[Art by Frank Cammuso]

Before his reinventing himself as a children’s book author through Toon Book properties like Otto’s Orange Day with Frank Cammuso and the Dean Haspiel collaboration, Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, Jay Lynch was a driving force in the Chicago’s underground comics movement of the early-70s, publishing Bijou Funnies, which brought the comics world pioneering works by the likes of Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman, and, of course, Lynch himself.

In the interim years, Lynch has worked on a wide range of projects, both comics and not, including the Spiegelman-created Wacky Packages series for Topps, and its successor, The Garbage Pail Kids. The artist also contributed to Mad, shortly after the return of counter-culture cartooning legend, Harvey Kurtzman.

In this final part of out interview with Lynch, we discuss working on Mad, whether today’s children’s books are a bit too safe these days, and the battle to stay afloat financially.

[Part One] [Part Two]

Do you think that children’s books have become a bit too safe?

Hypocritical? Well, it’s like a regular children’s book publisher will say that you can’t have the main character die—unless you’re Shel Silverstein.

His work was also a product of a different era. It would be interesting to see if he’d be able to get away with that now.

Well, Shel Silverstein’s books can be read by adults or kids. The Toon Books, possibly too. Actually, Art wrote some of the dialogue when they’re fighting and they say snappy things.

Do you find that you tend to work better when you’re collaborating on something?

Yeah. I think of myself as more of an editor than a cartoonist. The end product is better. Like, if I do a rough, I can put 2,000 people in one panel, and whoever draws it can draw 2,000 people. But if I were to draw it myself, I’d only put 50 people in it. So I think the end result is better. It all comes from Kurtzman’s Mad stuff. Kurtzman would do the rough, and Elder or Wood would be required to intensify it.

You’ve done some work for Mad, as well.

Relatively recently. Whenever it was that Kuyrtzman came back to Mad—I guess it was in the late-80s.

Did he play a role in bringing you on-board?

No, I just thought it would be—I never tried to work for Mad, because of the old idea that Kurtzman should have gotten a better deal. What happened was, Bob Stewart, who used to work at Topps, became Joe Orlando’s assistant, and I did a Mad stylekit. And I pointed Monty Wolverton out, because Monty draws just like Basil. They didn’t know that.

That’s his son?

Yeah. They started using him, and I wrote stuff for him. I wrote about three or four articles in the 80s, but it’s hard to do stuff for Mad, because you do it and it’s a year between the time you do it and when it’s printed, and it’s hard to predict what will be known in a year.

Especially in terms of the magazine’s pop culture satire.

Now I can do Obamalot. But what if he’s not elected?

You’ve since stopped working for Mad?

Well, it’s speculative. You write something, and maybe they’ll use it, maybe they won’t I’m in a position where I have to constantly do stuff to get money.

So what are you working on right now?

This very second, I’m drawing an old Wacky Package character for some guy who paid me $300.

So it’s a lot of commissioned personalized artwork?

Yeah, a lot. I did about 200 in the last three years. And I did a t-shirt for some kid’s Bar Mitzvah. On my Webpage, it says I’ll draw a piece of art for $300. I do that and some of the people get Mineshaft to print them, and then they’re original art, as well that’s worth more because it’s printed. Let’s talk about the new Toon Books book. I get royalties off of that.

Dean mentioned that if the book does well, he’d be happy to do a sequel. You’ve definitely left the door open for a part two. Is that something that would interest you?

Oh yeah. So it’s good that we can’t kill of the characters [laughs]. Yeah, there could be sequels now. It’s like twin superheroes. They’ve learned to get along, so next time they can learn something else.

–Brian Heater

His latest work, a collaboration with Act-I-Vater, Dean Haspiel, is hardly Jay Lynch’s first foray into the world of children’s entertainment. The book, Mo & Jo Fighting Together Forever, is Lynch’s second for Francoise Mouly’s Toon Books imprint. It’s also the latest in a long line of output aimed at children, including Garbage Pail Kids packs, My Little Pony sticker books, and lyrics for kids songs—a far cry from the latter day output of many of his late-60s underground comics contemporaries.

In this second part of our interview with the artist, we discuss the state of children’s books, X-men’s sales figures, and why his days drawing Duckman comics will also make him think of OJ.

[Part One]

Do you find that interest in your work tends to come in waves?

There’s certainly more interest in old underground comics than there was seven years ago. I don’t know, I kept all of my underground comics stuff out of print, because no one has really—I started an autobiographical comic that I wrote and Ed Piskor drew.

That appeared in Mineshaft, right?

Yes, that was serialized in Mineshaft. We don’t get paid for Mineshaft, but I like it. When we did underground comics, we made good money. When we started, Bijou was the third title, so there were only like a dozen titles. One of our titles would sell about equally with what Mad Magazine sells today. In the 60s, Mad sold 3 million a month. Our books would have printings of about 50,000. So today Mad is under 200,000. We’d sell out the reprints. Now for comic books, it’s not something you do for money. The X-men, now, is the biggest selling comic, and it has a smaller circulation than most of the underground comics.

Is that a result of the marketplace being flooded?

Yeah. And also, it’s sold in the shops. No one ever really goes to the shops, except collectors. That’s why I haven’t really done any comics. I drew a Duckman comic for Topps, about—when the OJ thing was happening.

The mid-90s.

Yeah. When OJ was on the car chase. I remember when I was drawing Duckman, OJ was on the TV, being chased. I guess that was like the early or mid-90s.

When you’re working on something like Duckman, how closely do you have to study the source material? Do they make you watch all of the episodes?

No. Stefan Petrucha wrote the thing. They sent me a style kit. Sometimes I’d write it—that’s mostly what I’d do, draw roughs, and other people draw it.

When you’re actually doing the writing, what are you using as source material?

Well, most of the sticker albums are based on movies or episodes of TV shows. Oh, that was a good job—I had to read every Goosebumps book that there was. I had a three-foot high pile of Goosebumps books to do a Goosebumps trivia book with questions about the stories.

Do you have a particular favorite non-comics job that you’ve done, over the years?

Non-comics? I wrote a comic in the 60s which was like a poem. And a band called The Boogers covered it on a album with songs for kids. Country Joe and the Fish wrote one, too. That will be out in a month, or so.

Let’s talk more about the superhero book, Mo & Jo. The first thing is to get a moral and then write the book.

It seems that, in the case of that book, the moral is pretty well stated in the title.

Yeah, that was Francoise, or maybe Art, who came up with the title. I called it something like “Major Mojo.”

Were there things that you wanted to put in, which were deemed not age appropriate?

No. Well, I think the hippo balloon was originally a Thanksgiving Day parade, so it was a turkey balloon, but that would have made the book seasonal, so they changed it to a hippo balloon.

You’ve done a bit of work for kids at this point. Would you say that you’re pretty well accustomed to what will and won’t fly for certain age levels?

Yeah. Well, there’s some stuff that you can’t have in kids books. No one can smoke, no one can die, and there can be no fire. Although a lot of the old classic things like Snow White and the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Sleeping Beauty, the prince goes blind, and in Cinderella, they cut off the queens feet. Pecos Bill, they went over the whole film and took away his cigarettes.

[Concluded in Part Three]

–Brian Heater

Jay Lynch was there at the beginning. As the head of Bijou Funnies, he published some of the most significant underground pioneers of the late-60s, including folks like Robert Crumb, Skip Williamson, Art Spiegelman, and Justin Green, while gaining notoriety in his own right as an artist in his own right, thanks to titles like Nard ‘n’ Pat.

With that in mind, the context for our conversation feels a touch strange. When I call him at his home in upstate New York, the artist is eager to speak about his latest work, Mo and Jo Fighting Together Forever, a collaboration with Act-I-Vate artist, Dean Haspiel. It’s Lynch’s second book for young children under the Toon Books umbrella.

The connection between Lynch’s early career and his current children’s work is rather rather easily unpacked, however. Toon Books head (and New Yorker art director) Francoise Mouly approached Lynch to join the fold of her soon-to-be launched publishing house three years ago. The collaboration eventually resulted in Otto’s Orange Day, release by the company, earlier this year.

But Otto was hardly Lynch’s first work for children, the artist having spent a significant portion of his career working on contract for Topps—works like Wacky Packs and The Garbage Pail Kids—alongside fellow underground legend (and Mouly’s husband), Art Spiegelman.

We spoke to Lynch about Spiegelman, superheroes, and his days spent slaving away at in the My Little Pony mines.

Did Francoise approach you to do something for Toon Books?

Yeah, pretty early on. It was like three-and-a-half years ago. She called me up with the idea. And I wrote the Otto book, and it was supervised all through its writing by these people from school boards. I’m not sure exactly which ones, but I think it was Maryland and maybe Pennsylvania. So the book has things that they learn about in phonics classes. It has their vocabulary words and stuff like that, but it’s cleverly disguised.

Was that something they were attempting to do with all of the books, early on, or was it more to help you along with your first time writing for that age group?

Well, for many years, I worked for a company called Diamond Publishing (they don’t actually have anything to do with Diamond Distribution). This is a company that makes sticker albums. So I wrote a lot of licensed character sticker albums for kids about My Little Pony and Transformers and The Simpsons and Archie—anything that was a hot license. So I did do a lot of writing for kids, but not of my own characters. So she showed me Frank [Cammuso]’s book. Frank I knew of from Max Hamm. So, all the time I was writing the book, I thought that Frank would be drawing it. Frank gave his input and stuff, and I don’t know, it’s cute…

Do you think that Francoise approached you, based on this prior experience that you had had, working with kids’ books?

Um, I guess, yeah. Well, she approached Geoffrey Hayes at the same time, because he had kids books out.

So in a way, it was something that you sort of happily fell into.

It wasn’t my idea. It was fun to do, though.

But it’s not something you’re interested in centering a career around, at this point?

Well, I just wrote a song for a kids record. But I’m too old—I already had a career. Shel Silverstein wrote kids books.

Did you do any artwork for these books?

I actually drew the musical notes in the beginning of the book, when Otto sings. And I did the lettering on the note that Aunt Sally wrote him, but that’s only because Frank was out of town, and they couldn’t reach him [laughs]. I did roughs of the whole book. That’s how I submitted the book. But I don’t draw as cute as Frank, so my cats come out looking more like Fritz. So I just did that for facial expressions and positions and stuff. That was just the first draft. Frank added a more dynamic movement to it.

Are you drawing still?

Oh yeah. I draw constantly. We did the Wacky Packs and the Garabage Pail Kids for Topps, and then I revived them, a few years ago, so I’m constantly drawing pictures of Wacky Packs for fans who pay more than Topps does for the real ones. I do stuff for Mineshaft Magazine, as well.

At what point did you join Topps?

1966.

And Art was already there, at that point?

Yeah. They hired Art when he graduated—he actually worked there when he was still in high school, and then they hired him the summer that he graduated high school.

How much freedom did Topps give you?

Well, when making a new series, we had pretty much complete freedom. When it became successful, then they’d start to go over it and change things.

In terms of Diamond, working with licenses like My Little Pony and The Simpsons—

Well, with Diamond it was all licensed stuff, so it had to be approved by the license holders. The Archie comics looks exactly like an Archie comic.

Is it tough to work within such strict parameters?

Well, I don’t do it anymore, except once in a while I do it for Topps. But no, it wasn’t they paid me. It was like a 9 to 5 job. I was the editor of their sticker albums for six years.

Since they revived Garbage Pail Kids a few years back, is that still a significant chunk of your income?

Wacky Packs is. That’s doing really well, and there’s a Wacky Packs book that reprints the ones from the 70s, where Art wrote the forward, and I wrote the afterword. That sold out of the first printing. That came out in May and the Otto book came out in April.

And the book you did with Dean just came out.

You can buy it on Amazon for the last month or so, but it was just officially released over the last weekend. With Dean I didn’t do roughs. I just wrote it and he drew it. He was more familiar with the genre than I.

The superhero genre.

Yeah.

There’s a somewhat artifical divide that we draw between indie comics and superhero books. Was it a genre that interested you, as far as writing?

Well, when I was a kid, I like The Spirit and Plastic Man, because they were self-contained. And also, the way that [Jack] Cole and [Will] Eisner drew had kind of a sense of humor to them. I was never really into Superman, though. It was Francoise’s idea to do a superhero book. When I go to the library where I live, in upstate New York, they tell me that kids gravitate toward manga and superheroes, so this may be a way to reach those who would only look at a superhero book.

[Continued in Part Two.]

–Brian Heater

Released earlier this week by The New Press, Brown professor Paul Buhle’s Jews in American Comics could have easily been yet another rehash of a long line of academic treatises on the subject of Jewish-American involvement in the creation of the superhero, most recently exemplified by Danny Fingeroth’s Superman Disguised as Clark Kent.

Fortunately for us, however, Buhle considers himself something of a peer to artists like Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman. A spiritual descendant of Harvey Kurtzman and his ilk, the realm of capes and tights never really did all that much for the author.

Instead, the book maps the role of Jewish creators from the early days of syndicated comics through the innovations brought forth by EC/MAD, and ultimately through the explosion of the underground and its subsequent repercussions.

For a more complete review of the book, check the most recent issue of The New York Press. After the jump you’ll find a full—if short—interview conducted with Buhle for the publication.

What sort of history do you have, writing academically about comics?

I would say modestly—I began by publishing Radical American Comics in Madison, in 1969, which is the third of the underground comics to appear. The first two were Crumb’s Zap Comics solos. Then, in the 70s, I published a theoretical version of a fanzine called Cultural Correspondance—1975 to 1983. That is digitized now. In the 90s, I wrote a fair bit about Spiegelman and Ben Katchor, my pal, and any number of artists, some of whom I interviewed in the 70s for Cultural Correspondence, The Village Voice, The Nation, and any number largely Jewish publications.

Leaping forward to 2003, I had a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education about how comics have now become a subject of academic interest. That was much circulated and much—not exactly attacked—but everyone whose name wasn’t mentioned was crabby about it, you understand. There wasn’t much of a scholarly trail then, and anyone who published an online magazine that has since gone out of business thought that he deserved an important mention.

I have another scholarly piece in Reviews in American History and another piece in Marxism Reexamined and a number of other journals. I’ve tried to do two things at once: establish a sort of scholarly dignity for non-fiction comics and recover what non-fiction has done in the past, like this guy, Jack Jackson, who did a history of pre-state Texas and was highly regarded by the Texas historical society, before he died, a few years back. Also at the same time, I’ve tried to suggest what could be done now, and why it was important to do comics on valuable subjects, without being didactic, because that follows the track of my students who read less every year—and many of them want to read comics.

You seem to largely take as your focus alternative cartoonists like Crumb. Is that a direct result of having come out of that tradition?

No, really, a lot of it is based on my growing up reading Mad comics, before it became Mad Magazine. When it became Mad Magazine, it wasn’t as good, but it was still sort of Jewish liberal and New York reaching out to me, in the middle of Illinois, which was appreciated, but also, Classics Illustrated, which we always called “Classic Comics.” That was the place I where I first read my classics. Since my sister, who is four years older, taught me how to read after kindergarten using those books, comics always had a really warm spot in my heart. Mad comics, because it was so wonderful about showing what was stupid and hypocritical about the coporate world, it was sort of like my book of knowledge. I wrote a high school paper as a junior about Harvey Kurtzman. I got a B from a teacher who liked me, but always thought that comics were degraded, as almost everyone did think.

I feel now that they have an exhaulted purpose that is only now beginning to be understood, and the comic artist, with the rarest exceptions—Spiegelman is almost the catchword, until Alison Bechdel came on the stage, and my new friend, Linda Barry-there are less than 10 that have ever been given the credit that they deserve. They’ve rarely been able to make a living. I think that I’m they’re champion, I would cheerfully say.

Is it a coincidence that the first person considered to have broken down that wall between academia and comics—Spiegelman—is a jew?

No, I don’t think it’s a coincidence. It’s a strange thing, and the very first underground comics full-scale exhibit will open in Madison, in April at the University of Wisconsin. I wrote the essay in the catalog, and I noted that, in the underground comics world of the Bay Area, Jewish comic artists were not numerous. They were there, but they were not numerous. That’s because it was not in greater New York, the way that the comic industry was. But that migration eastward, after that phase ended, circa-1980, suggested that, in the greater New York publishing world, that Jewish artists probably would have been the ones who would have written vastly disprortionate amounts, compared to the common artist.

You touch on the superhero books coming out of New York in a chapter, but don’t really dwell. Does it have anything to do with the fact that it’s a well-tread area?

That’s a really good question, and someone who criticizes me on that is probably well-founded, and I have no right to be crabby about it. I really stopped reading superheroes when I was about 12. I was a little too old to start reading Marvel in the 60s. I didn’t take to them. I didn’t think that they represented a new phase of art. The art seemed very stylized, and also, I have to say I was always looking for that progressive New Deal-ish message that always seems to be in Mad Magazine.

I found Sgt. Fury to be more the tone of comics, and I know that has changed in the last 20 years—I was just looking at a writer who said that the artists want to write critically about the Iraq War, but they find themselves strapped to publishers who are still in the “celebrate the conquering heroes” mode in the mainstream. Although that may be over in ways I can’t see, I feel that the world of underground comics is so much my generation. There are so many people among them who are very good friends of mine, including Crumb and Bill Griffith—the only one who could make it into the dailies—that these are the ones that my heart went to. Plus those people in mainstream get $300 a page, and they don’t even have to ink. They have health plans, unlike my pals who have none of those things and are scraping along. So again, I feel like I’m their champion.

How integral is that concept of being an underdog to the success of the Jewish role in comics?

I think it’s integral to comics from the very first moment they appeared in the daily press in the 1890s, and not particularly Jewish. But it’s also true that my late friends, the Hollywood blacklisted artists, when they found out that they couldn’t portray struggling workers related to unions, they found another underdog who they could truly sympathize with, whether it was Katherine Hepburn as a woman or a poor orphan and on and on—some of them ended up doing animal features, with the same kind of underdog attitude. Animation was full of the same thing—mice against cats, cats against humans. You’re littler, but you can take on the giant, if you’re more clever. That resonates in a lot of Jewish culture, especially Jewish culture that’s not connect with the merchant or the Rabbi, but is out of that circle of influence.

Fitting then that it’s targeted toward children, in so many cases.

Well, that’s right, too, of course. I suppose on our weak side, we all wanted to be Superman or for girls, Wonderwoman, but that’s the immature way out—”I want big muscles, so I can punch people out.” But, by the time you get to be 12 and you realize that you’re not gonna be one of those guys with big muscles, you’ve got to figure how else to get along in the world. Then you’ve got to use your wits, and again, that goes to a certain Jewish affect, which was there, is there, and, in my estimation, will go on being there, no matter what the income levels and all of the other things that go along with that.

–Brian Heater

Where Demented Wented Book Release
Desert Island Comics, Brooklyn, NY 8/8/08

[Gary Panter, Bill Griffith]

[More photos available on our Flickr page.]

[More videos on our YouTube page.]

“This is the largest crowd that Rory’s ever had,” laughed Bill Griffith, only half-jokingly. Desert Island Comics was packed Friday night, in joint celebration of Fantagraphics’ upcoming Rory Hayes anthology, Where Demented Wented and a posthumous celebration of the artist’s 59th birthday. The owners Brooklyn-based shop had diligently swept all of the store’s waste-high shelves into the its remotest corner, but the space was still standing room-only, at best.

Griffith’s bafflement at the matter was palatable. After all, Hayes was never really recognized in his lifetime, whatever minor fame he achieved paling in comparison to habitually lauded peers like Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson. Posthumous fame hasn’t exactly been forthcoming, either. For all intents and purposes, the newly-issued Fantagraphics volume is the first widely available anthology of Hayes’s work.

[Bill Griffith, Geoffrey Hayes]

The attendance could no doubt–at least in part–be chalked up to the panel that had been culled together for the occasion, moderated by Picturebox founder and Demented co-editor, Dan Nadel, and featuring the aforementioned Griffith (he of Zippy fame); Hayes’s brother and fellow cartoonist, Geoffrey Hayes; and the inimitable Kim Deitch (who, was sadly absent from the proceedings, though the Gary Panter, who was present amongst the audience, was more than happy to fill in from the other side of the store’s impromptu table).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwb2PAoHOJg]

Geoffrey reminisced about brothers’ early years, as burgeoning comic artists inspired by the likes of Carl Barks. Griffith happily touched on nearly everything else, from early stories involving well known peers (and Hayes admirers) like Crumb, Deitch, and Spiegelman, to some his short-lived career as a burgeoning horror film director, to the artist’s later years scraping together a living working at a San Francisco-based comic shop while selling the occasional print to a philanthropic admirer—nearly every tale, however, was peppered with the inevitable reference to Hayes’s growing battle with drugs, which ultimately ended his life at age 34.

Most telling, however, amongst Griffith’s accounts, were the near constant references to Henri Rousseau, a fellow insider-outsider artist whose “primitive” art was lauded amongst contemporaries like Picasso, but largely ignored in his lifetime, in favor of his more famous peers.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJj0szq9mCo&feature=related]

Asked whether any contemporary artist claimed Hayes as an inspiration, Griffith couldn’t think of a single one. “But they will after this book comes out,” he added, optimistically. Surely there couldn’t have been a more appropriate forum for such a hopeful sentiment, inside a Williamsburg alternative comic shop, walls lined with a wide array of two-dimension figurines crafted by a large cross-section of up-and-coming artists for an event crated by Picturebox’s own Lauren Weinstein. A cursory glance around the shop revealed exactly where demented has gone.

–Brian Heater

Ralph Bakshi is one of those rare artists who possesses a personality ever bit as colorful as the characters he creates. It’s no surprise then, that the man fit in perfectly amongst the Ren & Stimpy cast, when John Kricfalusi asked him to voice a part in his 2003 sequel to Fire Dogs.

That inspired partnership was also a happy reminder of the fact that, in spite of the animator’s remarkable ability to maintain a four-decade old grudge with a certain prominent underground cartoonist, Bakshi has long been a supporter of many of his talented peers.

In this final part of our hour-long interview with Bakshi, we discuss the artist’s favorite contemporary cartoonists and animator, and let him get off a few more shots against that aforementioned fellow counter-cultural icon.

[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three]
Have you kept up with the contemporary comics scene at all?

There are so many great, strange comics out there. I went to the comic convention—I wish I could remember their names—they’re brilliant, and the drawing is awkward now and weird, and very wonderful. Everyone draws so well. I love [Julius] Knipl, you know, the real estate guy. I can never remember the names, but I think they’re sensation, especially the new underground, with the lines and the distortion. I see a renaissance there. It’s all tremendous. And Juxtapoz is wonderful—the best magazine around. Those guys are wonderful. I love James Jean. A wonderful artist. I think the new kids—I don’t know what kind of drawing they’re doing, but it’s marvelous.

Is there any kind of similar revolution happening in animation? Or has it stagnated?

That’s a good question. I think, believe it or not, with Nickelodeon, some of the shows that they’re doing are amazing. I think what kids are doing on their computers at home—what I catch on YouTube and what I see in schools—is amazing. I see spurts of great stuff all over the place. I’m not talking about the Pixars, where what they do is overwhelmingly beautiful. What they do is incredible, but the kind of stuff that I’m talking about, I see it everywhere. I see young kids really working with computers and doing wonderful stuff. I feel that there’s a huge renaissance and I thought the kids at SVA that I visited—I told them that I’m not coming through again.

The only reason everyone wants to talk to me again isn’t because I did so well. It’s because everyone did so poorly. No else has done anything since Traffic and Coonskin. I must drive my contemporaries crazy, because every time they fucking want to do something, here I come. It’s only because you guys have done nothing, not because I’ve done anything.

What I’m saying is I’m very optimistic. Kyle Baker is incredible. Unbelievable. I can go on and on about the talent. I went to the comic convention and walked down the aisles, and I bought thousands of books, because I just love the new art.

You love the art, but do you feel that there’s something lacking in the message in the books?

No. Here they come. It’s brilliant stuff.

Is there still a subversive quality present, like there used to be?

I’m not an authority on this stuff, like I used to be. I’ve seen some stuff—I think the subversive quality is there. It’s as much there as the underground ever had it. I don’t know about across the board—I haven’t read DC in a long time, and I haven’t read Marvel. I don’t like what they’re doing.

So it’s there, but it has a hard time bubbling up to the surface.

Yeah. Yes. It’s there, oh it’s there. Let me put it this way. If I had money, there are hundreds of things that I would buy, as compared to walking into a store and there’s only Fritz. The other guy I’m sorry I didn’t make a movie with is Spain Rodriguez. I love Spain. Spain is absolutely brilliant with his layouts. He’s such a good artist. I used him in Cool World to paint the walls. I was going work with him in my next project, but Crumb got me so disgusted and angry

I wanted to be friends with those guys. I still think what they’re doing is great. And all of those guys wanted to work with me. The only guy that screwed it all up is Robert Crumb. He said, “if you work with Bakshi, you’re not my friend.” I’m serious, and they needed him, because Crumb sold comics. In the old days, all of these guys would be able to make bread because Crumb would be a part of Zap and stuff. They’d all hand him their pages. He really hurt the others, as far as I’m concerned. I was dying to make a movie with Spain. I spoke to him six or eight months ago, just to touch base. Everything he did on Cool World, I have a drawer.

But the guys today are just as good. Meathaus is good. In fact, the Meauthaus guy did the book [Unfiltered],. John Gibson and Chris McDonnell are brilliant. Chris McDonnell did some of the greatest layout I’ve seen, and I love the way that John Gibson wrote it. He had the hard job of 40 years of a man’s life. It’s not easy to do in less than a year. I thought they did a wonderful job.

You ask me if there’s good stuff in comics? Yeah, it’s all around us. Maybe other people don’t see it. One of the things about me is that I’m a great fan of cartoonists. I’m a cartoonist who loves cartoonists. And one of the mistakes that all producers of animation make with young cartoonists is they don’t love cartoonists. They pass up a lot of stuff. That’s why so much of the stuff that you see isn’t animated. I wasn’t afraid of making Crumb world famous. When I picked him, nobody knew him.

–Brian Heater

Ralph Bakshi has never been one for self-censorship, a fact that has readily manifest itself his work, resulting in some of the most ground-breaking and uncompromising films of the 20th century, animated or otherwise. As we discovered in our face-to-face conversation with the 69-year-old Brooklynite, such unfettered expression has a tendency to manifest itself in some of Bakshi’s professional relationships, as well.

The mention of underground cartoonist, Robert Crumb, for example, who created the title character for Bakshi’s 1972 film Fritz the Cat, was more than enough to launch the animator into a bare-knuckled diatribe against the artist—one which carriers over well into the third part of this interview.

It’s this same lack of creative compromise that has lead, for better or worse, to Bakshi’s inability to recapture the scale of success that defined Fritz, largely relegating the animator to the status of cult hero.

In this third part, Bakshi happily explains why he initially abandoned the mainstream and never looked back.

[Part One]
[Part Two]

Did Crumb have a similarly negative reaction to The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat? [Neither Bakshi nor Crumb were involved in this 1974 sequel]

He didn’t bother to discuss the Nine Live of Fritz the Cat. He would have to say, “well, Ralph did do a better picture than Nine Lives.” So to Robert Crumb, there is no Nine Lives. It doesn’t exist. The only Fritz the Cat he’s mad at is the one I did, because if he discussed Nine Lives, he’d have to say, “well, you know, for all of my bullshitting about Ralph, Nine Lives is even worse than what he did.”

What were you own impressions of the film?

I never looked at it.

You weren’t curious?

No. I went on to do something far greater. Heavy Traffic is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. And Coonskin is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. And American Pop is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. And Wizards is a far greater film than Fritz the Cat. Fritz the Cat is the least great of my movies.

Do you have any regrets about having made it? Do you feel like it still stands up?

Yeah, I regret having made Crumb all of that money.

But in terms of the artistic—

No, I didn’t need that film to be—I don’t know. Heavy Traffic was my next film. Why did I need Fritz the Cat?

Well, you said that it was the success of that film that propelled you onto bigger and better things.

Yeah, that’s right.

Does it stand up, artistically?

Of course it stands up artistically. I made it.

It’s just a lesser film than your later films…

Easily. But it stands up artistically—it was all Bakshi. Tell that to Mr. Crumb! [Pauses] I’m just growling at Crumb…

Do you consider how audiences might receive film, when you begin production?

No, when I’ve done films, I try to do the film that I love and hope audiences will receive it. And when they receive it well, and the producer takes all the money, I get mad.

Are you affected by criticism, at all?

[Shakes head].

So you’re essentially just making a film that you want to see.

That’s exactly right. I believe it’s hard to spend a year and a half in animation on a film if you’re not really behind it. I don’t know how some of those guys do it. But they all work on little sections of the film, at Pixar and Disney. I’m such a personal director that I write and direct most of this stuff. It makes me invest a lot of me in what I’m working on. It would be impossible to spend that kind of time on something that I think is just too commercial, because I really don’t have the slightest idea about what is commercial.

That has to make it difficult to get projects off the ground.

I can’t get projects off the ground anymore.

Because the audience has changed? Because the studio has changed?

Well, the studios have changed—the budgets have gotten bigger, but as the budgets have gotten bigger, and the advertisers have gotten bigger, they need bigger box office results. They need more people in the theaters. They want something that the whole family can go to, because it means more money for them. So they work very hard on something that a 14-year-old boy would like, and an eight-year-old boy would like, and the parents would like. These things have a range that will bring more people in. The Bakshi films bring would bring less people in—or so they think. I think a Bakshi film could bring lots of people in, but that’s what they arrived at. That I was too dangerous.

You’ve never had that drive to create something more universally appealing?

[Shakes his head.] I think people are idiots. Look, why do you want to make a movie that’s universally appealing? What do you get out of it? I have an opportunity to scream about things I hate, or things I don’t like, or point fingers at things. That’s what a cartoonist should be about. That’s what the cartoons that I love are about. That’s what I love about cartooning. You can scream, and yell, and point fingers.

I don’t want to make a family film, because I can always paint a picture and sell it at a show. I sold eight paintings at the gallery at Broome st. not bad. No one tells me what to paint. That doen’t mean, for a second that I don’t like money, but there’s no reason to make something that appeals to people, only to appeal to them. I did that for 12 years at TerryToons. It bored the hell out of me I’m not that kind of artist. I don’t like to collaborate and have people tell me what to do. I don’t want to work in the story department. It just doesn’t pay to spend that kind of time working well with other people. It’s boring. I don’t want his idea, I want my idea. Not that my idea is better, it’s just that it’s my idea. I can’t make films that way.

[Continued in Part Four]

–Brian Heater

Released in 1972, Ralph Bakshi still considers Fritz the Cat to be the major turning point in his career, the breakthrough film that helped the animator make the blind leap from the Heckle and Jeckle cartoons of his early career at TerryToons to gritty urban underground work like Heavy Traffic and Coonskin, which, to this day, are largely considered Bakshi’s masterpieces.

Adapted from a series of Robert Crumb strips, Fritz the Cat became the first animated film to be tagged with an X Rating, courtesy of the MPAA. Despite, or more likely because of this, the film also did gangbusters, becoming the first animated film to rack up more than $100 million at the box office.

In the wake of the film’s release, Crumb made public his aggressive disdain for the adaptation well-known, going so far as to file a suit to have his name removed from its credits and later killing off his reluctant Hollywood star in a subsequent strip.

Bakshi, for the record, would like it known that the feeling is mutual. As our conversation transitions from questions about his own jump from kids cartoons to the topic of Fritz’s subversive nature (or, to a degree, he might argue, lack thereof), Bakshi’s own feelings about Crumb quickly take the reigns of the conversation, along with a commentary how the press has long opted to report Crumb’s feelings on the matter while neglecting his own. And while, despite a bit of finger pointing at me on Bakshi’s part (referring to said press as a collective “you”), I can’t honestly take an credit for this perceived lopsided account (though, for the record, at the top of the interview I did mention Crumb’s name amongst a list of cartoonists whose work I admire).

That said, it’s hard to argue with Bakshi’s assessment that the press have been far more eager to print Crumb’s opinions on the subject than his own. The matter is certainly not due to a lack of passion on Bakshi’s part. A few months shy of 70, the animator is still more than happy to let his feelings be known, with a force that, to be totally honest, is a little frightening when sitting a few feet away.

I agree to print his opinions on the matter during the conversation, and to break some of the tension, I make some off-handed joke about having momentarily lost control of my bladder in the face of the fury that’s still alive and well in the heart of the Brooklyn animator,

Bakshi pauses for a moment and then smiles, “I like him.”

[Part One].

How large a role did the works of 60s underground comic artists like Crumb play in your transition to more adult cartoons?

Not as much as you might think—a lot, but not as much as you might think. Right before then, there were bigger transitions than Crumb. That was Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, Naked Lunch, On the Road by Kerouac, John Coltrane—there were literary sources that had broken through that probably caused the underground to come alive. What were the underground’s influences? Those were more important. The underground didn’t come out of nothing.

I remember read those and saying, “oh my god.” The Naked and the Dead by Mailer was very important. There were certain literary things that blew me away. Of course the underground helped, but it was those things that influenced me much more clearly. There was a lot of agitation in the streets those days, before the underground blossomed. Dylan started to sing—it was very exciting. I would more attribute it to that.

It seems like less of a leap to make the transition in what is already considered an adult medium, rather than in something like comics or cartoons.

Well, funny you should say that, because you weren’t there, and that’s the impression.

Fair enough.

You weren’t there before comics were on television and in video games. If you were around then, comics had a massive influence—you wouldn’t even recognize it now. You can’t imagine what Captain America looked like in a drawing, if you took away all of the shit that you have now. It was massively exciting. Or Superman flying. Why did Superman go through the roof the way he did? Because there wasn’t anything else like it. In novels, to your amazement, there were codes, there were lawsuits. You couldn’t write these things, you couldn’t print these things.

Henry Miller—

Oh! Henry Miller! So this thing about being more of an adult medium—it was more adult by really small degrees. When Selby did Last Exit to Brooklyn, with pimps and prosistutes and homosexuals, it blew everyone away! It was huge! It had never happened before! When John Rechy wrote City of Night, about the homosexual scene in LA, they finally got past Miller’s lawsuits. You read Naked and the Dead and big Mailer writing an adult book couldn’t say “fuck!” There isn’t a “fuck” in the entire book. These soldiers are saying “Fug you,” F-u-g you. You die laughing at how antiquated. Go read it! He was afraid to use the word! He didn’t use the word “bitch” in The Naked and the Dead. What was so adult about that? Novels were also slow in getting to the point. When they could do what they wanted, without being afraid, finally it broke. Everything was very proper in those days. Yeah there was some sex and some unbuttoned shirts, but there wasn’t screaming.

Was your own transition slow into more adult works or did you get to do what you wanted to do, right out of the gate when you did your own stuff?

Fritz freed me. Crumb’s Fritz the Cat, which is brilliant—though I dislike Crumb—because it was fun, it was satirical, it was delightfully drawn. It made so much money that I jumped into Traffic with both feet, which no one had ever done in animation—I did Heavy Traffic and Coonskin. I had the muscle from Fritz the Cat. In that respect, if I didn’t have a hit, would I be able to do Traffic? No way. If Fritz bombed, there’d be no Heavy Traffic.

Were you more reserved in the making of Fritz than Heavy Traffic?

Yeah, Crumb—yes. That’s a very good question. When I did the Dr. Suess’s Butter Battle, I respected Suess—Ted Geisel. There wasn’t that material in Fritz—in other words, Fritz didn’t have that depth. It was cute, it was sweet, but there was nowhere to put it. That’s why Crumb hates the picture, because I slipped a couple of things in there that he despises, like the rabbis—the pure Jewish stuff. Fritz can’t hold that kind of commentary. Winston is “just a typical Jewish broad from Brooklyn.” There was nothing—it was cute and well-done, but there was nothing that had that much depth. With Traffic, Michael who had never gotten laid and was going out with a black girl, and his father’s an Italian racist, and his mother’s Jewish—we set up a situation that’s vibrating with undertones. Fritz didn’t have that. And they’re animals. They’re cut little animals. There wasn’t the depth to Fritz. I couldn’t get there if I wanted to.

Did that fact that they were cute little animals make it somehow more subversive on some level? That juxtaposition of image and content?

No. Not at all. I think it made it more palatable. I think, had it been adults, I think I would have been blown out of the water.

[Pauses] You’re a Crumb fan, which is fine with me. Let me tell you what he did. Crumb railed against me for Fritz the Cat. He killed off Fritz to get back at me, and we all read how I’m a hustler and I have a big mouth and I can’t draw, and all that shit that Crumb said. Meanwhile, he brought a camera into his house when he wanted to become famous again. He allowed a movie to be made where he shot his mother crazy and his brother eating rope—and his brother committed suicide, after the movie was finished. What kind of guy is that? Is that the kind of guy who has a right to scream at me? Is that a guy who really cares about people? Is that a guy who you should love?

You believe everything Crumb says, after he does that, and he yells at me for doing Fritz? He made millions of dollars from Fritz. He did his book. He made millions of dollars from the cat, but he still calls me a schmuck! He took the money. See, he let me make the picture for a year and a half. He took $60,000. That’s a lot of money in the 60s. That’s upfront money. He took that for the rights. And when he realized that I was going to become as famous as him, he got mad at me. He thought I was going to make him famous. He thought I was going to spend a year of work on Fritz the Cat and make him the greatest cartoonist in the world! Well, he got very angry at me, when the director got some credit. Directors always get credit. That’s my point of view on it. You guys who love Crumb don’t understand how slick he can be.

You were a fan of his work before.

Of course! That’s why I bought the book!

And you’re still a fan of his work?

Of course! I don’t like him as a person.

I’m a fan his work as well. I don’t know him as a person.

I don’t like to see guys let him off the hook. Just because I’m a fan of his work, doesn’t mean I’m going to let him off the hook. If he’s going to point a finger at me, I’m going to point a finger at him. I’d never bring a camera into my house and allow anyone to shoot my family, the way he did. You let that kind of stuff slide. That’s not fair. I don’t see anyone write that in the paper! They always write about how he dislikes my Fritz and what a hustler I am and how unartistic I am. Did anyone ever write what I just told you? No! He’s in a chateau in France, drinking wine! “Mr. Underground.” You buy that! Do I think he’s a good artist? Absolutely. Do I think he has a right to yell at me? Not a chance. Do I think he’s a son of a bitch? Oh Yeah… But you guys sit panting at everything he does. But that’s the difference with my films. I’m not afraid to speak the truth the way I see it.

[Continued in Part Three].

–Brian Heater