We have at this time at YOE! Studio a most excellent assignment. We’re doing an exciting design project for a chain of resorts in Jamaica and at the Turks and Caicos Island. So I’ve been filling up sketchbooks on the flights back and forth. Here’s some pages from the latest pen pushing…

Time Magazine tells us in their Feb. 11, 1935 issue how the toon Henry was conceived:

“One day in Wisconsin a hard-working cartoonist name Carl Anderson sweated over an idea for a drawing he hoped to sell to the Saturday Evening Post. Slowly, painfully the idea took form as a sway-back, pot-bellied horse and two small boys. One boy was bald as a buzzard. The other boy lifted him up until his naked pate pressed agaist the horse’s sagging belly. Asked the secondboy, “Does your head fell warmer now, Henry?”
The $50 paid him by the Satevepost for that cartoon looked exceedingly good to Carl Anderson, but the new character he had drawn for the first time looked even better. Henry’s personality appealed to him. The very jname somehow seemed ideal. Artist Anderson concentrated on Henry, perfected the simple lines of his domed head, big ears, full cheeks, skinny neck. Eye, nose & mouth, indicated by circles and dots, formed an expression of sublime self-assurance, competence, unconcern. Henry, according to his maker, was not really bald, he had just had all his hair shaved off.

Always wanted to do some contests, just found this quiz by Dick Cavalli from the 1960s and it makes it easy and fun. Cavalli created the Morty Meekle strip in 1956. I always thought the best thing about the strip was the funny name. The name changed to one not qute as funny, Winthrop, in the 1960s-does anybody know why? Speaking of names, Clizia informs me the Cavalli means horses in Italian. Speaking of names, the contest is to figure out the names of three famous cartoonists from the drawings below. I’ll annnounce the winner this Friday the 22nd of September.

You’ll win an autographed copy of Weird But true Toon Factoids or Arf Museum or Modern Arf or the upcoming Arf Forum-your choice. I’ll put the names of all the Arf Lovers that get the names right in a beenie and draw the winner’s name. Deadline Friday morning. When you submit your guesses be sure and give me your email address so I can notify you. Hint: two of the cartoonists are featured in Arf Museum one of these did a strip especially for the book. The third ink slinger esteemed comics historian and critic R. C. Harvey has a jones for. R.C. is writing a biography on him that I’m pretty excited about myself. Send your guesses to arf(at)arflovers(dot)com and you could be a weiner!

Yo, Yoe!
I just have to say that I find nothing suggestive about Henry and another boy sucking opposite ends of a double dildo. It’s a sweet and innocent image of childhood that only someone with a dirty mind (like you, Yoe) would find in any way sexual.
-Dave
Yo, Dave!
Whatever you say! And thanks for supplying many of the sweet images above, none of which I see anything but sweet innocence in at all!
-The New Clean-thinking Craig
And esteemed comics historian and cartoonist Arnold Wagner wrote on the Plat list message board:

No apologies needed here Craig. I suspected it might be tongue in cheek, but you’re usually not that subtle. None of the Anderson children married so no close reletives to question…I suspect Anderson had hangups, nost of us have a few and the fact that none of the Anderson clan married probably indicates something, but just what is anybody’s guess.

I’ve been urged not to abandoned my plans to post some other Carl Anderson items I find interesting . So, I find the following interesting but also creepy or at least a little strange. But—PLEASE NOTE:
1) It’s a given that I have a dirty mind and often find “pictures with pictures” that aren’t there at all.
2) Times have changed and what was innocent cartooning/drawing/writing in the 30s with absolutely no subtext can be misconstrued in our times where people may be overly sensitive or jaded (or dirty minded like me).
3) While I believe he was never married and do know that he lived with his two spinster sisters I really no nothing of Carl Anderson’s personal life or interests besides cartooning. Even though I find some of his images disturbing or strange or out of the norm he and his creations maybe as pure as the new-driven snow. Let’s even assume they are, if you’d like, yet maybe examine the following as interesting documents viewed from our own time and place.

The following material is from Anderson’s 1935 book “How to draw Cartoons Successfully” and appeared in the front of the book.

The above was the frontispiece. With my dirty mind and jaded 2006 perspective I find it a little disturbing. Anderson created thousands of cartoons of Henry that even I would not find so.

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I have shelves and shelves and shelves of how to draw books. This is the only anatomy chart I’ve ever seen in all those books that I find that somehow has a sexual feeling. Yeah, I’m probably a sick puppy.
I want to say one last thing: I like the vast majority Henry and Carl Anderson’s cartooning.

Whew! It’s been a controversial week so far at the ol’ Arf Lovers blog. I’ve been smelllng like a dirty diaper over the Carl Anderson self-portrait I posted (below) with my over-the top (some say insensitive) commentary. I’ve had to eat some unpleasant crow and offer some sincere apoligies (especially at the Comics Journal message board).
But, thankfully, I can put all that behind me and now it’s time to leave the tawdry, the salacious, the exploitive, the politically-incorrect, the items of questionable taste and present Wacky Wonder Woman Wednesday’s latest offering!

Like the toon Henry maybe I should have remained mute. People have accused me that my own thoughts about Carl Anderson’s self portrait were beyond weird. On the Comics Journal message board and on the Plat list I’ve been taken to task a bit (including by some people I highly regard). If you scroll down about a foot and a half you’ll see the self-portrait of Henry’s creator we’re all talking about and can form your own opinion. Meanwhile on the Comics Journal message board I’ve apologised to anybody I’ve offended and I extend the same apologies to any reader of this blog.
Meanwhile, just below is another Anderson self-portrait that should be free of controversy, i.e. I’m not going to talk about how that in the portrait Anderson has a light side and a DARK SIDE and that pesky pipe. I’m KIDDING!

I’ll be at the opening of the American Master’s Exhibit tonight at the Jewish Museum in Manhatten and then at the opening of the other half of the show Thursday in Newark. Come up and say “yo!” if I don’t creep you out too much!

Arf II, Arf Museum, (click on the cover in the upper left of the blog for a preview) has a whole section on apes and women titled “Get Your Hands Off of Me You Big Ape!” It’s got Bettie Page photographed with with a gorilla to a painting done especially for Arf by Colleen Coover. One of my fave images is the one that leads the Arf chapter off that was an early concept drawing by Mario Lorrinaga for the original King Kong film. Thanks to Miron Murcury, Kong expert, who helped me on the book I just got a couple more drawings by Mario to share on the blog. There’s Kong again with Fay, not as sexy as the one I used in the book but cool none-the-less. And then there’s KK grabbing a reptile. The reptile may or may not be female to keep the theme going, but it’s another great rendering. Thanks, Miron!

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Yo Craig!
Isn’t it funny how a giant ape grabbing a half-naked woman in his hand is
cool, yet a man with a bare-assed, bald-headed boy on his knee is creepy?
If Kong had picked up the boy, would that be creepy? And if septuagenarian
Carl Anderson had a pants-less woman on his lap, would that be cool?
These are the kinds of difficult questions Arf brings up.
Faskinatin’ ain’t it?
Dave
Yo, Dave!
I think the coolest would be if a giant half naked pipe-smoking mute septuagenarian woman cartoonist with a snake wrapped around her waist sitting in bed with a bed pan under the bed would have me on her lap while I licked a sucker while Carl Anderson, Henry and King Kong looked on. That’s probably a pretty normal fantasy, though.
-Craig

To me there’s never been a creepier character created in comics than Henry. Henry was created for The Saturday Evening Post by Carl Anderson when the cartoonist was almost 70 years old. Henry is a bald headed-hell, his head looks like a butt-mute. I mean, Popeye’s head looks like a butt, too, but somehow the also handicapped sailor (one eye is “popped”) is much more reader friendly. Henry just plain weirds me out.

But, if you want real horror check out Anderson’s 1943 self-portrait with Henry poised on his lap as they sit together on a bed. Yes, Carl has just de-pantsed his young charge. (Henry’s tail now matches his head). Yes, the cartoonist sports a adult phallic symbol, a pipe while Henry licks a kid-oriented phallic symbol, a sucker. The Boy Who Cannot Speak has his bare legs dangling between those of the spread-eagled cartoonist’s. I find the smile on Anderson’s face no less than disturbing.

BTW, some folks think * I’M * creepy for seeing nefarious motives in this picture and think this is simply a sweet, innocent pic of a fatherly Anderson changing Henry’s diapers. What do you think, Arf Lover?

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