Canadian Comix News & Culture
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Thursday, May 01, 2008
Bob Bierman, 1921-2008
:: Posted by Bryan @ 5/01/2008 06:00:00 AM 
Cartoonist Sued by Vander Zalm
Victoria Times and Monday magazine editorial cartoonist Bob Bierman died as a result of a stroke April 16, according to a report by the Globe and Mail.
Born in Amsterdam, Bierman worked for a variety of Dutch publications before emigrating to Canada in 1950. He first worked as a bar doorman in Toronto before moving to British Columbia in 1954, eventually publishing his first cartoons with the Victoria Times. After the merger of the Times and the Victoria Colonist in 1976, Bierman published in the weekly alternative paper, Monday Magazine. Besides regular contributions to the annual Portfoolio collections of Canadian caricature, Bierman published one book, 1984: A Collection of Political Cartoons (New Star Books,1982).
Bierman is best known for a court case involving Bill Vander Zalm. The cartoonist drew a cartoon of then-Human Resources Minister Vander Zalm pulling the wings off flies and was sued for libel by the future B.C. premiere and amusement park owner (who was also a Dutch immigrant). A $3500 decision against Bierman and his publisher was later overturned by the B.C. Court of Appeal.
A collection of Bierman's cartoons can be seen here.Labels: obituaries, political cartooning
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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
International: Steve Gerber, R.I.P.
:: Posted by Bryan @ 2/12/2008 01:19:00 AM Comics writer Steve Gerber has died. As a writer for Marvel in the 1970s, Gerber created Howard the Duck and Omega the Unknown. As a result of the legal battle for ownership of Howard, Gerber became an early advocate and fighter for creator's rights in the U.S. comics industry.
The best adventure comic book writer of the 1970s, Gerber enjoyed long, innovative and popular runs on The Defenders, Son of Satan, Manthing, and many other titles. Gerber's brand of tightly-plotted superheroics combined with social commentary, satire, psychedelia, and an original approach to character and setting to produce memorable characters and stories that are still read today. Indeed, for many readers , fans and historians, Steve Gerber was 1970s superhero comics.
Gerber worked for a variety of publishers during his career and was a writer/producer for television, working on several animated series and created the fondly-remembered Thundarr in 1980.
Gerber died of pneumonia, a result of his struggle with pulmonary fibrosis. In recent years he had been writing for DC Comics, preparing a Dr. Fate miniseries and blogging about his life. Beginning earlier this year, a new series featuring his Omega character and written by Jonathan Lethem paid honour to his legacy.
Tom Spurgeon has an excellent obituary at Comics Reporter.
Mark Evanier has posted the news at Gerber's blog.
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T.Hodler's 2-part critical overview of Gerber's career, written for the magazine Comics Comics, is an excellent introduction. Hodler's footnotes are here.Labels: comics writers, creator's rights, obituaries, U.S. superhero franchises
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Monday, December 17, 2007
Whalley Ruins
:: Posted by Bryan @ 12/17/2007 12:13:00 PM They still make comics, right?
- The Globe and Mail finally gets around to eulogizing Peter Whalley, cartoonist and sculptor extraordinare. Some choice quotes included.
- An exhibit of original art from Regis Loisel and Jean-Louis Tripp's Magasin Feneral album series continues through January:
Galerie Attakus
5333 av. Casgrain, 6eme etage, suite 603, Montreal
(Metro Laurier or bus 55 St-Laurent, Fairmount stop)
Monday to Friday, 12-6
- Nathalie Atkinson's quartetly review of comic books and graphic movels for the Globe, Graphica, features lots of Can-con, including laurels for Therefore Repent! and Long Tack Sam.
Labels: blogosphere, cartoonists, graphic novels, obituaries
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Monday, September 24, 2007
Peter Whalley, 1926-2007
:: Posted by Bryan @ 9/24/2007 12:39:00 AM 
Peter Whalley, cartoonist, sculptor, Giant of the North. One of only two or three important postwar Canadian magazine cartoonists, Whalley died Tuesday, September 18.
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From the Montreal Gazette:
Whalley, the son of an Anglican clergyman, was born in Brockville, Ont., on Feb. 20, 1921. He grew up in Halifax, where he attended the Nova Scotia College of Art.
He sold his first cartoon when he was 16, but the Second World War interrupted his budding artistic career. He served in the merchant marine during the war.
After the war, he moved to Montreal with intentions of becoming a serious artist, but once he began working for the Standard, "cartooning won out. It paid more," he once said.
He moved to Morin Heights in the Laurentians, joined the local volunteer fire brigade, and for the rest of his life worked out of his home office.
He hit his stride in the 1960s and '70s, when he turned out covers for Maclean's, Weekend and the Montrealer magazines and did other commercial work.
He was a regular contributor to the CBC's Observer television program, in which he illustrated the week's top news stories with cartoons, and he did film strips for the National Film Board.
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CBC videoLabels: cartoonists, obituaries
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Saturday, September 22, 2007
Alootook Ipellie, 1951-2007
:: Posted by Bryan @ 9/22/2007 06:01:00 AM 
Alootook Ipellie, the Inuit cartoonist, has died suddenly in Ottawa. He was 56.
Ipellie was well-known as a gallery artist and his comics work had only recently begun to be appreciated by a wider audience.
Raised in Frobisher Bay, Ipellie was artistically inspired by Superman comics as a youth. He dropped out of the lithography program at West Baffin Eskimo Co-Op in 1972 and went on to create single panel cartoons for Inuit Today magazine. He also worked as an editor and journalist before becoming a prominent artist, defying the stereotypes of Inuit art with his sexually charged, modern images. Ipellie also created the comic strip Nuna and Vut for the Nunatsiak News in the 1990s. His work was showcased in various galleries internationally and in Canada and in the recent Monster Island Three comics anthology, edited by Montreal's Billy Mavreas. Ipellie's book, Arctic Dreams and Nightmares was published in 1993. He also wrote a children's book, The Inuit Thought of It.
Ipellie died of a heart attack outside his Ottawa apartment September 8. He will be buried in Iqaluit. Ipellie is survived by his daughter Taina.
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obit
Encarta bio
gallery
photo
People of the Good LandLabels: cartoonists, obituaries
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John Collins, 1917-2007
:: Posted by Bryan @ 9/22/2007 06:00:00 AM 
John Collins, long-time editorial cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette, has died at 89. Collins died Sunday, September 16.
Born in Washington, DC, Collins moved with his family to Canada in 1920 and sold his first cartoon to the Gazette while still in university in 1937. He joined the staff of the paper in 1939 and created many memorable images of the Second World War and Cold War years. Collins also contributed cartoons to Saturday Night. Collins' cartoons often featured the stock figure of Uno Who, the proverbial impoverished taxpayer, naked but for a barrel. Collins won the National Newspaper Award for political cartooning twice, in 1954 and 1973. He retired from the Gazette in 1982 but continued to contribute illustrations to Edgar Andrew Collard's nostalgic column, All Our Yesterdays, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1986.
Collins is survived by his wife Edna Collins.
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Gazette obit 1
Gazette obit 2Labels: obituaries, political cartooning
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Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Jocelyn Houde, 1960-2007
:: Posted by Bryan @ 4/11/2007 11:43:00 PM 
Quebec cartoonist Jocelyn Houde has died. Houde died April 8, 2007 at St-Francois d' Assise Hospital in Quebec City. He was 47 and had been suffering ill health for some time.
Houde was best known for several clear-line historical adventure series and for his contribution to local amateur publications and fanzines like MensuHell.
A self-taught artist, Houde was inspired by the Belgian school of Herge and by fine art painters. His earliest efforts aped the style of Quebecois caricaturist Serge Chapleau but he soon found further inspiration in the "petit format" adventure strips from the 1960s and 70s like Kiwi, Kit Carson, Cap'tain Swing, and Yuma Kid.
Beginning in 1998, Houde self-published three volumes of Panzer, a series of WWII adventure albums. In 2006, La Pasteque published Les derniers corsaires, a graphic novel about a WWII Royal Navy submarine crew, written by Marc Richard. At the time of his death, Houde was rumoured to be working on a new project written by French scenarist Ted Benoit.
Houde's remarkable talent, including an eye for historical detail, character, and lush colour, was admired by many and his unexpected death comes as a sad shock to the Quebec BD community.
His funeral takes place today, April 12, at 2pm, at St-Pierre-Aux-Liens church (corner of Roses & Henri-Bourassa).
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More:
English Review of Les dernier corsairs
Les derniers corsaires at La Pasteque
Jocelyn Houde interview at BDQuebec
discussion at BFQ forums
notice at FBDFQ site
(thanks to Le BeDenaute-en-chef)Labels: bd, graphic novels, obituaries
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
More on Muff Mills
:: Posted by Bryan @ 3/14/2007 12:01:00 AM Writing for the Cambridge Now! website, Thomas Hagey remembers cartoonist Muff Mills who died last week:
I remember the first time I met Muff Mills. He had an outwardly crusty disposition. I recall muttering under my breath, "What the heck is his problem?!?" But then, I didn't know the character ... or the character behind the character.
His friends would say to me, "Oh don’t worry, that's just 'Muff'! He really wouldn't hurt a fly." And they were right. He was looking through life with those little round glasses and what he saw was different than anyone else. This is why when someone like Muff moves on to greater things; the people they leave behind really, really miss them. Such was the case on Friday down at the Legion in Galt. His friends and family were missing him; stunned that Muff wasn't there to get them through yet another one of life's dramas.
Labels: cartoonists, obituaries, people, poltical cartooning
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Monday, March 12, 2007
Muff Mills, 1923-2007
:: Posted by Bryan @ 3/12/2007 12:10:00 AM Cartoonist was WWII Nose-cone Artist
Albert Edward "Muff" Mills, longtime editorial cartoonist for the Cambridge Times, has died.
Born in Todmorden, Ont and raised in Humber Bay. During the second World War, Mills trained in Galt (now Cambridge) as a pilot and mechanic before being assigned overseas in 1943. As a member of the RCAF's No. 428 Squadron, he worked as an airframe mechanic and used his skills as a cartoonist to paint nose art on bombers. In May, 1945 he was re-assigned to No. 408 Squadron along with his brother. Many of the planes he worked on are on exhibit in museums across Canada.
After the war he worked as an artist and lived in Toronto. He moved to Cambridge in 1985 and began working as a cartoonist for the Cambridge Times.
Mills passed away Wednesday, March 7, at the Cambridge Memorial Hospital. Mills was predeceased by his wife Norma. He is survived by 3 children and 2 grandchildren. A funeral was held March 9th.
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links:
Examples of his paintings on planes
Cambridge Times ObitLabels: links, obituaries, political cartooning
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Friday, January 19, 2007
Said Shiraga Rahimi, 1971-2007
:: Posted by Bryan @ 1/19/2007 04:08:00 AM 
Said Shiraga Rahimi, 1971-2007
Said Rahimi, an Afghan-born cartoonist living in Canada, was killed early on the morning of January 15 in Hamilton.
Rahimi had recently emigrated to Canada with his family and was working as a pizza delivery man while studying English and preparing an exhibit of his cartoons. He was killed on the job when his van was hit by a train at a railroad crossing at approximately 1:30 am.
Rahimi was born in Kabul, Afganistan but lived in Iran and Azerbaijan during the reign of the Taliban. He published political cartoons in several Iranian magazines and also submitted cartoons to international contests. His cartoon output and opinions made both countries inhospitable to him and he brought his family to Canada in September 2005. His ambition was to work as a forensic artist.
A funeral was held at a Hamilton mosque on Tuesday and Rahimi was to be buried at Chapel Hill Memorial Gardens in Stoney Creek.
Said (Saeid) Rahimi was 35. He is survived by his wife of 21 years, five daughters and two sons.
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Hamilton Spectator
Toronto Sun
Addiction cartoon contest entryLabels: news, obituaries, people, political cartooning
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Monday, December 11, 2006
Bus Griffiths 1913-2006
:: Posted by Bryan @ 12/11/2006 01:36:00 AM 
Bus Griffiths (1913-2006)
Logger Cartoonist Created one of Canada's First Graphic Novels
Gilbert Joseph (Bus) Griffiths, a cartoonist, logger and fisherman, died of prostate cancer in Comox, B.C., on Sept. 25, 2006. Griffiths was best known as the creator of Now You're Logging, a 119-page graphic novel about the 1930s logging industry in BC.
Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Griffiths was raised in British Columbia, first in Penicton and then in Burnaby. As a teenager he was interested in cartooning but was unsuccessful in finding work in the newspaper field. As a young adult he illustrated catalogues for Massey-Harris but left that job to work as a logger during the 1930s Depression.
Giffiths specialized as a faller, a logger tasked with dropping trees so that they do not cause damage to or become entangled with neigbouring trees. By his own account, Griffiths was very good at his job and loved every aspect of the industry, even though it was seasonal and prone to lay-offs, especially during the 1930s. His logging career began in the Fraser Valley and the Mainland coast of BC, but he eventually migrated to Vancouver Island.
After a decade in the bush, Griffiths married his wife Maragaret in 1940. He also managed to find jobs as a cartoonist, creating work in the 1940s for Vancouver's Maple Leaf publishing, one of the short lived Canadian comics publishers that sprang up during World War II. At the same time, he produced an 8-page children's comic book about logging for the BC government. An editor for BC Lumberman magazine encouraged Griffiths to submit strips about logging to the magazine --a project that would eventually lead to the creation of a much longer work.
Giffiths retired from logging in 1961 and began working as a fisherman out of Fanny Bay, where he had moved in 1944.
In 1972, at the urging of his wife, and using her as a model, Griffiths began working on a longer comic book about logging in his spare time. This was published in 1978 by Harbour Press as Now You're Logging.
The book concerns the adventures of two young loggers in the 1930s who learn the ropes from an older camp-boss. Full of period detail, Now You're Logging is almost a primer on the basics of the business from the days before the advent of the chainsaw, and contains many lengthy explanations of the techniques and tools of the trade. Graphically, the book looks something like a cross between a textbook and a love story illustrated by a heterosexual Tom of Finland. Griffiths cartooning combines muscular figures with tightly rendered machines and landscapes to charming effect.
Shawn Conner, writing in the Comics Journal in 1996, characterized the book as "a true anomaly: written and drawn by a man with decades of experience in the woods, it's a book with no clear antecedent, more intent on documenting a way of life than telling a story (though it does that, too)," noting that, "it might just change your perception of what comics are, what they can do, and why we need them."
Indeed, although published during the same period that U.S. based cartoonists were beginning to refer to their long-form comics as graphic novels, Griffith's book seems totally divorced from the world of North American comics of the time. In this sense it has more in common with other sui generis graphic novels of the past, such as The Four Immigants Manga or Frans Masereel's woodcut novels.
Now You're Logging went through 3 printings but is now out of print. In later years Griffiths continued to pursue artistic endeavours: he illustrated a few other books about BC subjects and several of his oil painting hang in local museums. At the end of his life he was preparing a series of short prose stories about his logging career.
According to Grant Shilling's Globe and Mail obituary, Griffiths "was a small man with a big chest, a lovely lilt in his voice and a twinkle in his eye. He was built more like Popeye, with well-developed forearms grown strong from working a saw and an axe for a living."
Griffiths experienced a stroke in 2003 and had been living under extended care since then. He is survived by his wife Margaret, two sons, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. A memorial service was held October 21.
Further reading:
online:
Globe and Mail obituary (08/12/06)
Georgia Straight Profile by Grant Shilling
illustrated article by Gordon Hak
Publisher's Website
in print:
Shawn Connor, "Beyond the Grid, Later, up in the woods...," The Comics Journal, 187 (May 1996), 111-2. (the same issue also includes an interview with Giffiths and samples of his work)Labels: news, obituaries, people
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Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Michelle Urry, R.I.P.
:: Posted by Bryan @ 10/17/2006 05:43:00 AM Editor a Significant Force in Post-War Cartooning
by Bryan Munn
Michelle Urry, longtime cartoon editor at Playboy Magazine, has died of cancer in New York.
Raised in Winnipeg, Urry (born Michelle Kaplan in 1939) was an early fan of comic art. According to a 1995 New York Times interview, "What no one knew at the time was that as a kid I had the biggest comic book collection of any girl I knew, just stacks and stacks of Wonder Woman and other characters. I expected to grow up to wear gold bracelts and fly. [...] I was a snob even then --a comic that wasn't well drawn didn't interest me. But give me a well-drawn comic with a good story and I was hooked."
She later moved to the U.S., was educated at UCLA and ran a fashion design business in Los Angeles before moving to Chicago in search of employment. Hired as a typist at Playboy in 1965, she was soon noticed by publisher Hugh Hefner and promoted to assistant cartoon editor and then to cartoon editor. For 40-odd years it was Urry's job to sift through thousands of submissions to Playboy on a monthly basis before presenting the cream of the crop to Hefner for his seal of approval. In this way, Urry became one of the most prominent and respected gag cartoon editors in the field, helping to discover and develop the careers of many successful cartoonists, including B. Kliban, Howard Cruse, Bill Plympton, Harvey Kurtzman, Jules Feiffer, Arnold Roth, Shel Silverstein, Gahan Wilson, and Chris Brown, who has called Urry "one of the greatest comics editors ever." In a 1970 article on humour for the Chicago Tribune, Urry tried to explain the appeal of the cartoons she published, many of which targetted women and sexual politics: "The rise in sexual and erotic humor is often viewed with alarm but it may, in fact, indicate a generally healthier society. You cannot laugh at anything unless you have mastered your anxieties about it, and the airing of these previously forbidden areas with more acceptance by society means that they are no longer so frightening. In order to laugh at a cartoon, for instance, one must be able to perceive the hidden hostility and be stimulated by it, but the cartoonist has to make it clever enough so that you don't feel guilty because you identify with it."
Along with The New Yorker, Playboy remains the most important market for freelance panel cartoonists. On the continued prominence of cartoons in Playboy (from that same NYT interview): "Mr. Hefner, because he loves cartoons so much, was the one who decided that cartoons would be an important part of the magazine, and he created a budget for them. I started off at Playboy being wildly spoiled. Now everyone fights for space --photgraphers, writers, advertising reps, the fashion department. I think this is true of all magazines. Increasingly, cartoons are viewed as expendable, they're just fillers."
Urry, who once claimed she bought "approximately a million dollars worth of cartoons a year" for Hefner, also worked as a consultant for other magazines and edited several collections of Playboy cartoons over the years. She often shared her experiences with comics fans and young cartoonists at many conventions and forums and was an articulate writer and critic of the artform (she contributed an essay on Jack Cole to the third volume of DC's Plastic Man archives).
In the late-1960s Urry was briefly married to Jack Altman before marrying the sculptor Steven Urry (d.1993), with whom she had a son, Caleb. She later married screenwriter Alan R. Trustman, with whom she lived in New York and Sag Harbor.
More:
Google's cache of cartoonist Skip Williamson's reminiscence of his time working with Urry at Playboy.
(with files contributed by Jeet Heer)Labels: obituaries
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Lillian S. Robinson, 1941-2006
:: Posted by Bryan @ 9/27/2006 03:08:00 AM Concordia Professor, Comics Scholar
Lillian S. Robinson, a feminist scholar and activist, has died of ovarian cancer in Montreal. A respected lecturer and writer, Robinson was for the past six years Principle of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia Univerisity. A seasoned protestor and former SDS-member, she wrote several scholarly books of criticism and cultural theory. Her last, Wonder Women: Feminisms and Superheroes, was published in 2003 by Taylor and Francis.
Concordia has posted a full obituary and has established and is soliciting donations for the "Lillian S. Robinson Scholars Program" to bring lecturers to the Institute.Labels: obituaries
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Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Michael "Bud" Riley, 1925-2006
:: Posted by Bryan @ 8/29/2006 01:55:00 PM Cartoonist of the Canadian Whites
The Toronto Star reports today on the death of Michael Riley two weekends ago. Riley created and drew Terena of the Jungle for an unnamed Canadian publisher sometime in the 1940s. (The strip is so obscure that when I was contacted by the Star for info I could find no reference anywhere, not in my admittedly tiny collection of 1940s black & White comics, not even in John Bell's generally informative essay in Canuck Comics, which mentions many many 1940s cartoonists. If anyone has any more info about Terena of the Jungle, please let me know.)
As ad-man for most of his life, Riley also seems to have contributed to the look of Canadian post-war popular culture, creating graphics for many long-gone Canuck products.
I'm posting the bulk of the obit here because it may be the best information published on this creator:
Michael Riley, 81: Comic book artist
Helped to create this country's superheroes
After WWII, designed graphics, logos for products
Aug. 29, 2006. 01:00 AM
LINDA NGUYEN
STAFF REPORTER
Terena of the Jungle was a knife-wielding woman in a stylish polka-dot bodysuit whose tales of action and adventure delighted Canadian comic readers during World War II.
She also provided girls with a positive role model, something uncommon in an era of damsels in distress.
The character was created by Michael Riley, who was among a group who wrote and illustrated the first Canadian comic books, known as the "Canadian Whites."
Riley, known as "Bud" to his close friends, died Aug. 19 at the age of 81.
"The beautiful, daring Terena, gallant queen of the jungle.... She sees a lone explorer in her kingdom about to be a victim of a blood-crazed headhunter and without hesitating, goes to his aid," his son Craig, 50, chuckled as he read an original template of the comic book.
Riley's name will likely never be mentioned in any art-history class, but he was an important part of this country's comic-book history.
To stabilize the Canadian dollar, the federal government labelled American comic books a non-essential good and banned them in 1940. The move inadvertently led to the golden age of the Canadian comic book, as publishers and artists like Riley seized the opportunity to create this country's own superheroes. The group included painter Harold Town and Leo Bachle, creator of Johnny Canuck.
The Canadian Whites got their name because they were printed on white paper with black ink, since coloured ink was rationed.
The golden age of Canadian comics ended in 1946, when the end of the war brought a resumption in the distribution of American periodicals.
Peter Birkemoe, owner of the Beguiling comic book store in Toronto, said that during the war, many artists like Riley realized the commercial potential of their comics.
"These were businesses, this wasn't an art collective or art-driven," he said.
But he noted that the comics still remain icons in the comic book industry.
Craig Riley said his father was always an artist at heart and devoted 30 years to designing logos and graphics for popular products, including Mad Hatter chips and Canada Dry Viva Orange drinks, until his retirement in the early 1980s.
"He was an artist. That's what he did all his life. He became a commercial artist and then a graphic designer. But the important thing is that he freehanded everything," he said.
He described his father as a quiet, unassuming and considerate man, who lied about his age to enlist early in the air force because it was "the thing to do."
Riley, who was married to his wife Evelyn for almost 57 years until she died in 2004, never got over the death of his "life's dancing partner," his son said.
"Their marriage was fantastic. They really complemented each other and they loved to dance. More than 50 years later, he still stepped on her toes."
Long-time Scarborough residents, the two used to dance at Balmy Beach when they were younger. They met during the war at a Legion dance.
Riley leaves two sons and four grandchildren.
TheStar.com - Michael Riley, 81: Comic book artistLabels: obituaries
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Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Sid Barron, 1917-2006
:: Posted by Bryan @ 5/10/2006 05:38:00 AM 
"Poet of the mundane"
Cartoonist Sid Barron, dubbed "the poet of the mundane" by Robert Fulford, has died in Victoria at age 88.
Barron was one of the funniest and most stylistically distinctive cartoonists to emerge in the post-war editorial cartoon world.
Born in Toronto in 1917 to a British mother and an un-identified Belgian soldier father, Barron was adopted by his maternal aunt and raised in Victoria, B.C.
With very little art training, Barron found work as a commercial illustrator and sign painter. According to Peter Desbarats and Terry Mosher in "The Hecklers", during the Depression he did some illustration work for Toronto's Star Weekly "until the paper discovered that for pennies it could buy cratefulls of illustrations that appeared originally in various American publications."
During the Second World War, Barron found work in the short-lived Canadian comic book industry, producing strips for Educational Comics' Canadian Heroes title. After the war, he received art training for a short period in Detroit and later found work across Canada.
In 1959 he began working for The Victoria Times as an editorial cartoonist. In 1961 he began a life-long association with the Toronto Star. He also found work with The Albertan in Calgary as well as with Maclean's magazine.
Barron's relatively mild yet satirically insightful topical cartoons of social mores and suburbia have been likened to the UK's Giles but his closest Canadian counterpart, aesthetically and geographically was probably Len Norris of Vancouver. The editorial cartoons of Doug Wright used a similar approach. Barron's cartoons utilized a clear line and elegant, unexagerated figures placed in extremely cluttered backgrounds full of sight gags and signs, a mix of styles akin to the chaos of Wil Elder's Mad cartoons crossed with the sophistication of a New Yorker gag. His two most distinctive trademarks were the sardonic banner-trailing biplane and a bored-looking, sign-toting Cheshire cat.
Barron lived a somewhat bohemian lifestyle with his artist wife Jesi, raising several children in Victoria and on the road. In later years, the couple exhibited paintings with a West Coast theme.
A life-long smoker, Barron suffered from declining health for some years. He died in hospital Saturday, April 29.
(with thanks to Jeremy Spencer)
More:
Wry illustrated commentaries delighted West Coast readersLabels: obituaries
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Sunday, February 26, 2006
Ed Franklin, 1921-2006
:: Posted by max @ 2/26/2006 02:12:00 AM Obituary
Former Globe and Mail political cartoonist Ed Franklin has died. Born in Texas, Franklin worked for the Globe from 1968-1987.
Franklin started his career at the Houston Press in 1947. He also drew cartoons for the Houston Post until 1953 when he moved to New York and freelanced for magazines including The Saturday Evening Post, True, and Argosy, among other clients.
In 1959 he moved his family to Toronto and worked in advertising and illustration. His first Globe cartoon was published in 1966. Following a short stint with the Toronto Star, he joined the staff of the Globe in 1968, alternating with Jim Reidford, the Globe's chief cartoonist and the man responsible for getting Franklin the job. Franklin became the Globe's main daily cartoonist in 1972.
According to Peter Desbarrats in The Hecklers, "His caricatures always illuminate public figures with harsh clarity but his ideas are often as labyrinthine as his drawings and sometimes remain tantalizingly obscure for a large part of his audience."
Desbarrats also notes that, "Probably remembering his experience with Reidford, Franklin has always been very encouraging towards younger cartoonist, including Ted Jackman and Tony Jenkins."
The Globe and Mail attributes Franklin with ending the political career of former Prime Minister Joe Clark when a Franklin caricature of a pants-less Clark was circulated at the 1983 Progressive Conservative leadership convention.
Another cartoon is said to have influenced Ronald Reagan on the issue of acid rain on the eve of Reagan's 1985 visit to Canada.
Franklin also worked for the Financial Post and Saturday Night after retirement.
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There is a Memorial Service:
Monday, February 27
1 PM
Campbell House
160 Queen West, Toronto
(reception 1:30-3:30)
1984 Profile
Complete Globe Obituary
(above: 2 cartoons by Ed Franklin from 1987, including a portrait of Brian Mulroney)Labels: obituaries
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