flip books for their big publishers or a Wacom tablet of high technology or schools like my alma mater, Syracuse, or School of Virtual Arts. I'm actually at goosebumps right now thinking about it.
"I was membership chairman of the National Artistic Society for four years. My job was for people to apply for me to review their work and give them a chance. I'm a scout leader too, so my chance is to mentor young people. That's important because you have to have a future. I saw several people today, young people that are just about to graduate from SVA or something—Syracuse—that have kick-ass portfolios. I spoke at SVA this past December.
"I was asked to lecture. And there's just
people that do fantastic work. I immediately took them over to the National
Cartoonist Society and said, ‘if you're under 27 years old, you can join for
$16 a year. You get all of these perks.’ Not
only was I buoyed by seeing—in fact, I'm actually scared because—I'm like, ‘these people are better than I am!’ But that's
great in one way. I'm trying to reinvent myself. I'm going to do
a graphic novel. I've had health issues. I don't know
if my hand is up to it, but I think so. I'm late in the game, but to see young
people...graphic novels are clearly the medium of today. There's animation, too.
"Comic strips, newspapers…certainly are not that genre. The medium that I grew up with has been replaced. And graphic novelists today, there's just...I wish I had a million dollars. I would have won everything. It's just so exciting to see the new work. And that's why we're here today.
"I'm glad that you came here to see this. I
encourage anyone to consider coming to the MoCCA Festival
each year here in New York City, or seek it out. There must
be similar festivals in other cities. The medium has changed a bunch, but
people still need to hear stories. They need to
see visual data. It’s
just taking on a different feel. Certainly, there's funny comics, there's adventures, there's adult material, and political
editorial cartoons. Here, we had No King's Day.
"And I love satire! Political satire and political opinion. We must keep that free expression in the media. And to HELL with what the administration says! We need to have a voice. That's what this country was founded on. It's done in fairness. Keep it up.
"It's very encouraging for you to speak with me and consider me important. I mean, I'm sure that's it. I'm trying to say it in New York to get it out. Covers a lot of small things, yeah."
In the final part...
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| He seems important...hopefully I don't fuck up talking with him... |
*Janocha has contributed freelance work for Mad.
**Not to be confused with the Hate character.
***Later known as Curious Pictures.
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