Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 8, 1982)
-QFF HE W/ALL" by Dale White A fat lady with her dog stands in front of the Evanshire Drug Store, chatting with a gentleman who has just purchased cigarettes and a newspaper She glances down the block at the opening of an alley, from which has emerged a little boy. heavih bundled in a cap and coat. “Here comes that Wilson bov — all alone as usual.' she comments Although the little Wilson bov ap pears to be quite alone to her. around him are all kinds of lund creatures of his imagination — a cloaked ghoul, a prehistoric bird, a mammoth monster with tentacle legs Thee saunter along like faithful puppies The tat lady, the drug store, the man with the cigarettes, the boy and his im aginary creatures are all parts of a Gahan Wilson cartoon, one of the numerous drawings in his 19-8 collec tion And Then VTe 'll Get Hrm What makes the picture so fright eningly funnv is ils element of truth Wilson. 52. grew up in Evanston 111 not quite Evanshire. but close i—and although he was not truly considered to be an odd fellow, he did seclude himself ' with the assistance of his trusts pen ) m a world of demonic and hideous creatures A painter rendering a tree on his canvas with an assortment of non existent spiders and serpents in an other of his comics tells a little girl. I paint what 1 see. child" And thais exactly what Gahan Wil son does His sense of humor is amaz mgiv perverse, shiveringh morbid He finds something to laugh about in all sorts of wicked and uncommon things hospital patients connected to i.v.s. hanging judges, mad scientists, fallen angels, emotionless business execu tives. man-eating plant' Well. 1 always wanted to be a car toonist. Wilson says His voice on the telephone is deep, even and precise — rather like Vincent Price s Forever and ever Ai my mom s place recendy she came across something that I once did It was a comic book with stuff similar to what 1 do now — monsters, rockets, that sort of thing There were balloons over the characters heads And instead of words in the balloons there were just scrawls It was sort of i pre-literate I tried commercial schools but I found them to be ven superb ! dal. I wanted someone to teach me to draw as w ell as 1 could I knew no one could teach me to be funnv I was the only cartoonist who was admitted at the Institute (.An Institute of Chicago) at that time i 19a8-1952 ) Whenever someone came in requesting a car toonist. thev sent him to me Now I've heard the whole piace has gone to hell and they've even got a cartoonists course in the curriculum ' Although he is tall, sandy-haired and blue-eyed. Wilson suspects the public pictures him as lithe, wnnkled and green Or they think I'm English and evil, a Dr Moriarty That's okay with me In time. 111 probable tum into that A descendant of P T Barnum and William Jennings Brvan. Wilson insists he was not born although people keep asking me that I always tell them. I was constructed during the 12th cen tury by a mad scientist, and sent for ward in time and placed in the body of a cartoonist.' Actually Wilson was stillborn They were about ready to drop me and forget the whole thing when the G P rushed in and clipped me in hot and 0 lUodVX/5, “I just don't understand it. Captain. Equal shares of food and uater to all. vet those two thrive uhile ue wither away." "Veil, It won't be long, nou r' Wierd& Wonderful I iced water alternately and kept whack ing awav at me and got me breathing Wilson explains There must have been brain damage A devotee of Carl Jung. Wilson be lieves there is little difference between existing and imaginary monsters He considers fast food stores and self service gas stations parts of a massive plot to prepare us to live on space-1 ship» He savs he has no idea whv nobody has sent him to a pisychiatrist and happih disclaims rumors that he spjends two months each year in a psychiatric ward But whv is he so — different 1 don t know what to sav Well, then — what led to his stvie of comic art? I don't know what to say Dick Tracy impressed me when I was a child 1 never could figure out how that cartoonist did it Those faces were lust scrawls but he could get such ex pression out of those scrawls It's the best comic strip that ever happiened Krazy Km also impressed me In the movies W C Fields In fine arts Goya It’s an endless list Isn t his humor close to that of Charles Addams W e re coming from the same area Addams was more influenced bv the movies of Karloff and Lugosi because of the Sixties we re pxxjled together I was influenced by Frankenstein and Dracula also—but more often, most of my material comes from TV news The news itself is so grotesque and bizarre It gives me material that is much more productive, stimulating His humor also has been compared to that of Jonathan Swift Mark Twain and Woods Allen — and such diverse publications as Plcnhrn The \eu ) r,rk Times Fantasy and Science Fiction \eu Yorker, Colliers Lrxjk Punch Es quire Pans Match Audubon and Cjfjurmet call on him to add a little life (if that is the correct word) to their pages "When I started out I had a lot < if trouble Editors thought mi stuff was funny and they'd laugh But thev d say that their readers wouldn t understand it There are still some old stuffs mag azmes that w on t buy it But most pub lications respect their readers intelli gence more now and I’m able to give it my best shot I keep in mind the intended magazine before drawing vimething because each one s differ ent Each one has a different voice and a different wai of life The Seu York Times has a certain image and then Playboy has another image Like when I do vimething for Satumal Ixtmpryjn I make sure it s in bad taste He drew a daily newspaper strip for a brief time It was a sort of comic page I got into editing it myself too But I kept softening it up so 1 wouldn t offend all the little old ladies and 1 wrecked it 1 got tired of doing a con unumg thing even day and having to watch the thing His books include Cohan Wilson's Oral eyard Manner The Man in the Cannibal Pot, / Paint What / See, The "You foot! there s no more of me! That s it! rm the last of my species!" U 'etrd World of Cohan W ilson First World Fantasy Collection ,\ntholony Suts and his latest. Is Sothtny 'sacred' He has written several volumes for children, such as Horn the Fat hear Spy The harry Fkiny Family, and Harry and the Sea Serfreru "I've been getting into short stories I m in radio too I do a regular com mentarv sort of like Alfred Hitchcock on National Public Radio's AH Things Ojnsidered His comic Nuts in which he ex plores common childhood fears, ap pears each month in \attonal law poem Not all of them are drawn with m> childhood in mind — but a good many 1 find that it s much stronger than I think at times At a coffee or a lecture somebody will pull me aside and ask me How did you know about that very secret thing he did as a hxjy I’ve discovered that we all went through amazingly the same things as children And it s very touching to me Everybody’s stuffed a ruined T-shirt in a drawer, thinking his mom wouldn t find it And every kid in history thinks he s the first to do it Wilson's gags must be approved In a final authority before thev meet the public s eve The onh pervm whose opinion 1 value is mv wife Nano W in ters the novelist (The (jtrl on the Coca-Cola Tra\ !kuld\ / She s a very good editor and has a go«x1 sense of humor I'll give one to her routinely and if she says it s not funny I listen to her and ignore the idea She s a swell writer Vie both work all the time We don't have regular jobs \Xc- have our own jobs We re our own supervisors | so I think we work harder than people w ho work at regular jobs We get up at 9 30 at the latest, take a half hour break for lunch, and then get hack to it until about 5 or 5 30 Actually, calling it work is not honest because we enjoy what we do so much We have a little |oke in the morning where we kiss each other good-bye and wish the other a good day at the office — before retreating into our separate rooms Then W ilson sits alone in his studio in front of his blank drawing board The imaginary creatures surface once again and the cartoonist starts to draw what he sees
