Write to Derf

February 7, 2010

Sorry I was late posting the latest episode of TRASHED. I got unexpectedly swamped with some book business relating to the in-progress MY FRIEND DAHMER graphic novel. It's potentially a pretty exciting development. I'll say no more for now, not until something is finalized.

As penance, here's a special treat. This is a page from my high school sketchbook, one I recently discovered in a box of stuff from that era that was stored in my folks' basement:

The "celebrity spokesman" here is none other than Dahmer, doing his signature freaky spaz act!

Here's the story behind this poster. Al Rebo worked at a pizza parlor that Dahmer and another friend of mine frequented while they were both at tennis camp. He was an odd dude and Dahmer would mock him by bellowing out "REEEEEEEEEEEBO!"

We heard about this at school, and my friends and I, who collectively called ourselves the Dahmer Fan Club, quickly adopted Rebo into our schtick. One of us then came up with the brilliant idea of signing up Al Rebo for student council elections, even, though, of course, he had never set a toe inside Revere High School.

I created a dozen campaign posters, most featuring Dahmer, and plastered them all over school. At that point, school authorities caught on to our gag, removed Rebo from the ballot, tore down the posters and called me and the other perpetrators into the office for a chewing out. As I recall, the assistant principal could barely keep a straight face while lecturing us.

Naturally, we were incensed at this undemocratic backdoor move by the powers-that-be, so much so we began a "Write In Rebo" campaign! That's when I created the above flyer. We ran off a couple hundred copies (sneaking in and using a school copier!) and passed them out in the halls the day of the vote. Rebo was the top vote-getter in the electon!

I thought all this stuff was long gone. I was thrilled to discover that one survived. Not a bad drawing, either! Lettering sucks , but the Dahmer figure is great! Of course, this all takes on several layers of surreal spookiness, knowing what Dahmer became.

I spent my entire senior year on similar artistic endeavors. Probably explains why they gave me a "D" in art!

 

February 4, 2010

Here's one the the funniest webcomix I've seen to date. I know that's not a high bar, given general dreckiness of most webcomix, but this one is well worth checking out.

AXECOP is drawn by comix pro Ethan Nicholle, a prodigiously talented fellow scribbler for SLG Publishing, and written.... by his 5-year-old brother!

I laughed my ass off reading this thing, straight out of the unexpurgated psyche of a Kindergartener. The hero is just that, a cop with an axe. Then there's Avocado Soldier, Pretzelhead and the Evil Flying Book. The thing has become a huge internet hit. Probably a short-term hit, because the kid will grow up fast, his imagination stunted by SpongeBob and SuperMario. Six months from now, he won't be this funny.

And then, of course, I became throughly depressed when I realized this is the final evolution of Media by Amateurs. Our inevitable future. We'll ALL be working for 5-year-olds soon!

February 3, 2010

A letter

Hi there.

The name "Fink" is German for "Finch". A Finch is a small bird. They are very beautiful and have a very pleasing song to sing; unless, of course, you have been up for 3 days smoking crack, in which case, they, as well as any other early morning creatures, might be slightly irritating.

My name is Frank Mark Fink. I was named after my grandfather, who is in the Aerospace hall of fame for being the chief engineer on the B-24 project. This aircraft helped defeat both the Nazis and the Japanese in WW-2.

The point is, that you might as well say "Rat Jones", or "Rat Smith". The only flying rodent that I know of is the flying squirrel - which are pretty cool.

I do have a sense of humor, but yours is lost on me pertaining to your comic in the January Funny Times.

Hank Fink

Cool name.

I didn't invent the Rat Fink. Or the Surf Fink, the Fink Eliminator, the Superfink, the Bossfink or any other the other dozens of "finks." Ed "Big Daddy" Roth did, way back in the early 60s when he was the beachbum guru of the California Kar Kulture. That cartoon was a play on that, just the sort of thing that my hipster-dork readership would enjoy and appreciate.

There is something called the Google-fink which may assist you in the future if certain humor is indecipherable.

And here's his rebuttal to my reply:

I didn't invent the terms "Rag Head", or "Jew Fag", or "Slope Head", or "Nigger", but I don't use those terms in my daily discourse with other human
beings.

Hank Fink

And introducing... the Douschebag-fink!

I like how Herr Fink goes from songbirds to slinging around racist insults, in 0 to 60 mph! And that the 50-year history of BIg Daddy's Fink character and the bajillion t-shirts the guy sold matters not one whit to the guy. I'M to blame for this insult to the good family moniker!

And I was just worrying that I hadn't gotten any nutball letters for a couple weeks.

February 2, 2010

Me and Bill Watterson

The local rag here in Cleveland just did a frontpage story on Calvin & Hobbes and it's reclusive creator Bill Watterson, who is an area resident. It's noteworthy because Watterson, the J.D. Salinger of comics, actually agreed to an interview.

Watterson and I, believe it or not, share a common history. I looked up a lot of this stuff online. My memory is not this good, trust me.

In the early 80s, both Watterson and I were political cartoonists for our respective college papers here in Ohio, he at tiny Kenyon College north of Columbus, me at Ohio State. We received a lot of college papers in The Lantern Newsroom and I used to scope out the other cartoonists, who I figured, rightly, I'd be competing with for jobs. The early 80s was a real Golden Age of college cartoonists. Other guys drawing at that time were Berke Breathed, Jack Higgins and Mike Luckovich And Ohio State itself was a cartoon factory. Jeff Smith, creator of the Bone comic book series worked on the paper when I did, along with several other guys who went on to become pros of one kind or another.

Here's a site with a bunch of early Watterson cartoons.

Watterson's cartoons were good for a college kid learning the craft, although typical of the heavy-ink style that still curses the profession (so were mine!) and he landed a coveted gig with a dying afternoon rag, The Cincinnati Post. But The Post inexplicably fired him after only six months! Watterson then moved to Cleveland and worked in the art department of a grocery chain, drawing lettuce and cauliflower for ads and flyers, and toiled in his spare time developing a daily strip to submit to the syndicates. Back then, thousands of submissions were received and rejected by syndicates every year.

Meanwhile, I was down in Florida drawing political cartoons for my own small dying afternoon rag. And I too was sacked, although I managed to last two years. I spent the next six months sending out resumes. One day I noticed a well-drawn new strip on the comics page of the paper that just fired me, called Calvin & Hobbes.

Eventually, I was hired to be a staff artist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer and I moved back to Ohio. I quickly tired of the place and started working in my off hours to re-start my cartooning career.

In town, there was a chain of a dozen weekly suburban papers, the Sun Papers. This chain had its own political cartoonist, none other than Bill Watterson! I dropped Watterson a note at the Sun Papers but never heard back from him. They may not have even forwarded the letter. I didn't try to contact him again. Networking, or social graces of any kind, has never been my strong suit and I had stopped reading cartoons by the time I moved back to Ohio, an approach I believed would help me develop my own unique voice. And Watterson was gaining a rep for being a recluse. So I respected his wishes and I let him be.

This is where our paths diverge. Calvin & Hobbes was taking off by this time, and would top out at a staggering 2,500 papers. Watterson was soon making millions and his strip had a rabid following, the kind you can only achieve in mainstream media. I was also developing my own daily strip then, and Universal Press, which also syndicated Calvin & Hobbes was interested. But after six months and several rounds of sample strips, I got a soul-crushing and career-changing rejection letter.

Here I had done all this work... for free!... wrote and drew a hundred or so strips... and got the brushoff in a form letter! I never even talked to anyone on the phone during this whole time! The syndicate communicated with me by unsigned letter. I didn't even know the name of the person I was dealing with. I was so pissed off at the end of this ordeal, I decided to seek another way. I never tried to pitch a daily feature again and instead developed a cranky, edgy weekly strip, one that eventually became The City. About thist time, Watterson stopped doing political cartoons for the suburban chain.

I achieved a fair amount of success with my strip, but never approached the staggering fame and fortune a successful daily feature would have generated. When Watterson stunned the biz and ended Calvin & Hobbes in 1995, my own strip was peaking, appearing in upwards of 75 papers, big numbers for a weekly strip. I thought I was about to make it big, alas, not realizing that it was all downhill from there for the newspaper industry and newspaper comics. I naively thought back then that the weekly press would be the savior of newspapers. That's almost laughable now! I'm not complaining, mind you. I'm proud of the work I've done and the career I've had. But I can't help wonder, what if...?

If I had to do it over again, to be frank, I would have kept trying to develop a daily strip, since that was the last era when a cartoonist could make it big in that biz. I'd like to think I would have done it for awhile and then walked away before I became a tired hack, just like Watterson did.

February 1, 2010

Sprooooing! Kerflooey! Splort! Tha-wiiiiing!! Smek!

Here's an incredible deal that you comix fans should NOT pass up. Daedalus Books has a limited number of the two-volume THE COMPLETELY MAD DON MARTIN on closeout for $29.98! The list price of this gorgeous set from Running Press is $150!!

Don Martin was one of the star writer-artists of MAD magazine, from 1956 to 1987. He was billed as Mad's Maddest Artist and the three full-page strips that ran in each issue were easily the highlight of the mag, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the lame, repetitive fare.

Martin was a HUGE early influence of mine. In my opinion, he's one of the most unique cartoonists to ever put pen to paper. I bought MAD every month just for the Martin cartoons and my bookshelf was stuffed with Martin paperbacks.

Martin quit MAD in 1987 in a dispute with legendary publisher Bill Gaines. Martin felt he was entitled to a cut of the many books and reprint mags that Mad published over the years. Gaines, sticking stubbornly with the typical plantation-owner mentality of the comics industry, insisted the Martin had been paid once for the work and was not entitled to anything more. This even though the books usually had the Don Martin name in the title! Martin, in Gaines view, wasn't even entitled to to be paid for the use of his name! Gaines treated, and paid, his writers and artists far better than other comics publishers of the day, but it was still a ridiculous, and immoral, hard line that cost Gaines his star.

Martin bolted to rival humor mag CRACKED and worked there for six years until a degenerative eye condition finally forced him to semi-retire in the mid-90s. He died of cancer in 2000.

THE COMPLETELY MAD DON MARTIN features everything from his long MAD career. It's a gorgeous set, over 1000 pages, with each cartoon printed the same size it orginally appeared. If you're smart, you'll grab a copy of this fast.

Here's another treat. A german tv company animated a series of Martin comics. They're in German, of course, but that makes them even funnier.

 

Amazon sale

PUNK ROCK & TRAILER PARKS is again on sale on Amazon for a whopping 30 percent off. If you've been meaning to grab a copy, now is the time! I never know how long these Amazon sales will last, so I wouldn't hesitate. Amazon link is HERE

 

Cartoonists interviews!

For those of you operating under the delusion that cartoonists are interesting, here's the site for you. David Paccia has interviewed over 40 cartoonsts on their work habits and the process of creating comics and cartoons. He calls them "cartoonist surveys" and you can find them all at Davewastingpaper.com. There are interviews with John Holmstrom (Punk Magazine) , Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man) , Bill Griffith (Zippy), Skip Morrow and dozens of others you may or may not have heard of. Check it out here.

MY interview is here.