-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