cc  >> 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 Goddamn.  I didn't think Goddamn. 

 Yeah, I did.  (laughter)  Goddamn, 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. 

 >> 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) to burst into tears so I go to