>> I'd like to welcome you
to today's event.
When you think of comic books,
do you have visions of funny
animals and heroes in tights?
Do you think of comics as
juvenile and not really worth
your time?
Well, think again and take a
serious look at comics under the
direction of Lynda Barry and
featuring Paul Buhle, presenting
his new book "Comics in
Wisconsin," and James Danky,
author with Denis Kitchen of
"Underground Classics:
The Transformation of Comics
into Comix."
Comics have grown up and so has
our appreciation for graphic
work that marries text and
image.
Today's fans and scholars look
at comics as a key element in
our understanding of culture and
even our lives.
So I am pleased to present
Lynda Barry.
( applause )
Lynda Barry has
worked as a painter, cartoonist,
writer, illustrator, playwright,
editor, commentator and teacher,
all at the same time, and found
that they are very much alike.
She is the imitable creator
behind the syndicated strip
Ernie Pook's Comeek featuring
the incomparable Marlys and
Freddie.
( applause )
Publisher Drawn and
Quarterly plans to publish a
multi-volume hardcover
collection of Ernie Pook's
Comeek starting this year, as
well as a collection of
Near-Sighted Monkey.
Lynda is also the recipient of
this year's Wisconsin Library
Association's RR Donnelley Award
for her book "What It Is"
which also won an Eisner Award
which is like the Pulitzer
of cartoon art.
( applause )
>> Except for the money part.
>> It's like the Nobel Prize of
cartoon art.
>> Except for the money part.
>> Actually, though, she's a
really peaceful person.
Born in Wisconsin in 1956, Lynda
studied at Evergreen State
College where she became good
friends with Simpsons creator
Matt Groening.
Her work has been widely
praised, and her book "The Good
Times are Killing Me," also
adapted as an off-Broadway
musical, won the Washington
State Governor's Award.
Barry currently offers her
workshop, Writing the
Unthinkable, all over the place.
( applause )
>> Thank you.
>> She's really a famous person.
And she's from Wisconsin so we
want to...
>> That's the most important
part.
( applause )
>> Paul Buhle was a
senior lecturer at Brown
University, and in retirement
has returned to Madison where he
earned his PhD
in history, right?
At the University of Wisconsin.
His 40 published volumes include
a dozen comic art volumes, five
biographies and a book series on
the victims of the Hollywood
blacklist.
Paul and I collaborated to
produce Howard Zinn's graphic
history "A People's History of
American Empire" which was
featured last year.
Paul is also editor of the new
book "Comics in Wisconsin" with
book designed by Madison's own
Steve Chappell.
( applause )
And James Danky is
the author/editor of dozens of
books on topics as varied as
African American newspapers,
women's publications and the
Native American press.
In 1974 he published his first
book, "Undergrounds," a
bibliography of alternative
newspapers.
He is on the faculty of the
School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at the University
of Wisconsin Madison, where he
also founded and directed the
Center for the History of Print
Culture in Modern America.
In 2007 Danky retired from the
Wisconsin Historical Society
after building their nationally
renowned collections for 35
years.
So that's it for me and thank
you, so much, again.
( applause )
Take it away Lynda.
>> Lynda Barry: All right,
I get to be your moderator
which, of course, is like
my dream because I was the
oldest girl in my family
and also the loudest kid
on my block.
I was the person who could talk
so loud that I really don't need
a microphone.
( laughter )
But let's pretend.
So before we start there's one
thing I want to ask you, I want
you to think one of your
favorite comic strips
and I'm going to
count to three and we're just
going to say the name of our
favorite comic strip out loud.
Not mine, of course, I know
that's what you'd say but think
of something else.
I'll give you an extra second.
Okay, one, two, three.
( shouting )
One more time.
One, two, three.
( shouting )
Okay, now one that you hate.
All right?
One, two, three.
( shouting )
One, two, three.
( shouting )
Thank you.
I like audience participation.
I'm sitting next to two super
smart guys who know so much
about comics that when you say
the word comics you can see
their foreheads go like this.
( laughter )
So I'd like to start
out by asking you, Mr. Danky.
When I met Mr. Danky and I found
out his last name was Danky I
realized he could do anything.
He could be a spy.
He could be the president.
He could be a revolutionary.
He could run a restaurant,
Danky's restaurant.
So I'd like to turn it over to
you.
>> James Danky: Thank you.
It's good to know you have
career options.
A number of you, thinking of
those who are particularly from
the Madison area, would have had
a chance to see the exhibit that
Denis and I did at the Chazen
Museum.
And thinking about the high tone
setting that this year's panel
is in, Lynda, Paul and I did a
panel last year at the Stage
Door, slightly lower level
amenities.
Nice place though, good crowd,
good questions.
But being here at Overture it
strikes me that it's the third
sort of obvious point of
recognition about comics.
And we had a good question that
I'll come back to, not directed
at me but directed at Paul and
Harvey earlier, about, what
should we say, the
institutionalization of comics.
And the questioner worried about
that and Paul, I think,
effectively responded to that
that if it's good for artists
then it's got to be good.
But taking comics and
particularly comix with an X and
getting them accepted, is not
about art because comics have
always been art, but rather it's
about making use of the cultural
institutions and the kind of --
that they add to those things.
That's the much more difficult
job that Denis and I have been
at work on through this book and
earlier the exhibit.
It was a success at the Chazen
Museum, I thought so, but then
again I would, wouldn't I?
But when I looked the other day
at the numbers and over 10,000
people have visited the museum,
and if you're local enough you
know how difficult it was to
scale the chain link fence to
get into the Chazen this summer.
( laughter )
But that aside, it
was a real confirmation for me
of the broad audience that I
really, really hoped was there
for comix with an X.
When you talk about the 1960s, I
am a historian as is Paul
although I have not taught the
1960s as much as Paul by any
means, one thing I'm sure about
is that you immediately hear the
soundtrack because it's
inescapable.
I assume that some time in
several millennia from now that
people will still be forced to
listen to classic rock.
( laughter )
I know why I tap my
toes, but as I always say to
students, I don't understand why
you are interested.
( laughter )
But that ubiquity
that we associate with rock
music from the 1960s is
definitely to be opposed by the
almost complete absence of
visual images from the 1960s.
Some of the audience of the
right age that would be geezer
like me or much younger will
know them through film, but
getting to a lot of the images
that were the crucial elements
of the 1960s is not really
possible because they're not
easily available to you.
And so that one of the ideas
behind doing underground
classics was to take one set of
those images, some of the most
important, most challenging,
most interesting of those images
done by comics artists in the
1960s and '70s and bring them
back.
And there are a lot of good
reasons to do that, but I
certainly wouldn't ignore the
fact that I just wanted to see
them again and I wanted to see
them on walls of the museum.
You have to recognize one's own
personal kind of motivation.
We get here to comix with an X
coming after a mostly, for my
mind, a mostly a dreary period
in the 1950s with comics.
I bought tons of comics, and I
would think that that's true for
many people, more likely male
than female, but everybody liked
comic books I think in some
degree or another.
And everyone had their own
favorites or least favorites as
Lynda just prompted us to know.
I was very found of Uncle
Scrooge, not so found of
superheroes but I certainly read
enough of those.
But what I took away from that
then, not that I understood it,
and now as an adult I do
understand, is the kind of
limited range of motion,
literally physical, that the
characters would do.
Sure they could fly over
buildings and they could do all
kinds, go into the sun, all
kinds of things like that, but
they really didn't do a lot of
the things that human beings do.
They become like John Wayne
westerns.
It's a very antiseptic view of
human life, if violent.
In the 1960s it was possible to
imagine completely different
kinds of comics, and I was sort
of at the end of my tether
reading comics, I would still
read some Walt Disney comics and
stories and perhaps you'll
recognize your own reading
habits for comics in this, but
some of the rest were just
completely boring.
But then I discovered Zap and I
thought, oh, my god yes, this is
what I've been waiting for.
I didn't know what I've been
waiting for, but this is what
I've been waiting for.
When we say comix with an X, the
subtitle of our book and the
exhibit, that we mean to refer
to the visual and textual
revolution that occurs in the
1960s whose consequences are
absolutely felt today by comic
artists that all of the sudden
you could change everything, and
you could have comics that were
fully dimensional and fully
realized that they could
envision on paper and in word
everything that everybody does,
and of course that includes lots
of things that will make people
unhappy and embarrassed or
blanch or any of the things that
actually occur in real life.
In the spring of last year
knowing that the book and the
exhibit were about to come out
after an incredibly long, more
than elephantine gestation
period, I was working with some
students to use social media,
something I knew nothing about,
to help promote the exhibit, and
the student's question was how
do comics become art?
And I said it's easy, all we
have to do is get them into the
museum.
( laughter )
That's all it takes.
Really, trust me.
They are art already but we just
have to get them inside.
And that's really, as we would
say in comic's parlance, that's
the origin story.
In 1977 I met Denis Kitchen.
I organized a conference on book
publishing in Wisconsin.
I knew Denis' work from many
things from Mom's Homemade to
his covers and more for the
Bugle American in Milwaukee
which was widely distributed in
Madison.
And I remember quite clearly
saying to him as we met, saying,
boy, wouldn't it be great to see
original comic art on the wall
of the museum.
You should be really careful
with those casual statements.
It took us 33 years so we are
indeed an overnight success.
But it took not only our
thinking about it for that great
length of time but it took,
about five years ago, it took
our presentation of this, and we
had great trepidation to Russell
Panczenko at the Chazen museum,
saying what if we did this.
And I don't know that either of
us, I think we just kept
talking.
We didn't realize that Russell
had already said yes.
I was just prepared for a large
sales job, not a simple sales
job.
But Russell said yes, gave us
some questions that we needed to
go forth and answer.
And we dallied for several
years.
And about three years ago we
finally got serious on it in
terms of putting it together.
Taking something we knew
something about, Denis a lot
about because he's a major
creator of underground
publishers.
But to figure out how to take
comics and make them work in a
museum context.
And it's another example of the
usually sausage metaphor that
you'd much rather see it on the
walls then learn all of the --
discussions.
When I would explain to Denis
that they weren't giving us the
entire museum and so some of the
works would have to be cut.
But still at 125 pieces it was a
very broad survey of the
materials produced by artists
beginning in the '60s,
continuing into the '70s.
We used the closing date in the
early '90s, but that's to take
in chronologically a couple of
the pieces made by the artists
who came of age in the 1960s.
As Jay Lynch reminds us in his
introduction, one of the major
non-comics inspirations for
pretty much everybody in our
show was Paul Krassner's
The Realist.
I know that it was that way for
me.
I can very clearly recall
picking up the first issue and
thinking to myself, oh, my god,
I didn't know you could write or
think like this.
And that really builds, that's
one pull, the other one would be
Harvey Kurtzman's astonishing
Mad magazine of which Paul will
talk more.
I think that the power of Mad
magazine to influence people is
pretty obvious to me in the
culture, but for me it's
encompassed the fact that I can
remember two very distinct
stories or written lines in Mad
magazine it must be from the
early mid-1950s, you can
remember something 50 years, the
Mad definition of life
insurance.
If you win you lose, if you lose
you win.
( laughter )
Then the other one is
a visual one, it's the kind of
teaching about drawing your life
that Lynda doesn't use probably
because she likes to encourage
people.
But it was a picture of Anytown
USA and a set of instructions,
and you were to draw all the
curbs purple with your crayons
and all the streets yellow and
the phone wires green or the
trees red and all these kinds of
things and the last it said,
show it to your teacher, she'll
think you're stupid.
( laughter )
But it's that transition
from the '50s in Mad
magazine where those are some
sharper examples, reflected in
my own selections, but it then
becomes a much, much harder
edged satire in the 1960s with
many things, but certainly
including Paul Krassner's
The Realist.
And we wanted to incorporate the
kind of comic art that comes out
of those two literary sources.
I decided that since it's a book
festival I would read a little
bit.
Despite what your parents may
have told you comics are not
trash.
Garish, sometimes tasteless and
violent, frequently non-comical.
Yes, they can also be
needle-sharp, provocative and
brimming with fresh language and
ideas.
Sorry, Mom.
And contrary to what you've been
told by pop culture historians,
comics did not exactly begin in
the 1890s with the Yellow Kid or
Little Nemo.
As an art-driven, story-telling
medium, comics go back at least
as far as the mid-19th century
and arguably to Goya, the
Greco-Roman frescoes, the
biotapestry and the cave walls
of Lascaux.
Nor did comics with the hip
terminal X spring magically to
life in 1968 with
Zap Comix No. 1 or The Fabulous
Furry Freak Brothers.
As with so many other art forms,
legitimate or not, the evolution
of comics is long, complex and
worthy of serious research and
explanation.
Sorry, man.
As a subset of the comic genre
underground comics are indeed a
product of the '60s.
Like a new life form, they were
heaved up on shore during a
decade of social and political
turmoil, of changing societal
and cultural norms.
First came the alternative or
underground newspapers.
The editors of the LA Free Press
and the San Francisco Oracle or
the East Village Other and
thousands of other similar
papers nationwide including
Madison's own Connections, among
many, combined a free swinging
journalistic style with a strong
visual sense attracting a small
army of artists whose wild
graphics and mind-boggling
satire exploded in their pages
as well as on concert posters,
leaflets, t-shirts and comics
books.
From San Francisco to Boston,
from Milwaukee to Austin, the
artists and editors of the
undergrounds -- committed
themselves to building the
movement, a new culture that
embraced and endorsed the values
of young Americans, namely, sex,
drugs and rock and roll.
Did we mention there's a war on.
I've got some of the visuals
from this, and in the
presentation just before us with
Harvey and Paul that they talked
about the importance of the
Masters of American Comic show
which some of you might have a
chance to see in Milwaukee or
even in its truncated form in
New York and particularly in its
origin in LA.
Our book and the exhibit, of
course, really takes its keys,
from that we wanted to show the
original work of comic artists
as they drew it not as it was
printed.
I wanted to give you a chance to
compare those two things so you
could see the more ubiquitous
form that you could purchase
frequently with the staples down
the back, but also compare it
with the way the artist actually
drew it themselves.
And this is something that was
marvelous to see in the master
show and we hope is of interest
in our own.
And everybody here is over 18 I
think.
And I'm barely technologically
literate to do this.
A key element for anybody
interested in comics and how
they come to be accepted is of
course Art Spiegelman's "Maus."
If you have a chance to hear Art
and observe him smoking inside
smoke-free buildings on campus
when he's giving lectures you
know that he's not only an
extraordinary artist but an
incredibly perceptive historian
and commentator and critic of
comics.
With the special Pulitzer given
to Spiegelman now almost 20
years ago that comics really
were introduced into mainstream
definitions of culture.
But he's also an undergrounder.
Jim Mitchell of Milwaukee picks
up certainly on Pro Junior, a
name that was handed around
among many kinds of many artists
in underground comics, but also
reflects the specific sexual
nature of many comics.
I can't imagine how good this
must look blown up behind me.
Anyway, the Walt Disney
Corporation for whom we have to
thank the fact that copyright
will never die.
( laughter )
It eventually will
become impossible to use
virtually anything because
somebody's 15th cousin must
possibly still be around to
claim it.
But when our friends in the Air
Pirates put together their jam
and they were sued by Disney,
brutally, for years and years
and years even though none of
them had any money but Disney
spent millions and millions of
dollars and there's a little
book on the Air Pirates suit
that has the details of this.
Charles Burns.
>> Barry: I went
to high school with him
and college with him.
And he painted incredible
paintings in the hallway going
up from the cafeteria.
Just to let you know he's real.
( laughter )
>> He is.
And he was as talented then as
he clearly still is today.
He's a very active artist and
his works are just marvelous.
Rory Hayes, long deceased.
You can't always take all of the
drugs possible and survive.
But when Robert Crumb saw Hayes
work he noted that undergrounds
now have a primitive, and
someone else also described
Rory's work which is really
astonishing; there's a good book
on that, "Where Demented Wented"
that his brother did.
Someone described him as the
Grandma Moses of underground
comics.
I can see some of that there.
Sharon Rudahl of Madison.
Yes.
Paul mentioned her earlier doing
the graphic adaptation of the
biography of Emma Goldman.
She's in Working.
She's an active artist today and
was an active artist then
dealing with sexually explicit
themes, obviously.
Robert Williams is today a fine
arts painter, and like Charles
Burns always was a spectacular
artist.
( laughter )
Musicians jam but so
do cartoonists.
So the cartoonist here passed
around the same board coast to
coast, those really were the
'60s and '70s weren't they,
driving around where each of the
artists drew themselves.
My collaborator, and likewise
Paul's, Denis Kitchen is up in
the upper left looking
appropriately serious.
He's a great guy too with a
wonderful sense of humor, but he
frequently was the only
reasonable person.
He's the one that they pushed
out in front and he has great
talents as a publisher and
literary agent too.
Denis had a good sense of humor
and has always liked older
things, something Robert Crumb,
among many others, had in
common.
Denis has always loved
pin-backed buttons so he created
the famous cartoonist series, as
well as creating a series of
union button that read The
United Cartoon Workers of
America.
Grass Green was the only African
American who was part of the
underground moment.
And this is his quintessential
Wildman and Rubber Boy.
This is not by an underground
artist.
( laughter )
You will be noting.
It is, of course, Jericho's
famous painting.
But it influenced the work as a
source of Will Elder who's not
an underground artist and was
the subject of a wonderfully
laudatory obituary in the New
York Times when he died at 92
last year or earlier this year,
and he drew this and we had this
as the last image when you left
the show at the Chazen that
showed really the ends of
undergrounds.
If you can read it there the
little board floating in the
water this says head shop.
And as Paul remarked earlier in
the earlier session he talked
that undergrounds came to an
end, people stopped buying them
long before 1987 mostly, and it
really becomes this time bounded
phenomena.
Because comix with an X could do
anything, then comics could also
be drawn by women, of course.
And they're many important
artists in that, but this one I
would include because it's done
by Trina Robbins who is a good
friend of all of us, and Trina
is also a historian of comics.
Her extensive books about the
history of women in comics have
uncovered a whole different
history.
Trina reacted specifically to
the kind of male chauvinism at
the time and moved it along.
Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers,
strongest narrative, longest
published series, I believe, in
comics.
Howard Cruse of Stuck Rubber
Baby, most important and first
gay cartoonist and a wonderful
guy.
And with that, I'm going to
close.
>> Barry: I'm going
to pass it on to Mr. Buhle.
>> Paul Buhle: Okay.
>> Barry: First I want
to say about Mr. Buhle.
>> Paul Buhle: Yes.
>> Barry: He has tasted
the wine of the east coast.
( laughter )
>> Buhle: It was bitter.
>> Barry: And he came back
to have more beer
and cheese curds of Wisconsin.
And we thank him for that.
( applause )
>> Buhle: I'm going to be a
lot more brief than brother
Danky because I want to make
sure we have plenty of time
for discussion.
I don't think I would be wrong
in saying everybody who came
here has read a whole lot of
Lynda Barry, and is eager to
hear her and talk about her
which is just fine because me
too.
I said in this book, I'm loathe
to hold it up but will anyway,
that in the history of Wisconsin
comic art it begins with a guy
named Frank O. King
from Tomah and little
banners on one of the streets in
Tomah say home of Frank O. King
and underneath that it says
Gasoline Alley.
It's the first comic strip,
arguably, successful comic strip
that has continuity.
That is, day after day, week
after week, month after month it
was dull as dishwater after
about the first three months but
it lasted about 50 years
anyways.
( laughter )
And millions of
people couldn't imagine starting
a day without reading Gasoline
Alley.
If I start there, then I come to
Lynda as influential in her own
way as Frank O. King
was in his time.
And I'll try to justify that
very briefly by starting to say
that my friend, really important
artist of the last 20 years, Ben
Katchor, likes to lecture on the
history of comics by saying the
history of art in the last
several hundred years was, until
the later 20th century, a
process of separating words from
pictures.
The great goal was to purify
words from being infected by
pictures and pictures from being
infected by words.
Something that starts way, way
back because comic art and all
art begins with the saga that's
poetry, music, dancing and some
kind of image altogether.
Well, purifying this sort of
ends up with abstract
expressionism in the '50s.
The free enterprise form of art
as Henry -- used to call it,
proudly, and was first going to
be broken down a number of ways.
Women's art, underground comics
and all of the kinds of things
in one specifically important
way among others and that is
that these forms rebelling
brought back figuration or the
existence of the figure, the
recognized human figure and the
story as being somewhere in the
center of art.
Now it had never been lost, that
notion had never been lost in
popular comic strips since the
1890s.
They were deeply beloved.
Those in the sports pages that
most people ever read in daily
newspapers, and they were the
most interesting part of daily
newspapers, by and large.
And why did people like them?
Because they liked the stories
because very frequently people
did not speak or read English
all that great and comic strips
had this particular form that
allowed people with limited
skills, immigrants and people
from rural areas, to find an art
form that was meaningful to them
and gave them a certain
sensibility.
Well, what happens from 1970s on
is called, by some,
post-modernism, which is even a
worse term than modernism.
It means almost nothing or
anything you want it to mean.
But what it does suggest or help
us to grapple with is the ways
in which the story comes back.
The story is recovered,
recuperated.
And if underground comics
collapsed shortly after the
electric eye store on Gilman
Street, some of you may be old
enough to remember that, sold a
lot of drug paraphernalia that
never did anybody any harm, as
far as I know, and a lot of wild
psychedelic posters, black light
apparatus and so forth, and my
comic Radical America comic
which is the first underground
comic to appear in Madison and a
bunch of other stuff.
But, hey, the police got rid of
those drug paraphernalia stores
before 1980 and underground
comic artists lost their venues.
And many of the finest artists
that I know didn't draw for 10
years or more because there was
no place to publish them.
This was a thin kind of strain
after 1980 because it was even
tougher than before to publish
comics created entirely of your
own imagination and sensibility
and free of all of the
strictures limitations on comics
in daily strips or comics in
comic books.
Among the outstanding
alternative artists, I would say
for most among the outstanding
alternative artists, Lynda.
And there are a couple of things
or many things to say about
this, but I want to just observe
a couple of them.
The first one is that she makes
us think about how unhappy our
teenage years were.
( laughter )
And sometimes we
think our teenage years couldn't
have been that unhappy so maybe
they weren't as bad as we
thought they were before.
( laughter )
Which is good for me.
I find reading them very
therapeutic in that way.
Although sometimes they remind
me of really horrible things in
my teenage years so they make me
a little depressed, but that
also has an artistic creative
quality to it.
The second thing is that when
people write criticism,
especially English department
people, but anybody, a
journalist's criticism of comic
books, comic art, and Harvey
Pekar and I, among others, face
all kinds of unpleasantness from
people writing about these books
that we produce.
Either they hate comics and they
want to make an observation
about why they hate comics or
they like one comic which may be
superheroes or American Splendor
and they hate all other forms of
comics.
Those are the main currents.
Or they wish they were comic
artist themselves and they would
have done it a lot better.
( laughter )
So it's one of those
things and there's a world of
hurt out there and Harvey and I
and Lynda are a little exposed
to that hurt.
When people write about these
things they very rarely write
about the art unless they're
writing an insulting thing.
And if they actually write about
the art saying, oh, such and
such an artist is good or bad,
it's sort of like reading rock
and roll criticism as it's
always existed.
Number one, I like it or I hate
it.
And number two, it's great or
it's terrible or I found one
thing about it that resembles
something in the history of art
class I took 20 years ago.
In other words, it's very, very
hard for even sympathetic
critics to pin down what is the
artistic element that goes along
with the narrative.
It's much more easy to quote
song lyrics than to talk about
the music.
And likewise for people talking
about and thinking about comic
art.
I really want to close so to
save more time with this
observation that if Frank O.
King, whose work could be a lot
better than most of his daily
stuff.
Sometimes he had these color
strips in Sunday papers or he
was just thinking about being in
Tomah or in the -- suburb of
Chicago where he lived with his
money.
And you see all these leaves and
people walking around in the
woods and so forth.
It really is beautiful, it
raised comic art to a dimension
it hadn't reached and was quite
astonishing for ordinary readers
who hadn't encompassed anything
like modern art.
So that's really remarkable.
But Lynda's comic art is as
stunning for its artist quality
as it is for its narrative.
The more so with the new book
"What It Is" because her pallet
of color but also her
recuperation of that 1919
revolutionary idea which was
called Dada.
You could take up anything,
newspaper scraps, old music,
anything that had ever been
printed or not printed, pieces
of wallpaper, and put it all
together again in a new way, and
it would show that redemption
has to come from the scraps of
ordinary life.
It doesn't come from the
heavens.
It comes right out of the crap
of ordinary life.
If we take that as a premise and
see this is the real basis for
art then the whole idea of art
becomes a lot more democratic.
What I think is the strongest
about "What It Is" is that it's
a testament or testimony to the
capacity of ordinary people to
make their lives different than
they are.
And looking back 40 years to the
'60s in Madison, the most
revolutionary thing wasn't
mainly opposing the war,
although it was really
important.
It wasn't smoking dope and
listening to The Beatles,
although that certainly was
important to me.
And it wasn't even organizing a
teaching assistants association,
which was incredibly important.
All of these things were
important, but the idea that
perfectly ordinary people in
Madison, mostly young people,
took this and internalized this
and were capable of making their
lives over by using all of their
creative potential and much more
than they were using now.
And that by doing so and knowing
other people and being in
contact with other people by
doing so, they would create a
very powerful current of
counterculture or some kind of a
culture which ultimately is the
only basis for getting rid of
this monstrous global system
upon us and finding a way to a
different kind of society.
Thank you.
( applause )
>> Barry: All right.
Now let's lower our brows from
the high brow to the low brow,
here I am.
Or the unibrow,
let's go unibrow.
Let's go totally democratic.
( laughter )
If any of you know my
work and if you hold it in any
kind of esteem, I'm about to
change that by telling you what
my favorite comic strip is, my
absolute favorite comic strip is
in this world.
Family Circus.
( laughter )
>> Buhle: That hurt.
>> Barry: See, I know.
I can, because I'm sober now,
when I hear that you groan,
I don't get violent.
( laughter )
But if I had two
shots of whiskey and somebody
starts putting down Family
Circus, I'll slug you, I really
will.
( laughter )
And I'll tell you why.
I want to talk to you a little
bit about comics.
And it's interesting which
comics you get attached to.
I don't think anybody really
gets to pick, especially if you
start reading early on.
Before I could read I knew about
the comics because it was the
only art we had in our house in
the comic strips.
And I knew I was going to be
able to read, I had heard that
was going to happen.
( laughter )
And I had also heard
this thing of doing something
for the rest of your life.
So I wanted to make these vows
for the rest of my life.
Like I made a vow that I would
remember this fence that I saw
for the rest of my life, and I
do, I remember it but it's like
okay.
( laughter )
I can still see it.
And so the strips that I swore I
was going to read for the rest
of my life are mostly gone.
One was called Dondi which was
this strange little guy who had
orphan Annie's eyes.
Remember Orphan Annie had white
eyes.
There were no eyes drawn; he had
pure black eyes.
And I couldn't even, I didn't
know what that dude was about
but he was the only kind of cute
guy sort of my age.
( laughter )
And then there was
Brenda Starr and I only started
reading her, made that
commitment, because she was
about to marry the Wolf-Man
which I never found out what
happened because by the time I
could read that had already
passed.
So I didn't know how that turned
out.
And then the other one is Family
Circus which you all know is in
a little circle.
A little circle with Dolly, PJ,
Jeffy and Billy and the dead
grandparents.
( laughter )
See you all know just
who I'm talking about.
Okay, tell me you didn't love it
when Mommy gave Billy a piece of
mail and said get this to the
mail box, and you had to follow
all the dotted lines that he
went through.
Plus there was a clue, there was
a dog in there named Barfy so
that's your first clue.
If we were studying this as
literature we'd say, all is very
sane except there's a dog named
Barfy.
( laughter )
I loved that strip
because I lived in a very
violent and troubled home.
The way I describe it is it's
blood and hair on the walls and
ceilings.
And teeth around.
It was a very violent, difficult
home.
Lots of alcoholism.
It was an immigrant family.
My mom was from the Philippines
and her entire family came over.
So I used to look at this little
circle and just think God damn.
I didn't think God damn.
Yeah, I did.
( laughter )
God damn, how can I get
into there from where I am?
( laughter )
So you all have heard
this, you start hearing this
crazy thing like when you see
great art you burst into tears.
You heard that, right?
Just like you hear if you could
really sing you can break this
glass.
When you were a little kid and
you were by yourself and going
ahh, ahh.
( laughter )
I wanted to burst
into tears really bad for some
incredible art.
And I went to Europe by myself
which sounds bad ass but I was
26 and I was terrified of
everyone so I went through the
whole trip like having the worst
time and I wrote a lot of
letters, I'm having a great time
here, to myself.
( laughter )
But I've been hoping
to burst into tears so I go to
the Uffizi Gallery, I think it's
in Florence, and I also really
wanted to burst into tears next
to a cute guy because then he'd
look at me and go, she's so
sensitive we must be together.
So there were times I was
worried because I almost burst
into tears but there were no
cute dudes around so it's like
suck them back up.
( laughter )
So the Botticelli's Primavera
had just been cleaned,
and it was in a room by itself
and so I walked in, sure enough
cute dude at 11:00.
There is the thing and I think
if I'm going to burst into tears
here it goes.
And I was really trying to force
myself, and I was able to
squeeze one out but it was on
the wrong side.
( laughter )
Dude leaves, nothing happens,
I have a miserable trip,
I come home.
Time passes, I'm a cartoonist
and I get invited to the Reuben
Awards, that's like the big
awards.
And all the real cartoonists
were there.
The real ones, you know?
I saw, the person that blew my
mind the most was
the woman who did Lockhorns,
you know that terrible strip.
If you came from a family of
divorce it was the most
horrible, that's my life.
But her name's Bunny, and she
had and I said you have the most
beautiful profile I've ever
seen, and she said I'll give you
the name of my plastic surgeon.
( laughter )
And then the other person
I saw who really upset me
was the woman who draws Cathy.
I was so mad because she's
really pretty, she's really
thin, she's totally together and
I thought you are making your
living off the women
with asses like mine.
( laughter )
You lying cartoonist.
( laughter )
And I'm meeting all
these, the real ones.
And then all of the sudden one
of my friends says, oh, Lynda
you like Family Circus right?
And I go yeah.
And this is Jeff Keane.
So Bil Keane is the guy who
draws the strip, he wasn't
there, he's elderly, and
oftentimes a comic strip is
passed down to a son.
So this was Jeffy,
you know, Jeff.
( laughter )
And I looked at him
and I went, ahh, ahh.
Like it wasn't cute bursting
into tears, it was totally like
I was shaking snot, and he
starts walking backwards because
this has never happened to him
in his life.
( laughter )
And he was like,
what the hell is going on?
And I keep walking toward him.
( laughter )
But I'm shaking really bad
and so I say, excuse me
for one minute and I go like
around a corner and there's a
potted plant.
Just keep it together.
You keep it together.
It's just Jeff.
It's Jeff Keane.
Walk over and I said,
Hi, I'm sorry, ahh, ahh.
( laughter )
And I could never
stop bursting into tears when I
saw him.
And at this convention it became
the joke to try to get him
anywhere in my line of sight.
( laughter )
But I realized the
reason I burst into tears was
when I shook his hand I had
crawled through that circle, I
found a way to do it.
And the way I did it was by
drawing a picture.
The way I did it was by drawing
a picture and writing something.
So one of the feelings that I
have about comics is I believe,
first of all, that they're a
fantastic portal in a container
of experience.
And I also believe that they
have an absolute biological
function.
If you all just knew who your
favorite comic strip was when I
said yell it out, and you knew
you hated it too which is also a
good, in fact I'll tell you
another little cartoonist dirt.
Garfield is not a strip that I
care for deeply.
( laughter )
But although I've
seen, what do they have Garfield
without the dude in it?
Or is it without Garfield in it?
Without the cat in it, and it's
like this Zen thing and yeah
right on.
But I found out that that guy,
the Garfield guy whose name
shall never pass my lips, Jim
Davis, he doesn't actually draw
his strip, and he doesn't write
the jokes.
But he signs his strip.
And he was signing his strip
with a felt pen that fades.
It has -- ink.
So I got to see some of his
strips where they were still
there but his signature was
slowly disappearing.
Which reminds me of one other
story I just want to tell really
quick that's kind of a super
good cartoonist story.
There was a guy I know who was a
fantastic oil painter.
He lives in the Washington, DC.
He was the guy they hired to do
the pictures of all the
executives, those fine oil
paintings.
Anyway, he was painting this one
guy and he told me, he goes,
the guy was a dick, I'm just
going to tell you that
straight up, he was a dick.
So what he had done was he found
he had these oil paints that it
turns out when you paint over
them the oil paints kind of come
through.
Sort of like if you put felt pen
on a wall and you try to paint
it and that felt pen comes
through.
So he decided that he would
paint and make his money and do
this perfect corporate picture
of the guy but underneath he
painted him with big earrings,
total in drag, like hard core
drag.
( laughter )
And it's going to take 30 years
for this to push through.
( applause )
But that's a comic strip.
To me that is a comic strip.
That's a comic strip that
is in time.
Here's this thing that we're
starting out with and here's
what pushes through.
So I want just talk to you about
being a cartoonist just for a
little bit.
I'll talk to you about being a
cartoonist and about kids
because that's something that
I'm really interested in.
I'm a cartoonist but I love to
tell kids I'm a cartoonist
because when I tell them I'm a
cartoonist they go, really?
I go, yeah.
They go, draw something.
So I draw a chicken.
And they'll go, you are.
And I'll go, I know.
( laughter )
But where I live in my little
town of Footville, we're in
greater Footville, actually.
( laughter )
I'm terrified that
anybody will one, find out I'm a
cartoonist because adults tend
to get very sad for me.
They'll go, you're a cartoonist,
will you draw something?
I draw the same damn chicken.
And it's like,
you keep following that dream.
( laughter )
Everyone needs a
dream and that one's yours.
( laughter )
But my feeling is
with comics one of the, I don't
think, at least for me, and it
was cool that you were talking
about Studs Terkel because Studs
Terkel was a huge influence for
me only because he actually
wrote down the way people spoke.
That and then Zap, one of the
comics that was in the
collection that you put up, it
was this Zap comic and I loved,
no matter what I did it was
always because of cute guys that
I was trying to find.
So they were hippies, they were
cute hippies, so I was trying to
find them, and they'd go into
head shops so I'd follow them.
And then I'd find the comics
there, and I'd kind of forget
about the cute guys for a while.
And I saw Zap.
It was Zap No. 0,
I think, but it had a comic
strip called Meatball.
I was 12 and all it was was
people walking down the street.
They looked like they were on
the east coast and Meatballs
started hitting them and
transforming them.
And I remember the best part was
some beatnik got hit and then
afterwards he went all right.
( laughter )
>> Buhle: It was LSD.
>> Barry: So I started to,
those things were really
important to me,
and especially Studs Terkel's
work because it got me
at an early age.
And also probably coming from a
bilingual family.
I know I love talking about
being Filipino and then seeing
people like that confused
German Shepherd.
Like, she doesn't look Filipino
at all, I don't know
if that's really true.
I always tell people it's
because I'm a quarter Norwegian
and Norwegian blood can suck the
color out of anything.
( laughter )
But I started to
especially get interested in the
way kids talk and the way kids
tell stories, and you know when
you start learning about
literature and you start to
really study anything with this
part of your brain right here,
you start taking it apart and I
had this idea to write a story,
whether it's in comic strip form
or literature, you had to know
about the three act structure
and you had to know about the
story arc and all this stuff.
And it took me a long time to
figure out that no, it's the
other way around.
The only reason we know about
that three act stuff it's
because we already know how to
do it.
It's like thinking the only
reason we have ribs in a spinal
column is because some guy drew
ribs in a spinal column in a
medical book and then named it
and so now we all have it.
It's the other way around.
So I want to tell you what I
think is a perfect comic strip,
and it was made by a kid I was
sitting next to on an airplane.
I'm very, very interested in
kids and their objects.
To me, when you see a kid
walking with a stuffed animal, I
actually saw this kid walking
through an airport he had had
the whole Incredible Hulk's doll
but all he had left was the leg.
( laughter )
The leg's all I need, man.
( laughter )
So I got really
interested in these because to
me those are comic strips too.
This is this object that
contains something alive.
But I learned that I can't just
walk up to kids and ask them,
can you tell me about
your transitional object?
( laughter )
It'd be like somebody
walking up to me and going can
you tell me about your bra?
I got five minutes.
So I realized that the way I can
talk to kids is just start
drawing around them.
Perfect set up.
I'm near the window.
This kid Jack, he must have been
about seven or eight, next to me
and then his mom who puts in her
iPod and goes to sleep.
So Jack has like this
Transformer sticker book that
he's playing with so I start
drawing.
He looks over.
I'm a cartoonist,
he believes me.
( laughter )
So I play this game
with him that actually got me
through math when I was growing
up.
Which is you do a scribble and
then you give it to your friend,
and they have to turn that
scribble into a picture.
And then they do a scribble and
pass it back.
You all have probably done that.
So I start doing it.
If you do that with a kid you're
going to get a story.
So I ask him if he wants to play
this scribble game.
We do it.
We get three passes and all of a
sudden he goes, oh, I have a
story, and you can make
a comic strip about it.
And you can tell he didn't know
what the hell the story was, he
just had this feeling of like,
I have a story!
Which is what most people think
creative people are like.
It's like...
( laughter )
I wish it was true, man.
( laughter )
So he goes, and the
kid's name is Jack, he goes,
the title is
Chicken Attack by Jack.
And he goes, you can make
a comic strip out of it.
And I said okay.
And I did because it was the
perfect comic strip.
And I'll say it to you verbatim,
and you can make the strip part
in your mind.
This is Chicken Attack by Jack.
First draft.
One morning a chicken
was eaten by a man.
The man went to work.
His stomach started to feel
funny.
He went to the port-o-let
and then he went.
( laughter )
The chicken came out.
The man was surprised.
The chicken was also surprised.
( laughter )
The chicken ran
from the port-o-let
to the construction site.
They put the chicken in charge,
and from then on the chicken
was boss.
( laughter )
( applause )
So that's first draft.
( laughter )
It came on with this feeling.
( laughter )
And it did make
a perfect comic strip.
But my feeling is that ability,
that ability in stories and the
ability to read comics, to me
really, I believe, that it's
because if you can read a comic
and make it come to life, my
feeling is you can write a comic
and make it come to life.
If you can stand your drawing.
And if you can't stand your
drawing here's the quickest way
to get started.
When you get home put your hand
down on a piece of paper, trace
it, draw some little feet, put a
beak over here.
You know the turkey, right?
Little hat.
But put a cigarette.
( laughter )
See don't you feel better
even just thinking about that?
( laughter )
That's what I'm saying
when I say it has
an absolute biological function.
I think it's about feeling
better, and sometimes the way to
feel better is to feel really,
really bad.
So I wanted to say that.
And then it's almost time to go
to our questions but wait I
just, oh, I wanted to tell you
about characters because people
ask me where I get my
characters.
And I had this big revelation,
unfortunately it was at a
renaissance fair.
Have you ever been to one of
those?
If you haven't been I suggest
you go just to see how other
people are living.
( laughter )
You can't even imagine.
They love to eat
big turkey legs.
And wenches have this
all pushed up.
But one of the things I saw when
I was at a renaissance fair was
these two theatre guys who had
memorized a great deal of
Shakespeare, and what they did
was they would make this big
announcement that the Globe
Theatre was about to start and
they did garbage Shakespeare.
And so they kind of just
indicated this area, it was like
in the middle of a road.
And this guy picked up a
cigarette butt and the other one
had a bottle cap.
And they did Romeo and Juliet.
And we watched it like, damn
how's this going to come out.
( laughter )
It was just something
about wiggling that bottle cap
and wiggling that cigarette
butt, and we watched them like
they were characters because we
can't help it, that's how we
work.
You know about how you have an
extra hard drive, you know this
whole thing with you have an
extra hard drive?
I think of comics as being like
a hard drive.
Or art as being this extra
living space.
And when you think about a comic
or you think about our problem
of having our insides that no
one can ever really see or feel
and then the outside world, art
is that transitional thing.
And comics are that transitional
thing.
And when you think about comics,
for instance let's say Snoopy,
you all know who Snoopy is,
right?
Where the hell is Snoopy?
Where is Snoopy?
Snoopy's in the image world, and
Batman's there and Scrooge is
there and even Cathy is there.
( laughter )
Even if you run after
her with bug spray, she is still
there in the image world.
So I think about this huge image
world that people have invented,
we've invented and this idea
that art or comics or something
is like an elective or
decoration I think is one of the
craziest, remember that term
junk DNA?
About the most arrogant term
I've ever heard in my life.
Don't know what it is so it must
be junk.
That's how I feel about art and
comics, that it's something much
more than something to think
about or I don't know about you
and no offense but museums and
galleries really freak me out
and they feel like intensive
care units to me.
Somebody's dying,
everything's really expensive.
We have to be quiet.
( laughter )
I don't know what I think.
( laughter )
In fact, for me to tell
what I think about a piece
of art I have to imagine it in
the muffler station or a gas
station then I can, alright.
Next to the you want it when
sign.
( laughter )
So characters come
from messing around.
They come from wiggling a bottle
cap or He-Man's leg.
And one night I was laying in
bed after I had my characters,
my comic strip is 30 years old
so when I was laying in bed one
night, I had quite a few, I was
laying there and I realized I
was never going to meet them in
real life, and I started crying
because it was the saddest thing
I could think of then I just
realized no, I'm just really
drunk.
( laughter )
It's not that sad.
( laughter )
So I think that that's,
did I have anything else
that I was really
going to tell you?
Nope, I think that was it.
So I guess we can open the floor
up to questions.
>> Buhle: We must
take questions now.
>> Barry: Let's take
some questions.
No one came prepared?
( laughter )
I had a teacher who
would always make this face
after she'd say something like
questions and nobody would raise
their hand and she'd go...
( laughter )
>> Buhle: So please, ask.
>> What do you have against
Garfield?
>> Barry: Against what?
>> Garfield.
>> Barry: What do I have
against Garfield?
And you know that's a good
question.
Like what do I have against
Cathy, right?
Garfield pissed me off when I
was a kid and it's not even any
kind of logical thing,
it's just sort of like
hating the color orange.
But he pissed me off.
He was like lazy and mean and I
didn't like his eyes.
( laughter )
And Petey was popular.
To hell with that, man.
Because there's that whole thing
with coolness too.
I hated Garfield because it was
uncool.
But of course I loved Family
Circus.
I'll beat the bleep out of
someone if they talk about
Family Circus, but then I'll
beat the bleep out of someone if
they tell me they love Garfield.
So it doesn't have anything to
do with thinking deeply.
( laughter )
Someone else?
>> Yes, somebody else here.
>> Cruddy was one of the most
enjoyable, hideous books I've
ever read.
And I wondered, because I knew
-- comic and I loved it and then
one day I was in the book store
I went, oh, a book and I grabbed
it, and I could not believe
what I was reading.
( inaudible )
>> It's horror.
>> Barry: That's actually,
people in my community
when they ask me what kind
of books I write, I always
say horror because I know that's
the look they'd had on their
face if they saw my work.
( laughter )
>> How was that for
you to write this as opposed to
writing this comic strip, and do
you ever think of doing a
graphic novel?
And what ever happened to, is
there going to be a sequel to
Cruddy?
>> Barry: Well, Cruddy,
here's the thing about Cruddy,
and I'm glad that
you asked that, I had written,
the first novel I ever wrote
was very short like a novelini,
and I wrote it by hand
and I wrote it using
a very specific word.
And I wrote it in 10 days and I
remember afterwards going damn,
I better not get in this mood
too often there will be novels
all over the house.
( laughter )
But the next one took me
10 years, it took me 10 years.
And the reason, I finally
figured out why it took me 10
years was I was trying to write
it on a computer which has a
delete button.
Which if I had on my own life
I'd have like 27 minutes, maybe.
( laughter )
But I was somebody who,
and I'm really interested
in, actually there are studies
about it, about our hands.
Here's the original digital age,
right here.
Digits, whoa.
Wireless, whoa.
( laughter )
Just feed her.
And so, what were we talking
about though?
( laughter )
I remember, I remember,
I remember.
So what happened was I found
myself in my studio after 10,
and it also was going to be a
book with an uplifting purpose
for society which is step one to
never getting anywhere, step on
to the cul-de-sac.
And so I was walking around my
studio one day literally saying
this if I was doing this how
would I do it?
If it was me writing this novel.
And it was like who else is
there.
And when I thought about when I
was a kid because that over and
over again has gotten me out of
jams.
How would I do it if I were a
kid?
Well the first thing that
occurred to me is I would never
think about writing a book
without making the book first
that you're going to write it
in.
Remember construction paper and
you take a couple, three staples
and there's your book.
As soon as I did that I already
felt ahead of the game because I
was feeling better.
I even liked saying construction
paper because I see people go
like this.
Like if you go copier paper.
Construction paper.
( laughter )
And then I thought
maybe I was too fast
with the computer.
What's the slowest possible way
you could write a book and it
was with a paint brush.
And also I was painting the book
so what I had to do was almost
paint the book.
Like if I did it like this on
the computer I didn't know where
it was or what it was.
So I painted that book, Cruddy,
with a paint brush.
And what I found out while I was
doing this very pretty
handwriting because I thought if
this goes to bleep I can get a
job decorating cakes.
( laughter )
Please.
And what happened was when I
drew it this entirely different,
I thought that I was like this
person who could cure vampires
with our magical hippy love.
Stated George W. Bush,
you just need to party
in the sun, man.
( laughter )
But what happened
when I started using my hand, if
you watch people talk they have
a very hard time talking without
using their hands and hands and
thinking in the back of the mind
are really connected.
So this entirely different
horrifying blood-filled knife
and I loved every minute of it.
In fact, I realized I could just
paint in what looked like dried
blood when nobody else was
watching.
So that's how Cruddy, but I
actually had to make the book.
And the book that I'm working on
now that's what I realized is
that it's doing stuff by hand.
And what it is, one of the
saddest things about what's
happening to comics is people
are doing lettering that's on
the computer because it's
easier, right?
But if you think about
handwriting, which is drawing,
you all if you're worrying about
not being able to draw, if you
can draw the alphabet, that's
drawing.
And what happens is when you're
drawing by hand a B that's next
to an O looks completely
different than a B that's next
to an I.
There's all this spatial
relationship going on.
There's all kind of stuff about
writing by hand.
And handwriting looks like
talking.
I think that's one of reasons
why we don't see the bubbles in
typeface.
So that's one of the saddest
things is all the computer stuff
that's happening.
Because I feel, I just feel sad
for young people who just, their
whole, they have to sit and do
like this and it's like having
your whole world but you can
only see it through a window
this big.
So where was that going?
Don't use the computer,
it's bad.
( laughter )
>> Buhle: That's funny.
>> Barry: I want to know,
Paul, what was the first stuff
that you saw
that got you hooked?
>> Buhle: Gosh.
>> Barry: I mean early.
>> Buhle: My sisters,
who were four years younger than
me, they set out to teach me
to read by showing me comics.
And that was really great but
when they traded my best comics,
like Donald Duck for western
comics, I remember my sister did
that, I got very, very upset.
It was a bad moment, a bad
family moment.
>> Barry: That is
a jarring shift.
>> Buhle: It was,
but within months
I discovered Wonder Woman.
And it was my first sexual
moment in my, I was very young
for that but Wonder Woman did it
for a lot of males in my
generation and perhaps a number
of females as well.
And there I knew.
There was my solace in the pages
of comic books, and of course
they were the first books we
were ever allowed to purchase
even though on an allowance.
The first things we ever stacked
neatly.
I stacked them terribly.
And maybe most important the
first ones that I, and among the
last for a very long time, that
I ever read repeatedly.
Over and over and over again.
Such that when I learned like 40
years later that this old
Bolshevik lady in New York who
had been blacklisted in the '50s
had scripted various classic
illustrated comics, we always
call it classic comics, like
William Tell would be a favorite
of hers or Mark Twain, I
realized how these, this message
had gotten through to me through
all of these forms.
And it was like remembering
seeing Mad comics for the first
time deconstructing advertising,
deconstructing American politics
and so forth and so forth.
It had to go through all those
forms, mostly from New York, to
get all the way to me in the
middle of Illinois in a Rock
River republican county.
But it did get to me, thanks to
comic art.
And it couldn't come any other
way.
>> Barry: That's one
of the cool things
is how images travel.
And they travel
through time too.
They travel through time.
>> Buhle: Yeah.
>> Barry: And they
travel intact.
How about you?
>> Danky: I remember
the comics cost a dime
because you're a little
older than me but I remember
like 12-cents on Dell comics.
>> Buhle: Seemed high.
( laughter )
>> Danky: It did.
I see you're price sensitive.
>> It was a big day
when they went up from a dime
to 12-cents.
>> Buhle: It was.
>> Danky: And they weren't
sealed in plastic bags
because they didn't
have naughty content in the
Safeway supermarket.
But you could sit there and
while your mother was shopping,
it was always the mother, and in
the time it took her to do that,
that's why I became a fast
reader.
I could read comics because I'd
read the ones that were more
marginal interest.
Let's face it, you can read
Superman quite rapidly.
It doesn't really require too
much pondering, at least in the
'50s.
But then I'd save my money,
because I could buy one comic
book.
So I'd buy Uncle Scrooge or
something like that.
>> Barry: You guys
like the ducks, both of you.
>> Buhle: Seemingly so.
He was big.
>> Danky: I wanted
to be rich.
>> Oh, that.
>> Danky: That's why
I became a librarian.
( laughter )
>> Buhle: My first paper
back book was a Pogo collection
and boy did that mean a lot to
me.
Walt Kelly was so wise.
>> Barry: Well, I think
one of the reasons
we can read them over is
because comics are like music.
They remind me more, people
always compare them to movies,
but to me they're more like
songs that you can listen to.
I'd like to talk about a comic
that disturbed the hell out of
me.
Some of you may know it.
It was in Playboy.
It was that granny who had the
really long #######.
You know what I'm talking about?
That scared, I was little and it
was like, it scared me so bad,
and that was the other thing is
I didn't know comics could scare
you.
Who was it, a friend of mine saw
his first Zap when he was 12 and
he was so flipped out about what
to do with it, he didn't feel
like there was any safe place to
hide it.
He buried it.
( laughter )
He buried it in his yard.
That's how alive
these things could be.
( laughter )
>> What were you
doing reading Playboy as a kid?
>> Barry: What every other
kid was doing reading Playboy.
Just the articles.
( laughter )
>> Danky: Never
the photos.
>> Barry: Oh, the other
one, Little Annie Fanny.
Who did Little Annie Fanny?
>> Buhle: Harvey Kurtzman.
>> Barry: That one
scared me too.
It wasn't so much that she was
so buxom, it was that she looked
crazy.
She looked like she was going to
hit walls when she walked and
wouldn't know what to eat.
I was worried for her.
>> Buhle: Rightly so.
>> Danky: She did
look dangerous.
>> Can you talk a little bit
about your wind farm comic
concept and where that's going.
>> Barry: Okay, I'll just
do this really briefly.
I have the most unpopular job in
the Midwest right now, and I
chose it myself which is I'm an
advocate for people who are
living in industrial wind farms
in our state.
And what's happening is yes, we
want renewable energy and right
on we do, but right now the wind
developers are getting away with
putting 40-story turbines 500
feet or a thousand feet from
people's homes.
And it turns out that they make
a lot of noise at night, and
people are having a hard time
and no one's believing them.
Or anybody who's having this
trouble are called a NIMBY.
I've been called all these names
for trying to get this issue up.
My favorite is wind jihadists.
( laughter )
But what's started to
happen is these people aren't
being believed.
They're being completely
ridiculed, if you attended any
of the hearings.
And I would hear them say over
and over again when they're
testifying, please come to my
house and spend the night so
that you can see.
So I thought okay, I will.
So I'd say, I'll come stay at
your house; I'm a cartoonist.
They don't care.
They're so desperate
they'll let a cartoonist come
stay at their house.
( laughter )
So I have, I've
interviewed people from 20
households in two different wind
farms in the Blue Sky Green
Field Wind Farm near the town of
Marshfield and the We Energy
Wind Farm near the town of
Byron, and I've spent the nights
in their homes and I've made
comic strips about it.
Because it turns out that if you
want to get a legislator's
attention, if you walk in with a
page that says these people are
having this much trouble and
here's what's happening and this
is what happens when you have
uninterrupted sleep.
If you hand them that they just
put it aside.
If you hand them a comic strip
they can't help but read it.
( laughter )
They can't help but read it.
And that was a revelation to me.
Because I thought when I walk in
it's like I'm a cartoonist and
I'm the one who's doing
research.
I thought they would laugh me.
But it was before I would even
stop talking they were like
I will read comics.
( laughter )
That was a really
good thing, and it was a
revelation for me.
So that's my little thing.
It was the dumbest, the thing is
when you try to talk about the
downside of wind energy it's
like you're legislating against
speckled fawns.
( laughter )
But there are downsides.
And just one last thing I'd like
to say is the bat mortality in
the Blue Sky Green Field Project
is really high.
And that's another thing that
people don't know.
Bats, it's not that they fly
into the turbines, the wake
behind them is so powerful that
when the bats fly through, their
lungs explode.
They get the bends and bats are
slow to reproduce.
They live like 30 years and
they're tight family groups.
So like anything else, huge
industrial wind turbines have a
downside that they're right on
if they can put them in the
right place.
So that's that.
>> There were a thing on NPR
recently about how when there's
not very much wind they can just
stop the turbines.
>> Barry: They can.
>> ( inaudible )
>> Barry: They can
stop them.
They can also stop them when
they're causing terrible shadow
flicker on people's homes,
that's the other thing.
But they don't stop them.
And they won't stop them.
It's called curtailment and the
developers right now are really
getting away with a lot.
And until the National Audubon
Society and the Sierra Club, on
the national level they're not
doing anything but luckily the
local chapters are finally
starting to speak out and say I
know the most wind are migration
corridors.
>> Have you seen the letters to
the editor in the Isthmus after
that?
I was really disappointed in
that.
>> Barry: What, about how
like people are...?
>> They're totally afraid and
they can't see there's any
problems with it.
>> Barry: I know.
And people think the turbines
are gently lowered quietly
in your field with a bag of
money right next to it.
( laughter )
But they have downsides.
They're, giant, giant, giant,
giant, giant machines.
And conservation and efficiency
still kicks ass beyond ass.
Green ass.
( laughter )
I'm like a kid with Asperger's.
Don't bring up dinosaurs
around Billy.
( laughter )
You bring wind turbines up
around me and I'm like oh, oh.
( laughter )
>> It's true.
>> Barry: So I'll stop
talking about that
but anybody who wants to
talk about it I'd love to talk
about it.
>> This is from -- in France.
I spent, between when I was two
and six I lived in France with
my parents, of course, but I got
introduced to Tin Tin and my
mother was --.
She thought comics were
basically trash but Tin Tin was
okay because she wanted us to
learn to read French.
So that was okay.
So when we came back to the
United States I was really --
they were trash by comparison.
Is Tin Tin considered kind of
like, I mean where is --?
>> Barry: You know,
I think, for me in my mind,
I even forget it's a comic
in a way.
It seems like a children's book.
It's kind of like Dr. Seuss but
for older readers.
But it is a comic and there's a
tradition in Europe of looking
at comics like books
like anything else.
>> The quality of the paper in
American comics, the color is
just all washed out.
>> Barry: Tin Tin was
hardbound, right?
You had hardbound books?
>> Yeah.
I was so upset when American
or English editions came out
and the dog...
(INAUDIBLE)
Who makes those kind of changes?
>> Barry: It should be Barfy.
(laughter)
Oh, by the way I did find out
how Barfy got his name.
Once I stopped crying,
I needed to ask Jeff, Jeffy.
>> Jeffy.
>> Barry: And I was really
bummed out.
I don't know if I want to even
tell you.
So I said, Jeffy,
the Barfy thing.
I know, that's the clue, right,
that the literature hippy in me
is following a little fish
upstream to where I spawned,
explain to me Barfy
was like the thing...
And he goes, no, that was
Dolly, his sister, couldn't say,
they had a dog named Barky,
and she couldn't say Barky,
she called him Barfy.
>> That's his story.
>> Barry: Yeah, Bill figured out
Barfy.
>> That's his story.
Other questions?
>> I have to apologize because
when I came here I had no clue
who any of you were,
(laughter)
>> Barry: Happens to me all the
time at the Piggly Wiggly.
(laughter)
Don't you know who I think I am?
(laughter)
>> I have to say that, because
I don't even feel like
I have the right to speak.
>> Speak.
>> But my children couldn't read
worth a darn, got them comics,
they could read.
I got them the little books
you were talking about, like
Mark Twain all the things with
reading on one side and drawing
on the other, and they read
through that, and now they're
wonderful readers.
I had no respect for comics
until I came here, except for
last year, there was a contest,
and if you wanted to win so
much money in order to have this
home makeover so rather than do
out the fill out the blank,
I did a comic.
Well, I have no artistic talent
whatsoever.
And I love this turkey thing.
But it was my dog and my cat.
And they were talking about
how our house is really boring,
I wish I could do something new.
And I sent it in.
Well, I didn't win.
( laughter )
( inaudible )
She got all these letters,
sad and funny.
And she finally, just drew one
out of the pot
and it didn't really matter.
And she called me and said she
loved it, and that was good, but
I haven't drawn anything since.
>> Barry: You should.
>> I know.
>> Barry: You're right,
everybody does know they should.
I should clean too.
( laughter )
>> Long story short.
How do I, is there a prison
comic?
>> Barry: A prison comic?
>> Yes.
>> Buhle: Yes, there's a
wonderful, what's it's called?
Real Life in Prison,
or Real Prison Life.
One way to access it is one
of the main artists for it,
a collaborator of mine,
Sabrina Jones, and her Web site
is Sabrinaland.
"Real Cost of Prisons"
is the name of this comic.
And it's an ongoing series
online and it's really, really
great.
>> Her name is Sabrina?
>> Buhle: Sabrina Jones.
>> And it's Sabrinaland?
>> Buhle: That's her Web site.
She's not the only artist,
but she's one of the artists.
(inaudible)
>> Buhle: I think so.
I know one of the artists
for that on the Web site
is a prisoner.
That's the only one I know,
but maybe there's more.
>> There's a lot.
>> Buhle: Then that's the site
to go to.
"Real Cost of Prisons."
>> Barry: Do we have time
for one more question?
>> Buhle: So it seems.
>> It's a question
for Mr. Danky.
I wanted to know in the
underground comics, who started
publishing them, and how did
they come up with the money,
and how did they make that
happen in a way?
>> Buhle: Can I offer
and footnote first here,
and then I'll pass it on?
>> Danky: You can, yes.
>> Buhle: Here's the way Radical
America comics happened.
It was the third underground
comic to appear.
>> Danky: In the whole country.
>> Buhle: In the whole country,
that's exactly right.
A left wing foundation whose
money was based on bra snaps,
but the patent was expiring
for years, it was like the end
of his foundation.
( laughter )
I published this magazine.
They gave me $2,000 sort of on
false pretenses that it was
going to be more intellectual
stuff produced.
And I gave that money
to Gilbert Shelton who was
going from Washington to
San Francisco and produced
a comic called "Feds 'N' Heads"
about acid heads
who had a good time,
and so forth in Austin, Texas.
So he and two other people,
he had $2,000 and two other
people each had $2,000,
and between the three of them
they founded Rip Off Press.
Radical America comics, formally
published, though not edited,
and written in Madison,
sold about 30,000 comics,
and they had enough money
to then print more comics.
And this is 1969.
And by 1971, sometimes
the print runs were 50,000.
They cost a dollar.
And people were crazy about them
in a counterculture, and they
were in every head shop in the
country, and there were plenty
of head shops, and other kinds
of places.
And to finish off my little
section of it, that so many
of these trips appeared
in underground newspapers, which
were all around the country.
A subject that Jim knows
more about than almost anybody,
probably.
That brought people's attention
to going to find those comics.
And it was a phenomenon
in comics, because they weren't
essentially commercial at all.
They were all self-created.
They had no censorship,
and people didn't plan to make
any money, and they made very
little money, but some money.
And rent was $50 a month,
so you could get by.
And they just sort of went
from there.
We'd never done anything like
that before, and never anything
like that since.
But by gosh, I'm glad
I saw it happen and got to be
a little part of it.
>> Danky: Great question.
I talked about the sort of
aesthetic liberation of artists
in the '60s, but it was also
economic liberation that, as
Paul indicated, that initially
and continuing for most, there
was no economic incentive.
But it's the very first time
that comic artists actually
control their own work.
Prior to that,
it's a real assembly line.
If you look at any of the
superhero things, it's a whole--
When they're fully listed, it's
a whole list of people who'd
done the inking and lettering.
>> Buhle: They didn't copyright.
Underground comics artists
copyrighted their work.
>> Danky: Artists really
benefited our show when we went
to do it, because the artists
indeed ended up controlling,
physically, their own work.
And that's probably the most
important legacy for the next
generation of artists like Lynda
who in the sense that they
actually have their own work.
Whereas, even somebody
who is very famous like Charles
Schultz, a lot of his stuff was
just thrown away by the printers
when it was done.
I'm not that wild about Peanuts
myself, but I'm sure that it's,
I wouldn't throw it away.
I'd make sure it was kept.
So it's the first time
that artists get to control
their work.
It was one time use, etc.,
through reprinting
and they got their work back.
And comic artists would do
as artists have always done,
and that's to trade work
with each other, and that's
how our friend and collaborator
Denis got his collection.
He traded his art,
or purchased art from artists
whose work he published.
And that's a terrific break
from the serf system
that had preceded them.
>> Buhle: A lot of great comic
work got published
up in Princeton, Wisconsin.
A lot of great comic work
within a period of 10 years.
Just astonishing.
Both in new stuff like
gay comics mentioned, but also
in archival material.
You couldn't find any comic of
the past that was really great,
except maybe Krazy Kat,
in bound volumes in 1970.
By 1990, Denis, more than
anybody else, had put all kinds
of just fabulous comic talent
from the 1920s to the 1950s,
some of whose stuff politically
I just despised--
Never mind--
As comic art.
Now by that time an archive
existed, and anybody can look
at that and make sense of it
themselves.
That's a real big difference,
and it belongs to the surge that
came out of underground comics.
>> Danky: And the pattern that
Denis did in reprinting Al Capp
and many, many other artists
has now been--
Denis doesn't publish any
longer, it's been passed on
to Lynda's publisher,
Drawn and Quarterly
where "Gasoline Alley"
is appearing as a really deluxe
series of bound volumes.
And I'd have to say that
that was an idea that I could
never have ever imagined
before seeing it.
>> Barry: So the concluding
statement is this--
Oh, what?
(INAUDIBLE)
So the concluding statement
is this:
When it comes to comics,
Bucky's got balls.
( laughter )
Bucky's got balls,
and he cannot lie.
So I hope you feel really proud
about Bucky's comics balls.
Balls spelled with an X.
( laughter )
And I want to thank you
all for coming.
We all got to look at each other
on the first day of snow.
And do go home and draw.
If you have a kid around,
you can pretend you're doing it
just to show them how.
But go ahead and do that,
and draw that cigarette,
and then write something
about someone you hate.
And then throw it away,
and you'll feel better.
Thank you, very much.
( applause )