Weird Chicken
Posted by Randall Enos at 2:57 pm on September 23rd
I have a friend named Jeffrey Reynolds who has been writing to me for some time now. When he first contacted me, he was living in China teaching kids English. Later he married a Chinese girl and moved to Florida where he is currently teaching English to inmates in penitentiaries down there.
He is an amateur doodler and an amazing fan of illustrators and cartoonists. He comes up with the most little known esoteric artists that I don't think even most people in the business would know.
He needs some encouragement because he wants to try to sell some art work if he can to local publications etc.. He's starting to get a portfolio together.
I thought I'd give him a little exposure here on Drawger since he is a big fan and ardent reader of our humble little blog.
Here is an older picture of his that he claims was inspired by my work. I think I see a good bit of Kroninger in there (another artist he greatly admires). Normally he doesn't do collages. I thought this was a particularly nice energetic piece.
The Saga of Hopalong Kroninger
Posted by Randall Enos at 6:21 pm on September 21st
As the 1:10 from York City chugged into the Westport station, I wondered if I'd recognize my mysterious visitor. As the smoke rose from the train wheels, bonneted ladies with squalling children descended from the iron monster. My eyes danced around the milling crowd of women, children and derby hatted pasty bank clerk types. Just as I had decided that the stranger wasn't among them, the smoke started to lift and I saw a black garbed apparition slowly pull a long dark cheroot from his waistcoat and fire it up. He wore a battered Stetson over his crop of silver hair. He casually looked around and then his eyes alighted on me and he sauntered over...pausing before me. He blew a thick cloud of acrid smoke in my face.
"Hopalong?....Hopalong Kroninger?" I coughed.
"Stop yer jawin' sonny", he snarled, "Let's hit the trail!"
We piled into the old pickup and headed east.
He said not a word as we rattled on toward the ranch while a sad country-western tune wailed on the truck's cranky radio (I Got Tears In My Ears From A'Lyin" on My Back In My Bed Whilst I Cried Over You).
When we pulled into the ranch, the smells of steaming vittles filled our nostrils....the wimmen folk had been busy. The stranger eschewed all talk of food and wanted to get right down to business. "Show me them hosses", he grumbled.
We went over to the corral and leaning on the rail fence his steely eyes surveyed the herd. After a moment he said, "That one!"
"But...but", I stammered, "El Diablo ain't been broke!"
Just then the maverick pony came over to us with his ears pinned back in a menacing manner as if to say," These are my fillies, hit the high road Jack!"
Hopalong reached out and deftly extinguished his cheroot on El Diablo's nose. The horse didn't flinch....just glared at his opponent.
"Jes' the way I like 'em", Hoppy said, "Saddle him up".
I stood in awe and admiration as my dark-suited visitor deftly checked the girth and hiked it up a couple of notches then easily swung into the saddle. He held the ornery mustang in check as he drawled, "Which way did they go?"
I pointed north and he smiled doffing his Stetson (see picture), reigned Diablo north and galloped off leaving me and the wimmen in a cloud of dust.
I never saw him...or El Diablo again.
But that evening, we thought we heard gun-play in the far distance.
Hannity and Levin
Posted by Randall Enos at 4:55 pm on July 18th
Two fellas we could well do without. Daily they spew their vicious propaganda on Mickey Mouse's ABC radio. They are considered true Americans by a large listenership....sadly. Sean Hannity and Mark Levin. This is sorta what they look like.
Another for PJBF
Posted by Randall Enos at 2:49 pm on March 10th
I hope Patrick won't mind that I show the recent cover I did for Rethinking Schools.
I want to belatedly jump on the Flynn bandwagon in praising one of the greatest art directors of our time.
The cover is sans masthead, headline and other cover copy of course.....just did it.
MY LIFE ON THE SLANTED BOARD...Chapter 28, "Stripping For Playboy"
Posted by Randall Enos at 6:37 pm on January 1st
I worked for Playboy magazine for fifteen years. I illustrated stories and sometimes did caricatures for their "Jazz Polls" and "New Year's Resolutions" pages. But the last five or six years was spent in doing two comic strips for them.
Hefner, who is a lover of cartoons and cartoonists decided at a certain point that he should have a comic strip section in the magazine. He already had Kurtzman's "Little Annie Fanny" but this was to be a separate comic strip section apart from that feature. Many of us were asked to create strips. Hefner asked if I'd care to create a couple of strips. I submitted several ideas and the two he chose were my "Reg'lar Rabbit" and "5-Cent Mary". They would alternate in each issue every month.
I drew Reg'lar Rabbit in pen and ink instead of my usual linocut medium and then colored it by using Pantone Adhesive colored film. He was a little Farmer Brown kind of guy and inhabited a place I called Boondock. There were only rabbits in Boondock. I thought a strip about a horny rabbit would suit Playboy's editorial requirements nicely.
In one strip, a movie company comes to film in Boondock and we are introduced to the famous movie star Rabbit Redford.
Reg'lar (as I like to call him) was always chasing and hitting on little rabbit cuties like Ginger Sue who asks him in one strip if he'd like a "roll in the hay". Reg'lar responds with, "DIGGITY DAWG...ah nevah thought you'd say THAT, Ginger Sue!"
He hustles her off to a nearby hay stack where she produces, from the picnic basket she was carrying, a "roll".
"Whut's yer pleasure,POPPYSEED or SESAME?"...to which our hero mutters to himself in a thought balloon, "Ah wuz in mind of some hot crossed BUNS!"
5-Cent Mary was actually named after a real person...a prostitute who serviced the fisherman down by the docks in my home town New Bedford. I met her once. My dad and I were sitting in a diner having breakfast early one morning before going fishing one day when lo and behold...5-Cent Mary sat right down next to me. I was just a little kid but I knew who she was because she was famous around town. She asked me if she hadn't seen me in church once. I said, "No." She must have had me confused with one of them Christians or something....I belonged to a proud Atheist household and had never graced the interior of a church. At any rate, that was the extent of my relationship with the famous 5-Cent Mary...but I always loved her moniker....hence my strip title.
Hefner loved it because he was a huge fan of John Held Jr. and when you draw a cartoon in linocut with characters in 19th century garb...it come out looking like Held whether you like it or not. When I realized this, I had second thoughts about doing it but Hefner liked it so much I complied.
5-Cent Mary spent her time fleeing from 1800's cops and popping in and out of bed with various "johns". In one strip she is in bed with a musician. We can tell he's a musician because we see his cello leaning against the chair where his pants and shirt also reside. Suddenly in through the open window comes a terrifying shriek," A-I-I-I-I-E-E-E-E-E!"
Mary says,"What's that?"
The musician, without missing a stroke says, "High C".
5-Cent Mary, Hefner and I decided, should be rendered in just black and white to preserve its antique flavor. All the other strips were in color.
Out of about ten sketches for each strip, I might get maybe three or four OK'd by Hefner who was the sole arbiter of the cartoons in Playboy. He was an amateur cartoonist himself. The art director Arthur Paul told me that Hef had put a couple of his own cartoons in the first issues of the magazine.
I would deliver my sketches to the cartoon editor Michelle Urry (who unfortunately died last year) in the New York office and then she would fly out to California once a month and have a meeting with Hefner. My roughs would come back with a little "OK" in red on the ones he liked. Twice he made a little doodle off to the side suggesting a mouth expression for Reg'lar Rabbit and once he suggested putting in a little guy holding a beer to fill an empty space in a "5-Cent Mary" panel.
These two little doodles hang proudly on my studio wall... after all, how many people have cartoons drawn by Hugh M. Hefner?
One of the Hefner doodles suggesting a character to fill an empty space.
