Fun on Mars (1971), Sally Cruikshank
Thanks to the indispensable Anthology Film Archives in New York, I discovered Cruikshank’s underground animated work last night, and my head is still reeling 12 hours later. Cruikshank fell into animation her senior year at Smith (where she made the stunning Ducky) and proceeded to create several other trippy, delirious, whimsical, riotously funny shorts. Her cult reputation led to a flirtation with the mainstream — she created the credit sequences for a few Hollywood pictures (including Mannequin and Ruthless People) and animated songs for Sesame Street. But it’s her original work that retains the most power; her wild and wonderful vision is still completely sui generis.
Lucia Pamela was a musician with a long and bizarre career: she learned piano from her classic pianist mother, led Lucia Pamela and her Musical Pirates (reportedly the first all-female orchestra), formed the vocal duo The Pamela Sisters with her daughter (who would later own the Los Angeles Rams football team!), and apparently had memorized over 10,000 songs. But given all her other achievements (winning the “Miss St. Louis” title, working in vaudeville and Ziegfeld Follies, hosting radio shows in Kansas City and Fresno), she only ever got around to recording one LP: Into Outer Space with Lucia Pamela, a strange concept album about her trip to the moon (which she naturally claimed was based on true events). Included with the release was a coloring book drawn by Lucia herself — the entirety of which is available by clicking above.
From The Bear Who Wasn’t (1946), a diabolical “children’s book” from the great filmmaker, satirist, and cartoonist Frank Tashlin.
All strips are supposed to be entertaining, but some strips have a point of view and a serious purpose behind the jokes. When the cartoonist is trying to talk honestly and seriously about life, then I believe he has a responsibility to think beyond satisfying the market’s every whim and desire. Cartoonists who think they can be taken seriously as artists while using the strip’s protagonists to sell boxer shorts are deluding themselves.
“The world of a comic strip is much more fragile than most people realize or will admit. Believable characters are hard to develop and easy to destroy. When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his voice is co-opted by the business concerns of toy makers, television producers, and advertisers. The cartoonist’s job is no longer to be an original thinker; his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become ‘celebrities,’ endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance.
“My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships. Who would believe in the innocence of a little kid and his tiger if they cashed in on their popularity to sell overpriced knickknacks that nobody needs? Who would trust the honesty of the strip’s observations when the characters are hired out as advertising hucksters? If I were to undermine my own characters like this, I would have taken the rare privilege of being paid to express my own ideas and given it up to be an ordinary salesman and a hired illustrator. I would have sold out my own creation. I have no use for that kind of cartooning.
”
From The Portable February, the new collection of cartoons by David Berman (of the late, great Silver Jews). I’ve admired Berman’s loose, hilarious doodles over the years, so I’m happy they’re now collected in one place; they vaguely remind me of the cartoons of another poet, Kenneth Koch. Berman notes, “The drawings are pitched into some rudimentary space of public art, a place we might think of as between and below Gary Larson and Raymond Pettibon.”
Jacques Legrange was a key (and largely unknown) collaborator with Jacques Tati, an idea man and painter whose sketches largely helped flesh out Tati’s fantastical cinematic visions, and even provided the basis for some of his gags. Above is his design of the legendary house from MON ONCLE. See (and learn) more with the above link to David Bordwell’s excellent blog.
Scott Dikkers scores immediate comedy nerd points for his longtime involvement with The Onion, but his side-projects, so to speak, are just as funny and smart. His You Are Worthless takes an easy target (the self-help book) and attacks it mercilessly, and his Jim Journal cartoon strip’s vicious, heartbreaking satirization of mundane daily life rivals the Onion’s best headlines. Both are a decade old, but well worth seeking out.
Rain, sleet, snow — Glasgow School of Art student Harriet Russell wanted to test exactly how far Royal Mail carriers would go to deliver letters, so she hid the addresses of 130 letters in complex puzzles, games, anagrams, cartoons, and brain-teasers drawn on the front of envelopes. All but 10 were delivered.
SCREWBALL SQUIRREL, Tex Avery (1944)
A personal favorite Avery, filled with typically brilliant gags and a playful self-reflexivity that’s years ahead of its time (and better than the more celebrated DUCK AMUCK). Jonathan Rosenbaum chose this — along with six other Averys! — as one of the 1000 essential films of all time.
