Mark Tatulli, LIO, HEART OF THE CITY cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview, Part 2

(Return to Part 1)

BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA:I have read where you have compared LIO to the character that Haley Joel Osment played in The Sixth Sense in that LIO’s world is real. I mean, that is his world, but is he the only one in his world who kind of lives and functions the way he does, surrounded by the monsters and the robots and animals and aliens?

MARK TATULLI:Yeah, I think he is the most at peace with it. In others, people just don’t see those things, you know, they are kind of walking by, or they happen to have their back turned to the situation. It’s kind of like, it’s his reality is just not acknowledged by other people. But they are there, and sometimes, it finds its way into other people’s worlds, too, but for the most part, we go on with our adult lives not seeing the things that kids are just deathly afraid of.

ANDELMAN:And you know, I apologize for even asking you to go behind the scenes and talk about some of these things, because I know, if you talk to a comedian, the last thing a comedian wants to do is dissect a joke, but LIO is still so new to so many people, and we haven’t had it for years and years yet, so it helps, I think, to explain a little bit. How do you keep it fresh day after day, and how long have you been doing it now?

TATULLI:Well, let’s see. It launched in newspapers last May, that would be May 2006. I originally pitched the strip to my syndicate in May 2005, so since May 2005, I have been basically writing and drawing, so like I said, it didn’t hit papers until last May, but the time between when I pitched it and when it actually hit the papers, I had to do a lot of writing and drawing, find out how I actually wanted to draw it and how I wanted the tone to be. So I have been drawing it I would say, honestly, almost two years.

ANDELMAN:It is still exciting to wake up to, or is it becoming work?

TATULLI:Oh no, it’s great only because, I would say mostly because there are no rules, and so every day, I can do something different, I can take it to a new place. It is always a surprise to me, and it’s an amazing, amazing thing to have a job as a syndicated cartoonist. I couldn’t be happier, I will tell you. I don’t know what I would do with myself if I weren’t doing this.

ANDELMAN:Now, you have done other things, right?

TATULLI:Yes.

ANDELMAN:What else have you done besides Heart of the City?

TATULLI:I started working in the film business when I was 19. I worked in every aspect of production. I did shooting, I did directing, I did editing, and then film segued into video, and then I made my way into 3-D animation and that kind of stuff and doing graphic commercials and television shows, and I also was a post-producer for a bunch of different reality television shows. But always on the side, I did comics.

ANDELMAN:So, it’s interesting that a lot of comic strip artists, I mean, they start doing it from their early twenties, and they haven’t really done much of anything else, and you are coming at it a little bit differently. You have worked in these other media. You have that exposure and that familiarity.

TATULLI:Yeah, I would say the majority of cartoonists that are syndicated have other things to do or still do. I would say that once they get lucky and come out of the chute with a syndicated comic, I would say that is the exception rather than the rule.



ANDELMAN:Do you have children?

TATULLI:Yes.

ANDELMAN:You do. What do you have?

TATULLI:I have three kids. Their ages are, my oldest is seventeen, my middle child, daughter, is fifteen, and my youngest is twelve, soon to be thirteen.

ANDELMAN:An endless source of inspiration, I guess.

TATULLI:Yeah, well, they’re not as weird as I am, though.

ANDELMAN:How do they respond, because this is such a different strip from Heart of the City? How did they respond when they first started seeing LIO? Were they surprised what was coming out of Dad’s mind?

TATULLI:Oh, no, they know I am bizarre. They were wondering what took so long. This is just a side of my personality that just never made it into Heart of the City. I mean, sometimes it did, and you will still see samples of it in Heart of the City, but Heart of the City is a completely different strip from this, which is the only way I can do two comic strips, because I sit down and I write Heart, and it’s in a completely different way, and then when I sit down and write LIO, it’s like I have turned the switch completely 180 degrees the other direction, and that’s the only way I could do it. I’m telling you, I couldn’t do two strip-driven comics, because I think that the dialogue would just be too similar.

ANDELMAN:How many papers is Heart in?

TATULLI:Heart is in about a hundred papers.

ANDELMAN:Okay. Now, were you able to make a living off of Heart before you started LIO? And now that you have the two strips, Heart’s in a hundred, LIO is in about two-fifty or so, is it safe to assume you are making your living off this full-time now?

TATULLI:Yes. Yes, that’s what I do full-time, comic-stripping. I never bathe, I wear the same clothes all the time, all I do is draw, draw, draw.

ANDELMAN:Have you gotten to the point where you have had to bring on an assistant to help with this?

TATULLI:No. I couldn’t imagine somebody working for me. I can barely stand it. I think that, oh yeah, I might be better if I pull somebody in to do inking on or something like that, but then I realize, I am such a control freak, which is the whole reason I do comics for a living, I have complete control over these people’s worlds, and they don’t complain. But I think that I would end up putting just as much work in standing over somebody’s shoulder while they do it, so I don’t think that’s a good idea. And I love it. I love it.

ANDELMAN:What do you think it is that was so different about Heart and LIO? I mean, Heart, a hundred papers is respectable, but as you say, you can’t earn a full-time living from that, and then LIO comes along, and inside of a year, I mean, it’s just exploded. What do you think that you learned from doing Heart, or why did one explode and one is just more of a modest….?

TATULLI:I don’t know. That’s the great unknown. I mean, if we knew that, we could all do it. You could sit down and do it, and the guy across the street could do it. I mean, you just don’t know. What you have to do is just be truthful to yourself and write what you know, you heard it a million times, and you throw it out there and hope it works. You can’t over-think this stuff too much, or you can’t say, ‘Oh, well, what does the market need?’ because it doesn’t work. That always fails. Well, maybe not always, but you know, it’s really, really difficult in the comic strip business to streamline a comic strip to what you think the market wants. What I wanted to do, like I said, was sit down and bring something that I felt was different to the comics pages, something we haven’t seen in a while with a pantomime strip and something with a little bit of a darker edge. Pantomime strips are generally really, really soft, conservative gags, and this one is not that, and so I just thought it would be different.

ANDELMAN:Now, two of my favorite LIOs to date, I think they were both Sundays, one was the appearance by the boys from The Boondocks, “There goes the neighborhood,” where LIO’s family, the moving truck backs up….

TATULLI:”There goes the ‘hood.”

ANDELMAN:”There goes the ‘hood,” I’m sorry. Thank you. And then the one, you will have to help me with this, because I don’t have a stack of them in front of me, but it was also a Sunday strip, and I think LIO was using a spy scope to like peek into another strip. Was that the one that was turned sideways?

TATULLI:Yeah. Actually, I do occasionally draw a Sunday sideways, another little quirkiness to LIO, only because I get in my mind this vision of somebody in their house having to turn their entire comics page sideways, and it gives me like a feeling of power. I just feel that the layout, some strips lay out better that way, and why not?

ANDELMAN:And the moving truck. I think, anyway, you tell me if I’m wrong, it seems like you are definitely one of the artists who has benefited from The Boondocks taking either semi- or permanent retirement.

TATULLI:And Foxtrot.

ANDELMAN:And Foxtrot, right, going from seven days to one. Did you hear anything from anyone in the business about The Boondocks showing up? It was just so spot-on.

TATULLI:No. Aaron McGruder is off doing his Hollywood thing. I don’t think he talks to anybody. I think he is just totally wrapped up in doing his show, so I doubt that he even saw it. I mean, somebody may have shown it to him, but you know, I didn’t hear anything from him. Like I said, that’s a whole other world, that Hollywood thing, and it’s very, very consuming, so….

ANDELMAN:You have done other character crossovers. I am thinking of Mary Worth in particular. That had me on the floor. Have you had feedback from other artists whose characters…

TATULLI:I had put Mark Trail in one of my strips. LIO was playing with a box of mice, and one of the mice chewed through the corner of the panel on its way over to Mark Trail’s panel, and Mark Trail is up on the chair screaming, holding his pants up, classic in that “I’m afraid of mice pose,” and I got a contact from actually the guy that draws Mark Trail, I am not familiar with his name right now, but his accountant contacted me and wanted a copy of that. Actually, I am going to send him the original, I just haven’t done it yet I am so busy. That’s on my list of things to do. I also heard from Jeff Keane when I had done a knock-off on Family Circus. You know, little Billy does that thing where he runs all over the place, and there is a little beeline behind him…

ANDELMAN:Leaving the footprints, right.

TATULLI:He had made his way over to LIO, and LIO packed him up in a box and was shipping him off to the home for wayward boys. And he wrote to me.



ANDELMAN:Two other more modern strips, Get Fuzzy, and Pearls Before Swine, frequently break that wall crossing into other strips. Is there a danger at any point of there being too much of that? I never get tired of it.

TATULLI:Yes, I agree with you. Yes, it can be overdone, and I have been kind of stepping back from that a little bit. First of all, it’s not a bottomless pit. You can only do so many comic strips, and you can’t do comic strips that are unknown to the general public, so there is like a handful of comic strips that you can rip on, but yes, I try not to go to the well too often.

ANDELMAN:For some reason, I am drawing a blank. I had interviewed Patrick, the fellow who does Mutts…

TATULLI:Patrick McDonnell.

ANDELMAN:Patrick McDonnell, for a biography of Will Eisner two or three years ago, and he was telling me that his Sunday strip is pretty much always a tip o’ the hat to some artist or some other strip but not in the same way that you and …..

TATULLI:Yeah. He has what they call a throwaway panel that they use as a space filler, and he always gives a nod to some artist, not necessarily always a comic strip artist, but of some artist in that first panel where you would see the panel Mutts.

ANDELMAN:Right.

TATULLI:That’s more of an homage.

ANDELMAN:How do you feel about, I have heard this from several artists over the years, and it’s no big secret that there is a younger generation of artists that is not real happy about how some of these older strips are being kept alive on life support, and they keep eating up space on these newspaper pages that continues to shrink. Do you have any thoughts on that yourself as someone who has two strips and one particularly on the rise?

TATULLI:Ummm, how do I feel about, you mean, dead cartoonists’ strips?

ANDELMAN:Yeah, basically, yeah.

TATULLI:Well, you know, if they want to quit, that’s okay with me. As long as the reading public wants to see it, what are you going to do? I mean, syndication is a business, and as long as the newspapers are willing to pay for them, there is not much you can do about it, and if the reading public wants to see them, what are you going to do? I mean, I wouldn’t pass on my comics to anybody, because I don’t think that anybody can do it. They are not those kinds of strips. They are very, very much mired in my personality, so I don’t think… I mean, they could do it, but I don’t think it would be the same thing, but you know, like I said, syndication is a business, and as long as the newspapers are willing to pay for it and the readers want to read the older strips, then that’s just the way it is. You know, you find a way around it, and that’s, I think, giving newspaper something they want to print more.

ANDELMAN:I guess it was Berkeley Breathed who was the first to really speak out against, well, in favor of having the dead cartoonists’ strips be pushed out of the way, but the thing that I always felt, up until just the last couple of years, was there hadn’t been enough strips that had really come forward to make the case that these should replace the older ones. You know, there have been a lot of strips…

TATULLI: It’s been moot. What’s the point of complaining about it? First of all, nobody listens to cartoonists anyway. We can rip on them in our own strips, and people will agree with us and so forth, but that’s about all you can do. I mean, newspaper editors are going to do what they want, and the syndicates are going to continue to syndicate dead cartoonists’ strips and repeat strips.

ANDELMAN:Right, but I mean, the way I look at it, anyway, there’s this generation in the last, oh, I don’t know, five years, let’s say, there’s LIO, Pearls, Get Fuzzy -- Mutts goes back a little further. Some of these strips, they are as revolutionary in some ways as Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes were at a period of time, but there really hadn’t been much in between that made you say, “Oh, I gotta just push all this out of the way and take up this new stuff.” But now, it seems like there has been some really fresh work being done.

TATULLI:Yeah, I agree, and I think that Pearls Before Swine is certainly an example of that and other strips that… And they are doing well. The new strips are doing well. It’s slow, but sure, that’s just… The fact that I have gotten 250 newspapers so quickly is just really an oddity within the business. It’s luck, it’s timing, it’s having a decent strip, the fact that two major players quit, and you have to give a tip of the hat to Bill Amend. I mean, he could have run repeats. He could have said, “Let’s go back to start with Foxtrot,” and newspapers would have bought it, and I am not saying that all the newspapers would have run it, but certainly a large amount of his list would have stayed, but he didn’t want to do that. I certainly benefited from that. I think he is to be commended for that.

ANDELMAN:Now, some of the guys who created some of the bigger strips of the last twenty years, The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes and Doonesbury, I mean, they have struggled with a couple of things over time. They struggled with the demand to be fresh all the time, and they have taken sabbaticals and ultimately, in the case of Watterson and Larson, have given up entirely, Trudeau always every so often takes a long sabbatical, and then they have also dealt with the demands to commercialize their products, which Trudeau’s has probably given in a little more on than the other two, you seem to be on this arc, this upward swing. Have you thought, as things, opportunities might come along, what you are willing to do and what you are not with LIO?

TATULLI:Oh… I just want to turn the best possible strip that I can. I am worried about building my list and maintaining it.

ANDELMAN:I did see where you were asked, I guess in a syndicate interview, about how you would feel about maybe LIO translating to like an animated series, and you have that film and video experience, so I would almost guess it would be almost disingenuous for you to say it hadn’t crossed your mind.

TATULLI:Oh, I mean, it crossed my mind, but that was not how I designed the strip. Aaron McGruder will tell you that when he designed his strip, it was always with animation in mind. That was his ultimate goal. My goal is to do a comic strip, and if it can segue into television or movies or whatever or Internet pieces or cell phone animations, that’s fine. I will cross that bridge when I come to it, but that was not how this strip was designed. It was designed to be just a strip, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t consider anything that came down the pike. That’s still not where my head is right now.



ANDELMAN:And last question, when we will see the first collection of LIO?

TATULLI:I am working on the book cover right now, and that’s due at the end of January. I really have to sit down and do that. The first collection probably won’t be out until October of this year.

ANDELMAN:Oh, great. Do you have a title?

TATULLI:Or maybe the end of the summer, I am not sure. Tentatively, I do have a title. It’s called LIO Stage One: Happiness is a Squishy Cephalopod. I have to figure out a cover. A cephalopod, of course, is an octopus or a squid or any other many-legged sea creature.

ANDELMAN:A creature that frequently appears in the strip.

TATULLI:Right.

ANDELMAN:Oh, I have to ask…

TATULLI:That, of course, is a play on the best-selling book by Charles Schultz, called Happiness is a Warm Puppy.

ANDELMAN:I’m sorry, I lied. I have one last question. Why is the character’s name spelled L-I-O? It always seems to be in upper case, as well.

TATULLI:I just like the name Leo. I wanted something short and sweet and just clean because that’s the nature of the strip. There is no dialogue, so I didn’t want to have a clunky name. It just was a short name. I got the name Leo from a couple of different sources, actually. One of the creators of the atomic weapon, one of the inventors was named Leo, and actually, there is this… Have you heard of cartoonist Edward Gorey?

ANDELMAN:Yeah, sure.

TATULLI: He had this thing called “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” like a poem.

ANDELMAN:I don’t know that.

TATULLI:Okay. Well, it will go through the alphabet, and he says, “‘A’ is for Amy, who fell down the stairs, ‘B’ is for Basil, assaulted by bears, ‘C’ is for Carla, who wasted away, ‘D’ is for Desmond, thrown out of the sleigh,” and it just shows these illustrations of kids being killed a whole bunch of different ways. But there is “‘L’ is for Leo” in here, it’s “’L’ is for Leo, who swallowed some tacks,’ and that cinched it for me. If Edward Gorey can use Leo, so can I, but I chose a different spelling only because I think it sets it apart, and it has almost like a foreign look to it. And the whole concept is pretty foreign to comics pages.

ANDELMAN:It’s very European in a lot of ways.

TATULLI:Well, yeah, it’s odd.

ANDELMAN:Yeah, okay, it’s odd.

TATULLI:Definitely odd. I try not to be Zippy the Pinhead odd, because I think that that is over the top, but I am sure there are a number of strips that strike people as being over the top.

ANDELMAN:I just want it on record that I said European and you said odd. That’s all. I don’t want to be blamed for odd or suggesting that Europeans are odd. Mark Tatulli, thank you so much for participating in this Mr. Media interview. We appreciate your time and look forward to many, many years of great LIO strips.

TATULLI:Oh, well, thank you very much. I hope so, too.

ANDELMAN:Thank you.

© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Ray Billingsley, "Curtis" cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview

When I was researching my biography, Will Eisner, A Spirited Life, one of the biggest surprises for me was learning that two extremely successful daily cartoonists, Ray Billingsley of “Curtis," and Patrick McDonnell of “Mutts,” were once students of Eisner’s at the New York School of Visual Arts.

Eisner spoke highly of both men, and he developed an ongoing mentor-style relationship with Billingsley, who was a very young man, just about 16, when he first took Eisner’s class.

Billingsley’s strip, “Curtis,” currently appears in more than 250 newspapers. It’s a steady performer recognized by the American Cancer Society for Curtis’ efforts to get his father to stop smoking. And Billingsley takes the detour from the usual story lines every December for an original Kwanzaa tale.


BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: Ray, welcome to Mr. Media.

RAY BILLINGSLEY: Thank you, thank you. How are you?

ANDELMAN: I’m good. Thank you. Ray, you and I have spoken a few times in the past, and I often get the sense that you don’t feel a lot of respect coming your way from your own industry. Is that true?

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah, actually, that is true. It’s been a very hard industry to maintain. I get the feeling that sometimes people of my color are pretty much ignored by the industry people. We never get nominated for Ruebens. Book deals rarely come our way. It seems that many of the opportunities that are afforded to our counterparts don’t come our way. It’s a hard road to travel, and basically what it means to me is I have to work a little bit harder just to maintain my stake within the newspapers.

ANDELMAN: Have you talked to other African-American cartoonists about this?

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah, I have actually spoken with Robb Armstrong of “Jump Start” and Stephen Bentley of “Herb & Jamaal,” and we sort of share similar stories. Things just don’t come our way that we see going to people who may be of similar talent or talent that is really not as good as ours.





ANDELMAN: Some people would jump in and say, well, what about “The Boondocks”? That seems to have done okay.

BILLINGSLEY: Well, yeah. “The Boondocks” was a product of its time, actually.

It was actually pushed because it was the angry black man. It’s almost stereotypical of what a lot of non-black people think we are about. We are not all like that. It was sort of revolutionary in its own right. And of course, for today’s times, it was just right, but just to give one person a voice isn’t really giving much of a voice at all. They need to really expand and let us all at least to have a chance to fail at what we were saying. Give everyone a chance to voice their own opinion.

ANDELMAN: Were you surprised when “The Boondocks” stopped that there wasn’t another strip like it that moved into its space? In most of the papers, I mean, I think, and I love “Lio,” I don’t want to complain about “Lio,” but “Lio” and “Get Fuzzy” and other strips seem to have filled that void as opposed to maybe another black strip.

BILLINGSLEY: Right, right. Well, I was actually more surprised that Aaron quit the job, sort of disappointed because I feel that we need as many voices as we can get that are different and diverse. But I’m not surprised that they didn’t go to replace him, because I had heard through the grapevine that a lot of people were scared of him and what he stood for. It was just sort of odd the way there was a love/hate relationship with most of the people I spoke to, a lot of editors, a lot of newspaper people. They were actually fearful of him, so “Get Fuzzy,” things like that – “Over the Hedge” is much safer. I could imagine that they would go along with something that they don’t have to worry about being controversial.

ANDELMAN: Are there white equivalents to “The Boondocks” and also to “Curtis”?

BILLINGSLEY: Well, actually, the number one I can think of is Garry Trudeau’s “Doonesbury.”

ANDELMAN: I wondered if you would say that. Yeah.

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah. He says all sorts of things political, gets away with it. I don’t know how much controversy he gets into, because I don’t hear about it, but I could imagine that he has in the past and he probably still does from time to time. But more often than not, it seems like he can just do whatever he wants.

ANDELMAN: And is there a white strip that’s a counterpart to “Curtis”?

BILLINGSLEY: Not really. Not really. I sort of made my strip to be the type where I could do just about anything I want. I can go from the absurd with Gunk, the character from Flyspeck Islands, and I can hit on very contemporary things. Gunther, my barber, he can speak on anything that’s relevant at the time, and he gets away with it, because that’s what happens in barber shops. They talk about what’s going on. And yet I have the innocence of Curtis and little brother Barry, so it was a strip where I could do just anything. Most of the strips don’t complement a lot of the stories that I can handle. Their characters aren’t suited for a lot of the things that I talk about.

ANDELMAN: How has the strip changed? You started doing it in what year?

BILLINGSLEY: It launched in 1988.

ANDELMAN: My goodness, you’re coming up on 20 years.

BILLINGSLEY: Yes, I am. Yes, I am.

ANDELMAN: How has it changed over the years?

BILLINGSLEY: I think actually the writing has become stronger. The character is much more rounded, and that’s what I feel is very important to the maturity of any comic strip, that the characters grow along with the times, especially in my case. Now, if you have something like “Wizard of Id” or “Broom Hilda," of course, they can just stay in one time, and you know, it’s just gags, so whatever they do, it goes. But strips like mine need to progress, and that’s what’s happened. I’ve kept up with the happenings of the times. Instead of Barry listening in on Curtis’ little phone calls to Michelle, things like that had to drop, because now the kids are mostly into cell phones. Oh, and you know, one of my favorite things I used to do was an imaginary record shop that Curtis and Barry would visit, and it would always change its name and its location because it featured the hardest rap that you could find, and most parents when they found out about it they would burn it down. The thing of it is, that was when rap wasn’t really accepted. Now that it’s so mainstream, it was a theme that I had to drop. So yeah, the strip grows.

ANDELMAN: What would be the equivalent of rap in the strip today? I mean, one generation is pushing in something, and the older generation is fighting against it. If it isn’t rap, what is it?

BILLINGSLEY: Right. Well, right now, I still have Curtis dealing with rap, much to his father’s dismay. But I am not on it the way I used to be. There aren’t any rap stars right now that are really hitting the charts like Public Enemy used to do. Those guys, they’ve now retired, so it has sort of lessened its impact in the strip.

ANDELMAN: Could we use a different word than retired, because I think I was still a music critic when they were playing, and I don’t like to think that they retired. Could we just say that they’re doing other things?

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah, they’ve gone on. As you see, right now, one of the hardest rappers that used to be out there, I think it’s Ice Cube?

ANDELMAN: Right.

BILLINGSLEY: He’s now doing family movies, Are We Done Yet? And this is a guy that people used to fear just seeing him. Now he’s doing family comedies. So time and age change everything.

ANDELMAN: I had asked you how the strip had changed in this almost 20 years, and one of the reasons I asked you that was to get into this other subject, there’s no way for someone who just started reading “Curtis” to know what the strip was like 20 years ago because it hasn’t been collected in how many years?

BILLINGSLEY: Well, actually, I started trying to get it collected in 1993, and I haven’t met with any success. I had two small pocket-sized books published by Ballantine back in like 1990 or ‘91, something like that, and I haven’t had any success since. Now, the popular books that are out there now, I have tried to get in with that company for eons, and time after time, they would just reject me. Sadly enough, my last rejection really turned me away from them. I spoke with a senior editor there, and she told me that she loved the material and this is what the company is about, and they would like to put the thing out. We were even talking covers and all. I had three books under consideration, and the last time I spoke to her, she said that the three books were on their way to Acquisitions. Now, to me, acquisition means they are going to buy it. So I sat back, and I was waiting and waiting. On December 27th, two days after Christmas, I get this large package back with all my work back in it with a rejection letter that said basically, “We’re not interested in this property now nor will we be in the future.” So basically they told me don’t even try any more.



ANDELMAN: I’m thinking there had to be an angry black man in Connecticut that day.

BILLINGSLEY: Oh yes. Actually, just very disappointed. It’s like the rug is being pulled out from under you, and that’s part of the thing I talk about, the not getting respect from the industry. Because they print everyone else, but for a person like me that keeps trying over and over and over again, they don’t do it. And of course, they offer no explanation why, and actually, I tried calling her back, and she wouldn’t even take my calls from that point.

ANDELMAN: What about the other strips you mentioned, “Herb & Jamaal” and “Jump Start”?

BILLINGSLEY: They don’t reprint them, either.

ANDELMAN: That’s what I wondered. And so, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but is this racism, or is it something else?

BILLINGSLEY: I think it’s just ignorance, actually.

ANDELMAN: Really?

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah. It’s a bit of racism, also, because I’ll tell you this: this is something that has eaten at me for years and years, but an editor once told me, and not from this book company, but

an editor once told me that it was thought that blacks don’t read and what white person would buy this for their kids?

And I mean, they said this right to me, so it’s just been a thing that I’ve been living with all these years. That’s why I try so hard to overcome it, because I think they’re wrong. I wonder sometimes if it’s a backlash of the whole rap industry where a lot of non-blacks think that we’re all like that. And that’s not the case. That’s why “The Boondocks” made it the way it did. It spoke of an angry revolutionary black man, and that’s been our stereotype. Most times when you see us in movies and all, we’re angry, we’re out of control, and they just feed into that sort of thing instead of doing something where the rest of us are basically family-type strips, and they just don’t want to deal with it. The bad part about that is that we’re not given the chance to fail. At least give us a chance to see whether or not it can go. Robb (Armstrong) has a great strip. They won’t give it to him. But it’s something that they have to be educated on, and I don’t think they want to be educated.

ANDELMAN: Does a black publisher need to step up and do this?

BILLINGSLEY: That might be the case, but also, it would have to be a black publisher who has connections with the bookstores more. You know how things go with bookshelf space and all that, and they would have to be strong enough to command a good spot. Right now, this other company that I don’t want to mention currently commands all the best spots.

ANDELMAN: Now, my sense of these things is that if a publisher or a TV network senses that there is money to be made, they tend not to see black or white, they see green.

BILLINGSLEY: Right.

ANDELMAN: Is it possible that they just don’t see a market here, or are they just ignorant of what the market is or how to reach that market?

BILLINGSLEY: I think they are ignorant, because there is plenty to be made in terms of bucks if they really want to sit down and put out a good product. Basically, that’s what I’m really dealing with. I want “Curtis” to be a good product, which is why I work on it so hard and why the stories are, in my opinion, very good. I try to be very original in things like that because I want people to see that we can put out a good product. All they have to do is work with us and sit down and do it. Now, one of the things for like TV, it would help if I did have some compilation books, because I could sit down with them, send them a book, and then discuss things with them. But without any sort of compilation, that work is hindered.

ANDELMAN: It is kind of surprising that BET or someone else hasn’t acquired the rights to “Curtis” to do, whether it be a cartoon or a sitcom of some kind. Has that ever come up?

BILLINGSLEY: The times have changed so much, especially with things like BET, where they would be more apt to take something like a “Boondocks” than “Curtis.” Curtis is a nice kid, and you know, he’s not really into, let’s say, Ebonics or anything like that, and I don’t know just how much they would welcome something like that.

ANDELMAN: Ray, do you need to “F” the poor kid up a little bit to get some attention?

BILLINGSLEY: Some times, I think so! (Laughs.) Many times when I try to stretch out too much, I might get censored, so you know, I try not to let that happen, because I really don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or step on any toes or anything like that, not through my work, anyway.

ANDELMAN: Let me ask you a question. I am going to play devil’s advocate here for a minute for people who may hear this and go, it’s not racism, it’s whatever. I think this is the second time since I’ve done Mr. Media I’ve used this example, so stop me if I’m wrong, but the “Cathy” creator, Cathy Guisewhite, is successful, but she’s not always accepted as doing important enough work in certain circles, and she doesn’t get a lot of respect. But the strip runs and runs and runs. Is there any sense of that as what’s happening with you or with Robb Armstrong?

BILLINGSLEY: Oh, sure. Sure. Definitely that’s what’s happening. We’re appreciated, we’re just not respected. I guess Cathy is getting it because you know, being a woman does have, I don’t want to say it’s drawbacks, because there are a lot of very talented women cartoonists out there, but I don’t think they get a fair shake, either. There is Roz Chast from The New Yorker. I think she has a beautiful book that’s just come out, but she should have had it a long time ago. She’s been working at it for quite a while, and she’s just getting it now. Lynn Johnson, she was different. She proved to be a heavy hitter, and I think it was because of her beautiful artwork and her sensitive stories that really, really got her over. But in terms of respect, I don’t know how much she gets other than being a moneymaker. If the strip was floundering or something like that, I doubt if they would really pay much attention to her.

ANDELMAN: Let’s change gears a little bit. The recent death of King Features editor Jay Kennedy hit you pretty hard.

BILLINGSLEY: Oh, yes.

ANDELMAN: What can you tell us about your relationship with Jay?

BILLINGSLEY: Jay and I, we were very close. He would always warn me in case of what he thought I was doing that might be controversial.

He looked out for me a lot, and he was a good sounding board. When I first started doing controversial ideas, I would always go to Jay and ask him what he thought of it, and Jay would always say, “Well, Ray, we’ll take a chance. I think this is good, so we’ll take a chance.”

And more often than not, we had good response. Sometimes, even during the worst controversial ideas that I put out there, Jay was always on my side. He would tell me different ways of handling the media and all that, because, actually, I am a very sensitive person, and when people say that they don’t like my stuff, it bothers me. Jay would just calm me down and send me on the right path. So it was very unsettling when I heard it, but the really bad thing about it was, Jay had called me up to tell me about a recent controversy I was going through with the Boston Globe.

ANDELMAN: I was just going to ask you about that, yeah. That was the last time you spoke to him?

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah.

ANDELMAN: For folks who may not have seen it -- I think it was a Sunday panel, wasn’t it?

BILLINGSLEY: Right. It was March 13th, actually. I’ll always remember that strip because of Jay. Jay called me on March 12th, which was that Saturday, and he told me that the Boston Globe was censoring that strip, and he told me not to worry about it, that it should blow over, hopefully it doesn’t get bigger, and thankfully, it didn’t. But he told me he was going away and he would be back in a week on that Monday, and he offered to take me to lunch that Tuesday at the new King Features office because I hadn’t seen it yet. A few days go by, I had sent a “Thank you” note to him over the last controversy saying thanks for watching my back again and talk to you when you get back. Then like a couple days later, I got an email from Claudia Smith at King Features. She’s the publicist, and it was saying that Jay had died, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe it because I had just spoken to him, and I was waiting to have this lunch with him. We hadn’t seen each other since the last Ruebens. I really liked getting together with Jay, so it really hit me hard.

ANDELMAN: How long had you worked with Jay?

BILLINGSLEY: “Curtis” started in 1988. Jay came on, I think, in 1989. So yeah, we had basically grown up in King Features there.

ANDELMAN: Do you have someone else there at King that will provide you with that kind of support?

BILLINGSLEY: Well, hopefully, hopefully. I know there are some other editors. There is one woman named Evelyn Smith, and I know she’s been a good editor for the past few years, but we have yet to really get close the way Jay and I did. It’s so strange, because a lot of deaths in the industry have hit me personally because I really knew these people. Jud Herd was one of them. We used to get together for lunch, and we would go to the Society of Illustrators. (Charles) Schulz was a big one for me, because we spoke so often, and it was a strange thing. I would call Schulz, and many times he was busy, so I knew he would call me back. I called him this particular time, and I waited for a week, and he didn’t call back. So I called him again, and he didn’t call back. The oddest part was, I got a phone call one early morning from some editor from Baltimore, and he asked me what did I feel about Schulz’ death? And that’s how I found out about that. So that floored me.

ANDELMAN: Well, going back to my introduction of you, I think a lot of people will be surprised to learn that you were a student of Will Eisner’s.

BILLINGSLEY: Oh, yes. His death, that crippled me.

ANDELMAN: What do you remember about Will if you could tell one quick…

BILLINGSLEY: Oh, I can tell you this:

Will was a tough MF’er!

(Laughs.) He was not to be played… He wasn’t one of those teachers that came in and had all the jokes and we had a good time. You were there to work. and actually, by the time I had gotten to Will’s class, I had been published quite regularly in New York. I was becoming a fixture. I was like the kid artist of New York, and I would show my stuff to Will, and Will would just look at it and basically yawn and say, “Okay, what else can you do?” He always challenged me to do more than I could do. I had credited Will with my superhero, Super Captain Cool Man. I draw that like in a superhero style just to show people I can draw other things, and that comes from Will making me do different styles. He also helped with the styling of the Kwanzaa stories, just stretching out. You know, actually, Schulz had a lot to do with the Kwanzaa stories, also, because some of his advice was, “Put things in your strip that are unique to you, something that no one else can touch,” and that’s how the Kwanzaa stories came up. So those were two of the men that actually influenced a great part of my career.

ANDELMAN: What cartoonists, as you were starting out and I guess over the years, have you looked to for influence, others than Schulz and Eisner, that you admired over this time?

BILLINGSLEY: Well, this will sound odd, but my number one favorite was Al Capp.

ANDELMAN: Really?

BILLINGSLEY: Yep. Who did “L’il Abner.” I have his entire series of books, and I mean, what the guy did was phenomenal with the space that we are all afforded. He gave us strong characters, strong dialogue, the stories, he was just an incredible artist and writer, and I looked to him for a lot of my inspiration.

ANDELMAN: But Al Capp, Ray? I suspect right now I am not the only person hearing this who is scratching their head, going, Al Capp? Okay.

BILLINGSLEY: You know, all those people who may be scratching their heads, they need to pick up some of those books and read them through. If you really want to see a fine example of good characterization, good artwork, check out “L’il Abner.” It’s really incredible stuff.

ANDELMAN: Wow. Okay, I’m still scratching my head, but we’ll move on. What about new strips? When you open the paper, and obviously you open the paper and you make sure your strip is in there every day, but what new strips can you not get through the day without reading?

BILLINGSLEY: Oh, let’s see. One of my favorites of the brand new strips, I think it’s called “Gals and Football.” I think that’s the name of it. I also like, wow, I can’t think of the name of this one. It has to do with a waitress. I know she’s one of the six chicks, cartoonists. I forget the name of it, but I check her stuff out every day. I just like the artwork. She reminds me of Betty Boop, the characters with the big heads and big eyes. If I had my computer on, I could look it up right quick.

ANDELMAN: That’s all right. We’re playing a game of “Stump the Cartoonist.” Any others?

BILLINGSLEY: Right now, those two are my favorite ones of the brand new ones.

ANDELMAN: Whose career would you most like to have?

BILLINGSLEY: Hmmm…. Right off the bat, I would say Jim Davis.

ANDELMAN: Really?

BILLINGSLEY: Because Jim Davis (“Garfield”) has been seen everywhere, and the marketing has been everywhere. I would love to be in that sort of position, and when you talk to Jim Davis, he’s so down to earth. He’s a cool guy. Also, Dean Young, between him and his father doing “Blondie, “these people are so highly successful, and they’re just regular, down to earth people. Also Mort Walker. Mort Walker has had a steady stream of success with several strips, and that sort of thing I would also like to get into. I don’t know how well he has done with the merchandising. I haven’t seen much more than the books. He’s probably had a bit more franchising, but I’m not really up on that. It’s the longevity and the quality of the strips that I really like.

ANDELMAN: So you’re not one of those guys who thinks that these strips that have been around for 30 or 40 years, they need to just stop, move out of the way for a younger guy?

BILLINGSLEY: Well, no, not as long as they are still pumping out good stuff. That’s one of the reasons why I really like “Blondie.” “Blondie” changes with the times. I’ve watched it ever since I was a little kid, and I see all the changes. The artwork is still superior to many that I’ve seen, and the ideas are still there.

ANDELMAN: You know, that’s funny. I agree with you on “Blondie.” As a matter of fact, when you mentioned Dean Young, I was thinking, I can’t remember the last time that there was some other type of Blondie product. I think, “Boy, this would make a great TV show” sometimes or a great movie, because it has changed. Blondie has gone from just being kind of curvy to kind of busty, and she’s very attractive, and you know the situations are very modern, if you will, in terms of the…

BILLINGSLEY: Everything is up to date.

ANDELMAN: Dagwood’s office…

BILLINGSLEY: Not dated.

ANDELMAN: I did see that they have launched, after all these years, a Dagwood’s Sandwich Shoppe.

BILLINGSLEY: I can imagine what that’s like, a little bit of everything.

ANDELMAN: Yeah. Franchising those things.

BILLINGSLEY: Jared wouldn’t like that.

ANDELMAN: No, I think you’re right. I think that would definitely not be a place that we would see Jared.

BILLINGSLEY: Now here’s something for you. One of my favorite strips used to be Russell Meyer’s “Broom Hilda.” It was about a fifteen-year-old witch, and I mean, she was mean, crotchety, she drank, she smoked, she pinched men, she did everything, and I liked it because it was such outrageous humor, so you know, from time to time, I go that way, also. I like the good stuff, like the “Blondie”s, to the old-fashioned slap-stick sort of things.

ANDELMAN: Ray, let me ask you about one other thing, and we sort of touched on it, that you started very young in the business. I remember the first time that we spoke, you were telling me you worked for a kids’ magazine.

BILLINGSLEY: Right, right.

ANDELMAN: Is that what it was called, Kids?

BILLINGSLEY: Yeah, it was called Kids.

ANDELMAN: Okay.

BILLINGSLEY: I started off in this business when I was twelve years old, so I have literally grown up in this business.

ANDELMAN: And how old are you now?

BILLINGSLEY: Boy, wouldn’t you like to know?

ANDELMAN: Well, I think I have an idea. I think we’re about the same age.

BILLINGSLEY: Okay. How old are you?

ANDELMAN: Late 40s.

BILLINGSLEY: There you go. I’m looking at 50 in the face.

ANDELMAN: Okay. And that’s why I wanted to mention the name of that kids’ magazine, because for a generation of us, I think, in the early ’70s, that was a magazine that a lot of us picked up, and it had a big influence on us.

BILLINGSLEY: A funny story about that. I remember I was 12 years old, I was in my art class, and we had this, I think it was a 20-foot tall aluminum Christmas tree project that we had to build out in front of this hospital in New York, and I mean, it was cold, it was snowing, and I thought it was a dumb project. So by 12 years old, I was already carrying around like a little pad and pencil, and I was always doodling something. Mind you, my teachers hated that. But I was sitting off to the side, and I noticed there was a little media coverage. I saw a couple of people from the news hanging about. A woman approached me, and she asked me what I was drawing, so I showed it to her. She asked if she could keep it, so I said, “Sure, why not?” And she wanted my name and phone number, so I gave it to her. Back in that time, you didn’t have to worry. Kids were safe. So I think that was on a Thursday we were working on that project. On that Monday, I got a call from this woman, and come to find out she was the editor of Kids magazine, and she wanted me to come down and try my hand at doing some spot art for a couple of articles. So sure, I went on down there. I received $5 for my first illustration, and the first magazine came out, everything was fine.

Then they called me up, and they hired me as like a staff artist! Life changed for me right after that. I would go to school, and as soon as school was out, instead of going to play ball or something like that, I was going to work, and I remained with Kids magazine until I was 18, and I retired from there as an associate editor at 18 years old.

And from there, I just kept on going. I found out that people paid you to draw. See, my father was very strict. He didn’t believe in allowances or things like that, so it was a good way for me to make money legally. I just kept on doing it, then I found out about the world of freelancing, and that was actually a lot of fun, because you never knew what you were going to be doing next.

ANDELMAN: Oh yeah, it’s a thrilling job.

BILLINGSLEY: It’s hard. It takes a lot of pavement work, but see, at the time, I was living in New York, so all the magazines were right there.

ANDELMAN: That is an advantage. There’s no doubt.

BILLINGSLEY: I had to take a subway or a bus, and there I was. Like I said earlier, I was starting to build up a reputation there in the city because I was a kid artist, so many times when I got to magazines, people would just be surprised to see me. “So you’re that kid we heard about? Yeah, we’ll put you on this job.” Okay. I’ll take it, I’ll take it. I mean, throughout this business, throughout all the years, I have done everything you can think of. I’ve done advertising, I’ve done storyboards, magazine covers, clip art. I’ve done all sorts of things. As a matter of fact, I actually did designs on underwear before they became popular. Those were my designs way back. I did a tuxedo shirt way back. It is like 25 years now, and these things really caught on. I used to see people wearing this stuff.

©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.

Mark Tatulli, LIO, HEART OF THE CITY cartoonist: Mr. Media Interview

"LIO" is the creation of Mark Tatulli, and he’s a fresh brand of weird and wonderful now appearing in more than 250 newspapers, with more adding the strip daily. If Far Side creator Gary Larson and "Calvin" creator Bill Watterson had mated, LIO is the character they would have produced. Tatulli’s brainchild, LIO, and that’s spelled L-I-O, is a young boy who combines elements of mad scientist, comic strips, science fiction, and the Adams family, and get this, LIO never speaks.



BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA:Has LIO ever spoken in the strip?

MARK TATULLI:No.

ANDELMAN:Will he?

TATULLI:He never will.

ANDELMAN:And he never will.

TATULLI:I mean, others around him may speak, and he may get visitations from other comic strip characters, but he will never actually talk.

ANDELMAN:I was talking to a friend whose history of comics goes back even further than mine, and we both came to the same connection. We remembered a character called Henry.

TATULLI:Sure.

ANDELMAN:Is that close to "LIO"’s lineage in some way?

TATULLI:Well, they are both pantomime strips, what’s called a pantomime strip, and those area basically strips that are driven by pictures in it instead of dialogue, so characters revealed by action rather than by words. I used to love pantomime strips when I was a kid. Henry is one, as you mentioned, and there was also Ferd’nand, which was, I believe that was not produced in the United States, but it did get circulation here.



ANDELMAN:So Henry was certainly a strip that you were aware of.

TATULLI:Oh yes.

ANDELMAN:There really hasn’t been another one like that in some time.

TATULLI:No, no, not since like the 1950s, and I just thought that with the space that they dial down to, that they actually allot to comic strips, I thought that it would be fun to do a comic strip that didn’t have any dialogue and any word balloons taking up any of that space, so I could utilize the entire space for illustration. It’s great fun on Sunday.

ANDELMAN:Is LIO mute, or is it he just doesn’t speak in the strip?

TATULLI:Yeah, he doesn’t speak, his father doesn’t speak, none of the characters really speak. Somebody might show up that you would expect to speak, like say Cathy from the "Cathy" comic strip or maybe Calvin and Hobbes or something like that, and you would expect them to speak because they speak within their world, but within LIO’s world, pretty much nobody speaks. There are sound effects, and there are billboards and so forth, but there is no actual dialogue.

ANDELMAN:Have you ever in the time you have been doing this strip, have you had an idea, you woke up in the morning or in the middle of the night or you are in the shower, wherever you get your ideas, you had an idea for the strip that would have required him to say something, and then you went, oh, and you slap yourself on the head and go, ah, that’s right, he doesn’t talk, it’s not going to work?

TATULLI:No, no, because I don’t think that way when I do these strips. It’s all visual, and so my brain is just switched in that mode. It’s odd, because I do have another comic strip called "Heart of the City," and it is dialogue-driven or script-driven, and I hear their voices. I put them in situations, and I see how they react, and there is dialogue, but with LIO, because I don’t put any dialogue in, I just don’t hear a voice.

ANDELMAN:It must require a tremendous amount of, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for, I mean, focus, to not want to slip and go to words, especially because you have the other strip where you are used to putting words in people’s mouths.

TATULLI:Well, again, you know, I just don’t even think in terms of that. That’s not even an option. The other strip is dialogue-driven, and like I said, I hear the voices, but when it comes to "LIO," I am just thinking visually, completely visually.

ANDELMAN:What other rules have you set for this strip? What parameters are there?

TATULLI:There are no parameters.

ANDELMAN:Okay.

TATULLI:It’s really a basic concept. It’s just LIO who lives with his father, and that’s basically it, and whatever I come up with. I set no parameters because I didn’t want to lock myself in. I mean, having no dialogue means that there is going to be no dialogue-driven gags, so I have to leave myself as open as possible to any kind of thing, so anything basically can happen.

ANDELMAN:Mark, you mentioned that LIO lives with his father, and I wanted to ask you about that. Is there no mother?

TATULLI:There is no mother, no.

ANDELMAN:Is he a product of a broken home, or is it that Disney tradition of kids only have one parent?

TATULLI:Well, I can’t imagine that a sane woman would stay in that environment for too long. Between the father and LIO, they are a couple of weirdos, so my guess is that she just about had it one day and just took off, but you know, it may make things simpler, because then there would be no dialogue between parents or anything. LIO’s father is kind of his guardian, more or less, and he just kind of goes with the flow.

ANDELMAN:Now, we frequently see LIO’s father in fairly treacherous situations. How do you envision their relationship? Is he tolerant, or is he in fear of his son?

TATULLI:Oh, he’s just tolerant. He just kind of goes with it. He just wants to, the interesting thing was that I had written the character of the father when I was out of work. I had lost my job, and I was feeling, you know, useless, and I kind of projected that onto this father character here, and he doesn’t really have a job. We never see him going off to work, and he just kind of sits around and watches TV and just kind of goes with the flow, and weird things happen, but, you know, he doesn’t ask too many questions, because I don’t think he really wants the answers.

ANDELMAN:Now, what are some of the, in your mind, some of the strangest things that have happened between LIO and his father?

TATULLI:Oh, my gosh. Every day is a new adventure, you know. They have been visited, well, I guess one of the strangest things would be that the father went into the refrigerator to get bacon and eggs, because he wanted to make bacon and eggs, and he found this enormous egg in the refrigerator and was very pleased about that, and the final panel is the egg has split open, and it was the alien from the Alien movie, the Ridley Scott movie, it wraps around his neck and was on his face, and LIO comes in and slaps his face, like, oh, my God, he’s getting in my experiments again. I would say that is among the most bizarre things, but those kinds of things happen every day, and everything is fine the next day.

ANDELMAN:That’s the amazing thing. I love that. It’s just like there is a giant octopus or something, and LIO is so in command of his situation. What elements of personality does he take from his creator, and what kinds of things have you given him that would you like to have in your own personality, perhaps?









TATULLI:Oh, geez. It’s mostly about fear. When you are a little kid, I was afraid of everything, because everything seemed so scary, and things that were even designed for kids seemed so scary. When you went and saw Sleeping Beauty, you know, the dragon in that was just really, really scary. Now to an adult taking the kids, oh, this is a lovely fairy tale I am taking my child to, and then you get there, and there’s this evil-looking queen, the most evil-looking queen you ever saw, and she turns into a dragon, and it just envelopes the screen, and it’s really, really horrific. Same thing with book illustrations. I remember being fascinated by Grimms’ Fairy Tales when I was a kid. Those stories are just downright sick, some of them. I remember, you know the story of Tom Thumb, but you don’t know that he actually is killed by a spider, and there was this illustration in this Grimms’ Fairy Tale of the spider kind of coming up on him and pounced on him and did battle with him, but the spider breathes his poisonous breath and then basically killed Tom Thumb, and you know, it’s shocking for a kid. LIO’s world is that way. Everything is kind of a shock or surreal or bizarre or scary.

CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING!

©2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.