National Cartoonist Society Profile: Hank Ketcham

The National Cartoonist Society is not a guild or union, although they have joined forces from time to time to fight for member's rights, and regularly use their artistic talents to help worthwhile causes. Membership is limited to established professional cartoonists, with a few small exceptions of outstanding persons in affiliated fields. The primary purposes of the NCS are to advance the ideals and standards of professional cartooning in its many forms. To promote and foster a social, cultural and intellectual interchange among professional cartoonists of all types. And to stimulate and encourage interest in and acceptance of the art of cartooning by aspiring cartoonists, students and the general public. Here is another short biography of past NCS member, Hank Ketcham, that sadly passed away in June 2001, thought his world famous strip, based on his first son, still survives today, the wonderful Dennis the Menace.

 

 

Born - schooled in Seattle. Introduced to exciting world of Andy Panda and Pinocchio at Walt Disney. Served full hitch in Washington, DC Navy During World War II - editing, drawing and writing. Became a "Wednesday regular" New York City freelancer. Moved west to Carmel where the Menace was created. Awarded the silver Billy de Beck trophy in 1953. Toured USSR in '59, searching for cartoon exchange program, but soon discovered Switzerland and remained a Geneva resident for eighteen glorious years, returning to the beach of pebbles with Rolande and two ragamuffins in 1977, where we've been living happily ever since. Now it's on to the wondrous world of Matisse and Picasso...!

 

 

National Cartoonist Society Profile: Gil Kane

The National Cartoonist Society was created in 1946 when groups of professional cartoonists got together to entertain our troops. They soon found out that they enjoyed each other's company so much they decided to get together on a regular basis. Today, the NCS is the world's largest professional cartoon related group with over five hundred of the world's major cartoonists, working in all branches of the profession, including newspaper comic strips and panels, comic books, editorial cartoons, animation, gag cartoons, greeting cards, advertising, and magazine and book illustration, just to name a few. Past and present members have contributed to their NCS profiles of there many artistic achievements, and I thought I would start out with a Marvel and DC fan favorite, the late great Gil Kane who passed away in 2000. Winner of the Silver Plaque Award in 1977 for best story strip, Star Hawks, here is Gil's review in his own words.

Born in Riga, Latvia, on April 6,1925...Came to U.S.A. at age three. My creative attitudes shaped in part by the romantic fantasies prevalent in films...comics...pulp literature...big band jazz...etc. Started as a pro at sixteen...Service in the Pacific during World War II. For a while I worked with director Garason Kanin when he was involved in T.V...I created drawings which staged the action and composition for every foot of film. Published a magazine and developed and published an experimental paperback series with a character named Blackmark for Bantam books. At one point or another I've drawn virtually every major adventure strip character from Batman to Flash Gordon.

Have a wife Elaine, and three great kids, Scott, Beverly, Eric. We live in hilltop house in Wilton, Conn. Recently won NCS award for my work in comic books. My interests range...Theater, Ballet, Psychology, Literature, and I've just gotten into serious music. Ran NCS shoptalks, and am on Professional committee.

Neal Adams' Continuity Comics

Back in late 1984 Neal Adams created his independent comic publishing company, Continuity Comics, which only lasted until 1993 when the books were canceled during his infamous Rise of Magic cross-over series. His line dealt mainly with serious super-hero titles like, Armor, Crazyman, Megalith, ToyBoy, The Revengers, Cyberad, Hybrids, Shaman, Earth 4, and other characters that were all developed by Adams, not to mention his space exploring rabbit, Bucky O’Hare. But a hand full of these titles did achieve some small success, enough so, that three of his creations, Samuree, Knighthawk, and Valeria the She-Bat ended up being published by Acclaim’s Windjammer line. A few years earlier, Adams had developed Ms. Mystic for Pacific Comics, which was an attractive strip he drew, but none of his characters in their later Continuity incarnations lasted over twelve issues or so. The first problem was Adams’ publishing schedule on the titles were always dreadfully late, on average one to twenty-four weeks, and I believe a book or two went even a year without an issue! That alone would kill any comic company’s orders by the combined frustration of retailers and collectors going crazy just to get their issues. Second, there was almost no plot based stories, wooden dialogue, and very shaky character development, which added up to some pretty mediocre comics overall. Third, Adams as well as the other publishers like Marvel and DC at the time were caught up in the new comic speculators buying habits for those wild “variant covers” that bombarded the comic stands. Tyvex and die-cut covers were all the rage, as well as glow-in-the-dark, optic illusion, hologram, multiple image covers, pull-out posters, thermal images appearing from the heat of your hand, chrome or gold plated covers, sticker clues to complete pages inside, and of course bagged comics with trading cards, were just a few of the many gimmicks that were being promoted.


But for all the negative talk I’ve heard about these comics and their creator, one small factor remained in my mind and is the only redeeming factor for my money - the great artwork. Now, I always enjoyed Adams’ unique style (thought it seemed to be based much on Stan Drake to me) and fondly remember as a child drooling over Adams’ Batman covers in those plastic 3-packs DC produced in the early seventies. But I was surprised to see how a style that appears complex can be reproduced by so many people. Maybe his style is not so unique after all if any number of artists can create his look, and is that even a good thing to do in the first place?

I recently picked up an almost complete set of Continuity Comics and was shocked by the number of artists and inkers who could "ape" Adams' look, perhaps maybe as well as their mentor in Continuity’s "house style". Some artists are better at it than others, but I like Dan Barry, Vicente Alcazar, Mike Deodato Jr., Trevor Von Eedon, Ernesto Infante, Clark Hawbaker, Mark Texiera, Dave Hoover, Richard Bennett, Terry Shoemaker, Malcolm Davis, André Coates, Tom Grindberg, Bart Sears, Esteban Maroto, Michael Netzer, and Sal Velluto. That’s just seventeen guys, and I stopped counting , who have a good “feel” for Adams’ style, and some of these artists I’ve never even heard of. And there is even more wonderful artists that I have not listed. How did that happen? If you can draw like Neal Adams shouldn't you be able to work for Marvel, DC, or any other company today? But how could you not look like Neal’s work if you have a swipe file from all his prior works, to well, SWIPE from, which makes it look correct since they’re his poses. And to top if off, Adams did lay-outs and inked many, if not all, the faces and touched up most pages to give them his seal of approval. Other artists that I enjoyed, but worked rather in “Adams” spirit than a literal line rendering were Brian Apthorpe, Mark Beachum, Aron Weisenfeld, Walter McDaniels, Kevin Nowlan, and Michael Golden. A shorter list by far, however that may be a good thing, to illustrate a little different and stand out in this comic company.?

Perhaps is was the crisp work of the inkers who helped save the day, making all these pages work, like the talented Rudy Nebres, Ian Akin, Brian Garvey, Alberto Saichan, André Klasik, Del Barras, Art Nichols, Bill Sienkiewicz, Romeo Tanghal, and John Nyberg. Some wonderful artists themselves in their own right, combined with quite a pool of talent from all the creators mentioned above. At least the production values on the books were always very good, being printed in Canada on high quality paper stock. And over all these tales, Adams constructed the plots and left the writing chores up to the much overworked, Peter Stone.

Now, as mentioned, the stories were pretty thin all around and in the cross-over series Deathwatch 2000 they got down right “preachy” with Adams’ villains using attacks based on global warming from chlorofloro-carbons to destroy the ozone layer, or used overpopulation, pollution, radiation sickness, and manipulated mankind’s other self-inflicted destruction. Whatever that might be? Zany situations were really going on when you combined weird stellar characters, mix in some BEM aliens, a dash of robots and a pinch of hardware, and finally a huge gun toting talking dragon! But even with all that insanity, for some crazy reason I still found these books enjoyable. Looking to the letter pages and a couple web sites, maybe I wasn’t the only one that liked these titles. Armor appeared always to be hands-down the most popular of the heroes, but was still unable to “jump ship” to Windjammer. Perhaps some day these character will be resurrected so we can see how Neal Adams’ vision for Continuity Comics would have finally ended.