HUGO WHERE? Part Two! (For Paid Subscribers Only!)

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Sorcery and Fantasy were popular in comics in the late seventies, and I saw something like what I was doing in bound copies like ELFQUEST was.

I was always drawing splash pages for HUGO stories until a friend asked “why are you showing stories you started”? I took that as a cruel fact; yeah, why? I wanted to have the thrill and impact of a splash page without following it up. So I started finishing them. In truth, splash pages should be last. Know what one ts doing first.

My attempts at humor were forced. I had been told by a friend that I my offhanded remarks were funnier than my writing.

My high school English teacher, Mr. Castelano, read my stuff; we discussed the history of comedy. He had a taste for the cornball. He once used as an example a neighbor meaning to drive his motorcycle into the garage, but the door slammed down shut before he entered it. The accident wasn't funny; but that he made a hole through the door that was more or less his outline was straight from classic comedy. Later on, a friend told me about a movie on an old ship where a guy fell off the scaffolding and made a hole in the deck...and there was another hole shaped like his eyeglasses.

Mr. Castelano told me of a comedy concept he had called “FARTMAN”. He knew it couldn't miss, that a thing like it would be hot. It was 1977; I never thought such a thing was funny. He died before its time came, first Howard Stern and then John Kricfalusci. He encouraged me to get more adult with the comedy; maybe not as much as I did.

Chief among my humor inspirations was Tony Randall's overwrought flourishes of words as Felix Unger. “Then into my heart you have plunged the dagger of ingratitude...” Melodrama is my favorite comedy.

Another was the late Mort Todd, the editor I worked for at CRACKED. He'd make dry comments out of quotes and cliches. Something crude was “as primitive as can be.” I don't know if it was worth laughing as hard as I did.

It's all pointing to my dislike of “wacky” humor as opposed to “cornball”. Cornball is not even conscious of itself. Even though I'm not a big fan, I'd call John Waters' films “cornball”.

It's in HUGO, Poor little jester overpowered and broken by the love of this towering Amazon Princess and flummoxed by her power games. Poor little jester shut up in his attic room, strumming his guitar to yearning of this vixen, as downstairs, she hungers for his throbbing manhood, but it's too much fun to be honest about it. My lead characters tend to have kind hearts and make bad choices.

Marvel and DC saw something there, too, but, as an editor told me, “You're doing good raw feeling, but your technique is shit.” He was right; I was doing flimsy brush work, augmented with a dip pen and a Sharpie. I bounced between studios, just hanging out. Larry Hama, editor of CRAZY, Marvel's MAD imitation, noted my preoccupation, and commissioned a four page story for me to illustrate about an gluttonous princess called FROG'S LEGS. One of the panels was featured in an ad for the issue. It might have added up to more work, but this was at a height of my father's drinking and bullying. My behavior wasn't stable; I carried the dread of going home to him even in the city. Hama and I didn't fight. I can only suppose my behavior was not impressive.

Editor Rick Marschall considered publishing what had become HUGO in a black and white fantasy magazine at DC, and asked me to write three stories. They were awful. I couldn't follow out a good story from start to finish. My plotting and humor were quite weak. Marschall's reaction was, “Well, they're not Carl Barks”, and I chose to misconstrue his message, muttering a feeble “Thank you.”

Shit, I couldn't write worth a tinker's damn. I heard “this isn't funny” a lot, even from my parents. And Thank God. I had to hunt, peck and scratch to develop a sense of humor, and to create a proper plot, because I'd always make a good start, then get lost in a weak middle and end with a cop out. Sometimes I lucked out. I had managed to sell three RICHIE RICH stories too Harvey, but as far as I know, only one made it to intact to the printed page. Another was heavily doctored, and I don't know whether the third was even drawn.

Eventually I found my voice by not trying so hard. Somewhere along the line, I fused my line of thinking into my characters. All of them speak for me. I told someone that even the villains were a part of me, which he felt was a brave thing to admit. On a work of fiction, a friend asked, which character is you? The answer was that they all are. Parts of my soul having exchanges. Often, one part wanting to outsmart the other. I found that being that honest with myself I found a sense of humor which isn't always commercial.

I wasn't ready to be on my own at age 18, but life at home had become intolerable. My father was drinking himself senseless once he got home. My heart sank when I'd hear his car drive up. He gave new meaning to the phrase “mean drunk”. Then he started missing for days at a time.

My mother, who had insisted against divorce for “my” sake, No matter what kind of deranged rage he had in store, she hoped under dense hope. The divorce papers from my father were delivered at her nurse's aide job in a public school. He didn't do the “right thing”, which would have been to have a heart to heart at home. There must have been some legal chicanery that made him deliver them there instead. Or it was the cruelest stunt he could devise. She confessed her bowels gave out.

Then there was a long period of processing. One night they were hiding papers from each other, even in and out of my own chest of drawers. I was living with two sick people.

They didn't want to see me get ahead in cartooning; they worked against it. My father occasionally put locks on the rotary phone (“Let them call you!”) and my mother was going into screaming nagging when I was working on a deadline. Her brain finally gave out and she behaved weirdly. Every day I was trying to get the gig that would get me out of there.

I didn't get any outright understanding. The answer from everyone was simply “Leave!” On what?